****
He had waited patiently to finish his job; for hours he had watched, until the man was alone. Now, he had the perfect opportunity.
Unseen, he came from behind, with the syringe in his fist, driving the injection into the meaty thigh of his victim.
To him, it will merely feel like an insect bite...
The dastardly deed was done in seconds. The stalker quickly fled, having no qualms, that he had just sentenced another man to death. After all...
Where I come from, a man's life means nothing; there are way too many men.
****
Gemma sat among her neighbors, and husband's many relatives, and friends. The full impact of what had transpired these past three months had still not registered. She simply felt numb, unable to accept that she was now alone.
Sam is dead! This isn't real!
Yet, there in the coffin was ample evidence...a cold, wax persona of the man she loved.
The cancer had appeared like a thief in the night. One minute Sam was working on his driveway, shoveling the last bit of gravel from the truck, raking it smooth, then turning away... and, vomiting the lunch, he had just eaten, on the ground.
From then on, it had been downhill all the way. He had gone downstairs to lie down in the rec-room. He thought, he had merely gotten too much sun.
But that evening, the man who would relish any dish she prepared for him, had not even wanted to look at his supper.
Before she was finished with her own meal, Sam needed to go to the emergency at the small town hospital.
Oh, why did we ever move here? Something must have been in that gravel from the dump...otherwise, how come he got so sick, so quickly?
The night they went into emergency, had been the roughest night of her life: first the ambulance ride to the city, Sam's operation, and the long hours of waiting for word. At last, in the wee hours of the morning, the physician came to the waiting room to share the prognoses.
Sam was filled with cancer. They had removed a large tumor blocking the intestines, at the cross-section between the lower and upper bowel, but when they realized there was so much more, they had simply closed him up, and left him to his death sentence. Two months, and the tumor had grown back again, to twice its original size.
Her poor lover had suffered much pain during the remaining three months of his life, bloating up like a pregnant woman about to give birth. Sometimes, to relieve the pressure, the doctors had drained up to seven liters of fluid from his belly in a week, only to have it return within days.
His last few weeks had been spent in palliative care in their small town hospital. Every day, Gemma rose at six, was there by eight, so she could help feed and wash Sam. She spent the rest of the day watching him sleep, or reading to him, while he moved restlessly on his bed of agony.
The last afternoon, just before she went home for supper, he begged her to take him with her; he didn't want to spend his last minutes in a hospital room. He wanted to die at their storybook home...with her.
"They are giving me a pill at night," he told her. "I don't know what it's for...I don't think it's good for me."
She hadn't really paid attention to his accusation. Gemma was afraid...she didn't think she could care for him by herself.
What if he should he fall, or get worse?
She never expected it to be her last moment with him. Gemma thought they still had days.
The call had come at four o'clock in the morning.
"Your husband died about an hour ago. Would you like to come, and say goodbye?"
Gemma was so angry. She even asked, "Why didn't you call me sooner? So I could sit with him."
I didn't even get to say goodbye!
"Well...no one noticed he was gone. We could hear his loud breathing all down the hall. He was such a disturbance to the rest of the floor...we simply ignored it, blocked it out. We didn't realize, at first, he had quit..."
Dear God! He died all alone; struggling to breathe.
Gemma would never forgive herself for not being with him. But...when she thought on it further, she was almost certain, they had put him out of his misery!
However, there was no proving her suspicions.
****
The people around Gemma, seeking to display comfort, were mostly Sam's friends, and family. It had been the same at their wedding. She had only her sister, Bella; their parents had been killed in a car accident, years before.
And, Bella was seldom a comforting soul. Her version of encouragement was always ill placed at best.
"After this is over," she whispered in Gemma's ear, as the precession of mourners followed the casket out of the church, to begin the ride to the cemetery. "You'll have to get right back out there; find yourself another man to look after you. The longer you stay off the horse, the harder it'll be to get back on."
Disgusted, Gemma shook her head in rejection of what her sister implied.
No one will ever take Sam's place! There is not another like him!
Aloud, she contradicted Bella.
"He was gentle...a God-fearing man! They are a rare find these days. He would never have hurt me!"
"Yah, but he's gone, now. You have to make plans for your future. He left you with nothing."
No matter how true that was, Gemma didn't want to think on that just now.
Together, she and Sam, had created the doll house; he had slaved over the beautiful garden, the fountain, and pool. The yard now had a bench swing, a fire pit. She still had that!
