JACKSON
Jackson, it's Bailey. You need to get to the hospital ASAP. It's April and it's serious.
Jackson, it's Bailey. You need to get to the hospital ASAP. It's April and it's serious.
Jackson, it's Bailey. You need to get to the hospital ASAP. It's April and it's serious.
Words echo in my ears, pressing my foot into the gas pedal of my car and hearing the engine roar to life as I sped through a yellow light, cutting it close. One of my neighbors, Melinda, was watching Quinn. My daughter had been asleep when I had left. She'd be confused upon waking and it would be a pain in the ass for Melinda, given how stubborn she is about having her mother lately. But there had been no time to wait when I had gotten that call from Bailey.
No speed would have been fast enough to get to the hospital and figure out what the hell was going on. That doesn't stop me from trying, though. My car is crooked in the parking spot and I leave it unlocked, barely even shutting the door. I didn't give a shit if someone snatched it, as long as April was alright.
"Where's Bailey?" I barked at the first unfortunate orderly who comes in my path.
"Uh– she, she was in the E.R. the last time that I checked." They stuttered back at me.
There was no way for me to get there fast enough. Everything in the hospital was always loud but it seemed especially so tonight, residents and interns chattering back and forth and loud mouthing as if nothing else in the world mattered. But as soon as their eyes landed on my panicked form, looking around and trying to get a hold of what happened, a hush fell upon them. They knew something that I didn't. Hunt was nowhere to be seen. Neither was April. I expected some familiar face, someone who worked during the day as we did. Even with her usually commanding presence, it took a moment for me to spot Bailey in a crowd of people.
She didn't look like her usual confident self. Instead, she seemed frazzled. Bailey wasn't dressed in scrubs in her lab coat but instead in street clothes, though she still had a pair of gloves from the E.R. on her hands. Whatever had happened, being off the clock hadn't stopped her from trying to step in and help. That only alarmed me further. If it was simple, she wouldn't have to.
"Dr. Bailey!" I called out her name loudly as I approached and she turned toward me immediately. "What the hell happened? Where's April?" Any other time and I wouldn't have spoken to her like that.
"Jackson…" she sighed out my name, clasping her hands together in front of her face.
"What happened?" I repeated, my voice growing louder.
"There was a car crash," Dr. Bailey began slowly. "Someone ran a red light and plowed into her car. Her car hit a worker's truck. The car flipped and her legs were pinned inside of the vehicle." Her hands don't move from where they are as she explained. "The worker's truck… it was moving some pipes and other equipment. When her car flipped from the force of the impact and hit the back of the truck, it dislodged all of the equipment in there. One of the pipes…" There were tears in her eyes and she looked up as if she were praying. Just like April would have done in a situation like that.
But her pause only gave me more reason to panic. "And what? What happened? Is she okay? Where is she?"
"The pipe impaled her chest completely and kept her pinned against her seat. But the way that the pipe was positioned, it kept her from bleeding out and awake. The first responders on the scene said that she was conscious and talking when they arrived there." Even though she kept speaking, it wasn't the answer that I wanted to hear.
"Where the fuck is my wife?" I blurted out, keeping her from going any further with the gory details.
"Jackson, maybe you should sit down for a moment." She recommended, finally unclasping her hands and touching my arm.
"Where is she? Where's April?" My voice grew louder and more desperate with each question that passed out of my mouth, looking around the E.R. in alarm at the faces who stared at the two of us, waiting for something to happen. "Where is April? I need to see her!"
Owen interrupted. "Jackson." He grasped my shoulder, looking at me with red eyes. "Sit down a minute."
"What's going on?" I jerked away from the contact. "Just tell me!"
"Jackson…" Bailey's hands clasped back together and she took a deep breath. "We did everything that we could for her. They had to remove the pipe from her chest in order to get her out of the car, but… by the time that she got here… it was already too late. We tried everything that we could. But she didn't make it."
She didn't make it.
"What the fuck? No. That's impossible." I shook my head with the denial. "No. No, that's not possible!"
"It was too late when they brought her in," Hunt echoed what Bailey I had said, tears glistening in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I tried– I tried everything, but… nothing worked. She was already too far gone."
"Where is she?" I demanded to know. "Where is she?"
"I'll take you to her," Bailey suggested. Her dark eyes were wet as she looked at me, arms falling down by her side.
