Just A Matter Of Time

Patty... My Beloved, Patty...

As Adams is lying in the hospital bed, we sit outside his room--and Franklin was sitting in the hospital room. I couldn't hear what he was saying to the doctor, nor what the doctor is telling him. I sit, concentrating on their lips. Seeing if I can read what they're saying.

"Can you explain to me why he's with us?" The doctor says, Franklin sighs, and replies with, "Well, you see, our friend, James Madison, here, is very ill in the head--he was freaking out and Jefferson--"

I couldn't look at his lips anymore to read them right when he spoke of me. I look away, sighing slightly.

I sit in sadness and discomfort--I should've listened! I should've... but now it's my fault that Adams is in this hospital room across the way! All my fault! I repeat to myself, as I start to cry. Why? Why am I such an idiot?

I close my eyes to try and think of something else, but that something else was with my wife's last breath. Yeah, I was there, by her side... the scene starts off with us dancing...

We are playfully waltzing together, I hold my wife close; and I feel her collapsing in my hold, I ask in concern;

"Um... Patty... are you alright?"

Her answer was just her saying my name once, and she collapsed on the floor, but I held her up, and placed her on a chair--she's having trouble breathing.

I start crying, "Patty..?" I start taking the tops of her dress off, and loosening up her corset, hoping it is just that being too tight on her lungs. 

I call for female slaves, once I loosen up the corset enough to hear her breathing a bit better. I carry her to our bed, and the female slaves come in. I order them to get Patty dressed in her sleeping gown.

With that, I leave the room for them to do so, and when they come out to get me, I take a book and go to the bed. I sit there beside her, reading. Hoping for her to live.

She is up comfortably enough to speak but the doctor we told to come told me: "This may be your last time..." and he stepped aside. I hold Patty in my arms and she silently says to me:

"T-Tom... promise me that you will not re-marry... I can not b-bear to see our children calling someone else 'mom'..." then she fell limp onto the bed, I hold her close, place my ear at her mouth...nothing... I start crying in and out that memory, and Madison shakes me.

"Thomas!" He says to me. I snap out of it. "James? What happened?" I questioned.

"You were dozing off!"

"So you decided to wake me up?"

"You were crying, I wouldn't think you wanted to stay 'asleep'."

I sigh, and look away.