Wilted and Faded

I sat on the hospital bed in a daze as the nurse went over the medication I was to take and when to take it. The stitches on my forehead and chin were starting to itch and the bruise across my chest was aching but it didn’t matter.

Chris was dead.

The doctor told me a little while ago. He hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt so when the SUV hit my car he went through the windscreen.

The paramedics couldn’t get his heart to start again.

They were talking about him in the past tense already.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, “Miss West?”

I focused on the nurse in her pristine pink scrubs and listened as she explained that there were two detectives outside that needed me to identify the body.

The body.

Just because he’s dead he stops being a person? I let her help me off the bed, refusing her offer to call anyone for me. I didn’t want anyone else here, the one person that Iwanted needed was gone.

Outside the room were two men in suits who looked like they’d rather be anywhere than here. I’d already given them my statement of what happened, not that I remembered much.

“Miss West, if you would follow us?” one of them said as he lead the way down the hallway.

They took me down to what I presume was the morgue. As soon as we stepped off the elevator the air felt different, cold and stale. Our footsteps echoed as we walked down the hall before stopping in front of a curtained window.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass, still clad in my pink dress from last night, although it had a couple of dark red stains down the front of it now, my hair was tangled, my side bang partially covering the stitches on my forehead. I couldn’t tell if the dark circles under my eyes were just from the smudged eyeliner.

“Are you ready?” asked one of the detectives.

I nodded and the curtain on the other side of the window swooshed open. I moved closer to see in.

There he was, on the metal table, a white sheet covering him from the neck down. If he weren’t lying so neatly I would’ve sworn he was just asleep.

“That’s him. That’s Christian”, I said softly, pressing my hand against the cold glass.

Part of me wished it was yesterday morning again and we were lying in bed together and soon I’d wake up and we’d laugh about this stupid nightmare. But it wasn’t. This was real, too real.

The detective to my left cleared his throat, “The doctor said that you can leave now. There are a load of paparazzi out in front so we’ll take you to wherever you want to go in an unmarked car, out the back.”

‘Wherever you want to go’. I was already there. I didn’t want to leave Chris all alone in this cold, lonely place.

Slowly the curtain closed and he was gone. The other detective cleared his throat and I felt a hand on my elbow.

“We’ll take you home now.”

Home? I didn't know where that was anymore.