The figure bathed in light from the hall stood like a guardian angel at the door. The form moved into the room with such grace that, to Marie, it seemed to float. The sullen woman closed her eyes hoping desperately that this apparition was not some form of good-bye from her longtime lover. As much as she wanted to be in her presence, she didn’t want it to be like this.


A single tear broke through the dam of closed eyelids and embittered self-restraint. Marie could feel it escaping down over her cheek. Then, she felt the warm touch to her cheek and heard the soft words on her ears. ‘No! No! If I don’t listen, if I don’t hear that…then she can’t be gone.’ She tried to shut the world out of her life, out of her love, out of this time.


The words would not stop, but instead continued on. The soft soothing tone of the voice seemed mellow against the dark of the night with its growing fears lurking in every shadow. Finally Marie forced one eye to open, taking in the vision in front of her. It was not a heavenly body to the forlorn woman, anything that did not resemble her soulmate was a godsend.


"Marie?" Danni looked upon the patient lying in the bed as she tried to ascertain her emotional state. "It’s me, Danni. I’m the nurse that took care of you with Dr. Trivoli in the Trauma Room."


The tiny gasp at the recognition of the nurse coincided with her heart as it fluttered with relief. "I…I remember you."


Danni smiled and let her hand come to rest on the woman’s shoulder. "I hope you don’t mind." The nurse motioned to the drop of moisture on her finger. "I’ve always thought that a single tear shared between two isn’t as hard to bare as one shed alone."


At first, the idea didn’t make sense to Marie, but the more that she thought about it, it made the most sense that she had ever heard. It was in this light that the woman let the corners of her mouth twitch upward into a half smile, not wanting to aggravate the stitches that had been used to close the laceration on the side of her face.


"How did one so young get to be so wise?" The whispered voice challenged the nurse.


"I think that sometimes I’m older than dirt. Pretty good disguise…eh?" Danni winked and let her broad smile shine through the abyss that the woman was climbing out of.


The older woman began to smile nervously then stopped with the twinging pain that resulted from the stitches in her face. "Oww!"


"Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you hurt. Really, I just thought that maybe you’d like to have someone to talk to…I mean…while we wait to hear about Chris." Danni was amazed at the delicate features of the woman before her. Now that the bloodstains were all removed, it allowed the beauty of the woman to grab you at first sight. She still had the youthful skin and physical appearance of a much younger person, the tinges of gray at her temples adding a well seasoned look. Her hazel eyes sparkled with the attention she was being given.


Marie nodded her head. "Yes, I think that I might like that." She studied the nurse trying to figure her out. "You always dress like that?" She pointed to the Flight Suit.


Danni looked down at herself. "No, actually we were paged out to assist with the trauma disaster. I’m the Flight Nurse on the Flight Surgeon’s Team."


"Your doctor…she’s the Fight Surgeon?"


"Yeah," Danni nodded her head as her smile grew bigger. "She’s the one operating on Chris in the O.R." Danni face brightened as she thought about the surgeon. "Gar…er…Dr. Trivoli is a great surgeon. I’ve seen her do things that an ordinary surgeon wouldn’t even think of. Chris is in the best of hands."


"Oh, is it…I mean…was she bad," Marie bit her lip, "They won’t tell me anything about her."


"Do you two have a legal document…a written power of attorney?"


"No, Chris wouldn’t think about it. She said that we were too young to worry about things like that." Marie tried to get her mind off what her life had been. "You seem to think very highly of this surgeon. Have you known her long?"


The nurse had to think about how to answer that question. "You know there are times that I think I’ve known her for ions but in the reality of it all, I only met her on July first of last year." Danni shook her head. "I guess living with someone, you get to know them better than you know yourself."


"Then you two are…"


The smile faded from the nurse’s face. "No, we just share the house that I own. She’s a Fellow and her year will be up in a few more months."


"She’s going to stay, isn’t she?" Marie found herself wanting it to be so.


Danni shrugged her shoulders. "I…I don’t know." Now it was the nurse’s turn to look for another subject. "Chris told me to tell you something for her." She paused trying to remember the exact words. "She said to tell you: ‘Tell her I love her...Then, now and forever.’ Yeah, that’s it." Danni grabbed the older woman’s hand and clutched it upward toward her mouth then kissed it. "Give her that from me, she said." The petite woman looked, trying to gauge the effect that it was having on the woman before her.


Marie’s face paled and her eyes searched the nurse’s face. "How? Those phrases are what Chris always says to me when we are apart from one another. How did you know?"


"She told me, right before she went up to surgery."


"That’s my Chris, always worried about me." Her voice trailed off as her mind wondered down a timeless path of their souls’ journey together.


"How long…I mean if you don’t mind…How long have you been together?"


"Not long enough." The patient smiled thinking about their time together. "It’s been over 35 years since we first met."


Danni pulled a chair over closer to the bed and sat down on it. Her full attention now focused on the woman in the bed. "I’m curious, how did you know that you were…I mean…that she was…gay?"