I followed her in a daze toward the elevator. When we stepped inside and she pressed one of the buttons, I know exactly where we're going up to. One of the holding rooms. The stop between for families to get a look at their loved one before they were taken down to the room.
"We had to move her down here for space in the E.R.," she explained. "Other crash victims."
"What happened to the person who hit her?" I asked
"He died on impact."
Good.
The floor was silent when we entered, the only noise coming from the shutting of the elevator doors behind us. The nurse at the station looked up at me and froze when the two of us entered, but Bailey waved him away to keep him from coming in to say something. It was cold. Empty. Bailey walked me down to a room, opening the door. There was one body out in the clear with a sheet on top of it – clearly someone short in height and thin. Even with the sheet covering her face, I can see red hair hanging off the top of the table.
"I'll give you a minute." Bailey looked at me for a long moment before walking back toward the elevator.
Another ding of the elevator was given as she left me alone in the room. For a long moment, I stand there, staring at the little curl of red hair that I can see hanging off the table. There was no movement, no slight rise and fall of her chest as if she was asleep. I'd watched her sleep more times than I could count. This wasn't that.
I'm not sure how much time passed before I'm finally able to approach her body. My hands shake as I reached for the thin white sheet and slowly begin to peel it back away from her face, an inch at a time. The top of her hair, her slight widow's peak, brows thinner without the makeup that she used to fill them in. Her eyes were already shut and her lips were pale. I stopped pulling back the sheet at her shoulders. Whatever clothes she'd had on, they had been cut off of her. What had she worn this morning? Was it the black jacket? Or the red one?
"No." I shook my head. "No, no, no… no."
Her skin was pale and produced a stark contrast between the freckles that covered the bridge of her nose and dusted across her cheeks. She'd always been embarrassed about them and started wearing makeup to cover them up once she was old enough that her mom let her buy makeup. I'd loved them. She'd worn makeup this morning. It must have come off when they wiped the blood from her body.
For once, I don't want to see her freckles.
"Strawberry." I'm a doctor. I've seen death more times than I can count, I've stared at dead bodies, fixed them up to try and make it a little easier for the family to have to face it. "Strawberry, please…" There's no sense in begging and that doesn't stop. "Please come back to me."
I don't know how long I stay there. I can't stand for all of it, eventually falling to my knees. Pulling her arm out from under the sheet, I hold her icy cold hand with both of mine, rubbing my thumbs across the back of her knuckles and trying to bring some of that warmth back to it. I hold it against my cheek, wishing for once last squeeze, or one of those silly cheek pats that she always gave me whenever she was coddling me. One last playful punch, one last squeeze of my hand, one last chest pat, one last anything.
But I wasn't going to have any of that. There would be no one last. We'd already had our last everything. Our last kiss, our last hug, our last night in bed together. Our first and last everything was in the past and we would never be able to relive any of it together again.
April would never get to see Quinn's first birthday.
The thought of our daughter never getting to know her mother who loved her more than anything in the universe was the thing to finally push me over the edge, sobbing as I held onto her hand tighter than before. Fat tears fall down my face and onto the floor. Each heaving sob left my chest hurt more than the one before it had. There's nothing to stop it.
So rarely in my life did I cry, and in almost every moment, April had been the one to be able to talk me back down and get my head screwed on right. I'd always let my feelings get bottled up and come out at the inappropriate time – except now, this was the right time, this was the time that I was meant to grieve. This was the moment when every bereaved person lost their shit. But now, I don't have my wife to hold my hand and tell me that it wasn't the end of the world, that things were going to be okay even if that moment wasn't now. Maybe things weren't going to be okay. She had been my world and now she was just gone, like that. Without any kind of warning. Taken away from me by some idiotic driver who couldn't just see a red fucking light and hit the brake like everyone else.
"What the fuck?" I blurted out, lifting up my forehead from her hand and looking up at the ceiling. "She loved you. She loved you more than anything, and you pulled this bullshit! How could you? She dedicated her whole fucking life to you!"
No answer comes. There wasn't an answer. There wasn't any kind of explanation for how someone as good and kind, as caring and giving, as April could be taken away from the world. She was the kind of woman who deserved to have a happy, long life. She'd only gotten one of those things, not both. I knew that she'd been happy with me and with Quinn. But she should have had years and years left with the two of us. We should have given Quinn siblings. There should have been a hoard of Avery's running around, a mix of little light-skinned redheads. Now it was just me and Quinn.
