Sarah’s eyes were closed, her face as peaceful as though she were sleeping. Her hand felt heavy and cold, and Murray gently rubbed his thumb against her papery skin. His tears fell unashamedly onto the white hospital blanket, forming dark spots like the onset of a summer shower.
There were four beds in this section of the ward, all but Sarah’s unoccupied. A nurse hovered discreetly in the corridor, giving him solitude at this most private of moments. Seeing him look up, she came to his side.
“Take as much time as you need.”
Murray stroked Sarah’s hair. Time. That most precious commodity. How much time had he and Sarah spent together? How many days? How many hours, minutes?
Not enough. It could never be enough.
“You can talk to her. If you like.”
“Can she hear me?” He watched the gentle rise and fall of Sarah’s chest.
“Jury’s still out on that one.” The nurse was in her forties, with soft dark eyes and a voice filled with compassion.
Murray followed the tubes and wires that snaked across his wife’s body, to the myriad of machines keeping her alive, to the IV drip with its soothing morphine.
They would increase the dose, the consultant had explained. When it was time.
The ambulance had taken only minutes, but they were minutes too long. In the days that had followed—in the blur of nurses and consultants and machinery and paperwork—Murray had made himself relive those minutes as though he had been there. As though this had happened to him.
There had been an upturned chair in the kitchen; a broken glass where Sarah had fallen by the sink. The phone, beside her on the tiles. Murray forced the images through, one after another, each one like a blade dragged against his skin.
Nish had begged him to stop. She’d arrived with something foil wrapped, still hot from the oven, and caught Murray in the brief space between hospital visits. She had listened to Murray tell her what no one knew for certain had happened; then she had put her hands around his and cried with him. “Why are you torturing yourself like this?”
“Because I wasn’t there,” Murray had said simply.
Nish’s tears left tracks down her cheeks. “You couldn’t have prevented this.”
Cerebral aneurysm, the doctor had said.
Coma.
Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.
Then: I’m sorry. There’s nothing more we can do.
She wouldn’t feel anything, they had insisted. It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do.
Murray opened his mouth, but nothing came out. There was a pain in his chest and he knew his heart was breaking. He looked at the nurse. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say anything. Talk about the weather. Tell her what you had for breakfast. Have a moan about work.” She put a hand on Murray’s shoulder, squeezed gently, then took it away. “Say whatever’s in your head.”
She moved away to the corner farthest from where Murray sat with Sarah and began folding blankets and tidying the contents of the metal cupboard beside the empty bed.
Murray looked at his wife. He ran a single finger over her forehead—its worried furrows now smoothed flat—and along the bridge of her nose. He skirted the plastic mask that held the tube in Sarah’s throat, and stroked instead her cheek, her neck. He traced the curve of her ear.
Say whatever’s in your head.
Behind him, the steady burr of machines continued, rhythmic sounds that formed the language of the ICU.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there . . . ,” he began, but the words were sobs and his eyes were streaming and he could no longer see. How much time had they had together? How much time would they have had left, if this hadn’t happened? Murray pictured Sarah on their wedding day, in the dark green dress she had picked in lieu of white. He remembered her joy when they bought their house. He held Sarah’s limp fingers and saw instead the nails filled with dirt; her face not pale against a hospital pillow, but flushed from a morning’s gardening.
It hadn’t been enough, but the time they had spent together meant the world to him.
It had been his world.
Their world.
Murray cleared his throat. He looked across at the nurse. “I’m ready.”
There was a pause. Murray half hoped she’d say not yet—in an hour or so, perhaps, yet at the same time he knew he couldn’t bear it if she did. More time wouldn’t make this any easier.
She nodded. “I’ll get Dr. Christie.”
There was no more talking. They removed the tube from Sarah’s throat as gently as if she had been made of glass; pushed away the wheeled machines that had been keeping the beat of a heart too weak to do so alone. They promised to be right outside, in the corridor, in case they were needed. That he mustn’t feel afraid; he mustn’t feel alone.
And then they left him.
And Murray rested his head on the pillow beside the woman he had loved for half his life. He watched her chest rise and fall with a movement so slight he could barely see it.
Until it wasn’t there at all.