Forgotten

He took her hand into his and placed the ring back on her finger. It looked even better than before. As he looked at it, sitting by her side, her hand inside his hands, she opened her eyes.

“Hey you.” She said. She looked at him dearly and caressed his face with her left hand. As she admired him, she noticed the seven karat white gold ring on her finger. “What’s this?” she said. He looked down and sighed. “So I get sick and you think that I am just going to marry you!” Her eyes started to water. “I have not seen you in four years! How am I supposed to get better if you keep feeding into my insanity?” He finally looked up at her, tears in eyes, got up from the bed, and left out of the room. She was speechless as she looked around the room from the bed. They had a golden carpet with vintage wooden furniture - it was a classic tan but in a way looked as if it had been salvaged from a fire. The white walls accompanied the sheer drapery that caressed the large windows that looked out onto the balcony. The room was the prototype of was she always wanted. She could see a small pond through the curtains but could not remember if she had ever been out on the balcony. Just as she imagined the wind passing over her face Eric had returned. She could tell that he had been crying even though she had never seen him cry. In his hands he held four large books which looked like photo albums. One was white with gold decors, and then there was a blue one, a green one, and a red one. He put them all on the bed. He took the white one off the top.

“This is our wedding and our honeymoon which we had six years ago, after the four years we were apart.” She gasped and put her hand over her mouth as he put it on her legs. He took the ring off her finger and pointed to the five diamonds that made their way half way around the band. “When it reaches ten,” he said returning it to her finger “we start on a new one.” He caressed her hand as he returned the ring to her finger and then kissed it tenderly. Then he took the blue, put it next to her and said, “This is Martin, the oldest twin.” Tears started to fall from her eyes. “This is David, the youngest twin.” He put the green one next to the blue one. She couldn’t believe it. He then took the red one, put it in her hands, and push them towards her chest. “And this is our heaven sent, Victoria.” She held the album tighter. She had then remembered the weeks Victoria had to spend in the hospital. “And those are just the first year of the children, the boys have five more albums, and Victoria has two more.” He took her face into his hands and gave her a peck on the forehead. “I will be in the yard if you need me.” She watched him as he dragged himself out of the room.

She sat there bewildered and sad. Her eyes wandered franticly around the room, then to the albums. The saline she struggled to hold back from her eyes got caught in her throat and she could not control it. She started choking, choking on her grief, her fears, her illness, her worries, her memories at least those she had. Her eyes broke; they were not strong enough to hold this. She tried to stop, gain her composure, and maintain her pride. She could not. She could not even breathe to stop. She started curling over into herself, holding the albums in between her chest and knees. This frantic state led her into a darkness which would be the only way to calm her.

She woke in the same position in which she fell asleep. She sat up and laid all of the albums next to her right leg. She opened the red one first. Victoria was the difficult one; she came late and with a heart complication. It was a simple surgery and from the album it seemed as though she still had a full life, a person can not even notice the scar now. Then she looked in the blue one. The first picture was of both of the boys. They were beautiful; they had green eyes just like their father and her smile, dimples and all. Martin had curly hair the color of chocolate, she could see in the album that he would be the comedian; he always had a smile on his face, even in his sleep. She grabbed the green album and in David’s first picture she could see that he would be so sincere. In every photo he looked so calm, not too happy nor too sad. His hair was more of a reddish brown, like his father, but still curly, like his mother. Just as she had built up enough courage to call Eric back she saw little green eyes of curiosity peer from in between the crack of her bedroom door.

“Come here, you.” She said. It was David. He ran in and on top of the bed as if he had just found his own meaning for happiness.

“I’ve missed you, so much, mommy.” She smiled, hugged him, and kissed him on top of his head.

“Well, I’ve been right hear, Hun. How was school?”

“Mom, it’s the summer, we don’t have school, its football camp.”

“Well, of course that’s what I meant.” David proceeded to tell her about camp that day and days before, the fire flies him and his sister had caught, and how he had cleaned his room. She sat and listened only wondering if she would remember any of this the next day. Even when Martin and Victoria crept in, she just admired her children. She said not a word, she just watched. She knew that when she closed her eyes that she would lose this moment, this moment of sheer innocence and conviviality. She talked with them, played with them, laid with them in silence. They were watching The Lion King when Eric came into the room with his camera. He took pictures left and right, capturing moments that people never want to forget but usually eventually do, but not this time. This time, like all the times before, she would have the photos to serve as escapes to a past that she would seldom remember. She laid there as the children and Eric slowly drifted away into dreams of happiness never ending. Eyes wide open she stared at the clock as it struck five in the morning. She rubbed the heads that lay on her thigh, on her stomach, and under her arm, and then she slid from under them and started to franticly search the house. Every bathroom and every kitchen drawer she searched, silverware and toothbrushes were laid across the floor when Eric had awaken and seen the aftermath. He found her in the living room helplessly staring out the window, trying desperately not to go to sleep. He came to kneel down beside her.

“Karen? What is this?” He looked at the pills that were scattered before her.

“I couldn’t find any so I went to the store.” He saw a yellow box with the words NO DOZE printed on the front, “You see” she said staring intensely into his eyes, “I figure if I stay awake, I won’t lose you, I won’t lose them, I won’t need any pictures or videos or tape recordings. I could just… be.”