Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 86857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
“What?” I shake my head. “That makes no sense.”
“I told you what I know. Now this is what I’ve been told. I left you on our wedding day. I showed up at Felix’s house. He was a first-year resident when I was chief resident. He had some issues, and I saved him and his career. I went to his house because I thought he owed me. I asked him to kill me. He restrained me and tied a bag around my head—”
I shake my head over and over before running to the bathroom and hurling. Not much comes out because my stomach is empty. Everything from the pit of it to the top of my throat aches and burns. I’ve seen truly horrible crime scenes and barely blinked at the carnage. But imagining someone restraining Josie and tying a plastic bag over her head … it’s gutting me.
She left me on our wedding day… to die.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
I stand and rinse my mouth in the sink. Pressing a towel to my lips, I glance at her in the mirror, standing with her walker in the doorway.
“I should leave.”
I turn and clear my throat. “How long were you in a coma?”
“Two months. In a storage unit filled with equipment Felix borrowed from the hospital.”
Two fucking months in a coma … in a goddamn storage unit. And I thought she was dead.
“I was confused as to why Felix kept me alive that long. I thought I surely gave him instructions, but I couldn’t remember. When I pressed him, he told me it was two weeks. His wife found me, and she refused to let me die. I think …” Josie’s gaze drops to the floor, eyes narrowed.
I turn, resting against the counter.
“I think … sometimes … that they should have let me die because I’m nearly four months post coma, and I look awful. And I can’t walk without a walker. And my memory is slow some days. And piecing things together is painful. I’m trying to form these connections in my brain, and it’s so very hard.” She takes in a shaky breath. “It’s statistically unlikely that I’ll ever be what I was before the coma … before I died a second time. Most days I wonder why. What is the point? Why did I want to stay in this world so badly?”
I run a hand through my hair. “For me. You wanted to stay for me. Because you know I love you. Because you know I need you.”
Her head eases side to side. “You wanted me. But you didn’t need me. You didn’t need me when you broke my heart our senior year, even if you wanted me … you didn’t need me. And you didn’t need me when we reconnected seventeen years later. I know this because you made it seventeen years without me, without making any effort to find me. You had other relationships. A career. A daughter. All without me. So I wanted to stay for me. I wanted to stay because you came back into my life, and I liked the version of me with you. I’ve always liked that version of myself. But now I’m barely a ghost of what I used to be. And I hate it. I hate that I allowed this to happen. I hate that I didn’t have the courage to just let go. Let you go. Let this life go.”
How can she be alive yet I hurt more than I did when I thought she was dead?
Something chimes from the bedroom. She turns and pushes her walker toward the bed, taking her phone off the nightstand and answering it. “Hello? No. I haven’t done my exercises yet. No. I haven’t—yeah, I know. I will. I know.” She closes her eyes for a few seconds and blows out a long breath. “Fine. I’ll meet you out front.” Ending the call, she glances up at me. “I have to go. That was Izzy.”
“Who’s Izzy?”
“Felix’s wife. I go to therapy four times a week, but I have exercises to do at home every day. Izzy feels very responsible for my recovery since she’s the reason Felix didn’t let me die.”
“Sounds like I owe her a debt of gratitude.”
“No.” She frowns. “You don’t. I’m not her. I’m not the woman you asked to marry you in a donut shop. I’m the car that needs to be sent to the junkyard because my parts are worth more than the whole of me. I’m nothing but a liability.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever fucking say that again.”
Pushing her walker toward the door, she mumbles, “Izzy’s coming to get me. Give my apologies to your date from last night. Felix was right; I should have let him run my errands.”
I follow her to the stairs. “It wasn’t a date.”