The Rose is Frail

Every hour of every day, the young man watched his wife grow weaker. She'd gotten much thinner since the diagnosis, so thin that it looked as if the skin on her arms had merely been stretched over her bones. With each pound lost she grew weaker and weaker until she could no longer walk.1

Many times, he had wondered if he could handle living another day with her in her current state. They'd gotten married and she'd moved into his condo two months before the diagnosis and had gone to the doctor, happily thinking that she was pregnant.2

If only the doctor had discovered a child instead of a tumor.3

It had been discovered much to late, and still they relentlessly tried chemo. He'd had hope for the first month, since all she had lost was a few inches off the bottom of her hair (she'd gotten it cut after the diagnosis so that when the chemotherapy effected it, the loss wouldn't come as quite the shock), but after that it was simply a downward spiral. First came the loss of appetite, and then the loss of hair. She always wore a scarf now out of self-consciousness.4

After that first month, though, it became very clear to him that his wife was going to die. The pain had been pure agony, ripping through him as if he were made of paper mache' and leaving him to pull the pieces back together. He wasn't quite sure how he had managed to, but he had grieved already, so all that was left was to wait for that exquisite light to leave her brown eyes.5

She was still beautiful. Since she had stopped being able to hold conversation, her beauty was the only thing that kept him alive, kept him from just going completely nuts or running away. She'd been beautiful when he'd met her, and even now, as she looked like death warmed over, she was still beautiful.6

Most of the day, he'd sit in the beat-up orange armchair that had once sat in the corner of their bedroom, his feet up on his mahogany bedside table while he stared at a book he really wasn't reading. She'd wake up, ask him for Perrier with lemon, and he'd run to the fridge and get her one. By the time he got back, she was usually asleep, so he'd put it back in the fridge for the next time she'd ask. Then he'd go back to staring at his book, his black-rimmed glasses sliding down his nose. He'd grown too lazy to use contacts anymore.7

One very different day, she woke up, and instead of asking for something, she only said his name. "David?"8

He'd sat forward, alarm making his heart pump faster. "Caroline? Are you alright?"9

"The pain is gone, David." Her voice was soft, weak, but somehow light and angelic. "It just stopped."10

"Baby..." he said warily, and her icy cold hand met his gently. That was when he knew that today was the day.11

"I'm sorry," she said quietly.12

He felt pressure building in his throat. "Why are you sorry, Honey?"13

"We just got married four months ago. Remember, we thought we'd last forever?"14

"Yes, but-" he thought a moment. "You have no reason to be sorry."15

"I love you."16

'Ouch,' he thought, those three words reopening the wounds that he'd thought had healed. The pain severed through his heart, his lungs, and he looked down at his beautiful wife. He remembered all the little things he loved about her, like the way her nose crinkled up when she laughed or the way one side of her mouth didn't turn up as much as the other when she smiled. He remembered picnics at the beach, and how she would run into the water and beg him to come with her, to sumberse himself in the freezing tide just to 'feel infinate,' as she called it. She was infinate. She would live on forever.17

Before he could reply, she was gone.