She was the only piece of her mother that I had left.
Eventually, Mark comes to try and drag me out of the room. He was in scrubs. I knew what he was doing. Underneath the towel, where I had been too scared to pull it back further, she was probably mangled. He was coming to fix her up some, to make it better. To make it more presentable.
"She was an organ donor." I reminded him as he tried to shut the door on me. "She wanted to donate."
"We know," Mark nodded. "They already harvested."
Oh.
"The paramedics said that she called you, before…" He doesn't continue his sentence. "That she left you a voicemail that you're probably going to want to hear."
My hands patted my pockets for my phone. "I… I left my phone at home."
When I arrive home that night, Melinda was not there waiting for me. Instead, my mother was sitting on the couch, holding onto my sleeping daughter. I can't say a word to her. Instead, I take my daughter from her arms and walking back to my bedroom, shutting the door without a word to her. She didn't know what I was going through. Dad had left her by choice. He hadn't died suddenly and horrifically. She would insert herself in how I feel. I don't want that.
Quinn doesn't know that there's a thing different in the world. Would she notice that she was going to have to start drinking formula in a couple of days? Would she cry for April's breasts? For April to be the one to hold her and change her diaper and bath her and put her to bed every night? Would she even want me instead of her mother?
I wouldn't.
Waiting until Quinn was asleep for hopefully a few hours is the easiest way that I'd be able to listen to the voicemail. My mother offered to stay the night and I kick her out saying things that I don't really mean, but it was the only way for me to get alone when I wanted to be. I need peace and privacy to listen to the voicemail. Whatever was on it, it was her last words to me. It was going to make me lose my mind no matter what.
Staring at my phone and the red notification that her voicemail leaves, it takes a few minutes before I'm ready to press play. It turned out there had been one more last waiting for me. The one last that I really didn't want to hear.
"H–hi, Jackson, it's me."
Even in the first few words, I can hear the pain in her voice. The background was noisy between sirens and the chatter and shouting of other people, but I can focus entirely on her voice and every syllable that came from it. Even if she had been conscious, she had to pain. I could hear it in her voice. It was the way that she spoke whenever she was cramping on her period, the voice that she had used when she was in labor and trying to remain calm. I knew that particular strain voice. Her last moments had been in agony, not peace. She had died in pain.
It made me hate her God all the more. And it made me even more grateful that the asshole who had done this to her was rotting away.
"I don't think I'm going to make it." Those words hurt to hear more than anything else. She had always been the hopeful one, the optimistic. She prayed for all of her patients while she was scrubbing in for surgery, using every possible method that she knew how in order to save them. Even the ones that didn't have science behind it. She had been too compassionate and caring for the world. But it seemed like in her last moments, she hadn't had that optimism.
"But I want you to know that I love you. I love you so, so much. And I love Quinn. I love you both more than anything in the world and I need you to know that and I need you to hear it just one more time."
Getting through the entire voicemail is the worst thing that I've ever had to do in my life. Listening to her in pain and hearing her lose hope with each sentence that comes on. Hearing her promise to fight and knowing that she undoubtedly had given every last piece of her she had in order to try and come home to me and Quinn, and she just…. hadn't. It hadn't been enough. She had died anyway.
"Tell Quinn that I love her. That I loved her more than anything in the world. Please make sure she knows how much I love her. And please know how much I love you. I love you, I love you. I love you."
Her last words had been I love you.
Dying and in agony, the last thing that she had made sure that I would hear from her was her voice, telling me that she loved me. The last act that she did was putting forth more love and kindness into the universe, doing what she always preached that she would, what she believed that God and being religious was all about. She followed through to the end with what she believed in. She made sure that I had one last message from her, that Quinn would have her mother's voice telling her that she loved her more than anything for her life.
Despite the horrendous pain that it brings me, I listen to the sound of her voice over and ovine again. I can't stop no matter how much pain it causes. It's torturing myself, in a way. But I memorize the timepoints when some of the worst of the pain isn't loud, and she professes her love for both of us. I would need that. Quinn would need that – now, and for the rest of her life.
The only reason that I get out of bed the next two days is that I have to feed and take care of my daughter – take care of the last little bit of April that was left. I had to make sure that she was okay, that there was nothing that was going to get in the way. Mom buys formula. She gets a Keurig-type of machine where it does most of the work for you. It makes everything faster. I should thank her for it. I don't. I don't want her there. I wanted April. She was the only one that I wanted.
