Jane looks down at Maura in her hospital bed...at her wife of 30 years. She slowly, carefully kneels on the floor beside her, feeling her knees creak, her muscles whine. Maura is asleep.
"Honey," Jane whispers, not wanting to wake her sweet girl up, but needing to speak, "Do you want to know a secret? I know we don't have many of those anymore, after all these years, but -
She lifts her hands up to look at them, calloused and worn with age and abuse, the scars on her palm faded now…but still there, always there,
"My hands hurt every day. There wasn't a day when I didn't feel a twinge, okay? And I never said anything….but you could probably tell, because you could always read my face,"
She reaches out shakily to brush a lock of grey hair out of Maura's closed eyes, "And sometimes you'd massage them for me when it was cold out. And I loved you for that. I love you, you know?"
If she even notices the tears tracking down her face, she doesn't move to brush them away. She doesn't want to lift her hands too high. She doesn't want to bring them away from where they are now caressing Maura's face, her slender neck. They are laid upon Maura like a holy prayer, a benediction. Maura's skin is the confession booth.
"My hands never hurt when they were touching you," she chokes out, trying not to follow her sweating palms and pitch forward, waking Maura up viciously just to be in her arms, "and I married you so that I would never have to live without you. You promised!" She's near hysterics now, not quite yelling but beyond keeping her voice whispy and awed, the pain is just too raw, burning at the back of her throat like fire, "I was supposed to die in some shoot-out…or…or from eating all my junk food and not sleeping enough…. not you…you…."
Maura's eyes start to flutter, and Jane freezes, her hands coming to rest on either cheek, as if they're waiting there to feel lively dimples, the stretch of a smile as the other woman wakes….but the fluttering stops, and all is still once more, and as Jane heaves oxygen into her lungs like she's trying to drown in it, Maura….Maura's shallow gasps for air just don't seem big enough. They don't seem like forever anymore.
Jane does lean forward now, her knees bruised by the nylon hospital floor beyond repair, her arms wrapping around her wife's thin form as tight as she can manage even through that pain because it's insignificant in comparison—and it's as if she's trying to hold Maura's ribs together, restart her heart, inflate her lungs…
Maura whimpers in her sleep. Because that's all it is….Jane has to believe…it's just sleep. She's only sleeping, she's…god —
Fingers splay out on a bony shoulder and cherished hip, her olive-colored nose buries at the base of a throat she's loved for so many years, and Jane breaks,
"You fixed me. Why can't my sorry hands heal you, too? See…." Sniff, breathe her in, remember to breathethrough the pain, flex your fingers just to make sure they still work -"They don't even hurt right now…because you're so warm. So…why can't I fix you too?"
Maura.
She's whispering again, voice gone. Heart gone, carried away on a beautiful woman's last rasp of breath. And everything is so still.
"please…
please."
Resignation. Defeat. Her hands will lay upon this body until both are freezing cold.
"I love you…." an unspoken goodbye.
And suddenly,
she's shivering.