The Hourglass Watcher

My wife has four days left to live.

She’s not sick or anything. Not old either. In fact, she’s only eighteen.

I don’t know how she’s supposed to die, only that the worst day of my life is now less than one week away. Since the day I met her, that damn countdown has been filling the space between my heartbeats at an ever-increasing volume.

There was a beautiful three-week window where I didn’t have to be burdened by it, because Sadie and I met online. I was so scared that day. For a lot of reasons, but mostly because I didn’t want to meet her in person. I don’t like to meet any new people. Ever.

Can you blame me? Knowing instantly when they’re going to die puts a slight damper on the small talk.

You’d think that having some kind of psychic ability would be cool, or at least useful in some way. I could have been born knowing how to predict Superbowl winners or something.

But no. Instead, I got this. The moment I make eye contact with someone, anyone, I can see the date of their death floating in front of my eyes like a helium balloon at a kid’s party.

I don’t get any other info. Not how, not why. Just the date, which is anything but useful most of the time.

So when Sadie and I met for our first date, I found out the terrible news about the same time that I shook her hand.

Not a great moment for me.

The very first girl I’d ever liked, and she didn’t even have a year left. I’d heard that high school relationships could be intense, but I wasn’t expecting “till death do us part.”

I haven’t given in, though. I decided a long time ago that I would be wrong this time. I’m not going to let her die.

Somehow, I’m going to save her.

***

“Gray, wake up.” Sadie’s squeezing my hand. “You’ve got to get going.”

Four days. I’ve been awake for a little while, but I didn’t let on because I wanted to keep lying here, holding her. Listening to the seconds left until The Day tick away in my horrible, precognitive brain.

She’s right, though. I do need to leave. If her dad found out I’d spent the night, my future wouldn’t look much brighter than Sadie’s. He doesn’t know we’re married. No one in her family does.

“Why can’t we just tell him?” I murmur, wrapping my arms more tightly around her.

“You know why.”

“Shouldn’t he be more worried about that drug dealer Millie’s banging than me?” Sadie laughs and smacks me with one of her pillows. When it comes to her younger sister, Sadie’s parents have got blinders on that could cancel the sun.

I get up and grope around in the predawn dark for my clothes. We’re both getting pretty good at waking up at a fully unreasonable hour so I can sneak out.

Personally, I voted to tell her parents we were getting married. After all, my mom took the news okay. Of course, she’s well aware of my freaky inner clock, has been ever since I was three years old. That’s when I predicted my dad’s imminent death.

She’s known all about Sadie’s bleak destiny ever since I have. So when we told her we were getting married, she got it immediately. No explanation required. My new in-laws wouldn’t have had that advantage, because Sadie flat-out refuses to tell them that she most likely won’t be making it to her high school graduation.

Which I understand. It’s a hard thing for most people to accept even if they’ve seen the video my grandfather and I recorded a few months before his death, the only thing I have in the way of proof. Especially in a case like Sadie’s. Young people are supposed to live a long time, damn it, and knowing it’s coming doesn’t make it easier.

It’s not like I want this information. I wish I didn’t have it. My grandfather called it a gift, but he wasn’t the one who had to live with knowing the death date of everyone he ever met.

It’s made me different. Weird in a way that’s haunted me since I was a little boy, in a way I can’t usually explain to people. I rarely get the chance. Most people avoid weird.

I lean over to kiss Sadie. “I won’t go far. Let me know when you head off to school.”

“Okay.”

We’ve mostly stopped going to class so we can bank more time together. The school would rather not have me attending anyway, considering my fictional case of mono and all. Without parental participation, Sadie’s lies were a bit more complicated. Even so, by the time they catch up with us, it won’t matter anymore.

Unless we can somehow prevent whatever’s supposed to happen. Which is a risk I’m very willing to take.

I know. It’s unlikely I can save my wife from her fate. How can I, when I have no idea what it is? For a while, I thought maybe she’d get sick. She wasn’t when I met her, but some diseases strike hard and fast and mean. That didn’t happen, though.

The two leading causes of teenage death are both out, because she’s not remotely suicidal and I’m not letting her anywhere near a car on The Day. In fact, I don’t plan to leave her side at all. If some freak accident claims her, maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll take me too.

My mom hates it when I talk that way. She wants me to have a long, happy life – with or without Sadie. Moms are like that.

Then again, Sadie wants the same thing.

And maybe I’ll have it. I have no idea about that because bizarrely, I don’t know my own date. I can’t say why. It’s not like my extremely specific brand of precognition follows any kind of rulebook other than apparently being right all the time about other people, which I’m about to challenge. But I’ve never had any idea when I personally will die, and I’m totally fine with that.

