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She shushed him and continued to smooth his hair off his forehead.
Dammit, he needed her to pay attention. He shook his head, only then realizing that there were tubes in his nose. Jesus! How undignified was that? He reached up and pulled the cannula away. Or tried. Caroline replaced it, and there was nothing he could do about it because he didn't have enough energy to raise his hand again.
The dull ache had worsened, and now he remembered being wheeled down a corridor, blinding overhead lights flashing past with dizzying speed, people running alongside the gurney talking in loud, excited voices. Had a guy with a goatee actually been straddling his chest and pounding on him, or had that been a weird dream?
Had those extra-bright lights been on the ceiling of an operating room? Probably some asshole with a trophy wife, a golf club membership, and a healthy six-figure annual income had been digging around inside his chest, and that's why it felt so tight and achy.
He heard a soothing voice as if it was coming from the end of a tunnel. It said, "Only another minute, Ms. King. Then you'll have to leave."
He hadn't realized his eyes had closed until he pried them open again. Caroline was still there. He gazed into her face and thought how lucky he was to be seeing it one more time, and marveled over how beautiful she was. He felt the warm, wet trickle of his own tears. Well, this was just super. Here he was, about to die, and there were tubes in his nostrils, and he was crying like a complete puss.
He forced his thick tongue to move before his final minute in this staging area was up, and Caroline would be lost to him forever. "Sorry I was..."
Shit. Sixty seconds wasn't enough time to list all the things he was sorry for. He just needed to tell her how much he loved her, had always loved her and always would. But he had to hurry because the stranger with the soothing voice was injecting something into the tube in his arm. Instantly he felt a rush of honeyed heat and sublimity. It was great fuckin' stuff, but as good as it was, he fought its effects.
He must say what needed to be said to Caroline, and he must say it in a way that would encompass the immensity of his love.
He groped for her hand, found it, squeezed it with all the strength he had. "I'd die for you all over again."
She turned his hand and pressed his palm against her heart. It beat steadily, strongly against his hand. She bent down and kissed his lips. Not gently. But with ardor, the way she used to when she was either really aroused or really pissed off.
When she pulled back, she whispered, "I know you love me enough to die for me, Dodge. Do you love me enough to live?"
Damn the woman! He couldn't leave now. Now that she'd given him something more to prove.
