120 days...

by Stratton, M.

  “How are things looking?” Ethan asked.

  “Let’s just concentrate on one thing at a time, okay?” The nurse stood up and walked away.

  Ethan looked back down at Sam who was staring at him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “This isn’t a nightmare . . . I don’t want to leave you . . . but it’s not up to me . . . He’s given me all the extra time I can have.”

  “No . . .”

  “Yes, my love. When the time comes, you have to let me go.”

  A soft mew came from the other side of the curtain and they both went still as the beeping from the monitors slowed even more than they had to begin with. Quickly, their daughter was brought to them and laid on her chest. He couldn’t keep the tears back any longer at the first sight of his tiny daughter, so small and perfect. Reaching out with a shaking hand, he cupped her small head, and for a brief moment, the three of them were a family.

  “Oh, my precious,” Sam said, tears running down her face. “I know this is all new to you . . . and you’re so little . . . but you have to fight . . . You have to take care of your daddy here . . . He’s going to need you.” She raised her head and kissed her daughter. “I love you, baby girl . . . Mommy will always love you.”

  The nurses came by, picked up their daughter and took her away. Ethan looked down at Sam and her tear-filled eyes met his.

  “She’s . . . so . . . beautiful . . .” Her breath came in shallow rapid gasps.

  “Just like her mama.”

  “Please . . . please . . . take . . . care . . . of . . . her . . .”

  “You know I will, and you can help me.” He needed her to live.

  “No . . . I’m . . . sorry . . .”

  “Fight, damn you, fight.” There was no hiding the tears. He had a hard time talking around the sobs. His wife was dying right in front of him and there was absolutely nothing he could do.

  “No . . . more . . . left . . .”

  “Samantha . . .”

  “Love . . . you . . .”

  Their eyes locked together, each telling each other what they couldn’t say with words until the light went out in her eyes and the beeping slowed and then stopped.

  “No, no, no, no,” Ethan said. “Please, please, God, she can’t die . . . I need her . . . I don’t know what to do . . .” Again, like when his parents had died, Ethan had no idea what came next, what he should be doing. He was lost, and as of that moment, alone, when just minutes before the three of them had been a family. Their daughter was fighting for her life in an incubator, all alone; she’d lost her mommy, and the one constant in her life had been ripped from her. The love of his life had been taken from him. How were they both going to survive without Samantha?

  Ethan laid his head on her chest and listened to the silence, hating every second of it. He’d give every single dollar he’d ever made to have her heart start beating again. He’d never felt this kind of pain in his whole life and he wasn’t sure it was ever going to end. Too soon, the staff were telling him to leave. If his heart was whole, this would have broken it, but there was nothing left of it to break.

  Ethan picked up Evan’s well-worn journal and turned to the last entry.

  Day 83

  Ethan –

  Evan woke up briefly, he looked at me and said, “Tell my brother I’ll be waiting for him with Mom and Dad.” He slipped back into unconsciousness and took his last breath at three-eighteen in the afternoon.

  I know these words are inadequate, but I am so sorry for your loss. Evan was a very special man.

  Samantha

  And now Sam was up there with his family.

  After all of this time, it was so strange for him to be spending so much time back in his house. He’d made arrangements for Samantha to be cremated and was having a tree planted next to her parents. The plan was to go back up to the resort that weekend. There was no one else he would allow to dig the hole to plant the tree in but himself. It was one of the few things he could focus on.

  The other was his daughter, his precious little daughter. She was a fighter, just like her mother. He was so conflicted. On one hand, he didn’t want to let Jennie out of his sight; she was all he had, and he had to protect her; she was so tiny. The other was the fact that he was scared to death of what he was going to do next. Once again, he went back to that young man who’d lost his parents too soon and had no clue how to raise his brother, or even live.

  Sam had only been to his house once, but she still lived there. There was nowhere for him to escape her memory. He hoped the first night was the worst, but a week later, he still wasn’t sure it was ever going to get better. Every night he came back exhausted, and dropped into bed, only to wake a few hours later with thoughts of Sam. He never went down the hall to his office. Every time he saw the butterfly painting, his loss slammed into him once again. The next morning, he’d get up and head back to the hospital to check on Jennie.

  He was a lost soul, always wandering, searching for something that was never there. In one brief moment, he’d lost his purpose, but gained a new one. One he had no idea what to do with.

  They say babies didn’t know where they were, they couldn’t miss someone. But he was pretty sure Jennie was grieving along with him. The nurses were wonderful, but Ethan could tell she knew when he was there. She always tried to find him when he talked to her, and she’d grab on tighter to his fingers than the nurses.’ The two of them were all the other had.

  Sighing, he turned his back on the view he was sure Sam would have loved. There was a storm out over the ocean, a deep dark blue against the orange of the bridge. He knew he was stalling. Going to another lawyer’s appointment in a year because someone he loved had died was almost more than he could take. He took a shower out of habit and put one of his suits on, surprised it hung so loose on his hips. Eating had become a necessity, and only if someone put something in front of him.