Knowing how long I’ve got to tote this knowledge around for everyone else would just be one more burden on me.

Anyway, our idea is to get a hotel room and hunker down in it on The Day. What could happen to us in a hotel room? As long as we don’t leave for any reason, I can’t think of anything that’s going to hurt her there.

We considered doing the shelter-in-place thing at my house, but on the off chance that Sadie’s supposed to die by some chance storm or home invasion, I don’t want my mom to be collateral damage. She’s still got a good forty-plus years left to live, but that doesn’t mean she can’t get hurt. No reason to be reckless.

It’s not a great plan, I know. But it’s all we’ve got.

In the meantime, we’re trying to make the most of the time we have left. Just in case. We’re teenagers, we’re newlyweds, and at least one of us is dying soon – so you can probably figure out the rest.

***

“Millie asked if we want to go to a party tomorrow,” Sadie says, her arm drifting lazily down to the edge of the river. Summer is on the horizon, which means the water is warm and clogged with people most of the time, but this is a random Thursday morning and this spot is somewhat hidden, so we’ve got a reasonable amount of privacy. We’ve been using it well.

“Where?” I ask, sliding my hand along her spine beneath the blanket.

“Rider’s house.”

“Is that a good idea?” I ask. “Last time we went to one of his parties, things got ugly.” Sadie’s sister is a born rebel, and a pretty advanced one for being only sixteen. Rider, her latest boyfriend, is bad news. I wasn’t kidding about the drug-dealer thing.

One of the few amusing parts of this past year has been watching Millie try to coax us to the dark side. Since she has no idea why her sister has suddenly started to embrace the concept of getting into trouble, Millie seems to think Sadie is going through some kind of phase. Trying to get all her pent-up rebellion out of her system.

She’s not entirely wrong.

Before we met, Sadie and I had barely done anything. We could teach a master class in risk avoidance. For me, that was mostly about limiting my contact with other people as much as possible.

But Sadie? She’s been the good girl all her life – the textbook daughter, the straight-A student, the perfect foil to Millie’s defiant nature. She was planning to be an engineer, and maybe work for NASA someday. She could do it, too.

Hearing that all of her hard work and sacrifice was going to dead-end in an untimely grave didn’t sit well with her, for some reason.

She’s never going to get a chance to go to college, travel the world, have children, or any of the other stuff that people our age look forward to doing. To compensate for the massive debt she’s owed and can’t ever collect, she decided to experience everything she possibly could.

We hadn’t even kissed yet when I told her the bad news. In fact, we’d never kissed anyone. Ever.

That changed in a hurry but I swear, I didn’t make this up just to get laid.

Along with sex, Sadie was eager to experiment with all of the alcohol and drugs she’d previously avoided so as not to compromise her future. I’d never been to a single party in my life before I met Sadie, and I assumed they would be terrible for me. Doing anything with a lot of people I don’t know gives me awful anxiety. Malls, restaurants, movie theaters, it doesn’t matter – the world is filled with people who have only one thing in common. They’re all going to die someday. And I’m the lucky guy who knows exactly when.

As it turns out, though, alcohol and pot go a long way toward taking the edge off that problem. I didn’t join Sadie in anything harder, for the same reason I sent in my college applications this year.

Sadie made me promise that I’ll keep living my life, no matter what happens to her.

Anyway, Millie finds Sadie’s entrance into her world highly entertaining, and her friends have made her something of a pet. They pretty much treat her like one of their own now, and me by extension. Most of the parties we’ve attended with her have stayed under control, but the last one was way too wild for my taste. Thankfully, I was mostly sober that night and managed to get us out of there before the police arrived.

Millie and Rider got away too. Which was lucky, since he was a traveling pharmacy that night.

I don’t like Millie very much. She gets away with being massively selfish mostly because she’s very pretty and innocent-looking. And because of Sadie. Millie’s taken her sister for granted all her life, relying on Sadie’s automatic loyalty to override everything else. Which it always has.

I wonder sometimes how Millie’s going to do without Sadie watching her back constantly.

“Rider’s been laying low since his friend got arrested,” Sadie informs me. “Millie says he’s being a lot more careful these days. I don’t think things are going to get out of hand.”

I shrug. If that’s how Sadie wants to spend one of the last nights of her life, who am I to say no? We’ll just leave again if things are getting too rough. Nothing’s going to happen to her until The Day, so as long as we don’t get arrested, there’s no real risk.

“Sure.”

