From a hard chair next to the bed, I watch the nurse replace my wife’s IV bag and check the heart monitor. She pauses her work to admire the daffodils I brought today. They stand in a vase on the bedside table, a card nestled among the blooms reads HAPPY ANNIVERSARY.

“These are beautiful. How many years now for you with this lucky lady?”

“Fifty-two. And counting,” I add with a grin. I lean over to my wife, her diminished outline almost lost beneath the blankets. “What do you say, sweetie? Can you stick with me for a few more?” She musters the hint of a smile, then winces when another painful spasm shoots up her neck.

The nurse tries to look supportive, but there’s pity in her eyes. “Well then, I’ll let you two enjoy your special evening.”

Before leaving, she places a paper cup on the table that contains the nighttime pills. The door shuts with a soft click and my eyes move from the cup to the small plastic box behind it. I can see my wife’s plain gold wedding band resting inside, slotted in a piece of foam.

Paramedics had to cut it off her finger last year after a bad reaction to new medication left her hands painfully swollen. I had the ring repaired and now it stays in the box on the table. My wife seems to enjoy having it where she can see it. Or maybe it’s me who likes that. The message engraved on the inside all those years ago is worn but still legible—J&N LOVE ALWAYS.

I proposed one year after we met. A sunny afternoon in February, very cold, walking along the lake with that ring in my back pocket. I didn’t have a plan that day, but I knew I wanted to do it. For better or worse, that’s always been the way I operate. She sat down on a giant log to look out at the water, and I just went ahead and asked her. Must’ve caught her by surprise because it took half a minute for her to finally say “yes”.

Two months later, we married at city hall. I was over the moon when she confessed that’s the kind of wedding she had in mind. I never wanted a big wedding. So much hassle and expense and I was a poor man back then. Still am. Most of all, I didn’t want anything to get in the way of starting my life with her. In the end, we both said ‘I do’ and now here we are.

On every evening visit, I give my wife a leg massage. By now, it’s like a ceremony. Each step in the same order, the movements unhurried. First, I turn the space heater on and let it run for a few minutes, resting my head against hers while I wait. The warming air moves around us, playing with the hair on my forearms.

It’s the same sensation. A summer evening forty years ago. Sweltering in our little house, so we went for a stroll around the neighbourhood. We moved through the heat in silence, holding hands then letting go. On our return home, I threw open all the windows and we sat down on the kitchen bench. Didn’t turn the lights on, just stayed still in the soft gloom and let the warm breeze flow past us, between us. We weren’t old yet, still healthy and energetic, not thinking about how many summers we had left. I didn’t say so at the time, but it was a perfect moment. Our nearness to each other was enough to sustain me. I wonder now if she felt that way, if I was enough for her.

When the room reaches a good temperature, I roll the blanket up to her knees and retrieve my jar of coconut oil from a drawer in the bedside table. I remove the lid and scoop out enough to cover both palms, then rub them together briskly to heat up the oil. The jar is getting close to empty, but there’s another one in her bathroom cabinet because I like to stock up. I realize it’s unlikely I’ll need it and quickly brush the thought aside.

My wife has lived in this facility for four months now. I chose this one because it’s close to home and, considering our budget, fairly comfortable. You always hear about these places having a smell, like sickness or disinfectant. But other than in the dining room at mealtimes, here there’s almost an absence of smell, which is somehow worse. Now, the scent of the coconut oil fills the room. I always start with her feet, going slowly, never pressing too hard. Her eyes narrow to slits, the breathing grows less ragged.

After a few minutes, I work my hands along her calves. There’s almost no muscle left, and what’s there has no tone. It’s been five years since she walked a step unassisted. Her legs had been so gorgeous, all elegant curves and hard-earned muscle. Now they are mostly cold, the flesh too yielding, the network of veins pronounced. My daily massage treatment offers brief distraction from chronic pain, but I can tell it’s the touch she appreciates most.

I run my hand over the scar along the shin just below her knee, so faint now, almost indiscernible. She got it from the blade of a rototiller we rented one spring, right after we bought the house. As we lifted it off the flatbed, I went too fast, we lost balance and it sliced into her leg. There was a decent gash, lots of blood. She didn’t curse at me or make a fuss. My stoic prairie girl rinsed her wound with the garden hose, then she slapped three band-aids on it and worked til sundown, til the job was done.

I like to think we both had that in us. It’s how we stayed together this long. That day at city hall, we made an agreement with each other—no matter what else was going on, we would show up for work every day. Might sound dry or utilitarian, but we really thought about our marriage that way. The other person would always be there, even on the days when it wasn’t so much fun. To us, showing up for that job was the most romantic thing imaginable.

So, we’re both here in this room, because that’s what we said we’d do. I know she’s getting ready to quit on me and I won’t blame her when she does. Still, we had an agreement.

