say huh?

She walked towards me in her uniform. I held my breath. Even before she began to speak I sensed that it would be bad.

“I’m sorry Geoff, we couldn’t save her. We did everything we could.”

I stared at my hands, the voice was penetrating my calm and destroying everything I both knew and understood. My hands were coarse: months and months of little care and little emotion. I felt nothing. I was empty, hollow. She was…

I had lived every day in constant worry. Now who was there left? Who was there to hold onto? It was gone. It was passed.

I loved her. She was…

Plain and simple. And now she’s…

gone. I never felt this before. How was I supposed to know what I could do.

I had met her when I was nineteen. University. Year 2. She was graceful, yet sporadic. She moved quickly and fluidly. Eyes like a hawk’s, but ones that could soften any man’s heart of steel.

And mine was breaking. Starting to come apart where the welding met. Then.

She walked through the door. More like glided.

My eyes nearly fell out of my sockets. What on earth was this? My stomach did a strange squiggle. What kind of a cruel joke was being played? My heart skipped several beats. Did no one have respect for a grieving man? My mouth went dry. How did this work?! She was… she was…

dead.

Gone.

Erased from all but memory. A mere shadow of a life.

My love. My world. My everything. Was gone.

“Geoff. Baby. It was Tibbles.” Her voice was still a melody, still a shiver that whispered down my spine forcing me to take a breath. My brain did a once-over trying to understand what was happening. Who she was. What they were playing at.

“T-Tibbles?” I barely stuttered. “What–”

“Yeah! She apparently had a massive hairball lodged in her windpipe. They couldn’t save her. Babe, I’m sorry.” She came over to me. I smelt her perfume. Her hair.

I looked up from the nest of brown hair that my eyes were nuzzled in. A veterinary hospital?