night, as she had stood frozen at the kitchen counter, she’d been unable to face the reality of her deep unhappiness … yet she’d no longer been able to deny it, either. And that conundrum had trapped her between her desire for a hot shower after exercise and her head-in-the-sand position on the first floor.
Because if she had to walk by that office one more time and be ignored? She was going to have to do something about it.
Eventually, she’d forced herself to hit the stairs, a marching band of don’t-be-stupid’s drumming her ascent.
Her first clue that all was not well had been the empty swivel chair in front of his computers. Further, the room had been dark, although that was not all that unusual, and Gerry’s monitors had offered plenty of light with which to navigate around the sparsely furnished space. But it wasn’t like he got up all that often.
She’d told herself that he wasn’t where he should have been because nature had called and she promptly resented the hell out of him for his need to pee: Now, she was going to have to interact with him in the bathroom.
Which was going to make cramming her emotions back into the Don’t Touch Toy Box even harder.
Special Agent Manfred had gotten the death scene right. She’d found her fiancé sitting up on the tile against the Jacuzzi’s built-in base, his legs out straight, his hands curled up on his thighs, his MedicAlert bracelet loose on his right wrist. His head had lolled to one side and there was a clear insulin bottle and a needle next to him. His hair, or what was left of the Boris Becker blond strands, was messy, probably from a seizure, and there was drool down the front of his Dropkick Murphys concert shirt.
Rushing over. Crouching down. Begging, pleading, even as she had checked his jugular and found no pulse underneath cold skin.
In that moment of loss, she had forgiven him all transgressions, her anger disappearing as if never been, her frustrations and doubts gone the way of his life force.
To heaven. Assuming there was such a place.
Calling 911. Ambulance arriving. Death confirmed.
The body had been removed, but things were hazy at that point; she couldn’t remember whether it had been taken by the paramedics or the morgue or the coroner.… Similar to someone who had sustained a head injury, she had amnesia about that part, about other parts. She remembered clearly calling his parents, however, and breaking down the second she’d heard his mother’s accented voice. Crying. Weeping. Promises by his parents to be on the next trans-Atlantic flight, vows to be strong on her side.
No one to call for herself.
Cause of death was determined to be hypoglycemia. Insulin shock.
Gerry’s parents ended up taking his body back to Hamburg, Germany, so that he could be buried in the family cemetery, and just-likethat, Sarah had been left here in this little house in Ithaca with very little to remember her fiancé by. Gerry had been the opposite of a hoarder, and besides, his parents had taken most of his things with them. Oh, and BioMed had sent a representative to take the computer towers from his home office, only the monitors remaining.
After the death, she had closed the door to that room and not reopened it for a good year and a half. When she finally did venture across the threshold, chinks in the all-is-forgiven armor she’d girded herself with had appeared the instant she’d seen that desk and chair.
She’d shut things up again.
Remembering Gerry as anything other than a good, hardworking man had felt like a betrayal. Still did.
Sarah had been through this post-passing recasting of character before with her parents. There were different standards for the quick and the dead. Those who were alive were nuanced, a combination of good and bad traits, and as both full-color and three-dimensional, they were capable of disappointing you and uplifting you in turns. Once a loved one was gone, however, assuming you were essentially fond of them, she had found that the disappointments faded and only the love remained.
If only through force of will.
To focus on anything but the good times, especially when it came to Gerry, felt just plain wrong—especially given that she blamed herself for his death. On their second date, he had taught her how to identify the symptoms of insulin shock and use his glucagon kit. She had even had to mix the solution and inject it into his thigh