**

“Is my wife here?”, I ask, waking up from a sort of a slumber.
It seems I’ve been sleeping for hours. But I haven’t.
In fact, forty minutes ago I was still at the club.
I must have fainted while we were driving here.
“Is my wife here?”, I repeat, with a croaky voice.
Carmen’s beautiful face appears in my field of view.
She takes my hand and, for the first time, it seems like I can breathe regularly.
“Babe, I am here. I am right here. How do you feel?”, she asks, her eyes glimmering with tears.
“I am dying…”, I moan.
She swallows, caressing my cheek.
“No, babe, don’t say so. You’re not dying, please, hang in there…”.
“Carm?”, I murmur.
“Yeah baby…”.
“They made me swallow some barium”. I smile, weakly.
“But it wasn’t that bad. It was peppermint flavored”.
Carmen chuckles through the tears.
“At least I’ll die with a good taste in my mouth”.
I stare at her, feeling like these are the last moments we’ll spend together.
And there is something into her eyes.
A shadow, maybe.
The shadow of something ugly, of something terrible.
Disappointment. Rage. Dismay.
Love.
But above all, disappointment, rage and dismay.
And I don’t know why, because I don’t remember about my note.
And that’s the moment when the doctor comes in.
Despite my critical conditions, he seems pretty relaxed.
He is smiling at me.
“Shane”, he says, patting my shoulder friendly.
“Hey doc… am I dying?”, I ask, feebly.
I hold Carmen’s hand tighter.
The doctor grins.
“No, Shane, you aren’t dying. The X-rays showed an oesophageal tear. It’s commonly known as a hiatal hernia”.
He shows me the plate, raising it against the light.
“See? Right there. The pain symptoms are identical to angina… Stress, coffee, spicy foods, smoke, gas… Your nerve endings get irritated. You know what that’s like”.
He chuckles.
“Not pleasant, but not fatal”.
Carmen slowly lets go of my hands, silently sitting on a chair beside the bed.
I glance at her, and then at the doctor.
“Could you get this hiatal hernia, say…”, I clear my voice, “…by being squeezed between someone’s legs?”.
“No”.
Carmen is now looking down, at the white tiled floor.
“So I am not going to die?”, I say.
The doctor laughs.
“Eventually, but not today”.
I nod my head.
“Thank you”.
The doctor walks out the room and closes the door.
An uncomfortable silence immediately takes his place.
I turn my head towards Carmen.
She’s staring at the wall in front of her, her expression pensive.
“Honey…”, I mutter.
“I’ve read your note”.
Her eyes move, meeting mine.
“Why were you fucking that girl?”.

End Flashback

All those lives going on out there…
People we’ll never meet… experiencing things we’ll never know.
We can’t know.
In your life, by this point, you think you know what’s gonna be but…
But you don’t know.
You don’t know.
It’s always just when you think you got it figured out when something comes along and knocks your right on your ass.
Bingo, if you’re lucky.
Or the winning numbers of a lottery.
And if you’re not lucky…
A cheating.
The wrong words written on the wrong page, at the wrong moment, and delivered into the hands of the wrong person.
Do you wanna know what Shane wrote on that note?
Well, it said, more or less, this…
(clears her voice)
…
…Fuck, Shane, I can’t read your handwriting.
Well, you were on a gurney being rushed to Intensive Care in excruciating pain but, Jesus Christ! Pure crow’s-fist.
Anyway…
Ok, ok, I got it.
I got it.
The note says:

“My love, by the time you receive this, I may be gone. My life was fun, full, beyond my dreams. All I have, and all I have, I owe to you. You gave me courage to surpass what I know I am, the strength to –“.

Oh, this is when Shane had a spasm.
I can’t read it, but the next line says:

“I lie here, feeling my life ebb away. I cling to your image and I want you to know that I am sorry, so deeply sorry for my little debacle with Nikki. I guess God had all the right to punish me. I know He will forgive me in the afterlife. And I pray you will, too, because I don’t have the courage to forgive myself.
I will take you with me to eternity.
I cherish you.
I thank merciful God for you”.

Shane didn’t have the strength to sign it.
Anyway, she was now in big, big trouble.