Take Care, Sara

stretched his long-limbed body out and put his hands behind his head. “Your turn.”
    It was too intimate. Sara couldn’t do it. She couldn’t even lie down on the bed by herself, let alone with a man other than her husband next to her.
    “Sara.”
    “You’re evil,” she muttered, lying down on the bed, her hands on either side of her body. Her arms and legs were stiff, immobile, like she was frozen by some kind of tragic spell.
    “Close your eyes.” Lincoln’s voice was low, hypnotic.
    “No.”
    “Do it.”
    Sara obliged, her teeth clenched, her body hot with annoyance. “What is the point of this?”
    “You’re reacquainting yourself with your bed. It’s such a small thing; sleeping in your bed, and yet it holds such power over you,” he mused. “You have to realize you’re stronger than the pain and the sorrow, Sara.”
    “I’m not,” she choked out, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.
    “You are,” Lincoln said with conviction.
    “You know I’m just going to go back to the couch at bedtime, right?”
    “That’s fine. At least I got you here now.” Lincoln paused. “Every memory I have of my childhood includes Cole. He was such a big part of my life, big brother and all. It’s hard going each day without him being a part of it. You know what helps me get through it?”
    She shook her head, eyes still closed.
    “At first I thought by not thinking about him, I’d be okay. But I wasn’t. Instead I made myself think of him and it hurt, a lot, but the more I thought of him, the easier it got. The more I did things I didn’t want to do, the more able I was to function without bawling my eyes out on a daily basis. The more I remembered him, the more I could think of him with happiness instead of sorrow.”
    Her limbs loosened a little under the influence of his soothing tone.
    “I mean, yeah, it still hurts. It always will. Cole’s my brother. I love him. I also hate him, just a little. But I love him more. You don’t have to accept what’s happened to him, Sara, but you have to find a way to live with it. Know what I mean?”
    Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. A hand, warm and calloused and strong, clasped its fingers around hers and squeezed . Sara held Lincoln’s hand, both of them silent, and felt oddly whole for the moment.
     
     
     

12
     
     
     
    It was time. How could he have put such a burden on her? How could he have thought it was right to ask such a thing of her? She couldn’t decide such a thing. Sara would never be able to do it. It was like she was killing him all over again, for a second time. And still she’d had to do it. Sara had done it. Dr. Henderson had sadly smiled as she’d signed her husband’s life away, offering no words of sympathy. Maybe he realized none would be sufficient enough. The antiseptic smell of the room made her stomach roil and though she wanted to run from the room, her feet remained rooted in place.
    “No one else can do it.”
    Her head shot up and she looked around the room, her eyes taking in the white walls, the beeping monitor, the hospital equipment, and finally, slowly, slowly going to his still form. His skin was waxen and gray-tinged. He looked unreal, like one of those celebrity replicas found in a wax museum. Tubes ran in and out of his body, giving him an inhuman, robotic quality. She hated the thought; she hated the truth of it. His chest rose and lowered with air that wasn’t his, stolen breaths of life that kept him alive, but not living.
    His light brown hair was thick and waved around his head. She lifted a hand to touch it and let it fall back to her side. His body was shrunken in size, the muscle and tan gone from his form. Sara closed her eyes, not wanting this to be him, unable to accept him this way, seeing him this way. He should have been laughing, smiling, spending his days working and loving and living . How could she have signed his death warrant?
    “No one else could do it, Sara. It had to be you.”
    She slapped a hand to her mouth, eyes stinging with tears. Sara stared down at him, her pulse jumping in incomprehension. It had sounded like his voice. He was silent and unmoving on the hospital bed before her. It wasn’t him talking, but for the first time, Sara realized it had always been his voice talking to her. She just hadn’t heard it as his before; she hadn’t been able to accept it was his voice in her mind. Chills went up and down her arms, encasing her in icy revelation. How could