York mint pieces come in two colours- white and blue. White and blue, white and blue. Blue for the Frenchman and white for his English angel, is what he would tell me. There was always the perfect combination of white and blue.
"Mrs. Bonnefoy, I'm sorry to inform you that your husband, Francis, is in the hospital."
The phone had slipped from my hand, crashing to the floor. I didn't notice. In the next second, I was grabbing my keys and driving myself to the hospital. The entire drive there, I was trying to convince myself that they had the wrong person, that the man in the hospital couldn't be my husband.
Once inside the hospital, I went straight to the front desk and asked for him. The woman there give me a pitying look before calling the main doctor over. Seeing the expression on his face made my heart sink.
"Mrs. Bonnefoy, correct?"
A slight nod.
"Today your husband collapsed while working his shift at the bakery. A fellow employee, Gilbert, called it in and he was rushed here. We've done many tests, and it has been discovered that Francis has a brain tumour that is quickly growing. He has only a year to live."
Only a year to live. How could that be? He had such a longer lifespan just yesterday, and now he had only been given a year. It felt like I had side stepped out of reality and into some twisted parallel universe.
The doctor gently led me to the room that had Francis in it. He still looked like my husband, nothing had really changed. For a moment, I couldn't bring myself to even believe that he had a tumour.
That brief moment of confusion when he saw me said it all. Just a half second, and I knew that they were right. Francis had been more forgetful lately, but neither of us had thought anything of it. But to see him look at me, even for a brief moment, as if I was a stranger, well, that was more than I could handle.
I rushed over to him, sobbing. He put his arms around me and tried to comfort me, but I could hear the fear in his voice. He was as scared as I was. The words he said meant nothing, it was the unspoken that seemed to be screaming around us.
He was allowed to spend as long as possible at home, but the doctors said that he would become too much as his year came to a close. The tumour was eating at his brain, and soon he wouldn't be able to recall anything or anyone.
We spent the first few months trying to act as if nothing was happening, passing our life off as normal. That was put to an end when Francis realised he could no longer remember the recipes. As tough as it was, he had to quit his job.
I had to take time off of work so that I could stay home and help him. By the fifth month, he could barely take care of himself. His forgetfulness had increased, and his motor skills had decreased.
Around the seventh month, he no longer recognised his friends. They would come and visit, and he would simply pretend to know who they were. Sometimes I could tell that he even had to pretend to know me.
Nine months in, he couldn't do much for himself. I had to feed him and clothe him. I sat and talked to him all day, telling him stories over and over again in the hopes that he would remember things. None of it was really any use.
The tenth month, he was back in the hospital. I was at the point where I could no longer take care of him, and that killed me on the inside. I spent as much time as I could at the hospital, but he didn't even seem to be aware of anything anymore.
It was the beginning of the eleventh month when he took a turn for the worse. His time went from one more month, to only one more day. I spent that entire day with him, talking and singing and trying to get back some small fragment of what used to be my husband.
As it neared the twentieth hour, I had been reduced to nothing but a sobbing mess. I was talking, but I couldn't even tell if I was saying real words anymore.
Suddenly, a thin, shaky hand was stroking my hair. "Remember, the blue ones are for me, the Frenchman.. The white ones are for you, my perfect little angel.. I love you.." his voice was nothing more than a weak whisper.
The hand slipped. The heart monitor went flat. My husband was dead.
York mint pieces come in two colours- white and blue. White and blue, white and blue. Blue for the Frenchman and white for his English angel, is what he would tell me. There was always an excess of blue, the Frenchman was gone.