"Hmmm…You know back then being gay wasn’t as accepted as it is today for you young folks. You really put yourself out on a limb if you just came out and said anything."


"Oh, I see. It’s not any easier today, either." Danni sighed. "I’ve always known that I didn’t fit in with the way my mother had my life planned out. I just didn’t know what it was that I wanted until now."


"I guess that would be the tall, dark-haired surgeon?" The older woman watched Danni cautiously as a blush tinged her cheeks.


"I’m friends with her but I’m not sure that she’s…"


"Gay?"

The nurse nodded her head. "I don’t even have a clue."


Marie reached out her hand and let it rest down on top of Danni’s cloth-covered knee. "How about I tell you the story of me and Chris? Maybe it will help you decide about the surgeon."


Danni’s green eyes lifted and stared directly into Marie’s hazel eyes. "You’d do that? Tell me your story?"


Marie nodded. "I’m not going to sleep and if you’re willing to listen…"


The nurse smiled. "You’d do that for me?"


"Chris trusted you with her words, why not me with our story?"


Danni leaned onto the bed. "I’m ready when you are."


Now it was Marie’s turn to blush. She paused to collect her thoughts then started telling the story of her love.


"Back in the Sixties free love was all the rage, that was if you were a heterosexual couple. I met Chris when I was out one day for a long walk down by the Point. I used to love standing there and watching the rivers come together." Marie let her mind imagine herself there. "I used to see this skinny girl always fishing off the wharf. She hardly ever caught anything, at least while I was there. But everyday she would be sitting with that pole in her hands. Each day I'd walk a little closer until one day I was right next to her. Scared the daylight out of her when I asked her what she used for bait."


Danni smiled. "Do you fish, Marie?"


"No, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I figured that it was the only thing to talk about." She shrugged her shoulders. "Well, to make a long story short, finally one day after a month or so, she invited me to sit down and offered me one of her poles to use."


"I take it that you did?"


"You better believe it. How else could I sit by her and talk for hours on end. She wasn’t too gabby when we first met but over the years, Lordy, she can talk your arm off now." They both giggled at same time.


"So how did you finally get together?"


"I got some bad news one-day, about a friend of mine in the army. He was stationed in Vietnam. He’d been shot and I wasn’t taking it too well. Chris offered to walk me home but instead we ended up at her place ‘cause it was closer. I was a basket case by then. Charlie and me, well, we grew up together. We kind of knew early on that we were different from everybody else and kept to ourselves. Our parents thought that it was cute and that we’d grow up and marry."


"Your parents didn’t know?"


"We did what all the other kids were doing at the time. I guess you could say that we started covering for each other even back then." Marie lost herself in the reminiscing.


"Marie, how did you know about Chris…that she was gay?"


"Some you can tell by looking at, some by the way they talk or act. With Chris it was by her touch. The first time we held hands," the woman closed her eyes, "it was like electricity running through me. Don’t know why, but I just knew."


"How did your parents take it when you told them?"



* * *

"Tell them?" Marie laughed. "I haven’t told them yet and we’ve been together for almost 35 years."


"They don’t live around you then, I take it."


"On the contrary, they live about a two mile drive away." Marie motioned for Danni to come closer. "They think that I’m living with Charlie and Chris and Bobbie live in the apartment upstairs."


"You four live together? Didn’t they ever ask about a wedding for you and Charlie?"


"Well, let’s just say that we all go in the same front door but Chris and I live on the first floor and Charlie and Bobbie live above us. Wedding, oh my, no child, we are children of the Sixties. Free love and no commitments, remember?"


"Is that the Charlie that you were so upset about being shot?"


"Yeah, you might say that it was his doing that brought Chris and me together at last. When we got to her place she just held me in her arms and I knew that I never wanted to be without them in my life, without her in my life. The safety and love that I felt in them was incredible."


Danni’s mouth turned into a broad smile. "That’s really great. You have your best friend and life partner all under that same roof."


"Yeah, I’ve been blessed in that manner."


"If you don’t mind me asking, where did Charlie meet Bobbie?"


"Bobbie was the nurse that took care of him in the hospital when he was shot." The older woman shook her head. "You might say that bullet had both our names on it."



* * *

Garrett Trivoli was at the helm of the operating theater as she fought desperately to save the woman on her table. Once she had opened up the abdominal cavity to inspect it, the surgeon could see the severity of the injuries from the blunt trauma the older woman had endured. Her abdominal contents seemed to be swimming in a pool of blood. The surgical team would have their work laid out for quite a number of hours to come.


With a feverish pace, the nimble fingered surgeon worked to find the major antagonist to the woman’s well being. Once the excess blood was suctioned out, the nasty remnants of spleen were evident. The force of the trauma to Chris’s abdomen had sent the spleen bursting at the seams. There would be no way to save this organ. Not even the skilled hands of Garrett Trivoli would be able to put this together again.


The tied-off splenic artery did nothing to stop the plummeting nosedive that the patient’s blood pressure was taking. The woman had to have another source for her lost blood, one that was possibly worse than the spleen.