Vision Impossible (43 page)

Still, after they’d tended to him, my gurney was pushed over to his side and I reached out to hold his hand. It was warm and just feeling the heat from it filled me with a happiness and relief I can’t fully describe. He was still unconscious, but breathing on his own and so far showing remarkable improvement. If all went well, one of the nurses told me, he’d be out of ICU in another few days.

I was allowed only fifteen minutes with him before I’d have to leave, so I made the most of it. Holding tightly to his hand, I told him how much I loved him, how proud I was of him, and how brave I thought he was. And then I looked inside myself and knew that I couldn’t deny this man anything—especially not something as insignificant as a wedding date. Looking back on my reasoning for postponing it, I realized I’d tried to make the choice all about what I wanted rather than what would be good for us.

Clanging around in my thoughts as I looked at his broken and bruised body was what the doctor had said: that Dutch had only a sixty percent chance of making it. That was better than average, yes, but it still struck a deep chord of fear in my heart.

“Dutch,” I said close to his ear, “I’ll make you a deal. You agree to make a full recovery and I’ll marry you whenever you want. You pick the wedding date, honey, and I promise you I’ll show up and say I do. No more arguments about my needing time to make it perfect. It’ll be perfect just because you and I are there. If that’s tomorrow, next week, or the first of November, cowboy, I will be there with bells on.”

I looked down at his hand in mine and waited for a sign. I wanted him to wiggle his fingers or squeeze my hand—you know, like they show in the movies. Something to let me know that he’d heard me. But nothing happened. His hand just lay there limp and lifeless in my grasp, and I couldn’t help the terrible feeling that crept over me. It’s hard to explain, but an awful foreboding snaked its way down my spine, and fear wrapped itself tightly around my heart.

“Time to go,” a nurse whispered too soon.

I kissed Dutch’s fingers and gently laid his hand back. I was too choked up to say or do much else.

Late the next morning, when my own pain was still fairly intense and my worry over Dutch wouldn’t abate, I was having a really low moment when a nurse came in. I thought it was the shift change until she told me that she was actually a nurse from the ICU. My heart began to pound hard in my chest. “What’s happened?” I asked her desperately.

“It’s your fiancé,” she said.

My hand flew to my mouth. “No!” I said. “Please . . . God . . .
no
!”

She looked puzzled, and then she seemed to realize what I must be thinking. “He’s fine,” she assured me, moving quickly to my bed to hold out a folded piece of paper to me. “He woke up a little bit ago, and he asked me to give you a note.”

I was too stunned to speak. My mind had gone so completely to that worst-case scenario that it took me a minute to recover from it, and in that moment the nurse smiled, tucked the note into my hand, and left me alone again.

When I could think, I unfolded the slip of paper. It was only six words long, but they were the sweetest six words I could ever remember reading. The note read: