“Did I die and go to heaven?”
Her eyes went serious for a few seconds. “No. You lived. Thank God.”
I frowned. “I’m not afraid of dying anymore. That place where we’re all going? It’s beautiful. There’s nothing on this Earth that can tell you just how beautiful. One day, when we’re all gone, me and you are going to that beautiful place, and we’ll live there in utter bliss.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “You’ll take me with you when you go next? You won’t leave me behind?”
I started to shake my head but found that I couldn’t.
“My head is plastered to this board and I can’t move it,” I paused. “Is that for a reason?”
Mavis grinned. “Just to keep you still for a bit while everything settles down. You won’t feel if you’re hurting yourself at this point because you’re still knocked up on the good drugs. When that…”
“Mavis Pope, a minute?” an authoritative voice said from the other side of where Mavis had slid her chair.
I tried to lean my head more in that direction, but something kept it from moving more than an inch. Still, that inch was enough to see the very pissed off looking man in the navy blue scrubs.
I narrowed my eyes. “Mavis Romano,” I corrected him. “Get it right next time.”
The man’s lips twitched. “Noted.”
“And you interrupted something. Come back in five minutes. She’ll be ready then,” I ordered.
I wasn’t sure why his tone pissed me off so much, but I really didn’t’ like the angry look in his eyes he was aiming my wife’s way.
“Unfortunately, we need to speak now,” the man disagreed.
“Fortunately, my wife doesn’t even need to work because I’m a goddamn millionaire, soon to be billionaire due to my investments. So you piss her off and make her cry, I’ll offer her more incentive to stay home with our kids than working here for you. Capisce?”
Again, the doctor’s lips twitched—at least I assumed he was a doctor based on what he was dressed as. That could just be my imagination, though.
“Capisce,” the doctor agreed.
I was sure that my words really packed a punch thanks to my head being mobilized to a board, and I was glaring at him from a lying down position with my eyes all but rolled back in my head so I could look at him.
“And, if you’re nice to her for saving her husband’s life, maybe you’ll think about the rather large donation that is set to come y’all’s way at the end of the month. And also, there’s a lot more where it came from,” I continued, the sting coming out of my words due to the fact that I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.
“Go to sleep, baby,” Mavis whispered. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“Okay.” I paused. “But don’t go far. I don’t like it when you leave me.”
She placed her hand over my jaw line, cupping it softly before she again placed her lips on mine.
The movement caused my head to jolt minutely, and a sharp shard of pain pierced my skull for a few seconds before slowly waning away.
I didn’t tell her that her kisses hurt, though.
She’d never kiss me again.
And we couldn’t have that.
“Love you, Mavis Romano,” I grumbled.
Then I fell off into sleep and didn’t wake back up for hours.
CHAPTER 24
Everything I ate this weekend? We’re going to pretend that didn’t happen.
-Mavis to Murphy
MURPHY
I would like to say that after that day where they cleared the clot from my brain, shit got better.
But it didn’t.
Because a little after that day, I contracted an infection that nearly took my life for a third time, and this time, I was asked to have no visitors due to the nature of the infection.
Meaning, it was a long, hard four weeks after things finally settled down enough for me to be moved out of the ICU, and the hospital altogether.
Though, Mavis didn’t know that I was out of the hospital just yet.
In fact, neither did my mother.
I wasn’t sure really how I was going to get this particular thing past them—I mean, it wasn’t like I could drive yet, nor did I have a car here—which led me to sitting on my ass in my room, looking at my phone, wondering whose day I should interrupt.
Mavis, I knew, had gone to work out for the first time in six weeks. And I didn’t want her to have to stop her workout to come get me—even though I knew that she would. In a heartbeat.
My mother was finally back at work, and I didn’t want to call her and interrupt her day because I’d finally convinced them to give me some breathing room that day, without knowing that I would need a ride home later in the evening.
But I was taking the out while I could get it.