His Tempting Widow

Chapter 4: Break Down

The two ladies stepped out of the pedicab and paid the driver. They quickly went inside the hospital, and they were met by Luke, who immediately introduced himself to them. It seemed that the man knew her. He perhaps saw her in her husband’s wedding and family pictures that he always carried around in his wallet. Her husband had the tendency to brag about her and their kids to other people. He was so proud to have her as his wife and to have two beautiful children together.

The man named Luke stood about five feet and six inches tall—three inches shorter than her husband. He was slim like her husband but had fairer skin than Ace’s moreno skin.

“Where is he?” she asked Luke as they walked into the lobby. She and her mother-in-law were holding hands, supporting each other. They had no one else but each other.

The amalgam of smells in the private hospital met their nose—disinfectant and others that were typical of this kind of place. She was familiar with these odors since she had been hospitalized a couple times when giving birth to her two children. She also visited this same hospital before whenever her kids needed their pediatrician.

Luke answered her, “They already transferred him to the morgue.”

Both she and her mother-in-law stifled a cry, a folded handkerchief covered their mouth and nose. They followed him through wide hallways, in every turn, until they went to the back of the hospital and entered an eerie room.

Shaina’s skin crawled, as goosebumps rose from her arms to her nape. The hospital staff stood waiting for them, and she and her mother-in-law slowly approached the gurney where a covered body laid. She could not believe it was her husband, who was lying there. He was so lively this morning and when he called her this afternoon. But now, here he was. He was so still.

“Ace!” she exclaimed and cried out when the staff took off the white cloth to show them her husband’s pale face.

As if in a race, the two women both rushed to her husband’s body and embraced him as they cried hard. Their cries echoed in the cold room, where other covered cadavers were arranged in a row.

“What happened to you, anak (my son)?” Hilda asked.

Luke could only watch the two women in pity and with guilt. He was beating himself up, as he was the one who urged Ace to go to their colleague’s birthday party. If he had not and let Ace go home as he wanted, he still would have been alive and had not left these two poor women.

Shaina sobbed harder, her chest tightening. “Ace, hon. Why did you leave me and our kids? What are we going to do now? How can we live without you?”

“Anak! Ngano man tawon ning nahitabo nimo? Nganong naing-ani man ka? (My son! Why did this happen to you? Why did you end up like this?)” Hilda lamented at the same time.

Shaina suddenly could not breathe well, and her vision started to blacken. She could not feel anything, but she knew she was falling down the floor.

***

When Wallace opened his eyes, he was standing in the busy emergency room. He had no idea why or how he got there. But then the memory of him flying and falling with a crack sound came back to him. His chest rose and fell as he recalled it. Then, his eyes grew wide when he saw himself lying on a hospital bed.

“No, no, no. This is impossible! This is not happening!” He touched himself, noticing that he wore a white shirt and a pair of jeans, different from the ones he had on as he remembered. These were not his clothes.

He glanced at the doctor that examined his body, shaking her head.

“Hey! I’m here. Can you see me? I’m still alive! I’m okay!” he emphasized.

“He’s already gone. We can’t do anything for this man,” the female doctor in her forties announced. “Why is he brought in here and not in the morgue? Can someone process this one please?”

Wallace’s eyes flickered. “W-what did you say? What do you mean I’m gone? I’m here! T-that one lying there is not me! This is me!” He pointed at himself. However, no one could hear or see him.

He moved in front of the doctor and waved his hands, but the female doctor did not even flinch, indicating that she could not see or hear him. He wanted to panic.

“But that one, we’ll do all we can to save his life,” the forty-ish doctor said instead.

Wallace turned his head to look at the mestizo guy on the bed next to his. The man’s head and shoulder were bleeding. Who knew if he had other injuries besides the obvious ones? It looked like he was in a rather bad shape. The staff was too busy to stop the blood and stitch the huge gash from his shoulder.

“He needs a CT scan and an X-ray. Have them done immediately,” the doctor instructed after treating the mestizo man in his late thirties, to Wallace’s approximation.

The man’s head was bandaged. Blood and betadine stained the whiteness of it.

Wallace stared at his immobile body on the bed, where no one was making a fuss over anymore. He touched it—at least tried to. And yet, he could not feel it.

“Does this mean I’m dead? Is this me, my soul now?” He looked at his hand that looked diaphanous. “No, this can’t be. Shaina and my kids… they need me!”

He went still, having a eureka moment.

“Hey, hey! I can still go back to my body if I’m here, right? Look!” he said to the doctor that glanced at his body for a second. A couple of aides came into the ER.

Wallace quickly lay down over his body and wiggled in. He lay there for a couple beats. But he could not feel anything. The two aides went to take his body, covering it with a white cloth first before transferring it to a gurney.

Wallace was left lying on the bed but eventually fell through to the floor. He waited for the pain to register, but nothing came.

“Hey! Hey! Where are you taking my body?” He immediately got up to follow where the two aides rolled the gurney with his body on it.

He noticed Luke following the two aides. He heard him talking to his wife on the phone, which made him still. He listened to Luke who sadly delivered the news of his death to his poor wife. He could see the sadness in his colleague’s face.

Wallace did not know what to feel at the moment. He was confused why he was still here if he was dead. He was not a religious person, but he did live as morally as he could. But he was not that good, either.

He knew that he did everything he could to have Shaina as his wife. He could categorize it as being naughty. He was possessive of her, but he loved her to the heavens and back. He would sometimes lie to her when it comes to drinking, but he would ask forgiveness afterward and make up for it. So, why was he not in hell already? He always thought that he would go to hell because of the things he had done, but it was curious that he was still here.

Anyway, he did not want to leave his wife, so it was good. Now, looking at her crying hard like that with his poor old mother in the morgue, his heart seemed to be crushed in pieces.

“Shaina!” Wallace attempted to catch his wife when she fainted. However, his hands and body went right through her.

Shaina would have hurt herself if Luke had not caught her just in time. He was grateful to him, but he was jealous that someone else held her.

His teeth gnashed, and his eyes blazed. “I will never leave you, hon. Never!”