'Beep beep beep' went the sound of the monitors, the only indicators of life in the room. That and the steady rise and fall of breathe from the one fragile person asleep on the hospital bed. He made sure of that, each time squinting in the dim lights to see the faint movement despite the layers covering her.
His phone lay beside him, the innumerable missed calls and messages, ignored and uncared for. Just like her. He scowled in the dark, hitting his knee in anger. She deserved to be better cared for. She deserved to be sitting, laughing with her son and trading insults with him, her eyes taking on that wry sarcastic glint when she looked at him. Her eyes, which were currently shut. Shut because that useless, snivelling bastard had taken out his gun and fired. And ofcourse she had to take the lead, pip him, even in this.
He had thought he'd be glad to be rid of her, god knows he would have been. But not like this, he thought he'd remember the entire disastrous sequence ingrained in his mind for eternity: the gun shot, the brief second before it hit, her grunt of pain and the blood....
He had wanted many times to just pick her and lock her up and throw away the key, she was that annoying and larger than life, boring a mess in his life. But as he watched her life fading away along with the blood and as he picked her up in a daze, the only thought in his shocked mind was, she was so small and lightweight, unsubstantial really.
And as he watches her, unconscious (sleeping, he mulishly decides), he finds it is so unfair to have her so fragile and delicate and at the mercy of every damn thing, while he has to watch her take in those small shallow breathes, ensure she takes them, before sighing with relief himself.
