Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 180510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 903(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 602(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 903(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 602(@300wpm)
“I’m in here.”
I follow her voice to Reagan’s room. She’s perched on the end of Reagan’s bed, staring at the cat mural.
“Who painted this?” she asks.
“I did.” I bend down and kiss her head before sitting next to her.
“Did I know that?”
“Yes. You did.”
“Huh …” She continues to stare at it.
“Josie,” I whisper, taking her hand in mine. “It’s time. I need to know. Where have you been? What happened?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What does that mean?”
“There’s what I know and what I’ve been told. I’ve been trying to piece everything together, but it’s been hard. I know I loved my job. I know you moved to Chicago, and it was the first time I had seen you in seventeen years. I know I was mad at you. I know you did a weird proposal over donuts. I know I said no. But I watched a video I made before I died, and I guess I was going to marry you, so I must have said yes at some point. The video version of me said that I had a near-death experience where I remembered a past life, and it was giving me horrible visions. I was suicidal. I was afraid of making you choose between your daughter and me. I must not have thought we could coincide in your life. Felix has filled in some more information as well. I have memories from before the first death, the shooting, but I think everything from after that until I woke up from the coma is gone.”
“Josie …” I stand, running my hands through my hair before turning toward her. “You were in a coma?”
She nods.
“Wh-how … for … Jesus … for how long? Why am I just now hearing about this? Why didn’t your name come up when you were admitted to the hospital? I’ve been looking for you for months!”
She winces.
I feel instant regret. I’m angry, but not really at her. I’m confused. My chest aches, and I feel so lost and helpless.
“I didn’t go to the hospital.”
“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.”