The day that her funeral comes, it was pouring down freezing rain. It fits.
Her graveside service was crowded with people from the hospital. It seemed as if everyone that was capable of not being at the hospital was there, dressed in black and the top of her coffin was covered completely with white roses. I wondered if she had any idea how many people would have showed up to this for her – how popular and loved she truly had become by everything that she worked with. She had spent so much of her life thinking that she was unpopular but everyone who could come had. Her mother, father, and sisters were all there. Alex, Cristina, Izzie, and Meredith show up, too. I barely speak to them. I barely speak to my own mother. People come and go with their condolences and hugs, kissing Quinn on the forehead and offering to help in whatever way they could, but none of them could. The only thing that would have helped was having her back.
People don't stay as long as I do. Eventually, the coffin is lowered into the ground. My mother takes Quinn from me and takes her home, letting me stay there for longer. I'm freezing cold in the rain. But I don't feel as cold as her hand had when I had last held it. That had been the coldest thing that I had ever experienced in my life.
There wouldn't be a headstone there for weeks. Instead, it's just a wooden sign. Not enough. It doesn't tell you that she was gone too soon and that she was leaving behind a husband and a daughter who would never have her own memories of her mother. It doesn't tell you that she believed in God and God had let her and everyone else down, taking her away way sooner than she should have been. It was just there.
Taking off work comes naturally and without question. Someone had to take care of my daughter. I couldn't be in the place where she had died and act like everything was fine. I had to make sure that someone was always keeping a careful eye Queenie and making sure that she was okay and out of danger. She needed to be watched all the time. Whether it was for the therapy related exercises or just taking a bottle, she needed a careful eye on her. Even if the daycare was a good one, there were so many kids there. She needed better attention than that. More attention.
"I brought a casserole." As usual, Izzie doesn't announce that she's coming over. She just does.
Izzie always brings homemade food whenever she comes over. Like April was, she was good at cooking. She probably liked leftovers too. But I can never bring myself to eat it for more than one meal, no matter how good it might have tasted. It made me think of April too much.
"Thanks," I muttered, securing my grip on my daughter as I held her against my chest.
"It looks like she's starting to grow out of that onesie," she remarked, eyeing my daughter. "You're probably going to have to go shopping soon."
"It's fine." I shook my head.
Two weeks had passed since April had died and been buried. I haven't left the house other than to walk down the block to the Walgreens and get necessities – diapers, butt cream, formula. Maybe a bag of chips or a frozen burrito to heat up if I was hungry. I hadn't made any real trips to the grocery store or places like Target. I couldn't bring myself to get in the car or to put Quinn in the car. She was safer at home. We both were.
"You have to go out eventually, Jackson," Izzie implored me. "April wouldn't want you to live holed up in here for the rest of her life. She loved being at work. Hell, she loved going to Target. She would want you to do all of those things."
"You don't know what she would want. You weren't married to her." I barked. "Just go home."
"Alright…" she sighed out, stepping back toward the door. "But call me if you need anything."
Even though I was being a dick, deep down, I knew she was right.
Quinn hadn't been in her crib for weeks because I'd resolved to have her sleeping in our bed. My bed, now. I didn't want to be in it alone and I wanted to be right there if she woke up for whatever reason in the middle of the night. Listening to her cry was harder, now, when all I wanted to do was cry for her mother. I'd recorded only the section of April's voicemail saying that she loved both of us, and played it for her every night as a part of her bedtime routine.
Holing up inside of my house was easier now than it had ever been. I can go online and order all of the groceries that I need and have them delivered. Getting takeout delivered was easy. Society could cater to those who refused to leave their house for whatever reason if they had enough money for it, and we did. There was no reason that I would have to leave my house for a long time. Bailey and Webber had both told me to take as much time as I needed. I would. Without her there, driving together in the morning and exchanging adrenaline-pumping stories of surgery over lunch or dinner, it just didn't seem right. Why did I have to go on saving lives when hers couldn't be saved?
Two weeks becomes a month.
The backyard felt like enough fresh air and outdoors tie for a seven month old. She wasn't walking or crawling around now – her therapist said, over the phone, that it was fine and normal that she wasn't crawling but that we needed to schedule another appointment soon. I can't bring myself to commit to any date for leaving the house and driving to the hospital. It had been the route that she had taken. Her normal commute home. And she had died there, doing the most normal and monotonous thing possible.
