“Don’t you dare die on me. Don’t you f*****g dare. I can’t lose you.”
They were her words—the charge she’d hurled at John in those first weeks after the accident, when he’d hovered between life and death, before it had become apparent he was never waking up. But it wasn’t her voice. She slid away again before she could identify the speaker.
The familiar sharp scent of antiseptic and beep of machines interrupted the dark. Voices talked around her, but she couldn’t focus on any of them. None were the deep one she’d heard before, and she retreated, not wanting a reminder of the hospital she’d come to hate.
A big, warm hand clutched hers. No, that wasn’t right. She’d held his for hours every day. He’d never held hers back. Not until that one brief squeeze before the end.
Had she died? Was
