What if...

She was stood nervously by the curtain again, wondering if he would even want her to be there. Especially if he felt guilty for her position, and then he’d just seen his girlfriend.
“What did she have to say?” Sarah asked, despirate to know why she didn’t stay for ages.
“She needs a man who is able to be there when she needs it,” he reeled off, amazingly coolly, “She hadn’t the time to care for an ill man.”
There were a few moments before Sarah understood fully what he was saying. “She dumped you? When you were in hospital?”
“Maybe she saw things the way that Sean did,” he said with a little smile to her.
“Or maybe she doesn’t care...” Sarah said, suddenly feeling a lot more comfortable.
“How long are you staying for?” Edmund asked, a needy tone in his voice again.
“Forever,” Sarah whispered.

A while later and he was asleep again. Sarah had only gone to get herself a coffee when she bumped into his doctor.
“How’s he doing?” she asked.
“He’s responding well,” the doctor replied, which told her basically nothing.
“But he says he’s still getting those tummy aches,” she didn’t let Edmund know, but she was really worried about it.
“Oh well now that the swelling’s gone down, we’re able to operate,” the doctor assured her with a well practiced smile.
“Operate?” Sarah asked, she’d heard nothing of an operation.
“Oh, it’s nothing to worry about. It’s quite a routine operation,” he assured her, just as Edmund started to stir, “I’ll leave you now. Edmund the operations been moved to four O’clock” the doctor tried to say, but Edmund wasn’t really able to receive, “Still a bit out of it...can you make sure he knows?”
“Of course Sarah said, sitting back down in the chair, sinking into all of her worries.

Even though she knew it was a small, and routine operation, Sarah was still sat in the waiting room worrying. She’d heard so many horror stories of stupid little things making it all go wrong. What if she didn’t get to talk to him again? After everything?
She stopped herself.
This was the shock they both needed to get them to stop being so stupid. They were finally going to be together. They’d already planned their first date, and she felt so much more able to hold his hand, not just as a caring friend, but as his girlfriend. She knew that she would have to look after him for a while when he was out of hospital, but he would still have his sense of humor, his love of music. They’d still be able to chat as they always had. It would be as it should have been those years ago when they first met. She kept watching the clock, and as her eyes flicked to it again, the doors swung open and the surgeon came over to her.
She was about to ask if she could see him, then she read the man’s face.
“Oh please no,” she began, wondering whether she was still standing. Did it matter?
“I’m sorry, we did all we could,” the doctor began. What did it matter what he said? “There was a complication and he bled internally...”
That was all she heard. All she needed to hear.
“May I see him?” she asked, managing to meet his eyes long enough to say it.
“Of course,” the Doctor said, and she was led through to a different room. There she had to wait until they were ready to actually have him presented to loved ones, and the hospital still thought that they were married so she was allowed to see him.
By the time she was allowed to see him he’d been cleaned up and just looked asleep. He looked like he did all those hours when he was sleeping and she was watching over him. She felt a bit like she did when they first brought him in and she was waiting for him to wake up.
She had to remind herself that he wasn’t going to wake up, and that everything they had put each other through was for nothing. That delightful hope they’d lived in since Rachel’s departure now felt like some cruel tease.
“Timing was never with us was it?” she began through her tears, “Why did we not love each other at the same time? Why only now? So many should have, and could haves and would haves...The what ifs. I should have told you at the beginning how I felt. I could have accepted you when you tried to tell me how you felt...I would have spend my life with you Edmund.”
She wanted to take his hand, but wasn’t sure if she could handle it being so cold and stiff, so she just sat by his bed in floods of tears, knowing that he would have been the only person that could have made losing someone like this any easier. “What if we’d timed it right?” she mused, her mind going back to wondering how life would have been if she hadn’t driven him to Gretchin, “If we’d been a couple right from the start?”
She didn’t really notice her phone go off. Or see that Sean was standing in the window, watching her. So her phone told her a few things.
That it was 1539 in the afternoon, it was the 14th of April, and that Sean had sent this: I’m sorry for your loss.