When she finally woke up hours later, she looked strangely smaller.
His gaze scrutinized my face. « You came, » she whispered.
« Yes, » I said. « That’s what I did. »
Tears rolled down her cheeks. « I tried to protect you, » she says in a weak voice. « I didn’t know how to stay. »
I couldn’t speak.
All the anger I had carried for five years turned into grief – not a sharp pain, but a heavy and definitive grief. A sorrow that does not demand justice. A sorrow that only aspires to be recognized.
She fell asleep again in the middle of a sentence.
And I sat there, realizing that the woman I loved had not abandoned me out of cruelty or choice.
She was disappearing—and wouldn’t take me with her.
Part 3
Claire survived the accident.
His convalescence was slow, complicated, uncertain. The doctors were honest: the disease was going to progress. There would be ups and downs. Moments of lucidity followed by confusion. A very different future from the one we had imagined, but a future all the same.
