You Promised

"One day you're not going to walk out of this hospital." Laura stared out at the town beyond the white room and beeping machines connected to the pale, weak body of her wife. "I don't know how I could deal with that."

Laura knew Carmilla was a rebel. She always had been. But, no matter how many times Carmilla got hurt, she always survived. Laura hated it, but it never stopped. Carmilla just couldn't stop.

They got married the year they graduated college. That was a year ago. If all she got in this marriage was a year, that would surely be cruelty. A year wouldn't be enough.

"I will always come back to you." Carmilla managed to chuckle, brushing a bandaged hand against Laura's forehead. "Trust me, Cupcake."

A year wasn't enough...and Carmilla didn't come back this time.

Damn Carmilla and that stupid motorcycle. Damn her not caring how much her recklessness scared Laura. Damn her for leaving Laura here alone.

A coma.

A ride down the street to the nearest grocery store on her motorcycle without a helmet, driving 30 over the legal limit, no jacket, all of that was worth this? A coma?

She didn't think about hazards. Not about people. Not about herself. It only made it worse when Laura waited for 2 hours and Carmilla didn't come home. It definitely didn't help when she got the phone call and 2 cops at their door with Carmilla's cell phone in their hands, cracked and splattered with blood with their wedding photo blinking in and out until the phone finally died in Laura's hands.

Three months in and she's still alone. She goes to work, goes to check on her wife, and goes home where she passes out on the couch because...because she can't stand to move any further. If she makes it to their bedroom, she sleeps with one of Carmilla's shirts and her black jacket...on the couch...because that room...has mainly been left untouched. Everything still looks the same. Just, no Carmilla.

Today, she goes to the hospital, sits in her chair next to her sleeping bride, and reads a book of poetry. It's one of Carmilla's favorites: The Collected Poems of Oscar Wilde. She sits there and listens to the rhythm of the machines letting her know that her wife was still fighting, the woman who made her the happiest she'd ever been. Ignoring the pain in the pit of her stomach about why they are here in the first place, Laura just read aloud in hopes Carmilla could hear:

"To drift with every passion 'til my soul

Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,

Is it for this that I have given away

Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Me thinks my life is a twice-written scroll

Scrawled over on some boyish holiday

With idle songs for pipe and virelay,

Which do but mar the secret of the whole.

Surely there was a time I might have trad

The sunlit height, and from life's dissonance

Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:

Is that time dead? Lo! With a little rod

I did but touch the honey of romance—

And must I lose a soul's inheritance?"

Aside from the monitors, the room fell quiet as Laura looked at the blank face of Carmilla lying in her hospital bed. She looked like she was asleep. They could've been here for anything less severe. She could've just gotten tested for sleep apnea. The bandage on her head erased that wish. The fading scars on her arm only more evidence that this was real.