Page 9 of When Love Takes Root

I sprinted to the desk with Jamal’s card clutched in my fist.

“My husband, Jamal Coleman. He was just brought in by ambulance. Please . . . I need to see him.”

The nurse’s fingers clacked over the keyboard. As she scanned the screen, her expression shifted.

“Yes, ma’am. He’s here. They took him back to trauma. The doctors are with him now.”

My chest tightened. “What does that mean? Can I see him?”

Before she answered, a doctor in teal scrubs approached from the hallway.

The doctor asked, “Mrs. Coleman?”

“Yes?”

His voice dropped to a calm, careful register. “I’m Dr. Patel.” He gestured toward a small alcove with vinyl chairs just off the main hallway. “Please, come with me. Let’s sit down for a moment.”

My feet glued themselves to the linoleum. If I sat, it meant accepting whatever gravity he was about to pull me into. “No. No, thank you. Just tell me. Where is he?”

Dr. Patel didn’t push. He took a half-step closer, dropping his hands to his sides so he looked completely accessible yet entirely anchored.

“Mrs. Coleman, I need you to hear me. Your husband collapsed at work after complaining of a severe, sudden headache. By the time the paramedics brought him to us, he was slipping in and out of consciousness. Because of his symptoms, we ordered an immediate emergency CT scan.

“The images showed a catastrophic brain aneurysm—a massive, sudden bleed inside his brain. While we were evaluating the scans to see if emergency surgery was possible, the pressure became too great, and his heart stopped. We did everything we could to resuscitate him, but the damage was too severe. Your husband has died. I am so incredibly sorry.”

The words entered me without mercy.

A sudden, absolute quiet swallowed the room. The phones and monitors went dead; Leilani’s gasp vanished. The world shrank down to one suffocating second of silence, and then a primal sound tore from my chest, folding me in two.

“No. No, God, please no.”

Onyx caught me as my knees gave out, his arms locking around my waist to slow my fall to the floor. The impact shot a distant pain through my legs, but it was irrelevant compared to the shattering inside my chest.

Then, the sound broke free. A ragged, animalistic wail tore from my throat and burst past my lips—a loud, unchecked noise that splintered the quiet air of the hallway. Leilani dropped beside us, wrapping herself around my shoulders. I could hear her sobbing into my hair. I could feel Onyx’s hand trembling against my back. A nurse said something gentle nearby, but none of the words reached me over the echo of my own ruin.

I tried to stand and couldn’t. Tried to breathe and couldn’t. Tried to put Jamal’s name in my mouth, and it came out broken.

“He was just with me,” I whispered. “He brought me flowers.”

My voice sounded small. Childlike. As if that simple fact should have changed the outcome. As if flowers could prove a man was too present, too needed, to be gone from the life he had filled that morning.

Time lost its shape. Hands lifted me into a vinyl chair, and a paper cup of water was pressed into my fingers. I never drank. The card stayed crushed in my fist, my thumb rhythmically tracing the softened edge of the envelope, the only thing in the hospital that still felt like Jamal.

Finally, I wiped my face with trembling hands, forcing words past the wreckage in my throat.

“I need to see him.”

Dr. Patel’s compassionate nod made me want to scream. He guided us through a clean, blinding hallway full of closed doors and whispered voices. I walked, but part of me remained in my shop, staring at the fresh bouquet. Leilani held my waist, and Onyx stayed close, holding me upright as we crossed the threshold.

Inside, the world stood still.

Jamal lay motionless under the glare. His face was peaceful, a terrible contrast to the storm in my chest. My memory fought the image, reaching instead for the husband who kissed me goodbye and prayed over our children. Above the sheet lay his familiar hand—the one that had gripped mine through hard days, good news, and a lifetime of shared prayers.

I collapsed over the bed, a stranger’s sound tearing from my chest.

“Baby, what am I supposed to do without you?”

When I pressed a kiss to his forehead, his skin was still warm. That lingering heat wrecked me—a cruel lie told by a body that hadn’t yet realized its own ending. A wild, desperate hope flared inside me, begging God to open a door if I just found the right words. I squeezed his broad hand between both of mine, every muscle in my body straining as I waited for his fingers to twitch in response.