The words play through her mind every day, every moment, every second as she watches him lie motionless on that bed. Injured. Broken. Silent.
Don't leave me, Matthew.
As she sees to other patients, they nag at her, continually echoing in the recesses of her mind, even though he isn't hers, even though he hasn't been for some time.
Was he ever, she wonders? It doesn't matter–she is his, at least she is in the dark solitude of her bedroom when dreams are allowed to collide with life's realities, clutching his photograph to her chest, remembering the texture of lips tasting of wine and want pressing against her own. Then, for a few blissful moments, there is no Lavinia. There is no Richard.
There is no war.
"Please don't leave me." She voices it aloud when the only ones who can overhear are her walls and a God she cannot picture.
As she reads to him, the words are ever present, moving silently among the crevices of hollow eyes and glazed expressions, unspoken yet tangible as she touches his arm. He doesn't look at her–he hasn't yet–so she stands to take her leave, stooping down to pick up his tray and straighten her skirts.
But something grazes her spine as she's walking away, a voice, hushed and ragged, a plea nearly lost in the heaviness between them that bids her to stop and fight back a tear.
"Don't leave me. Please."
She won't. She can't. And as fingers connect in a manner they share with no other, for a few seconds of eternity, they belong to each other.