He couldn't find a tie, he'd said. He'd been expecting sister Juilienne, so he couldn't have been fretting about her aproval. No, he was just a little shambolic, as he always was. It frightened her though, how a tie could bring so many thoughts into her head. The thought of helping him pick one out, in his frantic rush to work in the morning. Of him loosening it off when he came home. Some strange urge in her to pull him closer with it and kiss him. What it would be like watching him undress after a hard days work, and how one could easily pull him into bed with that tie...
But, eventually, after their mutual triumph, a passion to work towards that could distract them for what may have been between them. They had felt at ease again. Until he showed her the x-ray.
Like some medival bride on her wedding night, she was helped to undress for him. There was fear for her life, surely, but also that he would see her. As a woman she considered a mother watched on. He said he'd drive her to an x-ray in the morning. She wasnt sure she could face him. But he insisted. Not forcefully, just gentle assurance. She couldn't face him. Death had never scared her before. She had her faith, it was uncertainty that frightened people. But now, a new uncertainty troubled her. She could not leave him.
But he wasn't her's to leave behind, and she wasn't his to miss.
And when he dropped her off at the Tb home, she had to remind herself, that he wasn't her's to miss either. The yearning she felt, this strange need to hold on to him and not let go. it was not permitted. But, with her illness, it felt as though it almost was. She was dying, and the need to fall into his arms, to hold fast to this rock as the ocean swelled around her, it did not seem so unacceptable. These were feelings the dying were allowed to feel. TB was the romantic disease, was it not? She'd seen la boheme, she should lie dying in her lovers arms. But she was married to god, her comfort was only prayer. Prayer, or the doctor's arms. It wasnt a choice she was allowed to make. All the weeks spent fretting, she had just started to feel ok again, to feel normal, healthy, free from this burden on her heart. She lived for the moments she saw him, got to work with him. People fear the unknown, and thats what she was entering now. She did not know how she would be without him, if her heart would pang even worse, or if it would ease.