Leave Your Mark

A Rainbow of Grey (TW)

TRIGGER WARNING: death

I hadn't known what colour was until we'd first met; everything had been in black and white until we'd made eye contact. I'd looked into my soulmate's warm brown eyes that glistened with gold, green, and grey dancing through his big round irises, eyelids crinkled in the corners from the smile that lit up his whole freckled face. I wanted to run my fingers through the locks atop his head that surely put the brightest fire to shame, a tangle of auburn, copper, golden, and ginger strands of hair entwined into frizzy, bouncy curls around his ears. I'd immediately wanted to feel his pink lips on mine, however dry or chapped they may be because, despite the cold winter drought, I'd felt that any kiss from him would be soft, tender, and electric—and I was right. From the way his navy blue jumper accentuated the fire in his hair to the way his eyes shone with the mysterious light of two bright hazel moons, he was a burst of pigment in a world devoid of colour, a blooming beacon of vibrancy in my achromatic universe. He had been the only thing I saw in colour for a while, but the more time I spent with him, the more pigmented the world around me became. We were married surrounded by rainbows—not because we were gay, but because I had been ecstatic to see so many colours at once.

The grey began to return while I read a picture book to our daughter. "Papa?" she'd questioned, concerned at the way my hands began to tremble as the brown bark on a cartoon tree faded to dark grey.

"I'll be right back, sweetie," I'd reassured her, "I just need to check on Daddy."

"Oh. Okay." She continued reading aloud, now and then struggling with the silent 'e' as most four-year-olds tend to do when they read without parental assistance.

Why is brown going away? I thought frantically as I looked around the house, some of the beige walls turning light grey, the bark of some of the trees outside turning almost black. Then it registered in my mind: brown was the first colour I'd ever seen.

Gold faded next. I looked around at the gilded doorknobs only to see them slowly fading to silver. I pondered back on the gold flecks I'd noticed in his eyes when we'd first met and began to panic. I pulled out my phone to call him, only to see that he was calling me. Thank God.

"Hi, baby," I said, relieved. "What's up?"

"Hello," replied an unfamiliar voice. "Is this...Joseph Smith-Johnson?"

My breath hitched. "Yes, it is, why?"

"Your husband has been in a car accident. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt. He's in critical condition and I'm afraid there's nothing we can do. You need to come to the hospital so you can say goodbye."

I forced myself to swallow the sob in my throat. "O-of course. I'll be there in fifteen minutes," I declared before hanging up. I went to the nursery to get the baby and picked her up, praying I wouldn't wake her up in the process, ignoring the way her pastel green blanket was slowly fading into the colour of fog. "Sydney," I said as I secured Bailey in her car seat, making sure my movements were slow and gentle so she'd stay asleep, "put your shoes on."

"Why?" she asked as she obediently tugged a tiny pair of Uggs onto the wrong feet.

"We're going to the hospital," I answered before helping her distinguish the difference between the left boot and the right boot.

"Is Aunt Lizzie having her baby now?" she said excitedly.

"Not yet, sweetheart. Just put on your jacket and get in the car."

I helped her get situated in her booster seat and made sure that, without a doubt, her seatbelt was completely fastened before I even started the car. It was a silent ride to the hospital, which told me our daughter was more intelligent than I'd thought; she was scared.

"I'm here to see Samuel Smith-Johnson, he was just admitted," I told the secretary. She looked over her glasses at me. I couldn't tell whether her glasses were black or if they'd been a dark colour before; most everything was black and white now.

"He's in critical condition, it's family only. Is he your husband?" she asked—not that our homosexual marital status was exactly a difficult conclusion to come to when you look at the scrawny man in what was once a rainbow jumper, with a napping infant's safety cradle in one arm and a four-year-old girl in the other.

"Yes," I said.

"Down that hall, take the second right, first left, it'll be the..." she typed something on the computer before continuing, "fourth door on the right."

"Thank you," I said before walking as fast as I could with a child in each arm towards the room where she said my husband would be. He was almost unrecognisable. His eyes were swollen shut and his nose was smashed in, his soft lips were bruised and covered in scabs and cuts, his left arm and leg were splinted, and with each breath that was forced into his lungs by a clear plastic tube down his throat, an awful rattling noise came from his chest. I sat down next to his bed and took his hand in my own.

"Papa, what's wrong with Daddy?" asked Sydney.

"Daddy got hurt," I said, holding the tears in for her sake. "Daddy got hurt really bad."

"How?"

"He was in a car accident. Remember how we always tell you to buckle your seatbelt?" She nodded. "This is why. You're safer with a seatbelt on. Daddy wasn't wearing his seatbelt."

"Oh."

I watched the monitor that tracked my husband's pulse. There was no 'beep, beep, beep' like in movies, there was only silence as a mountain peaked with every painfully slow heartbeat. "Hi, baby," I said. "Sydney and Bailey are here. We're here to...we're here to...here to..." If I couldn't even say the words, 'say goodbye,' how was I supposed to do it?

Sydney was crying now. She knew this was the end. Her sobbing woke up Bailey, who commenced to screaming her tiny head off. I picked her up out of her car seat and cradled her, using the opportunity to cry without Sydney seeing. Daddy was the emotional one, Papa never cried. I had to stay strong for her.

What remained of the beauty in the world faded as the line on the monitor went flat. The vibrancy and colour I'd grown accustomed to after years of living with my soulmate were gone. I couldn't remember what colour Sydney's eyes were. I couldn't remember what colour onesie Bailey was wearing. I couldn't even remember what my own favourite colour was. Now he was gone, and the world was once again a rainbow of grey.