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By the time the ambulance showed, my muscles burned from the exertion, and I was sweating like a pig in the late afternoon sun.
“Take over compressions. I’ll tube her.” One medic said to another.
I moved, reluctantly, to let them do their job, but I had zero hope.
The woman was dead. There was no other explanation for it. She was stiff as a goddamned board. After nearly fifteen minutes of CPR and no pulse, I was fairly sure she wouldn’t be coming back.
I’d worked a lot of cases with dead people, and there was just no way.
***
“My fears were confirmed twenty minutes later when I called to check on the patient and they told me she didn’t make it. Her neck had been broken with the impact of the fall.” I said woodenly. “When I performed a search of her vehicle, I found a medal of honor, and a note. The note said that she’d gotten the news that her husband was never coming home from the war. That he’d died in a roadside bomb. She said she couldn’t live without him; that she never wanted to¸ and she decided to join him in the afterlife. That she loved him too much to live without him anymore.”
“That’s just horrible. Oh, God. How dreadful.” Viddy whispered sadly.
Itwashorrible. The whole thing was just a completely gut-wrenching situation. One that tanked my career in Las Vegas so completely that I’d been jaded ever since.
I couldn’t sleep at night. I had nightmares. I replayed certain cases over and over again.
So much of this world was dark and nasty, that at times I couldn’t see the light.
Or at least I hadn’t been able to…until I met Viddy.
“How about we eat?” I suggested to try to lighten the mood, even though that was the honest to God last thing I wanted to do right then.
“Sure,” she said softly.
Scooping up a massive amount of spaghetti, and then smothering it with sauce, I sat at the table, watching as she made her plate of food. Not once didshespill, bobble, or even trip. She was doing it as if she was seeing it, and it amazed me.
“I hope you don’t get offended by this, but I think it’s truly impressive that you can do all this without your sight.” I said carefully.
She shrugged one shoulder as she sat, placing the napkin in her lap and tucking her hair behind her ears before she took her first bite. “I know no different. Seriously, though, what would you do right now if you lost your sight? Would you curl into a ball and whine about what was taken away from you? No. You’d grin and bear it just like I have. I’ve learned to cope. I’ve learned to do things that others thought would be impossible. Hell, I can even do sign language. Do you know how? I felt with my hands each word. That’s how. I listened and learned. Just because someone is blind or deaf or can’t walk doesn’t mean that they can’t enjoy life.”
“That makes me feel humble.” I said shaking my head.
Then I took a bite of her spaghetti even though my stomach was still churning from reliving one of my greatest nightmares. I ate every single bite, and then placed the plate on the floor for the dogs who were all laying in the middle of the kitchen floor like lumps on a log.
Lumps that Viddy had avoided.
***
Viddy
“No, no.Nooooo.”
Moaning woke me from a deep sleep.
Sitting straight up in bed, I was confused for long moments while my brain caught up with my body, and it was then I heard the low moans of Trance.
I could hear him from his room all the way across the house.
He had me in his guest bedroom.
Somewhere in the time that I’d been at his place last and now, he’d gotten a brand new bedroom suite for the guest room.
Last time I’d slept in his bed.
I’d breathed in the masculine scent of him while I’d slept, gathering peace from the comforting smell.
