"You can do it! One more now, don't be a quitter!" My coach in rehab, such a bitch. I know she means well but my mouth still can't pronounce "lemon." I spend half the day working my tongue.

The car wreck totally threw me into a new realm of shock, depression and a little hope fostered by caring healthcare people. I couldn't just die like I wanted to because my family would freak. So I'll be the freak with the distorted face. May be I'll join the circus when I get out of rehab.

I can't complain I thought when they pushed Lora in through the rehab door. She was fucked up like nobody's business. Her arms atrophied to pencils. Boy did she have a lot of work to do. I admired her attitude. I wished I could say "hello," but there was my fuckin' mouth.

Long story short: After months of rehab, I was able to say, "I love you" and she was able to put her arms around me.

The beeping from the equipment rang in his ears as he looked at her frail body in the hospital bed.  The bed that had become hers with how much time she had had to spend in it over the last few months.  

He thought back to that night in the pouring rain when she had come pounding at his door. As he pulled it open she didn't hesitate as she wrapped her arms around him, cold, wet and shaking she held on to him for dear life. "I'm never letting you go again" she whispered in his ear.

He hadn't seen her in months, she had broke it off after three years of bliss to follow her dream.  She didn't want it to be hard on him with the distance if she left.  She didn't want him to follow her and side track his dreams and aspirations for her, in case it wasn't going to last. Even though he knew all he really wanted was her.  He hadn't heard a word from her since she left for Scotland.  Now eight months later she was back at his door wishing she had never broke them apart.  She now knew that he was all she wanted.  

She had tried to have a fling.  Met a nice strong man in Edinburgh who could have been the one, but she had already found her match in her home town.  Over the winter break when she had returned to Canada to visit her family she had fought the urge to contact him, she couldn't break his heart again, or torture her own fragile one.  So she had left it alone.  Now she had thought about it for the last few months and she knew what she had to do.  She needed him in her life, her best friend.  She missed him with all her soul. 

As she held on to him, and he held her back she knew that she had made the right decision. Pulling back and looking into his eyes, he smiled down at her "I knew you would be back, but still I'm not letting you do that to me again."  He looked her dead in the eye and said "I love you" and she pulled him in for a kiss, finally in his embrace, he felt her relax as he grinned at her and said "Lets get you dried off my darling" and she nodded lightly and followed him inside.

Sitting in that hospital room five years later he was so glad that she had come back to him. He didn't know he could miss a person as much as he had for those torturous eight months that she was absent from his life. Now he hadn't heard her voice in three months as she lay still in the bed, the ventilator making her chest rise and fall.  He held their child in his arms. His eyes the colour of his loves, he ran his fingers down his nose as he slept peacefully in his arms.  

It was a rough birth, too many complications from the time the contractions had started, the pain on her face, as it tore through her.  She had been so weak in the car on the way to the hospital, he had had to carry her through the doors, screaming for help.  During the delivery she had hemorrhaged and they had to open her up to stop the bleeding.  She should have recovered by now, but the trauma may have been too much for her.  She just needed time the doctors said.  He had spent the last three months in this hospital, by her side watching for any movement, monitoring.  Today there was some, her eyes opened. 

Panic wide across her face as she reached for the tube in her mouth, but she couldn't move them, her hands anchored to the bed, her eyes scared he rushed to her side and the panic drained because he was there.  He stroked her dirty hair holding their son against him she looked at the swaddled baby and tears welled in her eyes running down her face.  His heart tight in his chest, he thought, she woke up, I'm not alone again, she came back.

--------------------------------------------Fifty Years Later--------------------------------------------

"So much time has passed" she whispered. Sitting on the porch swing, their grandchild playing in the grass, making vrooming noises with her truck.

His hands traced her face, running his worn fingers down the sides of her wrinkled face and around her ears.  As she opened her eyes she leaned her face into his left hand as her green eyes looked into his gold speckled hazel ones and he ran his fingers through her hair catching in the tangled bits.  The setting sun bright behind him she ran her hands along his shoulders and arms his skin soft and thin beneath her touch.  They pulled each other in closing the short distance between them.  "I never let you go" she whispered. "I'm so glad you never did" He responded as she rested her head against his shoulder and he felt her embrace as her arms circled him.