Challenge Submission The Impossibility of Reason

[Voluptia Reign]

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Life was always about choices...

Eric Granger knew that. He'd known that the day he'd taken his second full time job and the hours of his down time grew shorter and shorter for months. There was no denying that he was exhausted, from the bags under his eyes and the strain in his words when he spoke. If he could sleep standing there was no doubting that he would. But he had a reason for it all. The late night hours, working double shifts at the plant that he'd been at for the last two years or coming home to quickly change into the uniform for his second job as an EMT and rush back out the door. His hands were rough, raw. The forever stained and calloused workings of a man with nothing more but love to prove. His love for Amy Margo.

The two had been destined to be together since their graduation of high school. They'd been best friends since the time they could ride a bike. Walking to school together daily. He was there for her when boys had picked on her for her braces. Standing between her and fights with other boys when they called her flat chested when puberty had been cruel. Eric was her shoulder to cry on when her mother died. A rock in a forever moving river that saw her cast out of her home in her teenage years when her father abused her in his drunken mechanism to cope. The man never meant to drive her away, even years down the road he was a lost soul in pain for the loss of his wife and the forced reasoning that he was left to father a daughter on his own. He didn't know how to take care of himself much less Amy, so the day she left he didn't stop her and Amy never looked back.

Amy loved Eric. She dotted on him in their youth and followed him around long into their teens. Yet still the two were blind to the true feelings that either of them had felt until the day Eric had professed it in front of his classmates like the damned fool that he was. How her face had reddened that day when the crowd of students looked from the pew to turn their heads toward her and her utter shock. She didn't care then. Her eyes were on him despite the embarrassment as that young man waltzed down the middle isle to collect her hand and the two walked away into that cliche sunset. They'd been together ever since.

That had been ten years ago. Things were great in their relationship. In the beginning. When the first blossoms of love soon begun to wither and devotion turned to waiting for the other to turn around and notice. Ten long years, Amy waited. Forever wondering if he would have ever settled down. Hopeful when he came home from work, he'd hug her or told her that he loved her. But as time went on and the more tired Eric grew, the shorter his time became and the more he took for granted. Did Eric see the look of pain in her eyes when he'd stopped hugging her? When he barely spared a moment to kiss her cheek on his way back out the door? Did Amy see the look of anguish in the mans eyes when he woke every morning to gaze upon her sleeping form and begrudgingly pull himself out of bed to go to work every day? The back breaking pain that he'd felt trying to provide her with a life that she never had?

Eric took that second job in hopes to have saved enough money to have bought her an engagement ring worthy of someone like her. For all the pain and hardship she had endured during her life, she deserved something as equally as beautiful as he saw her. There was one in particular he had his eye on for so long that whenever he thought it was just out of reach, he'd get a little closer. But money was already tight, living in the city with rent, bills and student loans to pay, they'd been living from one paycheck to another. Amy had been lucky her job had paid enough to keep food on the table, much less the venture of having children. Something he had later grown to discover that Amy could never have kids of her own. Not after she'd been diagnosed with pco and although they'd tried, the likelihood of ever being able to conceive on their own was slim. Did Eric fully know just how much that had hurt her?

The day was like any other. Eric came home that night and rushed right out the door without saying good bye. Amy would have closed the door behind him for the final time that night. Thinking little of it as tears streamed down her face and despair gnawed away at the last tethers of her soul. She couldn't take it any more. Her mother was gone, her father, she could never think to achieve a family of her own without struggle and there was Eric.. she felt like he'd left her behind and how naive she really was. Had she known then what he was doing maybe she would have waited just a little longer for the surprise he had planned for her that weekend. How could he have known she would have drawn herself a bubble bath and made the foolish choice to mix pain killers and alcohol, letting herself fall asleep beneath the warming caresses of her bath. Having forgotten to turn the water off before she'd slipped under, it would have only been a matter of time before the unit below theirs had begun to feel the effects of water dripping below. Calling the apartment maintenance who would have used their key to get in and found her unresponsive, calling 911 and waiting with her for paramedics to arrive while he pulled her soaking form from the water.

Everything happened in a blur. The door team of EMT's with their bags and back board had rushed up the stairs and despite the feeling of duty, Eric knew. When his heart raced and his breath caught, that feeling of dread weighed on him heavier then anything in the world. It was his home. His Amy. His love had chosen to end her life and suffering while he was what.. busy working? How could he have been so blind? How could she have been so naive? Was it really that hard for the two of them to have just stopped to take a moment and talk? Would all the words in the world have made a difference then? He could have taken time off, surely it wasn't that important and she would have understood had he just told her the truth. Eric didn't remember moving her, he didn't remember drawing her into his arms as her soaked limp body sagged against him. His heart shattered into a million pieces when her head lulled against his chest and the taps on his shoulder from his peers, suddenly shaking him and urging him to put her down. He was sobbing then. The tears burning his eyes as his wordless screams rang through the apartment.

Except it wasn't his team. It wasn't the maintenance worker. It was Amy. She was shaking him awake after he'd slept through his alarm, fitful and sobbing in his sleep. When Eric had finally woken, sitting up with the sheets pooled around his waist, his mind was racing to come to terms with what in the hell had just happened and in his sleep filled fog he was dimly aware that it was nothing more then a dream. Amy wasn't dead. She didn't commit suicide. That the shirt that now clung to his body wasn't wet with bath water but that of the perspiration of fear and desperation. He was shaking and despite all the confusion, Amy looked at him as if he were crazy. How could she have known that he'd just pictured her lifeless form against him and no sooner had she said his name in question, Eric's arms were around her. He'd made her a promise then, that he'd never work another day in the plant so long as it meant she'd have had him by her side. Coming clean with his plan he told her everything before finally popping the question. He didn't have a ring but merely the intention behind it and she would have smiled at him then, shaking her head as she had all those years ago and calling him a damned fool. She never needed a ring, she just needed him and it took a dream to finally make him see it.

The End​