Forever Together

“Forever together,” he glared as he squeezed the trigger.

The bullet ripped through my face but failed to kill or render me immediately unconscious. So I heard the gun discharge a second time and his body drop hard to the linoleum beside me.

When I woke, I had the nastiest headache and foul taste in my mouth. Looking around, I wondered how emergency crews had missed me as my would-be murderer was no longer in the room.

Dizzy and disoriented, I stumbled to the hospital. There I found him, in a bed, head wrapped in clean gauze, tubes and wires hanging off of him.

Quietly, I sat in the chair next to him, waiting for him to awaken. As he stirred, I ran my graying, swollen and cold hand along his forearm.

He looked at me, eye as wide as any I’d ever seen, as I whispered through my broken jaw and jagged teeth, “Forever together.”