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The therapist, Helen, smiled. “It’s all right that you feel lost sometimes. This group is about friends and about healing. We all understand what you’re going through. We’ve all been there.” She turned to Mary. “Since it’s your first visit, Mary, would you like to share something with us?”
Mary looked down at her fingers, which she’d twined in her lap. She wanted to be honest, not only with the crowd but with herself. Through the years she’d been doing her best not to think about the night Charles had left her, but now she again allowed the memory of Charles’s final night to return.
The eerily quiet hospital room surrounded Mary as she sat on the edge of the hospital bed beside Charles. She fought her misery, trying to remain Charles’s source of strength. She had never broken down in his presence. At first she held on to the hope that he’d recover, but now she wanted to give him an end that he deserved—one full of love, not fear and dismay.
Charles’s features were filled with pain behind the haze of the medication. “I’ll miss your smile.”
She bit back the emotion threatening to come out of her throat in a scream. God, she’d miss his smile, too. She’d miss everything about him. Her chin quivered, reminding her that her world was crumbling around her and she could do nothing to stop it. She dropped her head onto his chest, releasing the pain bottled up inside of her, and shared the part of her soul that was breaking.
She could speak of how much she loved him, but he already knew, and she’d said it a thousand times over through their years together. Her submission to him proved that time and time again. Only one thought captured her: “How do I go on without you?”
Not only would his absence be hard, but her life had surrounded his medical treatment. She’d lived and breathed his cancer for more than twenty months. Everything revolved around getting him better. Even as a doctor herself, she’d failed to do that. She had no idea how to pick up the pieces and continue on.
“Dmitri has promised to look after you financially.” Charles’s voice lowered, strained, and sounded so weak. “You have the world at your fingertips. Do whatever your heart desires and never stop.”
“I don’t want the money.” She hardened her voice, hating the world, hating fate, hating cancer. “I want you, Charles. I’ll give everything I have, want for nothing more, if I can have a few more days.” Hours even, to hold him, to talk to him, to hear the sound of his heartbeat. Yet the pause between his breaths told her she controlled nothing.
“Promise me that you’ll continue to live.” His breath hitched and then sounded raspy from his throat. “You’ll live out my dreams and you’ll honor me by being happy.” The heart-rate monitor slowed, the beeps came farther apart, and Charles’s breath grew shallower. “Promise me.”
The years they had together weren’t long enough. She needed a lifetime with him, longer than their twenty-year marriage. She needed more time to see his smile, to experience the ways he loved her and made her feel special.
She needed his Dominant touch.
He panted through the force of his chest rising, yet it also sounded labored. “Promise me.”
“I…” Drawing in a sharp breath, she stood and watched his chest rise and fall, so hard. She couldn’t continue with useless wishes. He was dying. Nothing she could do would stop the inevitable. And she’d give him the promise he sought, to see him off as he deserved.
Placing her head back on his chest, she took his hands and cradled them to her heart, unable to watch his end. “I promise, Charles. I promise to love you now, forever, and always. And I promise to live each day for you.”
His chest beneath her head quivered, a soft gasp of air escaped his mouth, and then he went still. Mary couldn’t look. She didn’t want to see the life stolen from his eyes and merely stayed against his body for one last time.
Her sobs filled the hospital room as she cried against the cruelty they’d been handed. Death shouldn’t have stolen a man like Charles. A man with a good soul who lived every day as if he were grateful for the right. A husband who made her feel special to be at his side.
Through her cries, she heard the final whoosh of air from his lungs, and that’s when he took her heart with him.
With tears in her eyes, Mary remained in the moment, unable to raise her head. She realized, for the first time ever, that she and Charles had broken promises to each other. He couldn’t possibly keep the promise that he’d always be there for her. She had forgotten the promise she had made to him…to honor him by being happy and living life to the fullest without him.
She wiped her tears, knowing she hadn’t wanted to talk to the group tonight, only listen. In fact, now she recognized she hadn’t talked at all about the loss of Charles.
Not one single time.
Her sister and her children didn’t understand what she suffered, as no one knew the inner workings of their D/s relationship. Yet she found that the women in this room would understand her more than most; they all had similar stories to her own, only theirs were about vanilla relationships.
As she spoke, her heart opened and eyes shut. “I see my husband everywhere. I see him in our children. I see him in our house. Even if he’s been gone for over four years, I see him all around me.” Her chest constricted with emotion, yet she pushed on, knowing it was the only thing that would save her now. “There are times I feel his touch, even though I know he’s not there. I experience memories of him as if they are real. I hear the way he used to whisper things to me.”
Even now it was as if his arms were wrapped around her, and somehow her mouth kept moving as her soul poured through her words. “I remember when he’d make me feel safe, like nothing could ever come between us.” Tears welled behind her eyes and her breath hitched on a sob. “He broke his promise to me. His promise to always be there. To always keep me safe. To always love me.”
She opened her eyes, discovering that she’d been talking for some time, and raised her head. All eyes were focused on her. In an instant, she regretted her words, wondering if she’d said too much to a vanilla crowd.
While they could relate to her on the level of a woman who loved a man, they couldn’t relate to how deeply that ran with a submissive and her Dominant. “I’m sorry,” she said with a sniff, wiping her eyes. “I miss him.”
Helen gave a sweet smile. “It seems like you two had something very special. We can all relate to that. It’s why it’s hard to move on. But we need to find a way to stop mourning, cherish the memories, and learn to live in the moment again.”
Helen’s advice stopped Mary’s tears, freezing her in her seat. During her final conversation with Charles, when she lay beside her Dom, she remembered hearing something so similar to what Helen had said.
The nurse shut the door behind her, and Mary knew she had only minutes before the morphine kicked in and Charles would fall asleep. Yet she cherished every second she had. She sat on the edge of the hospital bed, holding his hand in hers and relishing the warmth of his touch.
“I worry for you, my darling,” Charles whispered. “Promise me you will go on without me.”
