Page 133 of From Best Friend to Bride
“She—” The hairdryer fell from her hand onto the floor with a deep thud. “She’s dying? She’s actually dying now?”
Emotion thickened in my throat, threatening to make me cry. “I’m so sorry, Deli. I wish I could tell you it isn’t true.”
Her gaze dropped from mine, flitting across the room in a moment of indecision as she got to her feet, turning erratically. “I need—I have to… I…”
I crossed the room to her and cupped her face with my hands. “What? What do you need?”
She stared at me blankly for a moment, recognition not even registering in her gaze. “I… I’m in my pyjamas.”
“Okay.” I guided her into the main bedroom we shared and sat her on the ottoman at the end of the bed. “T-shirt?”
She jerked her head in a “yes.”
Okay.
I could do this.
I could dress my wife.
I scanned the drawer and pulled out what looked like a comfy blue t-shirt. “This.”
Deli’s eyes were flat when she nodded again.
“Trousers?” I pointed to the next drawer, and she barely acknowledged what I said, but I was pretty sure I’d seen her pulling leggings out of this one before. I rifled through her clothes and pulled out what looked like the comfiest pair in the drawer.
“No,” Deli said, her lips forming the smallest of smiles. “Those are Tweety Bird pyjamas, Fred.”
“I taut I taw a puddy tat,” I murmured, shoving them back in and turning to her with another pair.
Tears welled in her eyes, hovering on the edges of her lower lids before spilling over. “Yes.”
“Deli.” I walked over to her and pulled her up against me, cradling her closely.
She collapsed into me, and I was sure that it was only the force of my embrace that kept her on her feet. She was just a ragdoll, completely sagged against me, and I was happy to take her weight.
She was the most important person in my world.
She’d held me up when my dad died.
Holding her up now was something I would do without complaint.
I would carry her as long as she needed me to.
“Can you come? Can you drive?” she whispered into my chest. “I don’t think I can. I don’t know what to do, Fred. I’m so scared.”
“I know, baby. I know,” I murmured, smoothing her hair. “I’ll be wherever you need me to be.”
Neither of us said a word on the way to the hospital.
Not as we rounded roundabouts, hovered at red lights, and got held up by farming machinery.
Not as we struggled to find a parking spot and finally squeezed into one that would undoubtedly get my door dinged at some point in the very near future.
Not as I wrapped my arm around Deli as we walked into the hospital and walked the now familiar path to the ward. There was nothing as we stepped into the lift, and I punched in the floor. No words were exchanged as I made sure we both sanitised our hands before we were permitted entry to the ward.
And then it was real.
The long, cold walk down the hall through the ward to the room at the end was chilling.
