Intro to The Girlfriend Project

Goodbye
 “Goodbye, Ernest.  I love you and I’ll see you in Heaven.”
 “I don’t want you to die,” he said, knowing he couldn’t change it and that she was most likely right.  Tonight was the night, her last night.  She had been a big lady in life, big in body, big in spirit, always loving and giving and letting the looks and comments about her and about him just slide right off, though they secretly hurt very much.
 “It’s all right, dear, I’m ready now.  I’ve plenty of morphine.  It won’t hurt.  Once you’re away, I’ll just press the button and drift off to sleep for the last time.  I won’t even know.  I’m not afraid.  Jesus is waiting for me in Heaven.”
 He knew Jesus was not waiting for her in Heaven and he did not know if she was teasing him.  Ernest had never been a believer, but she loved him anyway.
 “Just tell me you love me and kiss me once more and then I’ll be off,” she said.  “I’m ready now.”
 But he couldn’t do it.  He couldn’t say it.  He didn’t love her, not as she understood the word.  He couldn’t, didn’t know how.
 He let himself be choked up, absently brushed away a tear, and kissed her gently on the cheek.  Her skin was parchment-thin, dry, her lush body now sunken in and skeletal.  He’d never carried her over the threshold when they had married but he had carried her into this hospital bed in this sterile hospital room with the television in the corner with the broken volume control.  Now it was whispering about how to cook pasta in a microwave container.
 He held her hand for a few minutes, then reached over for her other hand, the one holding the controller for her morphine.  He looked at her eyes, she looked back at his and nodded.  And he helped her push in the plunger, the one that would make all the pain stop – her pain, not his.  She had said she would do it but she was really too weak now to do anything.  He did this last thing for her because he could not do the other, could not give her the pretty lie she wanted, that he loved her and always had.
 When her eyes closed for the last time, when he was sure she was sleeping peacefully, he said softly, “No, love, I never did.  I couldn’t.  I don’t love you, but I’ve done my best all this time.”
 And then it was time to go.  The heart rate monitor in the corner, so familiar now it was unnoticed, let out its high-pitched alarm and the nurses came.  The doctor double checked the do-not-resuscitate order and went off to do the paperwork.  And Ernest, more lost than ever before, went home to make breakfast.