Lord Lucius Marcellinus said his final goodbyes to his wife on January 5th, as a gentle snow fell outside, under a gray overcast sky. She had been released from the hospital three days prior into at-home hospice care so that she could spend her final moments in more comfortable and familiar surroundings. She and Lucius had conversed softly through her last moments, he in his soft, reassuring manner, and her in a faint whisper, which was the best she could do.

The only medical equipment sent home with her was a morphine drip, equipped with a button which she could press to release a little extra, if the pain became too bad. At the hospital, the built-in computer had a limiter which prevented patients from accidentally administering too much. When she had been sent home, the doctor discretely informed Lord Lucius that this had been removed, “to ensure the comfort of the patient.” Lucius had expected a warning against giving too much, but this had not come. He understood what this meant. Medically assisted suicide was still illegal in this country, but for the Marcellinus family– eyes would be turned elsewhere.

But Lucius knew his wife’s character, and as he expected, she had hardly pressed it since coming home. While she was sensitive to the pain of others, she was philosophical about her own. When she had given birth to their son Markus, she had refused an epidural, saying that the pain of becoming a mother was something unique and special, and that she didn’t want to miss out on it.

The doctor attending the birth told Lucius that he had heard this before, but in the end, the patient always requested the epidural. He advised that she should accept it now, and asked Lucius to persuade his wife. When he walked back into the room and saw her laying in her hospital bed, her huge belly swollen up like a beach ball under the maternity gown printed with little blue and pink teddy bears, and her face glowing with expectation, he only asked “Are you ready?” She answered “Yes”, and he saw that it was true.

Even after twenty-four hours of labor, when her breathing had turned into a sort of ragged heaving that began to alarm him, and the doctor ordered that the labor be induced to ‘prevent risk of harm to mother and child’, she had endured. She never complained, or expressed regret. That was the sort of strength his wife possessed. Cuddling the newborn Markus, her face was haggard and weary, but the glow was still there, and he knew that she had been right. She had gone down to the depths, to the very brink of life and death where no man can ever go, and had brought back with her this new life. He almost envied her that pain.

Lady Marcellinus told her husband that the pain of dying was nothing compared to the pain of giving life, and he saw this was also true. Since that pain was nothing special, she had accepted the morphine. He guessed she did it as much for his sake as for her own.

Later, he was unable to recall what they had talked about that final night, except that on three separate occasions she had drifted off into sleep and had awoken suddenly and spoken urgently, as if she were afraid she might slip off for the last time before saying what she needed to.

“Take care of Markus.”

Each time he assured her that he would, and pointed to the eight year old boy asleep on the sofa. Jeorge, Lucius’s most trusted servant, had brought a blanket to place over him, understanding that this must be where he spent the night. The final time she added, “He tries his best to put on a brave front, but he’s such a sensitive boy.”

Lucius squeezed her hand and assured her, “I know. Don’t worry. Everything will be alright.”

With that, she seemed to relax. Instead of drifting off unwillingly, this time she closed her eyes. She breathed in a long, heavy sigh and as she let it out, she allowed herself to fall into a peaceful sleep.

Ruby, the hospice nurse, had attended the final moments of many, and knew this sign. She quietly stood, walked to Jeorge and whispered, “It’s time,” and then led him out the door.

Lucius continued to sit by his wife’s bed for many more hours, in the sort of absolute silence that can only be experienced in the dead of night after a heavy snow. The only sounds he could hear were the muffled tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the sitting room outside, and the faint sound of Markus’s breathing. He watched his wife’s chest slowly rise and fall, rise and fall, in a trance. He thought of nothing and watched, his hand resting on top of hers, not counting the breaths, nor aware of the passage of time. Finally, her chest fell for the last time.

At that moment he experienced a strange sensation. It was like a sudden, split-second wave of euphoria and release. He knew it was now over. It was such an unexpected feeling that had he been a religious man, he might have mistaken it for the release of her soul from her mortal chains, and the choirs of angels guiding her to heaven.

But Lucius was an atheist. Even now, in his darkest hour, he was an atheist. Not the sort that liked to preach and argue against the existence of a god. He felt no need to intrude upon whatever comfort others might gain from their beliefs. It was just that in his life he had seen things and had done things that did not allow him to believe in the guiding hand of a creator.

He later came to think that feeling was nothing more than his own relief that the long ordeal had finally ended.

Lucius stood and moved to the door. As soon as he opened it, Jeorge and Ruby stood up, looking embarrassed at having been caught sitting down at such a moment. Lucius tried to say, “She has passed”, but found that he was unable to speak.

Ruby moved past him, gently touched Lady Marcellinus, and began filling out a form on a clipboard she held. Lucius stared at the clock on the nightstand. It was a novelty flip clock that she had liked. It didn’t fit the aesthetic of the mansion at all. Cheap black plastic tabs displayed the time in white lines. Each minute one tab would push past its stopper and fall, revealing the next number. It read 06:03. He hadn’t liked it; had offered to buy her something better, but his wife had been attached to it. She had insisted and he had given in. He often gave in to her wishes. He could not recall a single time when he had come to regret doing so.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The rest passed in a blur for Lucius and he only remembered broken fragments. Many sad faces offered condolences, some familiar and some not. Mountains of flowers. The Marcellinus family plot; a white field of snow with a black rectangle dug into it. A young boy was desperately trying to hold back tears and failing.

