You sit in the corner of the room, watching entranced as O'Brien's hands do their dance over her hair, quickly unpinning the dark tendrils that just moments before made up an elaborate tapestry at the base of her neck. The only noise interrupting the silence amongst you is the still labored rasp of her breathing. It is a testament that she is alive and sitting here but you cannot forget that only four days ago she almost slipped away from you while you weren't looking. She says she's feeling much better but you take in her reflection in the mirror, her eyes closed while O'Brien works, her waxy pallor and gaunt cheeks and your heart stutters in fear, impatient to get her back into bed. After four years of war and the time you spent yourself dodging bullets in Africa, you thought you knew about the fleeting promise of life, the way that time can just stop, seemingly well one moment, a memory the next. Wallowing in your self pity these last few months, you almost forgot this and all you have taken for granted was nearly taken away.
O'Brien meets your eyes in the mirror and they are hard and calculated. It is a marked change from what they were moments ago, gazing down at her hair tenderly as she ran her fingers through before plating it. You wonder how much O'Brien knows of where you were when you were not by her bedside, leaving the mopping of her brow and the holding of her hand to her lady's maid. O'Brien knows your shame intimately, knows that wherever you were, you were not here and she has probably deduced what kept you away. The help always seem to know what is going on behind closed doors. And you wonder, not for the first time, if she shared it with her.
You look at the bed, tidy and made up now and recall her in it, fever riddled still but awake, asking if you are all right, apologizing for her imagined flaws and your disgust of yourself clenches your insides. You have barely left this room since the night she almost died but in your heart it cannot make up for the what you missed before that, when you were running head long into oblivion in the next room with….You cannot say her name because if you do it becomes too real, your betrayal a tangible monster that may make itself known to her, if she doesn't suspect already. You teeter on the edge of blurting it out to her, unburdening yourself and asking for absolution. Every time the words have been waiting in your throat, you look at her shadow rimmed eyes and the droop of her fragile shoulders and you swallow your need. For the first time in a long while, you put her first.
"That should do it milady." O'Brien's voice is a soft caress, a finishing touch on her handiwork and you would be grateful to the care she has shown her if it didn't make your own neglect so glaringly obvious. To you she gives a curt nod before leaving the room. And then it is just the two of you and you rise and go to her, her eyes opening and sharing a tired, sad smile with you.
"Robert, you don't have to hover." She says in a raspy voice, still raw from her illness.
You caress her cheek and feel an overwhelming urge to crush her to you, thanking God that it was not her funeral today, swearing that you will never forget how precious she is to you again. But you breath deeply and quiet all of that hysteria and smile down at her.
"Of course I do."
You reply and your heart stops briefly as a cloud passes over her face and her brow furrows a little and you are sure she knows that you weren't there in the beginning. Not for the first time, you imagine her calling for you, asking O'Brien where you are, and looking at the empty space you should have been occupying. Your abandonment is the stuff of your nightmares these days, among other things. You are sure you'll blurt it out, unable to hold it in any longer as it tears you apart, but she covers your hand with hers and uses it for support as she shakily pulls herself up. She sways in your embrace and you curse yourself for being talked into letting her go today. The funeral has left her drained of the little strength she was starting to regain.
"Should I have O'Brien bring you a little something? I don't think you had much of anything today." You cannot stop fussing over her as you help her into the bed and you know that she will only indulge you up to a point before she puts a stop to it.
"No. You know how death makes me anxious and when I'm anxious I can't eat." You do know this, like so many other little things you've learned in the twenty-something years she's been by your side.
"Fine, but starting tomorrow, we are going to begin the job of fattening you up." You sit down in your chair by her bed and take her hand in yours, the bones of it fine and fragile and too pronounced for your comfort. You trace them like a blind man reading Braille, hoping for the answer that will help this heavy guilt dissipate. Her sigh interrupts your wallowing and you look up to find her staring off into space, sadness pulling down her face.
"What is it?" You ask quietly.
"It's so sad, Robert. The house was getting ready for her wedding and then it turned into her funeral. So quickly. She was so young, I can't help but feel…" Her voice trails off but she doesn't need to say the words for you to know what she is thinking, or for the implication of them to make you sick to your stomach.
"Don't!" You say, harsher than you mean to and it startles her and her eyes bore into you, searching. "You are no less deserving of being here right now than she would have been."
You bring her hand up to your lips and kiss each fingertip before cradling her palm against your cheek, nuzzling into it, her touch always having the power to calm you. This is where you have always belonged, in this hand, in this room. The war and time and disease and your helplessness in the face of all of them almost destroyed this. But now you are like Odysseus reaching Ithaca; finally you are home.
"Do you know how much I love you, Cora? Do you know what would have become of me if it had worked out any other way?"
You think back to hours before, standing at Lavinia's grave, thinking this same thought as you witnessed Matthew's grief. The full force of the possibility hits you and you can barely breath. She was so close, so close to being the one that Death took on the dance floor. You will not burden her with the tears you can feel stuck in your throat so you swallow them down convulsively as her fingertips find your hairline and stroke your brow.
"Stay with me till I sleep?" She asks shyly, knowing that propriety would dictate that you go back downstairs to the guests that have remained after the funeral luncheon.
"Always." You tell her, stroking her soft hair and for the hundredth time at least thanking God for her.