Babysitting his nephew for three days while his parents were on vacation. Two men who couldn’t keep a houseplant alive, suddenly daydreaming about strollers and bedtime stories.
The night we celebrated our ninth anniversary, he smeared chocolate cheesecake down my chest and licked it from my skin, both of us drunk on laughter and sugar and the way love used to feel when it was still new.
The light faltered, the edges burning white. The picture warped, then stuttered. Our kitchen faded first—the table, the plates, the smear of chocolate still on his chin. Then him. Always him, the last to go.
I reached for his face, tried to hold it in place, but my hands passed through smoke.
Wait.
I didn’t mean for it to end here. Not on soundlessness. Not on that blank look that told me how far we’d fallen.
I wanted another frame. Just one more breath of laughter, one more second of his warmth before everything went cold.
But the reel was done. The film spun loose, flapping against the projector, empty light flickering through nothing.
Still, I tried to stay inside it, to claw my way back into the memory, to make it keep going. I’d take the fights, the distance, anything, if it meant I didn’t have to leave.
Because if this was all that was left—if this was how it ended—then I wasn’t ready to let it go.
I wasn’t ready to lethimgo.
The screen went white, humming. A sound like the world exhaling.
And somewhere beyond it, I heard him call my name.
It wasn’t a memory anymore.
It was now.
And I ran toward it.
Part Three
Holding Out Hope
Chapter 10
The Blip
ADRIAN
The sound that followed the flatline wasn’t silence.
It was everything at once—the alarms, the shuffle of footsteps retreating, the sterile hiss of oxygen still cycling through a machine that had lost its purpose.
Someone said “Time of death,” but the words sounded wrong, as if meant for another room, another man, another version of me that wasn’t kneeling here stained with my husband’s blood.
The world had narrowed to this—one bed, one body, and a lack of sound that roared in my ears. I sank to the floor.
A nurse reached for me. “Doctor, you need to sit down?—”
“No.” My voice cracked on the word.
My chest collapsed, ribs grinding to dust with every breath. I leaned forward until my forehead rested against his arm.
“Eli,” I whispered, my voice trembling so hard I barely recognized it. “Come back. Please.”
The overhead light flickered. I shut my eyes. For a heartbeat, I imagined the hum syncing with his pulse—one more beat, one more chance.