What snapped him out of his waking stupor had been when he turned over a paper in a stack of documents on his desk and saw the certificate of death laying underneath. The Lady Marcellinus. Organ failure due to acute myeloid leukemia. January 5th, 6:03am. Attending caregiver Ruby Dearborn, Our Lady of the Valley Hospice Care.

The clock; it was something about the clock. He didn’t know what, but there was something. He rushed from his study into their bedroom.

(His bedroom now)

Her clock was still on the nightstand– that cheap plastic flip-clock. And it still read 06:03. His watch said 3:44pm.

The clock had stopped. The clock that she had been so fond of had stopped at the very minute of her death. A coincidence? It could only have been a coincidence, but he had known, without understanding, that something had happened. He saw the scene in his mind again: Ruby touching her neck, writing something on her clipboard, and his eyes had gone to the clock. He had known then, but not noticed.

He checked his watch again. 3:49pm. A sense of dread seized him. He was drifting past her, forever moving away from the last point that they had shared together. She had stopped, yet he kept moving on, traveling at sixty seconds per minute away from her.

Taking the clock with him, he rushed back to his study and locked the doors. He tore through the rack of books over his desk and pulled out what he was looking for– the first blank notebook he could find. It was a black MEAD notebook, speckled with white. That too was hers and contrasted against his own leather-bound journals. It was simple, common and cheap, just like the clock. But it was hers.

The loss of a spouse so beloved was an amputation– worse than the loss of an arm or a leg– for it was the loss of a whole body. Where there had been two halves, there was now only one, and he felt her absence as keenly as a phantom limb. But underneath his own pain he felt something deeper, a wrongness in her death.

He understood that part of it was his own perception. The loss had hit him like a physical blow, leaving him dazed and disconnected. The world that once filled his vision with life and color had turned to gray ash and he felt that no matter where he went or what he did, he would never again enjoy the taste of food, or marvel at the beauty of the sunrise over the ocean. This was not a surprise to him.

But there was something more. Something outside himself. With her passing, something that was essential to the world had ceased to be. It was as if he had opened his door one day to find that there were no more trees or birds. Everyone else might be able to go on with their lives as if it did not concern them that no sparrow would ever perch on the branch of an elm again, but he could not. It was wrong.

He had known her better than anyone. There had not been a single secret to obscure her from him. In life, they had stood naked and bare before each other in a vulnerability that only the truest depths of love could endure. Yet even this vision of her that filled his memory was only the fast fading echo of the woman herself. He had to preserve something of her while the memory was still fresh to him. He knew it was futile, but he could not do otherwise.

He wrote about her. At first his writing was as disjointed as his thoughts, but became clearer as he continued. He wrote about the way the evening light played through her dark hair as it shone through his study window. About how her sharp wit would cut through him whenever he tried to use his title rather than his intelligence to solve a problem. He wrote about how they had first met; She had been an aspiring journalist and had marched into the Marcellinus mansion with such an air of imperious confidence that she had made it all the way into his office before anyone realized that she did not have an appointment. Even as she was escorted out, she continued to throw pointed questions about his past political dealings at him; questions designed to sting and draw him into an argument. It hadn’t worked, but her audacity had intrigued him, and he had put her down for an appointment the next day.

That interview had been the first of many. She was both uncompromising and unflinching, her keen mind pouncing on the slightest contradiction or inconsistency in his answers. She tore away his dissembling and evasions, and even as she drew him out and sought to corner him, his intrigue grew into admiration.

From there, he wrote about many other things. About how their love had grown. About the change she had wrought in him. He wrote until his hand ached and cramped, until the sky grew dark, and then light again. He wrote even as he refused his meals and sent the servants away. Even Jeorge, who pressed him harder than any other dared to, calling on him to resume his duties. Time passed by in the outside world, but for him locked in his study, it was forever 06:03.

When the sun began to set again, casting its rays through the westward window, there finally came an interruption he could not ignore. Without knocking, someone was picking the lock from the outside. He stood and began marching towards the door, letting his rage build. Even if it were Jeorge, this was more than he could forgive. Before he reached it, the door swung open, and without apology or hesitation Markus strode into his room.

“Father,” he said, in a stern, scolding tone, “this is unbecoming–”

Lucius froze mid-step when he saw his son, his face stuck in a transition between anger and confusion. Markus faltered, swallowed, and then mustered his courage. The young boy of eight drew himself up to his full height and in that moment, his eyes shone with a light that Lucius recognized. It was that same look of imperious confidence he had seen so many times before. The light of the setting sun played through Markus’s dark hair and he said:

“Mother is dead. She is gone. And we have to carry on without her-”

He stopped, shocked by his own words. Words designed to sting and draw his father out. Lucius was stricken, not by Markus’s words, but by his face. It had been there for only a moment, but it still existed. A sparrow took flight from the sill of his window and he remembered his wife’s final words.

She had told him—three times she told him– “Take care of Markus.” But he had forgotten. Lucius fell to his knees and pulled his son into a hug.

“Oh, Markus, I’m so sorry. I love you, son.”

So Lucius allowed himself to be drawn out once again, and began to heal his grief. It made him feel better to think that his own story had ended here, at his wife’s side, but that Markus’s was just now starting. He would carry on for his son’s sake, as a lord and a father. He would spend all the remaining days of his life keeping his final promise to her, raising Markus into a fine young man. Only then could he go to join her, in whatever lay beyond the curtain of death.

But it would be two years before he discovered, completely by accident, the true nature of his wife’s death. And it would be a decade after that, before his revenge would be accomplished.