Another Love

 Sarah walked into Margaret's room with her medication and a glass of water, and found Margaret sitting on her bed her head bowed over the photograph of a young soldier, depicting the now very familiar portrait of a mourning widow.

"Good morning Mrs Margaret!" She greeted cheerily. She set the medication and glass on the old woman's night stand. Seeing Margaret's frowning face, Sarah sighed sadly and sat on her right.

"How long has it been?" She asked. Margaret lifted her eyes to meet the young nurse's and replied, "Too long. It's been fifty-five years." She showed Sarah the picture. "A fine young man he was. I wish you would've met him; he had a passion for music too." Margaret smiled sadly at Sarah, sighed softly and went back to looking at the picture. Both women sat quietly on the bed for a few moments both lost in thought.

"What does yours say sweetheart?" Inquired Margaret, looking over to Sarah.

"My birthmark?" "Yes, your birthmark. What does it say?" Sarah rolled back her long white sleeve to her elbow revealing on her forearm two words slightly darker than her skintone. "It says 'Be right back'." Margaret nodded slowly and once again looked at the photograph in her hand.

Sensing there was nothing left to be said, Sarah got up, rolled down her sleeve and walked towards the plain, white door. She turned around to look at the old widow, "Make sure to take your pills, alright? I'll be back in about an hour and we'll go see Dimitri." She smiled her warmest smile, the one that made every old man and woman in the nursing home a little less grumpy and a little less lonely.

As she turned around to leave, Margaret's frail voice ask, "How is he doing?"

"He's fighting ma'am." They both knew what that meant. The disease was slowly taking over, and he was living on borrowed time.

Sarah left and Margaret got up, went over to her vanity, put the picture back in its place, in the bottom right of the silver mirror. She sat down and observed her reflection; her wrinkled face and white hair. Slowly she unbuttoned the two first buttons of her pale pink blouse and slide the fabric off of her left shoulder, revealing the familiar words that brought her such sadness. Four words. Four words that are not her husband's last. Four lies, four mistakes. As she had done every day for the past fifty-five years, she tried to convince herself that there had been a mistake, that she was an exception, that even though every child is born with a birthmark reading the last words that its true love will say to them, there had to be some explication, because there was no way that her dearest Robert was not her other half.

As promised about an hour later Sarah came back to accompany Margaret to Dimitri's room. The two made their way to the end of the hall, the common room and across to 'Green Hall' which earned it's name from the light green colour of its floor. The Green Hall was where the elderly who weren't in such a good shape stayed. The hall was well equipped with fancy hospital machines and there was always a doctor on site. They got to the last door on the left and Sarah knocked softly. She opened the door and slowly went in, "Mr. Korzhakov, you've got a visitor."

"Has the Satan come to claim my soul?" The old man asked from his bed where he laid with a cheeky grin on his face. "In that case Mr. Korzhakov, I must say that Satan has a most beautiful disguise!" Sarah laughed.

"Oh, stop it you two." Said Margaret stepping into the room with a small smile on her face. She sat on the chair by the bed and the nurse left the two childhood friends to catch up. Margaret smiled her sad smile once again, knowing that her only friend was slowly slipping away from her, as her husband once did.

Dimitri knew better than to interrupt Margaret's thoughts, and so he laid there in silence taking in the scent of her perfume, watching her, but not just looking, really seeing her. He could see beyond the tired face of a grieving woman, he could see the small creases on each side of her mouth, laugh lines, which he knew he caused, having always know how to make her smile through her pain, through her heartache.

Margaret's face slowly formed a confused frown, as if she tried to figure something out. "Why didn't you ever get married?" She asked.

Dimitri took a deep breath and sat up very slowly. "I don't know. Maybe I made a habit out of loving girls I couldn't have." he let out a small laugh.

"And what about Beatrice? Oh, she loved you so that one!"

"But I-" His reply was interrupted by a long coughing fit that left him red faced and out of breath for a few moments, "-I was already in love with someone else. That was all a long time ago, why do you ask?"

"I was just curious. All your life you had girls falling head over heels for you, but yet here we are. Tell me Tri, who was it? That girl you loved, who was she?"

"It was always you." He admitted. Margaret reached out for his hand, which he took slowly. He looked at her lovingly, as he always has, but in this bed, inside his frail body he could feel that time was running out, he was trying to hold on to this moment.

Later that same day, after her visit to Dimitri, Margaret was back at her vanity and like she had done that very morning, she unbuttoned the two top buttons of her blouse, slid the pink fabric off of her shoulder, read again the all too familiar words, and then suddenly everything made sense.

'It was always you.'

That night as Margaret was sound asleep, her best friend, her true love, passed on after a long fight with cancer, having succumbed to a deathly heart attack, knowing that she knew how much she meant to him.