“We’re checking into the hotel the next day, right?”

“Yeah.” I’ve already arranged everything. We’ll check in on the afternoon before The Day, and bring enough food with us so we won’t have to leave for any reason. No one knows where we’re planning to be. I’m not taking any chances. We’ll be locked away from the world, and short of an act of God I can’t imagine how anything could happen to Sadie.

She sighs. “I’m scared, Gray.”

“So am I.”

“I can’t stand it, not knowing what’s coming.”

“That makes two of us.”

“I still can’t believe you have to go through life knowing this about everyone you meet.” She strokes my face.

“It sucks. That’s a fact.”

“I wish I could be there to help you through it.”

I wish that too.

I pull her close and kiss her. We got married a few months ago, right after Sadie turned eighteen. It was something she desperately wanted, and I didn’t have the heart to deny her anything by then. Besides, I would have married her even if she had sixty years left.

The only person who knows is my mom. Since I’m still seventeen, she had to give me permission. I thought Sadie would have second thoughts about getting married without her own family there, but she didn’t. She’s determined not to hurt them more than necessary, and she swears that knowing in advance would only prolong their pain.

I suggested we tell her parents we were getting married anyway, but she insisted that they would make it into a huge affair with months of planning. We didn’t have that kind of time.

“Will you do something for me?” she whispers against my mouth.

“What’s that?”

“Can you get a gun?”

My blood freezes in my veins. That is so not what I expected her to ask.

“A gun? Why?”

“Just in case something does happen in that room. In case I’m fatally injured or something. I don’t want to die slowly and painfully. I want to be able to end it right away. Or have you do it for me.”

“You think I could shoot you?” I cry, sitting up straight. “There’s no way in hell I would ever do that, Sadie.”

“Not even to keep me from suffering?”

“No! First of all, in case you’ve forgotten, there’s a word for killing someone on purpose. I’d spend the rest of my life in prison. And secondly, there’s no way I could ever live with myself if I killed you no matter what was going on. What if you could still be saved?”

“I’d do it for you!”

“No, you wouldn’t! And that’s easy to say when you know you’ll never have to!” I take a deep breath and try to get a grip. We can’t afford to fight. “No gun.”

“Okay. I’m sorry I asked.” I nod and slowly wrap the blanket around our shoulders. She leans back against me and I think she can feel me shaking. She won’t ask again.

***

The party is in full swing when we arrive. Probably twenty people circle around Rider’s tiny apartment. Some of them are holding drinks, more of them are doing lines off the coffee table.

Millie and Sadie peel off for the bathroom as soon as we arrive, probably to take Ecstasy. That’s what they were talking about on the ride over.

I don’t want to let Sadie out of my sight for long, so I wait in the hallway. I’m expecting them to be in there for a while, so I’m a little surprised when she comes rushing out a minute or two later.

“Let’s go, Gray.”

“Already?” She nods. I can tell that she hasn’t taken anything yet.

“I changed my mind. I want to get out of here.”

Millie comes up behind her, rolling her eyes. “What’s your problem, Sadie? It’s not a big deal!”

“What the hell is going on?” I ask, mystified. Sadie grabs my hand.

“I’ll explain in the car. Let’s go.”

Millie opens her mouth to respond, but I’m already turning to leave. I don’t care what she thinks.

Before we can get out of the hallway, chaos erupts. Without warning, the party sounds from the next room turn into screams and it sounds like a stampede. I can hear things breaking. Sadie grips my hand as hard as she can.

“Gray, come on!”

I have no idea what’s going on and no interest in finding out. I just want to leave before we get arrested.

Sadie is about to wade back into the living room, but instead I grab her arm and push her toward one of the bedrooms. Rider’s apartment is on the first floor.

“This way,” I tell her, and she understands immediately. “We’ll break a window if we have to.”

Luckily, the windows in Rider’s shitty apartment are easy to open, and I punch out the screen as fast as I can. I motion to Sadie to go first. It’s a six-foot drop to the ground, but we’re short on options.

She jumps quickly and I lose sight of her in the darkness.

“Sadie!”

“I’m okay, Gray! Get down here!”

I swing my legs out the door, preparing to jump down. Suddenly, there’s a jarring flash of light.

That’s when I hear the gunshot.

***

“… patient is nonresponsive…”

“… single gunshot wound…”

“… approximately eighteen years of age…”

Words are floating all around me. None of them mean anything. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what’s going on. There are a lot of bright lights in my face.

“Sir?” I feel pressure on my upper arm. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Where’s Sadie?” I murmur.

