Breadcrumb #616
CHRISTINA ROSSO
I remember her appearing like a shadow at first. I was eight years old. Her body was washed in gray as though she was from one of the black and white movies my aunt let me stay up and watch with her sometimes. I could see right through the woman to the open window, the moon full and blue, illuminating her from behind. As she moved closer to the bed, she gained color and vitality. She was young. Maybe eighteen, maybe twenty, I wasn’t sure. Her black hair weaved in loose curls down the sides of her white nightgown. Her complexion was darker than mine, and reminded me of wet clay. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I named her the woman in white, and she was going to be my bride.
It took me nearly forty years to find her. I had even married and started a family. What else was I to do? I told myself I couldn’t keep chasing a ghost.
Life was good. My wife was pretty and kind. Our children sprouted freckles across their noses and cheeks like their mother. Their hair was blond like hers. I wouldn’t say I was waiting for the woman in white. Yet she never lingered too far from my mind.
I had just started working as a radiologist at Crest Presbyterian Hospital. A woman entered the room for a chest x-ray. “Stand against the machine with your chin resting on the top. Closer. Yes, right there,” I instructed. “Stay still.”
“I wouldn’t say I was waiting for the woman in white.”
When the x-ray was complete, she turned to face me. The woman in white. She was in a hospital gown instead of a negligee, but it was she. I opened my mouth, hoping my lips would form the necessary words. The woman began coughing, her body contorting with each bark.
It flashed before me like a film reel. The x-ray would confirm her lung cancer had spread, estimating she had a few months to live. She would die less than two weeks later. Her parents, who had spared no expense on her medical treatment, would erect a grand mausoleum for her with two lion statues stationed outside the wrought iron gate in protection of their beloved daughter.
Tears stung my eyes. I took the woman in white in my arms and rubbed her back until the coughing fit ended. During my shifts at the hospital, I walked past her room a dozen times until she was gone.
A week after she was laid to rest my feet led me to her. It was just past midnight. I patted the heads of each of the lions, the ones I had envisioned, the stone both coarse and smooth. “I’ll take it from here,” I told them.
I took the crow bar from my bag. The lock on the gate whined and then crunched as it broke. I pushed past the gate, entering the mausoleum. Moonlight cast a spotlight on her coffin in the middle of the room. I went to her, easing the coffin lid back. There the woman in white lay, dressed in the nightgown she wore when she appeared to me all those years ago. I climbed inside, adjusting her so two bodies could fit. I pressed my lips to her cheek and closed the lid, darkness surrounding my bride and me.