my phone from my purse and hit redial. Milford answered on the fourth ring, just when I was about to lose hope. We spoke for a few minutes and I disconnected.
“You’ll be receiving a call shortly,” I told her and stepped aside and waited impatiently for the promised connection to come through. Milford didn’t disappoint me.
The phone on the receptionist’s desk rang, and I watched as the volunteer answered. After a few seconds her eyes connected with mine. When she replaced the receiver, I approached her desk a second time.
“Will you help me now?”
She nodded. “An escort will be down in a few minutes.”
An escort. I hadn’t expected that.
Sure enough, within five minutes a uniformed officer met me in the foyer. His name tag identified him as Officer Whitney. “I need to prepare you for what you’re about to see,” he said, as he led me toward the elevator banks.
I listened, but I don’t think any of what he said sank in. Reality hit me hard when I was led into the ICU room where Mark was currently hooked up to a number of devices and machines. If I hadn’t been told the man in the bed was Mark, I would never have recognized him. He was thin, thinner than I’d ever seen him, his skin bronze from the sun, and yet his face was a sickly shade of yellow.
The color of death.
Glancing at the monitors, I saw that his pulse was slow and uneven. His blood pressure was so low I had to look twice to be sure I had read it correctly.
A nurse spoke from behind me. I hadn’t been aware anyone else was in the room. “You have five minutes.”
I nodded, stepped up to Mark’s bed, and reached for his hand. It was cool to the touch.
“Mark,” I whispered. “It’s Jo Marie. I’m here. I love you.” As I spoke my voice gained strength. “I need to tell you something important, so listen carefully.” I drew in a deep breath. “If you came all the way back to me from Iraq just to die, I swear to you I will never forgive you. I’m serious, Mark.” I kissed his limp hand, bending down and pressing my warm lips against his cold skin. “I love you. Please, don’t leave me.” The tears came then, falling unrestrained down my cheeks. “You can’t leave me, Mark. You can’t have come this far to die.”
Jo Marie’s voice came at me from the dark void. I’d heard her before; her sweet voice whispered to me when I was wild with fever. This was different. So real and close.
Was it possible? Could she actually be with me? How did she get to Iraq? No, it was the fever again. It had to be. It wasn’t safe for her here. I moaned, a warning, silently begging her to leave. No sound came from my throat. My heart thudded hard in my chest, paining me. The pain and the heaviness grew tighter, stronger.
A distant voice shouted out. “Code blue. Code blue.”
I knew what that meant. I was dying. Darkness threatened to overwhelm me, to swallow me whole.
“No. No.”
Jo Marie again, screaming this time, calling out to me, begging me to stay with her.
“Don’t you dare die on me, Mark Taylor.”
It was her and she wasn’t a whispered voice of my dreams, of my need. Mentally I reached out to her as the darkness yanked at me from the other side in a violent tug of war, a tug against death.
Death was slowly gaining momentum, the darkness swamping me from all sides.
“Mark,” Jo Marie screamed again. “I love you…no. Please, no.”
Love. I felt it reaching out to me like a thin sliver of light. With every bit of strength I possessed, I leaned toward that needlepoint of sunshine, that tiny hole of warmth and love.
It wasn’t enough. The darkness was too strong.
I stood in the hospital corridor and leaned against the wall, slowly sinking toward the floor as nurses and doctors rushed to Mark’s bedside. I saw the heart monitor go flat and the frantic efforts of the physician to revive him.
I couldn’t look, couldn’t see the man I loved declared dead. Burying my face in my hands, I leaned forward until my forehead was braced against my knees.
Someone came for me and helped me to straighten. Officer Whitney again. “Let me take you to a waiting area,” he urged.
I looked up into his young face and adamantly shook my head. “No. I need to stay.