Just a small reminder guys. This story is romance/tragedy/angst.

DimkaxRoza – I'm sorry. But it's not changing. :'(

Chapter Eleven.

22nd June 1961.

Rose was frozen. Numb. Shut off from the world.

The elderly couple had taken her to the hospital since she hadn't been allowed in the ambulance. They didn't allow you to travel with de-

She couldn't even complete her own thoughts.

An aneurysm had killed her husband.

He'd been washing his hands after using the toilet, and it had happened. They'd had no way of knowing it was there, and it had just… popped, killing him instantly. He'd hit his head on the sink as he collapsed, which explained the blood. The aneurysm in his brain had killed him, at the age of twenty nine.

Rose was a widow at twenty two.

Lissa had rushed to the hospital as soon as she'd heard; Adrian had sent her up in one of his cars after the hotel was alerted by the other person who had come to help. She kept trying to talk to Rose, but Rose couldn't understand what she was saying.

She didn't want to understand. Everything sounded fuzzy and muffled, like she was underwater.

Her husband was dead.

She would never get to make love to him again.

Or to hear him laugh and call her Roza.

To kiss him softly, or passionately, or teasingly.

She would never get to curl up in his arms again.

She wouldn't be able to tell him she loved him ever again.

The thought caused a fresh batch of tears to well up in Rose's eyes and spill over, cascading down her cheeks as Lissa noticed and pulled Rose into her embrace, her hands rubbing up and down her arms as she tried to warm her up, tucking the blanket the nurses had given her around her friend more tightly.

"It'll be okay, Rose. We'll get through this."

28th June 1961.

Lissa watched her friend worriedly as she packed up boxes. She seemed to be on autopilot, not reacting to anything that was said or done to her; and now as she silently boxed up the contents of Dimitri's room, it seemed like she had shut everyone out even further, if that was possible.

The only signs that she was still in there, actually feeling something was that every so often Rose would sigh and swipe at the near constant stream of tears trickling down her cheeks, and the fact that as she packed up his clothes, Rose would hug Dimitri's shirts to her chest, breathe in deeply, and then shut her eyes, a deeply pained expression covering her delicate features as she refolded them with shaky hands.

"Rose?"

No answer.

"Rose, please answer me."

Lissa had to move from the window and forcibly stop Rose from packing.

"It's not good for you to hold it in, Rose. You need to grieve properly. Let it out." Lissa's voice was beseeching, but Rose stared right through her, and then gently, but firmly pulled her hands free and resumed packing.

Once she'd finished packing away Dimitri's few possessions into boxes and placing them by the door, ready for them to be loaded into the car, she sighed heavily and headed back through the corridors to her own room, Lissa trailing behind her.

Once she was safely inside, she began to pack up her own belongings. She didn't have many, so it was a relatively quick task.

Rose pulled open her underwear drawer as Lissa began to plead again, and dumped small handfuls of the items into an empty box, before her fingers traced across something smooth and cold.

She froze, and Lissa took that as a sign that Rose might have been considering her words.

"Rose, stay here. Please. Leaving isn't going to help."

Rose's fingers closed around the envelope, and tears seeped from beneath her closed eyelids.

Cherish the time you have.

The warning had been there, but she hadn't heeded it. She hadn't known how to interpret it. How was she supposed to know how Dimitri would die, or that it would happen so shortly after she received the message?

And that made her even more resolute in her decision.

She was going to go to Russia. As Dimitri's widow, she'd inherited his estate. It hadn't been much, but it was enough money for her to be able to send his body and possessions back so he could be buried in the home he'd always wanted to return to. And Mr. Ivashkov had generously paid the extra that it would cost for her ticket there. He'd offered to pay for her return ticket too, but Rose wasn't sure if she was going to come back. Not even if Olena slammed the door in her face after she found out what had happened.

Taking her own life had never been something she'd considered. Rose had been through a lot in her life, facing a lot of adversity and hardships and rising above them. But she wasn't sure if Dimitri's death was something she'd be able to recover from. She could only hope that his family would welcome her like in the letter, and that they would give her something to live for.

I wanted to make this a lot longer, but I decided to split it. Tomorrow's two chapters will be the last ones.

www (dot) scientificamerican (dot) com/ article (dot) cfm?id= experts-what-is-a-brain-aneurysm