Page 3 of Someone to Remember
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I need it. Please. Will you take me to him?”
“Let me see what I can do,” he says reluctantly.
After he leaves the room, I stare at the dry-erase board that bears my name and my nurse’s name, wondering how this nightmare can be happening again. How am I supposed to go on without the man who put me back together with his love and devotion to me and my kids?
He was so perfect from the beginning that I didn’t agonize over whether I should be with him, the way most widows do with new relationships after a terrible loss. Falling in love with Will was the easiest, most natural thing to ever happen, and I didn’t stop for one second to ask for anyone’s permission to be happy. I left my widowhood behind, became a wife again and never looked back, except to honor Greg’s life at every birthday, anniversary and sometimes just because I was thinking of him on a random Friday. I’ve never stopped thinking of him even as I built a happy new life with Will. Keeping Greg alive in the memories of our children has been one of my primary goals since we lost him.
“They said you can see him shortly,” Bryan says when he returns.
“I need my friend Iris.” She’s the only one I want. She’ll know what to do. “Do you have my phone?”
When he hands it to me, the first thing I see is a message from my neighbor Kate asking how Will is doing.
I’m also shocked to see it’s now after midnight. What the hell? “Did I pass out?”
“Yeah, you were out of it for a long time. You scared us.”
I’m so blinded by tears I can hardly see the screen as I find Iris’s number and make the call that’ll make it official.
I’m a widow.
Again.
Iris
A midnight phonecall is never a good thing. That’s my first thought as I turn over in bed to grab my phone off the bedside table, hoping to quiet it before the ringing wakes Gage. I see the name TAYLOR on the screen and am immediately wide awake as I take the phone into the bathroom and close the door. I haven’t spoken to my friend and cofounder of the Wild Widows in a few weeks, and she’s never called this late.
“Hey.”
“Iris.”
“What’s wrong?”
All I can hear are deep, wrenching sobs that fill me with anxiety over what she’s going to tell me.
“Taylor, honey…”
“It’s Will.”
After being widowed for more than five years, she remarried two years ago and is expecting her first child with her second husband.
“What about him?”
“He… he was killed in an accident at work.”
“Oh God, no.”
“Iris…” A world of need is conveyed in the way she says my name.
“I’m coming.”
“I… I’m at Inova. I passed out…”
“Are you okay? Is the baby?”
“I…”