  Ethan couldn’t take joy in anything. He was breathing in and out, and that was about it.

  Ethan laid his head on the steering wheel and took a few minutes to let everything the lawyer had said wash over him. Sam had left him everything. The resort was his. He never expected her to leave it to him, let alone change her will eight months before her death. She’d changed it before she knew she was pregnant. He felt so unworthy of her belief in him—that he could continue to run her resort after her death.

  Turning his head, he saw the small group of items she’d wanted him to have. They were personal items from her and her family, things she wanted passed down to Jennie. She’d been mailing them to her lawyer for safekeeping along with a note for each. She wanted to make sure he knew how important they all were and she didn’t want them lost after she died.

  There was a USB drive containing a video she’d recorded for him. That one scared him the most. How could he play it? See her looking so alive, talking to him, knowing she was dead and he’d never be able to hold her again? She said he had to watch it before he buried her.

  “Oh, God, please give me the strength. I can’t do this,” Ethan said in the silence of the car.

  When no one answered him, he put the car in gear and headed back to the hospital. The need to see Jennie overwhelmed him; he needed to be close to Sam.

  With Sam’s funeral the next day, the video remained unwatched. For some reason, Ethan wanted to watch the video with Jennie. He knew she was too young to know what was going on, but he thought she should be there. Since she couldn’t leave the hospital, they allowed him to bring in his laptop and gave him some privacy. He knew they were still right there, monitoring everything, but at least he couldn’t see them.

  His shaking finger hesitated over the touchpad. There would be no going back after he watched this. It was as if by doing this, he was making her death all the more real.

  Stalling, he turned toward their daughter. “Hey, Jennie girl, Daddy’s here. Looks like you’re getting stronger. They say you are doing better than they thought you would. We need to fill them
in on who your mama was. There was no one stronger . . . I have a video here. It’s of your mommy. Think we should watch it?”

  He left his hand in the glove that went into her incubator where she gripped his finger, her only human contact. He tried not to think of how scared and alone she was in all that medical equipment. So different from the loving, warm womb she’d been in.

  Clicking play, he watched as Sam’s face filled the screen and felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. He could tell by how she looked she’d made this video a while ago. Her cheeks weren’t sunken and the dark circles under her eyes was light. As she started to talk, he was surprised when Jennie squeezed his finger. He looked over at her and there she was, her little face turned toward the sound of her mother talking, her legs and arms moving.

  Admittedly, he didn’t listen to what Sam was saying. He was in total amazement watching Jennie respond to Sam’s voice. It wasn’t until he could hear the change in Sam’s voice that he looked back at the screen. It was obvious, this portion was made after she’d been pregnant for a while. She told him about the back room and what she wanted him to do for Jennie as she grew up and how much she loved him. They might not have had much time together, but the time they had was remarkable.

  The last thing she said to them was, “Everything can change in a moment. Live hard. Laugh hard. Love harder. I love you both so much, never forget that and don’t waste one moment.”

  Relief filled Ethan’s chest after watching his daughter react to the sound of her mother’s voice. The words Sam said touched him. He needed to refocus and really be there for Jennie. He hated leaving her to go up to the resort for the weekend, but he had to. The tree was delivered and he needed to bury his wife.

  Walking into Sam’s house for the first time almost buckled his knees. It still smelled like her; her scent hung on everything. In his mind, he could see her laughing at something they were talking about in the kitchen, or reading a book on the porch swing as the breeze gently blew her hair and she’d impatiently tuck it behind her ear.

  Slowly, he walked up the stairs, passing the room they shared and going to what was going to be Jennie’s room. They had everything from the baby shower in there and Sam had finally picked out the colors she wanted. The need to prepare for Jennie overwhelmed him, sending him on a mission. He needed to get her room ready for her. There was no way she was going to come home for weeks, so he had the time, but that wasn’t the point. The point was he needed something positive in his life. He needed to move forward.

  He tried to organize the room the best he could, but he’d never been around babies and had no idea what half of the stuff was. He knew he was in over his head, and was going to need help.

  It was past midnight by the time he finished everything. He lay down in the middle of his daughter’s room and closed his eyes, hoping for some dreamless sleep.

  It seemed like Ethan’s life was full of new levels of pain. Burying his wife next to her parents was right up there. The staff and guests left him alone to dig the hole, but he knew someone was watching when they all turned up when it was time to plant the tree. Everyone did what they could, either by helping him move the tree into place or taking a shovelful of dirt and putting it into the hole.

  One by one, every single staff member and guest said something about Sam. It wasn’t anything he didn’t already know. There were no women like her out there.

  Once he was alone again, he sat down on the bench. His voice was gone. He had nothing left to say.

  The next eight weeks flew by for Ethan, between being at the hospital for his daughter and running Last Resort, he had no time to dwell on losing Sam. He knew it was better that way, but he still felt as if he was betraying her. She deserved more than a passing thought through the day. Although he knew she’d be the first to tell him he shouldn’t be worried about it. Jennie needed him, the guests needed him. She’d tell him she wasn’t important, but he knew she was everything.

