She was watching the weak and almost undrinkable coffee drip into the white plastic cup when her husband died. She wasn’t with him because she was waiting by the drinks machine. She hadn’t even wanted coffee really, she’d just wanted a moment away from the dimly lit room, the smell of disinfectant and the gentle beep, beep, beep of the machines. She’d wanted a little bit of time on her own and that time made her miss those last moments.
She would never forgive herself for that.
When the nurse met her outside the room and told her, she dropped the cup of coffee and heard a choked, strangled sound that she thought was coming from herself. She pushed past the nurse and into the room, lay down on the bed next to him, took his still-warm hand in hers, and pretended that she’d never left and that his gentle slipping away was still to come.
She didn’t know how long she lay there next to him; she didn’t know how much time had passed before the nurse came into the room and spoke to her in hushed whispers. It could have been hours or minutes. Slowly she got up and followed the nurse’s instructions to go home and get some sleep.
“We can deal with paperwork tomorrow,” the nurse said. “Do you have anywhere you can go or someone who could be with you tonight?”
She nodded, pretending. She didn’t want to go anywhere but home and she didn’t want to be anywhere but alone in bed, the bed she had shared with her husband for so many years.
And she didn’t want to think about how she was going to live without him.