(The rest of the story is here)
I stretched and rubbed the ache in my neck. I'd lost count of how many nights I'd slept on the waiting room floor of the ICU. Too many. I rolled over and touched his shoulder gently. He'd been there every night as well. He'd been sleeping at the hospital with me, leaving early in the morning to go to class and returning with dinner.
My aunt walked in as he kissed my forehead. "I think that boy loves you" she told me after he was gone. The days ran into each other, all the same. I don't remember much until the day my dad woke up. Then he was transferred to a hospital an hour away. Jeff made the trip with me. "I can miss class for a few days" he said.
On his way home he gave me a letter. I read it lying alone in a hotel bed while I waited for visiting hours to come. I was thankful that my dad was well enough for visiting hours, well enough to go home in a few weeks.
My dad answered the door in his wheelchair the night the girls came over. We were huddled on my bed upstairs when Tiffani gave us each a grain of rice. "I'm pregnant, she told us, that's how big the baby is."
I thought about Jeff that night. "I don't know if our road will end in eighty days or eighty years…" he'd written in his letter. I didn't either but I was leaning towards eighty years. I wasn't sure if I could wait to find out. I asked him the next day. "Do you see us together? You know, for eighty years?" He smiled and pulled me closer to him. Maybe, he'd told me. But he wasn't even going to think about being engaged or that serious for another year or more. I tried not to look upset by that revelation and he tried not to laugh at the fact that he had a diamond ring hidden in his closet.
He called a few days before Christmas "You are celebrating with the girls this week, right? I'm going to take your dad to dinner to celebrate being out of his wheelchair." I told the girls that maybe he was going to propose after all. Christie Michelle told me that she'd asked him. He wasn't proposing. She didn't want me to get my hopes up.
I cried that night. I loved him. I loved him and I knew I loved him and dang it if I hadn't asked God to keep me from loving him if he wasn't going to marry me. I wasn't sure if it would be good for me to love him and not know if he loved me back. I drove to his house the next night. "I think we might have to break up" I told him.
