Three Wishes (Michael Clifford a.u.)

20//epilogue

I smiled down at my husband as he stared up at me in happy confusion.

"Well, aren't you a pretty little lady," he said, using the same charm he'd had when I first met him. "What do you say you and me go out for a drink a little later? I know how to get out without those ladies in the white coats noticing."

I felt my smile falter slightly. Michael had been like this since we first discovered that he'd developed Alzheimer's a few years ago. The doctors had been doing everything they could to help him, but they just couldn't figure out why his memories were disappearing so quickly.

"I don't think that's too good of an idea," his nurse, Jenny, said, sending me a sympathetic smile. She knew how I felt about having Michael in a home in the first place, and she had always understood how hard it was for me to have to deal with my husband's situation.

Michael winked at me, a sly grin crossing his face.

"Hey, Mom, I'm taking the kids home," my daughter, Amanda, told me as she poked her head into the room. "It's getting late. Do you want me to have Dan stay behind so he can take you home?"

"I'll be done in a couple minutes, Mandy," I promised. "Don't leave without me, okay?"

She sent me a gentle smile and nodded, then left with a frustrated sigh that she thought I couldn't hear.

Just because I was nearly eighty didn't mean my hearing had started to go yet.

"Your husband will be fine for the night, Mrs. Clifford," Jenny told me. "Don't worry. He doesn't understand what he's saying anymore, that's all. The doctors are doing everything they can for him."

"Unfortunately, I don't think there's much more they can do," I mumbled, looking back over at Michael, who had started playing with his hands like a child who didn't understand what fingers were meant to do. I bent down, kissing him on the forehead gently without receiving any kind of response from him.

Jenny sent me one last sympathetic look before sending me off.

I walked out into the hallway carefully, slightly worried that my cane would slip out from under me and I would fall again, but it held up. 

Recently, I had begun to think about Michael's situation more. Ever since the day I had freed him, he had told me that he didn't want to forget anymore. He didn't mind having his flashbacks. They had lessened since he had been freed. He looked back on the memories of his past holders fondly for the most part. He didn't worry about what had happened to his family once he had disappeared anymore. We named our daughter after one of his holders, and he had always loved her just as much as he had loved the original Amanda.

The sad connection that I had made about all of this was that when he finally wanted to remember, he began to forget. 

I spotted my daughter and her family by the door, my son-in-law talking on the phone with someone, as usual. I began moving towards them until I noticed a young nurse staring at me across the room. She had a long purple braid down her back, and when she noticed me looking back at her, she looked towards Michael's room and shook her head.

Then she melted out of sight as though she had never been there in the first place. 

"Mom?"

I turned back towards my family, a soft smile on my face as I connected the dots. 

"I'm coming," I said, hobbling forward with my cane. "I may be old, but I'm not senile quite yet. You aren't getting rid of me anytime soon."

"I wouldn't dream of it, Mom," Amanda replied, smiling at me as she pulled her arm through the crook of my elbow to help me walk out. "Who were you looking at just now?"

I glanced over my shoulder. The young woman hadn't reappeared, not that I had expected her to.

"Nothing," I answered. "I just remembered something."

The end.