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didn’t shower or change my clothes. I drank coffee and caught naps on a two-seater couch someone had found for me. Sleep was hard to come by. Between the machines doing their thing and the nurses doing theirs, I never had more than a half hour at a time.
    Day five.
    He woke up.
    Day six.
    He turned his head and reached for my hand.
    Day seven.
    “Love you, Gen.”
    Three weeks later, he was strong enough to attend his dad’s funeral. Adam Finnegan had bought a double plot for himself and his wife when he worked as a groundskeeper at Evergreen Memorial Park. It was a beautiful place, right on the edge of Mt. Tamalpais, overlooking Marin County on one side and San Francisco Bay on the other. I stood by Ahren the entire time, saying very little, just making sure he was eating, sleeping…breathing.
    One month later, exactly four weeks since I’d first sat in his hospital room, Ahren curled me into his side. We were in my bedroom at Eden Hills. His aunts and uncles cleaned his parents’ house and prepared it for sale. Things were labeled, put into boxes, and moved into storage. Ahren said, when he was ready, he’d go through everything, but he’d never step into his childhood home again. I understood that, even though I thought it would help him say goodbye. 
    “You know,” he began. “I know you like photography…” I did like it, but I’d only ever taken pictures of houses. “There’s a permanent exhibit, down in The City at the photography museum…and they have all these post-mortem pictures. Turn of the century, I think, something like that. Pictures of kids with their dead baby brother. We should go.”
    I moved from his embrace and looked down at him. “I’ve always wanted one of those pictures! They’re called Memento Mori”
    He smiled. For the first time in four weeks, he smiled. “Glad I’m here, Gen.” After a long silence, he took a shuddering breath and told me, “You were the last thing I thought about.”
    I could have said a million things, but they would’ve all been inadequate.
    His head was on the pillow, his left arm still in a sling. I sat to his right and lifted my hands to his cheeks. I don’t know how long I did it, but all I could do was stare and study his handsome face. For three months, I’d battled wildly different emotions. Every day was a tug-of-war between grief and giddy. Grief was like the little devil on my shoulder, taunting me to give in and wallow. Giddy was shouting at grief, calling him an asshole while giving him the finger. Three months, I’d renewed and rekindled a flame that burned brightly for the man who was lying in my bed. I squeezed my eyes closed at the vision of him swollen and bruised. I knew what he was saying to me. I knew what I’d become to him. I’d become what he’d always been to me.
    I kissed him softly, not wanting to hurt him. He still winced and moaned in his sleep every night, and every night since his accident, I would lie awake. I’d hear my heartbeat against my pillow, his slow and steady breaths much like my own. I’d stare at the shadows on the ceiling and become aware of every inch of my body. I wouldn’t blink and I wouldn’t breathe. I’d lie there and wonder, is this what will happen when I die? The last thing I’ll see will be the shadows of redwoods near my bedroom window? My mouth will fill with saliva. My eyes will burn because I can no longer blink? These dark thoughts began to eat away at me each night.
    But one thought was relentless. What would happen if Ahren had died, too?
    When I pulled away and looked at him again, something in me changed. There was a gradual shift that began when I lost my family, the intense, emotional pain that stole my ability to breathe, to think…to feel anything at all. It was too much, and because of those dark thoughts that visited me at night, I knew I could no longer be a comfort to him. Any feelings I had for anything or anyone, even Ahren, had been replaced by ambivalence. I