After that, it was just the two of us.
We did figure it out. It was a slow, imperfect process, but we did it together.
And we had nine more years together before I lost her, too.
"Her heart simply stopped," the doctor had told me.
"But she was only 17!"
He sighed. "Sometimes these things happen when a person has an undetected rhythm disorder. Stress and exhaustion can increase the risk."
We had nine more years together before I lost her, too.
Stress and exhaustion.
I thought about that for a long time afterward. Had she seemed stressed? Had she seemed tired?
I'd asked myself those questions every hour of every day since she died. And every time I came up empty.
Which meant I'd missed something.
Which meant I had failed her.