Normal and monotonous, like grocery shopping or going to therapy appointments. Or maybe the latter wasn't the norm. Down Syndrome was common, but it wasn't that common. At least no one could say that my job was normal or monotonous. Some days, boob jobs and tummy tucks, maybe. But it was a level one trauma center. I had plenty of adventures and challenges at work.
A level one trauma center that couldn't save my wife. How was I ever supposed to go there and pretend that things were fine? How could I look at Hunt and Bailey and everyone else and not think of who was missing from the picture?
"Jackson!" My mother lets herself in with her key, as usual. She was more unpredictable than Izzie with whether or not she bothered to announce her presence beforehand.
"Hi, Mom," I called out, wiping Quinn's chin from the baby food on her chin.
"What are you doing right now? I have something for you." There she was, demanding as always.
"Quinn just finished lunch." She had made it apparent that she wasn't interested in eating any more of the organic banana puree. "I need to put her down for a nap." Maybe she would take a long time so I could put off this conversation.
"Oh, let me take care of that in just a minute," she waved her hand as she followed the sound of my voice to the kitchen. "I have something else that I need you to do. Someone that I need you to meet."
Had she just brought someone over without consulting me? "Mom, now really isn't the time for that."
"I don't care." Of course, she didn't. "This isn't important to you."
"It can't be that important," I argued.
"It is." Her eyebrows raised, daring me to question her further. I sighed. I wasn't sure that it was worth the energy. "Just put Quinn in her playpen for a moment, and I'll introduce you two, then I'll get her to put down for her nap. She's been missing out on her grandma time anyway and you need to do this." The absolute last thing that I wanted to do right now, but she made it apparent enough that I didn't have much of a choice.
"Fine."
Scooping up Quinn from her highchair, I carried her to the playpen that she had set up in the living room and set her down gently on one of the blankets that were stretched out there. There were plenty of toys for her – none that were a choking hazard or had too hard of edges. Plenty of stuffed animals, too, to make sure that everything around her was soft. Maybe I had gone a little overboard with cleaning out the house and making sure that it was as baby proof as humanly possible, but I didn't care. I would and could do absolutely anything humanly possible to make sure that the environment was as safe as possible for her.
"What is it?" I turned to my mom as she walked back toward the front door of our– my house, folding my arms in front of my chest and scowling down at her. "I really don't want to see anyone right now." As if she hadn't already gotten the message.
"Trust me, this is going to be good for you." She opened up the door and motioned me outside to follow.
A woman was standing at the end of the driveway by the mailbox, wrapped up in a cardigan with her own arms crossed. She was thin and a little frail looking. Given that there was only one car parked on the street, she had undoubtedly come here with my mother.
"If you're seriously trying to set me up with someone a fuckin' month after my wife died, I'm–" Before I can get any further with the anger spewing from my mouth, she cut me off.
"You know that is not something I would do. Hush." Mom glared at me with furrowed brows, shaking her head at disapproval before putting on a sunny disposition and turning toward the woman, waving her over toward the two of us. I didn't let up with my folded arms, slouching down. "Come here, honey. This is Jackson Avery, my son who I told you about. Jackson, this is Audrey Coleman."
"Hi." I forced a smile but I don't offer her my hand.
"Hi," she breathed out, a smile growing across her cheeks as she looked up at me.
"Audrey has two young boys. Shortly before the birth of her second son, however, she was diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy. The results showed her ejection fraction was only 15. They had her deliver at thirty-four weeks and had to place in an LVAD. She had to deal with a NICU baby, like you did, while she was in the ICU. But she had the opposite result that you and April did – she didn't get to go home soon and her baby did. Her results revealed that her ejection fraction dropped to an 8. She needed a transplant." The more that Mom explained, the more that I could see things slowly beginning to fall into place. "She got that transplant a month ago. April's heart, Jackson. Her heart was still in good condition after the crash, and a transplant team came and picked it up to give it to Audrey."
I stared at Audrey for a long moment, trying to process. April hadn't lived. But her heart was still beating – just inside of another chest, giving life to another woman. Another mother. It was still there and beating and loving.