“She’s in the other ambulance. We’re taking care of her. Is Sadie your girlfriend?”

“My wife.” I can’t sort anything out. “What happened?”

Whoever I’m talking to doesn’t seem to hear me. At any rate, he doesn’t answer.

***

It was the shock, they tell me later. That’s why I can’t remember anything. I wasn’t that badly hurt. Not physically.

Someone shot us as we were climbing out the window. A bullet ricocheted off a nearby building and caught me in the shoulder.

Another got Sadie in the head.

“The EMTs said that you are the patient’s husband?” someone asks me. I’m standing next to the window of her room, staring in disbelief. There’s no possibility that I’m seeing reality right now. She’s not in front of me with people hovering around her, shaving her head and putting a billion tubes in her. It doesn’t even look real.

“Huh?”

“Are you married to this woman? Legally married?”

“Yeah.” It doesn’t occur to me to lie.

“Okay. Are you up to talking for a few minutes?” I finally realize that the talking is coming from a white coat hovering near me. I guess it’s a doctor.

I feel a gentle pressure on my good arm. I’m not aware of moving, but a few seconds later I can’t see into Sadie’s room anymore.

White coat is talking again.

“I’m sorry. I know that you’re in a state of shock right now, but I need to talk to you about Sadie’s condition. Does she have other family?”

“Uh huh.” I nod. “I don’t know where they are.”

“Let’s call and get them down here, okay?”

“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” I murmur.

“No one your age expects to deal with something like this,” the white coat voice says consolingly.

“You don’t understand. She has three more days.” My lips feel numb.

“What’s that?” The voice pauses and then continues. I still can’t take in any details. I don’t even know if I’m talking to a man or a woman, and I’m not about to look. I can’t deal with someone else’s date right now. “We’re about to take your wife into surgery, okay? Is there someone who can wait with you?”

***

I’m aware of people moving around me. One of them is my mom. I guess that’s a good thing, since I can’t say anything or do anything except stare at the floor.

I hear a lot of arguing, but it’s like I’m underwater. I can’t make out words at all anymore.

Time passes. A lot of time. Someone shakes me, then there’s some more of that muted yelling. I think it might be Sadie’s dad. Someone else puts a blanket around my shoulders.

I don’t sleep. I stare.

***

I shake my head. “I won’t do it.”

“Gray, it’s already done,” my mom says quietly. “You’ve been completely out of it for almost two days. I’ve been here the whole time and believe me, they’ve tried everything. They operated on her twice, but there’s nothing else they can do. Sadie has no brain function.”

“She’s still alive. Look.” I point to Sadie’s chest, which is rising and falling.

She looks very peaceful. I don’t think she’s feeling any pain.

“Honey, she’s gone.” My mom isn’t very showy with her emotions. The tremble in her voice says more than her words could. “I’m so sorry. You know I wouldn’t say this to you if I thought there was any chance it could go another way.”

“It is going to go another way. I won’t let them turn off her life support. They can’t make me.”

“No, they can’t.” My mom sighs. “You’re her husband, which makes you her next of kin. You have to make this call.”

“Where are they?” I ask. “Millie? Her parents?”

“They’re all in the waiting room. I insisted they let me talk with you first. There just isn’t room in here right now for all the emotions they’re bringing to this. Justified as they are.”

I stare at my sleeping wife. “I’ll save her. Just like I said I would be all along. I’ll keep her alive.”

“Sweetheart, that’s not saving her. Sadie is gone. That bullet ended her life, not you.”

“We had three more days.” I know it normally doesn’t pay to argue with reality, but this one is worth the fight. “We had a plan. I never should have taken her to that damn party.”

“Gray, your plan was good. You couldn’t possibly have seen it coming like this. I know I didn’t.”

I only realize I’m losing when tears start to leak down my face. My body is ahead of my heart.

“We’ve always said that there was probably nothing you could do about this,” my mom continues gently. “When it’s someone’s time to go, they go. You know that better than anyone.”

“No!” I bite out. Even as I say it, I remember Sadie’s plea. To take her out. Not let her suffer.

But I told her I couldn’t do that!

In spite of myself, my eyes find a time stamp on the edge of a computer screen. It’s two thirty in the morning on The Day. The day I’ve been dreading ever since the moment I first laid eyes on her. The one where everything ends.

I still have a choice. I don’t have to be Sadie’s executioner.

I could be a coward instead.

***

When it’s time, they let me stay with her. Apparently that’s against protocol but I’m just not leaving.

I can’t speak. I can only watch and wait while the last of her time runs out.

Her hand is still warm. For many moments afterward.