The illness came swiftly, but has lingered interminably; a living funeral procession. After the diagnosis, we gamely threw ourselves into months of rehab and treatment, convinced that any small win was a sign of more to come. After a while, it was a struggle to find moments of comfort amidst the indignity. Her condition grew beyond my ability to help, there were panicked calls for the ambulance every week, she couldn’t stay at home. We were exhausted, broken. 

And when this is over, I know part of me, a bigger part than I care to imagine, will feel a sense of relief. There’s a deep shame that comes with that knowledge and I don’t dare say it out loud to anyone. I put on a brave face and joke with the nurses, but suspect they can see the cowardice in me, the fear. I think real love always comes with fear, because you know there will be an end. You know what waits on the other side of that love.

Still, I bring flowers and read books to her. I’m here every morning to feed her breakfast, every evening to rub her aching legs. It’s a desperate late-game push to make up for not being able to save her.

My wife lets out a rasping moan and I glance up to see her staring straight at me. Her eyes are more open, clearer than normal. I stop what I’m doing.

“Is this not working for you today, sugar?”

She blinks, slowly, and again.

“Are we doing the classic once for ‘yes’, twice for ‘no’ thing?”

One blink.

“Ok. Can I get something for you?”

Her gaze drops to the bedspread, where her left hand rests; the one that used to paint watercolours and swing a hammer and play with my ear lobes, so frail now. With a quivering effort she raises the hand half an inch off the bed, then lets it fall. 

I touch the heart monitor clipped to her index finger. “Is it pinching again? Want me to adjust it?”

Her brow furrows with annoyance and she blinks twice.

“Alright, let’s try again. Is it something in this room?”

One blink.

“Show me.”

Tendons in her neck emerge in bold relief as she struggles to tilt her head toward the bedside table.

“Just relax. Let me help you.” I gently adjust the pillow til she can see the table, then point at the pills. Two blinks. I lay my hand on the small plastic box. She blinks once.

I take her ring out and let it rest in my palm. Fifty-two years to the day. I slide it onto her finger and take her hand in mine. “We said ‘always’, right?”

Her eyes go soft and focus on me for a long moment, then close.

She held on for three more days after that.

The service was simple and lovely, as she wished. I put her urn in a niche at the cemetery. I didn’t want to keep it in the house. It’s not her.

That’s the hardest thing; she’s always with me. As I sit in here alone in our kitchen, there isn’t a single item that doesn’t remind me of her. The tea towel with the rooster on it that says I’M A COCK-A-DOODLE! She brought that back from a weekend trip with her sister, handed it to me with eyes alight and said, “I immediately thought of you!” These chairs we found on the street, carried them through a thunderstorm back to our old place downtown and fixed them up. There, on the shelf under the counter, her coffee cup. Its rim is chipped and scarred, the inside discoloured, the handle worn smooth by her elegant hand. I have my cup, she had hers. Every morning, we sat across from each other, sipping our coffee, feet touching below the table. 

It’s the same in every room. I can’t escape while I remain here. Sometimes, I want to burn the house down, consume everything with fire, and pray that my pain floats away with the smoke.

I’ll admit I’ve been weak and let it overwhelm me, become my world. When I close my eyes to find a vision of her, it’s soon replaced by one of me bobbing on the surface of a vast ocean at night, a fathomless deep and I am thousands of miles from any shore.

And it seems impossible that no one notices. When I go to pick up groceries or get a haircut, I feel like I must be glowing or buzzing, a beacon of heartbreak that can be seen from afar. But no, it’s left entirely to me.

Maybe I can simply choose to shrink the boundaries of the pain, but I’m afraid to find out if I have that power. Would she say that’s what I should do? Probably. She always wanted me to be comfortable, unbothered. She tried too hard to make that happen every day. It must have been exhausting for her, living for my happiness.

I started writing a journal to soothe or purge but it all felt ridiculous. Filling the void with words didn’t work, didn’t change anything. I’m not crazy, I knew it wouldn’t bring her back, but what I mean is it didn’t change anything in me.

We spent a week by the sea once, in a snug cottage surrounded by tidal flats. You could only get there at low tide, via an old stone causeway. The weather was mainly awful, but she couldn’t get enough. I wanted to stay inside with a book, feeding the iron stove, but each day she would drag me out for a walk along the coastline. My wife was so alive there, taking in great lungfuls of ocean wind, hair plastered to her pink-cheeked face by the lashing rain. When there was a break in the clouds, she’d stop to sketch seashells or spiky flowering shrubs. And when the light began to fail, I’d coax her back to the cottage, splashing through the oncoming tide. 

I love this pain. It’s a causeway that connects me to her. For now, the tide is out. I can still walk across to the shore and enjoy the beautiful thorned flowers that grow there. But eventually, the sun will drop, the waters will rise, and I’ll retreat to the little island on my own, before I drown.

Love Always was written as a submission: https://reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/reedsy-literary-prize/