And that was exactly what he did.
***
When I opened my eyes, I found myself in the bed Sid shared with my sister. I couldn’t remember how or when I’d gotten there. I couldn’t remember when I’d fallen asleep. But for a few blissful, silly moments, I forgot all about the events of the previous night. For a few moments, I even felt good after having slept for a while.
But then I remembered, and I turned my face into the pillow and let the air out of my lungs, wishing for the relief of never having to fill them again.
Sid came in a little while later to check in on me, and not wanting to be bothered, I warred with whether I should pretend to sleep or wake up.
“You’re forgetting I slept with you for years,” he said, sitting on the bed beside me. “I’m like Santa Claus, man. I know when you’re sleeping, and I know when you’re awake.”
I groaned, rubbing a hand over my face. “Fuck off.”
He chuckled a bit, and then he went somber as he asked, “How you feeling, man?”
“Like shit.”
He nodded, a sympathetic look in his eyes. “Yeah, I can only imagine—”
“No, I mean, literally. Do you have Tylenol or NyQuil or something? The girls gave me whatever plague they’d picked up at school and …” I swallowed against a throat full of razor blades as I thought of the girls, and I whispered a tortured, “Oh God. Lizzie … Jane …”
He patted a hand on my arm and nodded. “Hold on, Serg. Lemme see what we have.” Then he left the room.
By the time I pulled myself into a seated position, leaning against the headboard, he was back with a bottle of NyQuil. “It expired a few months ago …”
“Better than nothing,” I grumbled, taking it from him and twisting off the cap. “I don’t remember falling asleep.”
He nodded as I took a sip from the bottle—Laura would’ve yelled at me for that, but Sid didn’t say a word.
“You were pretty fucked up last night. Completely out of it by the time we got to the house. I got you in here, and you pretty much passed out as soon as your head hit the pillow.”
I looked at him with an apologetic, embarrassed grimace. “Where did you guys sleep?”
“The couch,” he admitted, and before I could open my mouth to rip him a new one, he held up a hand to stop me. “Don’t say anything. You needed the sleep more than we did, so don’t worry about us. We’re fine.”
Reluctantly, I nodded. “Well, thanks.”
He lowered his gaze to his hands. “Anything for you, man. You know that.”
Silence fell over the room, and I tipped my head back against the wall to stare at the ceiling.
Laura was gone. How could that even be? Yesterday, she had been here. She was pregnant with our baby. She was bringing home dinner. She had an appointment. She’d had a fuckinglife, and just like that, it was gone. Extinguished. Taken from her over a stupid fucking accident, a foolish, negligible mistake. One I would be paying for, for the rest of my life.
And I understood death. I understood how quickly life could be taken. I’d seen it. I’d been responsible for it. But it was at least somewhat different, wasn’t it? That had been war. And this …
I shook my head at the torrent of grief crashing against my heart like waves against the shore. Was it karma? Was this the price I paid for the lives I had taken while on the battlefield? Or could it have gone back further than that? Maybe this was my punishment for whatever Dad hated me for. Being alive, I guessed.
A cold, vacant emptiness engulfed me at the thought of never seeing her again. Oh fuck, it was so vast, the chasm that separated us now. This wasn’t time or distance. This was life and death. This was her being there with our baby and me being here alone.
I was alone.
I was in no better position now than I had been before we were reacquainted on that bridge. Except … no. This was worse, wasn’t it? I had known what it was like to truly, freely love her, to be really loved by her, to be with her and her daughters.
Her daughters. My daughters.
They were eight. Eight years old. How long would the memory of their mother live in them? How long until they started to forget until she was only a fragment of something they could barely hear, touch, see, smell?
How long until that was all she was for me?
