End
He's fourteen years older than she and he always believed she'd outlive him. Those illusions shatter when she dies.
***
She wants to tell him that she's pregnant but as she only has a few hours left she knows it will be cruel to let him know what will never happen. So she bites her tongue and watches him watch her, the constant bleep bleep bleep of the heart monitor measuring the time she has left.
***
No one dies from pneumonia anymore, he thinks, but she did.
***
When Ralph goes to get a bottle of water for her she calls in the doctor and begs him not to tell Ralph about her pregnancy after she dies. She explains that he shouldn't have to know what might have been. The doctor agrees just as Ralph rejoins her.
***
She's tired and goes back to her room the afternoon before Ralph comes to spend the weekend with her. She's still asleep when he arrives nearly twenty-four hours later.
"What's wrong, Fee?" he asks her when she wakes up.
She's coughing and flushed and his is worried about her.
"Have you been to the doctors?"
"It's nothing," she manages to say, but he will brook no refusal. She dresses and he drives her to the hospital.
***
She's selfish and while she doesn't want him to remember her this way, dying in a hospital bed, she can't bring herself to ask him to go.
***
He will not leave her even if she asks. He's wasted too much time as it is. Nine years and they've only had thirty-six weeks together, give or take a few days. Not even a full year.
***
When she closes her eyes for the last time he dies with her.
***
"I love you, Fee."
A single tear rolls down her cheek.
"I love you, Ralph."
***
"It's my fault," she whispers. "It's all my fault. I should've gone to the doctor's again – I knew something was wrong. I was just stubborn; I figured it would go away in its own time."
"Of course it's not your fault," he says, but she shakes her head, refusing to listen to him.
***
She rests her hand on her abdomen. She will never have the chance to feel her baby kick, never hold her child in her arms, never even know if she was carrying a boy or a girl.
He takes her hand and she looks at him. His eyes are already hollow in anticipation of his loss and her heart aches for him. At least he will never know that they could have had a child.
***
Her heart monitors whine, ringing in his ears for eternity.
***
He holds her nightgown to his nose, breathes in her scent, and allows a tear to slip down his cheek. She's gone.
***
When he returns home Deirdre asks what happened. He says that an old friend died, not elaborating any more than he has to.
A week later, after her funeral, her solicitor calls him into his office for the reading of her will. That's when he discovers that she has left him the house and her money which amounts to thirty-five million pounds – forty million if the house factors into the equation.
Then he has to tell Deirdre something.
He lies to his wife and says that she had simply admired his work and helped him with editing. It is a pathetic excuse but he really doesn't care anymore.
***
After all these years, she finally has the identity of the woman who captured her husband's heart.
***
He wishes that he had left Deirdre for Fiona but it's easy to know what you should have done when things have come to an end. Hindsight is always 20/20.
***
I wish it didn't end like this,' she thinks as she slips into oblivion. 'I wish it didn't end...'
***
Their ending is more like a Shakespearian tragedy than any fairy tale.
Somehow it fits.