"There is nothing I can say to even begin to thank you and your wife enough for what you've done to me." Audrey began to speak. She had a quiet, meek voice. "As soon as I woke up, I was acutely aware of my new heart. It was so strong. It was an incredible feeling. The doctors said it took very little to get the new heart pumping again. The outcome has been amazing." Despite her demure behavior, she smiled up at me genuinely.
"I…" I was speechless. Nothing came to mind. I couldn't help but stare at her chest, thinking about April's heart beating away inside of it, giving this woman a new and better life.
"I'll leave you two be," Mom said, squeezing my upper arm softly and heading inside of the house.
"When I got the call, I almost didn't believe it. I'd gotten the call before and last time it didn't work out. My husband was with me and he said that I was so calm it actually scared him." Audrey gave a small laugh. "As I went into the operating room, I was praying for your wife and you. Her entire family. Even though I knew my life was about to change in the most amazing way, I knew that you had to be hurting in the most unimaginable way. I can't even begin to understand what you've been through. But I couldn't be more grateful to your wife. Catherine told me that she was a doctor. A trauma surgeon. It sounds like she must have been the most amazing woman."
"She was," I wet my lips as I finally found my voice. "And… she would have been happy that you had it. That you got to be with your kids." Even if she wasn't with hers. Any other moment, I could have hated her selflessness. But staring at Audrey, seeing her living on in another woman and acutely aware that she wasn't the only donor that had received something from April, it's harder to be angry with her. It doesn't hurt in quite the same way.
"Did your wife like strawberries?" Audrey asked suddenly.
I stared at her with a blank face before I was able to reply. "Yeah. She did," I nodded. "What made you ask that?"
"Well, I'm not a doctor. But after the transplant, I was really craving strawberries. I read online that there is this extraordinary phenomenon which sees some transplant recipients take on the characteristics of the donor. So… I thought that maybe she really liked strawberries or something like that. I guess I was right."
"She loved strawberries." I found myself smiling for the first time in a long time, chewing at my lower lip. "It was, uh, my nickname for her, actually. It was a long-running joke between us. We were childhood sweethearts. I knew her since kindergarten. And we met because I was stealing her strawberries and she was too nice to stop me. She's been giving for a long time."
"That's really beautiful," Audrey smiled. "I didn't know that you were childhood sweethearts. Did you know that scientists say there are at least 70 documented cases of transplant patients having personality changes which reflect the characteristics of their donor?"
"Yeah, cellular memory. You sound just like her." I commented, shaking my head and running my hand over my face. "She loved facts like that."
This was weird.
"Do you want to listen?" Audrey asked, blinking. "To her heart beating?"
"I do," I answered without the slightest pause. "I do. Please. Come on, I have a stethoscope inside." I nearly rushed her into the house.
Leaving her in the living room with my mom for just a moment, I go through my bag and quickly pulled out my stethoscope. It hasn't been used in weeks now. But this was the right time to break it out. I couldn't imagine bringing it out for anything more meaningful than this. I would get to hear April's heart beating again. It wouldn't be the two of us lying in bed together, naked after making love and hearing it flutter away as she calmed down, but it was still her heart. It was still one more piece of her out in the universe, doing good.
"Your daughter is beautiful," Audrey commented as I came back out into the living room.
"Thank you." I glanced at Quinn a moment, nearly distracted by her staring up at us. She was clearly confused about what was going on, too young to get a grasp on why her mother was suddenly gone and the significance of the other woman standing in the living room.
Sitting down on the couch, she looked up at me and gave a smile. I sat down next to her, taking a deep breath before putting on my stethoscope.
Placing the disc against her chest, I can hear the sound that I want. The amplified sounds of April's beating heart traveled up the stethoscope's tube to the earpieces. It was beating a little fast, maybe because she was nervous to do this, but it was as strong and clear as any healthy heart. The heart sounds couldn't have been better. I'd listen to April's heart beat like this before, too, when we'd joked around. It sounded just the same inside of Audrey's chest. It was still her heart. Seconds pass as I just sit there and listen to it, bringing a peace that I hadn't known in weeks.
"Thank you," I repeat the words, but this time, they mean something much more than before. "Thank you."
"No, thank you." She shook her head at me though she remained smiling. "Your wife gave me a new life and that's a debt that I can never repay to her or to you. This is the least that I can do for you."
I shake my head, smiling at her for a moment and saying what I knew April would have said regardless in this situation.
"Thank you anyway."