  He had a moment of panic when the nurses handed him Jennie and told him to put her in the car seat to take her home. After all this time, he couldn’t believe they were just going to let him leave with her. He didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t have the first clue even though the nurses were kind enough to teach him the basics of taking care of her, yet he still felt lost.

  All the way up to the resort, he kept looking in the rearview mirror at Jennie, who he could see thanks to the other mirror he’d installed on the back of the backseat, trying to see if she was okay. He had been torn between hiring a driver so he could sit in the backseat to make sure she was fine and driving himself. Since he didn’t trust anyone else’s driving with her, that option won out; although he did stop a couple of times and checked to make sure she was okay.

  Sam would be the first to tell him not to hang on so tightly, that he couldn’t think of every situation and plan for it so Jennie wouldn’t get hurt, but he had to try. It was a father’s duty to protect their children, and he was going to try to be as good as his father had been.

  His fingers ached when he pulled into the driveway from clutching the steering wheel so hard. Finally home, he worried if he’d be able to make it through the night, the only one to care for Jennie. He tried telling himself not to be such a wimp, he wasn’t the first, and wouldn’t be the last man to do this.

  When he opened the door to the house, he could smell dinner and for a moment, he forgot Sam was gone. He thought it was one of those rare days when she finished up work early and came home to cook for them.

  He remembered she wasn’t here before he could call out to her.

  The staff had made sure he’d have something to eat. He knew they were worried about him. They always found some excuse to push food on him, knowing he’d be too polite to turn it away. He knew they meant well, but for him it was simply nourishment so he could put one foot in front of the other.

  He set the baby carrier down in the living room and turned on the stereo to the station Sam liked. One of the things that had changed since she died was he never liked the house to be quiet. Soon enough though, Jennie’s cries made sure he wasn’t surrounded by silence. As quickly as he could, he made her bottle and then picked her up. He went over to the rocking chair Sam had purchased just for this event and sat down.

  Looking down at his daughter, the new love of his life, he was amazed at the fighter she was. So far she’d beat all of the odds and was stronger than the doctors thought she would be. On one hand, he was scared shitless of being the only one there for her, and on the other, he knew this was the most important thing he was ever going to do in his life. Raise his daughter.

  Looking out over the hills of the resort, he fed his daughter for the first time in their home, not a hospital, feeling the connection between the two of them, which was one of the best feelings he’d ever had. They were going to be there for each other.

  Ethan watched the Fourth of July fireworks from Boston on the television while Jennie napped on his chest. It seemed like he was exhausted all the time, but being there for her and watching her grow was amazing. She had started out so small and defenseless, and had grown so much. She could easily get her point across if she wasn’t happy about something.

  Peter had called him. His house in the city had sold. It was the last piece of property he owned. He had asked him to start looking into a buyer for the last of his privately held properties while Sam was still pregnant. Ethan knew he wasn’t ever going to be going back there.

  Anything his company held he gave to his assistant Jodi, he thought she was running things just as well as he did, and she deserved to reap some benefits for taking care of everything for over the past year. The thrill was gone and he couldn’t see himself going back to what used to hold so much pleasure for him.

  There had also been some interest in the resort. Since he had bought up so much of the surrounding properties, it had become a huge parcel of California land, which also happened to have a gold mine on it, the amount of money being
thrown in his direction was staggering, even for him. He started constructing a wall around the whole place. People were sneaking in, trying to find a way to either get him to sell, or a way into the gold mine.

  Since Sam had died, he had been pulling back from everything until his life was only him and Jennie on the resort. Nothing was the same, everything seemed duller, not as brilliant without her around. The only thing that brought him joy was Jennie. They were in this together.

  Ethan felt he’d been doing so well, every day was a little bit easier for him. Sometimes he couldn’t tell how much, but he knew it had to be something. When the package came in the mail for Jennie, he didn’t think anything about it. He opened it up and there was a little baby-size Wonder Woman costume for her to wear for her first Halloween.

  He sat down right where he was and cried.

  In Sam’s mind, Halloween started the holiday season. Ethan knew it was only going to get harder.

  The staff tried as much as they could, and Ethan knew they were missing her too. He tried as best he could for them and Jennie, knowing they all needed each other.

  Not a day went by that he didn’t thank his lucky stars the resort ran so well. He couldn’t devote as much time as he needed to, or had been able to in the past. He still tried to meet every guest when they arrived, but he hadn’t been able to be there when they passed away. He’d tried, but he couldn’t. It was the first time in his life he felt like a failure.

  Ethan knew Sam would have said he went overboard for Christmas, but it was their daughter’s first, and he felt like he had to make up for the fact that he was the only one there for her. The house looked like it should have been in a Hollywood movie, not to mention all of the gifts under the tree. So much more than an eight-month-old needed.

  Overall, he thought he was handling things well, but every once in a while something would happen and it would throw him for a loop. He had been reading ’Twas the Night Before Christmas to Jennie and when he read the part about the mom and dad being tucked in the bed, he couldn’t continue reading. There was no mom and dad for this family, only dad.