What if
In one instant
Everything ended?
And what if
That moment
Was shattered?
And the ending was then
A beginning
What If?
David ignored the man on the floor. He didn't care that there were still three threatening men in the room when he fell on his knees next to Anna.
Her face was a mask of pain and when his eyes drifted to her stomach he saw why. A slow, steady flow of blood was sreaming from her abdomen.
"David…"
His hands trembled. "Don't talk, baby. You're going to be fine." Blood. There was a surreal amount of blood flowing over her and it paralyzed him. He was unable to move. Unable to do a single thing.
He didn't see a patient or a gunshot wound in front of him. He couldn't react as a physician. All he saw was Anna. The woman he loved and the life force that was leaving her.
One of her hands had been resting on her chest and when she moved it, the gesture released a new, warm, river of blood over her body.
'Oh God,' he struggled to pull a single breath of air into his lungs. There wasn't just one entry wound. There were two.
Her blood-covered hand reached up towards his face. "David…it's…it's okay."
He shook his head violently. "No! No, it's not okay…it's not."
Her eyes met his and he was awestruck at how beautiful they were. How full of love. For him.
How could I have lived without looking into them for so long?
David wept. How?
"I'm sorry…" Her voice was little more than a whisper.
"No, Anna. No. You're not leaving. I won't let you."
He cried the tears of a mad man as he finally started crazed, frantic attempts to stop the flow of blood from her body.
"I won't let you. I'll fight this time. I promise."
There was no reaction from her. Only silence.
"I won't let go of you. I won't!"
His efforts to stop the flow of her blood her left him drained. David raised his eyes to look for the other men. For the missing nurse. But there was no one there. He was alone with Anna.
After a while, he no longer felt a pulse and started CPR.
His tears fell down and mixed with her blood.
"No…Anna. No."
Everything. It was all too late.
"Anna!"
No!
He felt someone shaking him. Or maybe he was shaking?
"David…"
His eyes fluttered open. Bewildered. Puzzled.
"Hey…it's just dream."
"Anna?" She was here, sitting down next to him. She wore a black blouse and slacks with a stylish, matching black leather belt that emphasized her slender waist.
He moved a flat, trembling palm onto her stomach, searching for the wounds. "You're alive? You're okay?"
Her lips hinted at a smile. "Your left-over pasta may be nothing to write home about but it wasn't enough to kill me."
David's breath came in heavy, labored gasps and his eyes darted around the room.
He wasn't at the clinic but at the cabin. He was in the living room, lying on the couch, in his hill-top cabin.
Slowly his mind drifted back to last night. He'd been working late at the clinic and when he came home Anna was already asleep. He'd decided to sleep on the couch so he wouldn't wake her. Or at least that was the reason he gave himself last night.
"Are you running marathons in your dreams?"
He was still breathless. "I dreamt that…that you were shot. At the clinic."
Anna's smile faded. "It was just a dream, David. It's okay."
"You said that in my dream too. You told me 'it's okay.'"
Anna's hand reached over and ran through his hair. "It is."
"No," he pulled himself into a sitting position. The palm of his hand still rested on her chest and he felt her heart beat underneath it, its steady throb humbling him. "What if I lost you?"
This time it was Anna who averted his eyes. He expected her to say. 'You won't.' God knows she'd said it often enough in the last few months.
"You would be fine. You'd find a way," was what she now said instead.
David shook his head. "No. I wouldn't."
She bent down to kiss his forehead. "It was just a dream, David." She sighed, "Maybe if you slept on your bed instead of the couch and didn't work eighteen hour days you wouldn't have dreams like that."
"Anna…"
"I should get to work."
David grabbed on to her wrist. "Don't go."
She glanced at her silver, men's watch. "I'm late already." Anna didn't have to spell it out. The truth was so obvious now, in her voice. The knowledge that he'd chosen to ignore all this time.
Anna didn't have it in her to fight for them anymore.
He had defeated her and she would leave him. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but she would leave him, sooner rather than later.
Suddenly, the thought terrified him.
"Anna, please don't go." David stood up and grabbed on to her other arm. Since waking from his dream, he couldn't get enough of looking at her. The way her eyes darkened when she inadvertently revealed something she tried to hide. The way her long, thick hair fell over her blouse and how her watch slipped down onto her hand, underneath her French cuffs, because it was too large for her wrist. Tiny little details that, combined, made up the woman he loved. Like a sponge he now soaked in those very details he'd purposely chosen to ignore for so long.
"David…I'm sorry your dream bothered you. But that's all it was. A nightmare. Nothing more."
"No, that's not all it was."
Anna brushed off his hands, "I'll see you tonight, David."
He grabbed her again. "Don't go…there's something I want to say to you."
She tightened her lips. Defensive now. "Look...you're upset because you had a bad dream. It doesn't change anything." There was bitterness in her voice too. Bitterness he wasn't accustomed to. "By tonight you'll have forgotten your dream." There was a trace of anger in her eyes too and it gave him a strange sense of hope. Anger meant she still felt something. "And that's why I'm going to leave now. Before you say something that you'll want to take back in a few hours."
"Anna, these last few months, every time I looked at you, I saw her. I saw our little girl."
Anna bit her lip.
"Each time that I looked into your eyes, I saw Leora. I saw the love that created her and every time I touched you, I lost her again."
A lone tear fell down Anna's cheek and David gently wiped it away. "It's why I couldn't…all these months. It hurt too much."
"And now?"
"Now I look at you, and I see how blind I've been."
"David, if you can't bring yourself to…"
He wouldn't let her finish. "Now, I look at you and I see the most precious thing in my life. I see the love and the strength that gave us our daughter."
She didn't say anything. Silence.
"I love you, Anna."
She slumped down next to him. Tired. "I love you too," she whispered. "But I don't know… I don't know if I can do this again."
He reached for her, wrapping his arms around her, marveling at the intensity of his need to touch her. "I hurt you and I'm so sorry for that."
"We both hurt each other."
"I want to love you again. To show you."
He ran his hand along her cheek, along wetness of her tears and he tilted his head to kiss them, tasting the salty liquid on his lips. Then he moved lower, kissing the nape of her neck as he soaked in the subtle, exotic scent of her perfume, wondering if it was possible for the fragrance to take on a life of its own when it combined with her hair brushing against his face.
His senses were overloading, hopelessly swamped, as they came back to life. He had shut them down for months and now they yearned for every sensation, magnifying and intensifying them all.
He allowed his senses to lead him as his hands began to unbutton her blouse, in awe at the delicate contrast between the metallic coolness of the buttons and the soft warmth of the skin underneath.
She dropped to her knees, on the wooden floor of the cabin and he did the same, moving his hands onto her hips, his lips gently trailing the skin revealed with each button undone.
His mind drifted back to the dream, to the blood that flowed out of her body, seeping away its life. His kiss lingered on that same spot where in his dream he'd seen the bullet enter and he closed his eyes in gratitude for the rise and fall of her breath. For the steady pounding of her heartbeat in his ears.
"I missed you, David," she said softly.
She made no move to return his gestures. To undress him. Yet she didn't resist.
And when he looked into her eyes, he now caught the doubt and the fear that she'd hidden so well. He saw the hurt and the angger that couldn't be erased with one dream. With one kiss.
"I love you."
He would say it until she believed it. He would show her until he doubt and the fear was gone and they could finally begin again.
He enveloped her in his arms.
It was his turn to fight.
The end
