He didn’t know she was there.

She could have stepped into the room or tried to let him know she was there for him, but she didn’t.  She stood quietly just outside, watching the nurse take blood from his lax arm and wondered what the doctor was thinking as he stared at numbers and lines dancing across the screens above her husband’s head.   

The room was surprisingly quiet.  Somehow she expected it to be chaotic.  Surely when he arrived here there had been plenty of rushing about as he was hooked up to IVs and monitors, but at the moment it was calm, the soft beeping of a heart monitor the only sound.   

She still remembered the night they first met.

It was his second showing at Stepp Gallery.  There were so many people interested in seeing his work it was nearly impossible to move.  She had been at his first showing; word must have gotten out about him since then.   That wasn't a surprise to her.  His work was exquisite. 

She somehow managed to find a place in the circle of admirers listening to him discuss sculpture and art in general.  He was mesmerizing.  She ached to get his attention but not in a crazy way.  When he said something clever about a piece by Marsset she blurted out the first thing that popped into her head, hoping it sounded casual and cool.  He looked at her and smiled, "That's brilliant."  She thought her heart would stop.   Thank goodness it wasn't the stupidest thing she’d ever said.  Or maybe it was and he was just being kind. Either way the heat in her cheeks felt the same.

Later, when the gallery was closing he found her in the thinning crowd.  She couldn't believe he was asking her out for coffee.  At that moment she wouldn't have admitted her dislike for coffee for anything in the world. They talked and laughed into the morning.

And now.  Now they were twelve years and at least a lifetime's worth of heartbreak away from the night they first met.   The day they’d married had been the most beautiful of day of her life.   She had never felt so full of magic.  Standing before the mirror she’d imagined the perfect life they’d have; the happiness they'd share, the quiet, tender moments spent together loving and giving one another love. She envisioned their children, so adorable and precious, laughing and looking so much like their daddy.  She knew he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen.  She believed she was the luckiest girl in the world to love someone as much as she loved him and to be loved as much as he loved her. 

She hadn’t seen an end to how she felt for him then.  She thought he would become a part of her; the beating of her heart. 

How had they ended up in this place?