CHAPTER 3

Flashback – Months earlier – McCutcheon’s/Morales’ house

“Don’t you really care?”, Carmen asks, raising on her elbow.

“No… I don’t really care, honey”, I reply softly.

She smiles the softest of smiles and her eyes seem captured by something I can’t see.

“Why?”, she whispers as her finger traces the outline of my forehead.

I just shrug my shoulders, staring at the ceiling, my back relaxed against the mattress. A silent answer to explain her that no, I really don’t care if her memory still comes and goes without a small trace of coherence, I don’t really care if there are dark spots into her head. I don’t really care if she doesn’t recollect exactly every minute we spent together since the day we first met.
I would like to tell her that I do, that I do care, that I regret every lost memory of hers everyday, but the truth is that I don’t.
I used to, but not anymore. Not now.

I guess I just needed time to realize that my wife is back with her temporal lobe partially but permanently damaged.
I guess I just needed time to get used at the idea that there are moments, days, occasions she’ll never remember anymore.
Doctor Breillard told me that Carmen is a lucky girl. Not many people can say that they had a fragment of bullet removed from their head with no severe damages.
Not many people are lucky enough to say they found themselves in the middle of an armed robbery and they’re safe.

Carmen can.
Despite all, despite everything, she can say that.
She’s safe, she’s alive, she’s healthy, and she’s by my side.
Maybe she doesn’t remember every little detail of our life together, but she remembers that she loves me.
And I do love her.
Can I ask for more?
I could. But I won’t.

“Shane…”.

Her voice soft, barely a whisper, and I turn my head to her.
She stares at me with those dark soulful eyes of hers, eyes where nothing has changed, and I smile silently. My heart beats faster inside my chest and I swallow slightly.

“I do love you, Shane…”, she says after a long silence.

And I feel like I can breathe again. I sit up and cup her face. I kiss her lips and she tastes like home. I murmur that I know that she loves me against her mouth, against the soft skin of her cheek, I murmur that I do love her so very, very much, that I am happy, gloriously happy that we’re married and together. I whisper that I feel the luckiest person of Earth every time I realize she is still by my side and that I am still by hers despite everyone and everything.