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My body tenses, my arms giving out, unable to hold my weight. Julia jerks away from me, lands on the floor bleeding beside me. Isabelle is trapped beneath me. The photos of our baby are turning red as blood seeps onto the small life captured on that page, ruined.
When I raise my eyes from that photo, the last thing I see are Isabelle’s eyes. That too-blue gaze. Shards of glass. Too beautiful for this world. Too beautiful for such an ugly world.
And although I know she’s screaming my name, I can’t hear her anymore. I can barely see her as my vision fades and the world ends for me like it should have so many years ago.
48
Isabelle
He dies in the ambulance. I hear the flatline and scream for the paramedics to let me go to him, but they hold me back. The pain in my arm is unbearable as they do.
His face is ashen. Eyes closed. Mouth slack. Blood seeps from his side, his chest. And one of the paramedics is counting, doing compressions, another is giving oxygen.
“Come back to me! You come back to me!” I scream and sob. So close to him but unable to touch him. To hold him. To make him come back. “Please. God. Please!”
We arrive at the hospital and the doors fly open. Nurses and doctors meet us, carrying Jericho’s gurney, compressions never ceasing, that count on a loop as I’m lifted out. They race him into the hospital, and I manage to run after them, not caring about my stupid arm when he could be gone.
“Jericho!” I scream his name as they wheel him through doors. Then I hear it. The flat line of the machine changing, beeping in a rhythm.
“He’s back!” someone calls out and I want to hug that person. They wheel him through another set of doors and just as someone stops me from following, he opens his eyes. Only for one split second, Jericho opens his eyes and they lock on mine. Time stops for us. Time comes to a screeching halt and the only sound is that of machines and echoes of people close but no longer here. Not in this space with us. This bubble of time. I put my hand to my mouth and a sob escapes me. When he smiles, reaching the hand that is resting over his heart toward me, I know he hears me. I know he sees me. And I know he’ll come back to me.
When he disappears through those doors, I’m barred from entering. I sink to the floor and sob, giving myself over to the doctors and nurses. Too exhausted to do anything else.
49
Jericho
She’s asleep on the chair across from my bed. I watch her as machines beep around me. Whatever they’re pumping into me makes it hard to keep my eyes open, but I fight it. I want to see her. I need to see her.
Her left arm is bandaged from her wrist up past her elbow. There’s a small bandage on her forehead and scrapes on her cheekbone. She’s wearing thick socks and that knit dress, but the arm has been cut off and it looks like it’s been through hell.
I guess it has. We all have.
I shift my gaze to the ceiling. I died today. I flatlined for more than three minutes. The last thing I remember before passing out were Isabelle’s eyes. The panic inside them.
They talk about your life flashing before your eyes at the moment of death, but for me, I saw that bright, sunny morning in Mexico that turned into the bloodiest day of my life. Now second to what happened this morning. I felt Kimberly dying in my arms. And then I saw her face. Not bloody and lifeless like it had been then. Not gray and slack. I saw her as she was. Young and bright and beautiful wearing one of her happy smiles. She cupped my cheek, oblivious to the blood, then set her hand over my heart and never spoke one word. Just smiled.
Then she took my left hand, her gaze on the wedding band there. She turned it around and around my finger. I swear I still remember the sensation. Before I could attempt to explain things, explain what I’d done to avenge her murder, explain that I’d fallen in love with Isabelle, she laid her hand over my heart and leaned in close to kiss my forehead.
I knew she forgave me then. And more. She gave me her blessing. Said her goodbye.
When I next opened my eyes, I was back in this world, locked painfully in my body. Then I saw Isabelle’s face. Heard her scream my name. Saw her stop when our eyes locked for that briefest of moments before I went under again, only to wake up hours later in this hospital bed.
