Chapter 3: The final complication
Michael and Kate were spooning in her bed when his cell went off in the middle of the night.
It was Dr. Bentley filling him in on Rita's worsening condition. He sounded alarmed but together. As all brilliant doctors sounded in the face of life threatening emergencies.
Rita had gone into septic shock due to a related colonic injury. In spite of being treated with the best combination of broad spectrum antibiotics and being very closely monitored with the latest medical equipment and by the entire Holt Neuro's staff. She was critical.
Michael and Kate rushed over and he performed another surgery on Rita to drain deadly fluids from her body.
This time she barely made it alive out of that O.R.
Three hours later she was gone, her heart stopped beating exactly at 9:15am while Michael frantically tried to safe her life for the third time that fateful week.
The next day, two hours before the fall of night they were all gathered around her white rose-covered casket in the cemetery.
It was raining again, copiously.
He couldn't believe the pain he was in, even worse than when his own mother left him and Christina. Even worse than when he learned about Anna's death.
He couldn't believe that just the day before he was in Kate's arms feeling content and alive again. Whereas now he was in her arms mourning the death of the woman that was like the mother he never had, not the one that gave him his life but the one who saved it and whose heroic act had brought him together with the woman he now loved. With the woman that after uncountable mistakes, he had learned how to love. Ironically the mistakes that had cost him his marriage with Anna in the past, had in a sense taught him how to love Kate in a better way now. That self-loathing train of thought brought his ex wife back to the front of his mind. That's when he slowly opened his redden eyes and saw her.
Anna was walking away, she turned her back to him after a quick look. She took the other woman who looked just like Rita by the hand and they started to walk away together, Rita didn't look back so he never really got to see her face, but he new that she looked peaceful. Yeah, that was his Rita alright, and she was okay.
The two women walked hand in hand for a while... and then they faded away...
-"Mike! Michael! Talk to me! Michael! Are you ok? Michael?"
He blinked for the first time in almost a minute. He released the breath he didn't know he was holding and felt better.
This strange and yet oddly familiar certainty, that he hadn't actually lost anybody settled in and he let himself be held tightly by Kate as the rain washed over them.
He breathed her in as he closed his eyes and put his arms around her. She rocked him back and forth in an almost imperceptible way that made him feel all warm inside. He needed that. He needed her and she was right there for him.