These Three Words Read Online Free PDF

using that gift from nature to his advantage. Fern at least was president of student council and was part of the prom committee who’d spent so much time working on making tonight a success. Fern had some sense of purpose and competence about her that Reed was lacking.
    A Celine Dion song started. Chip and Candy stopped the gyrations and slow danced. Gray held out a hand. “Want to dance?”
    “I dance worse than I hit,” I warned him, though we’d been friends for enough years that he already knew it.
    “Me, too,” he said, “but I think we can both turn in a circle together.”
    Celine’s song talked about touching and kissing, which made me feel uncomfortable wrapping my arms around Gray’s neck.
    He didn’t seem to notice my discomfort as he pulled me into his arms.
    We danced then, and maybe to the rest of the world, we were just turning circles, but something else started to turn inside me.
    I didn’t analyze it or try to name it. I simply reveled in its warmth and I danced with my best friend.

    No matter how sweet the siren’s call of the past, the present pulled me back as easily as it had Maude. I sank further into my seat in the ER waiting room, still clutching a coffee as my arm rested on my purse and the envelope that spelled the end of my marriage to Gray.
    The drone of daytime television was broken by an occasional PA announcement. The smell of stale coffee that couldn’t quite mask the stench of the ER waiting room.
    I wanted nothing more than to fall back to that time when I turned circles on the dance floor, held in Gray’s arms as Celine Dion sang. But I held myself firmly in this place. I looked at Maude. “It was our junior prom and that was our first dance. And at that moment, something started to change between Gray and me. At least for me that was the moment.”
    We’d been friends from the moment Gray had wrapped his arm around me in kindergarten, but that night on the dance floor, we started to become something more.
    I remembered that prom and the song we’d danced to so clearly. “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” I clutched the envelope on my lap and realized that there was a sense of irony in the memory of that long-ago song.
    “Honey—” my waiting-partner Maude started, but she was interrupted when a doctor came into the room.
    “Mrs. Grayson?” she called.
    I didn’t want to go because that doctor might give me news I didn’t want to hear, but my new friend reached over and squeezed my hand. That tiny bit of human connection was enough to give me the courage to set down my coffee cup, grip the envelope and my purse, and move toward the doctor.
    The grim-faced doctor.
    She was tiny, but had an aura of confidence about her.
    “It was a heart attack, then?” I asked. I knew they could do things to remove blockages. Maybe that’s what she was coming to tell me.
    But I realized it wasn’t that simple as the doctor shook her head. “No, ma’am. It wasn’t a heart attack. It was a type A aortic dissection. In layman’s terms, it’s a tear in a blood vessel. We’re taking Mr. Grayson up to surgery immediately. He . . .”
    Then she spoke doctor at me. She talked about his history of high blood pressure, something I knew nothing about.
    I couldn’t hold on to the entirety of her explanation, but I gleaned words and phrases.
    Stent.
    Surgery.
    Sedation.
    Coma.
    I began to hear full sentences again when she told me that the longer Gray survived, the better his chances were.
    “His risk of death will decrease with every passing hour after the surgery,” she assured me, as if that would give me comfort.
    Risk of death.
    Despite the fact I was still clutching the divorce papers, I couldn’t process the concept of my life without Gray in it.
    “Ma’am, is there someone we can call for you?” she asked me kindly.
    I shook my head. I’d have to call Gray’s mom, Ash, and JoAnn, but that was something I could do myself. I wouldn’t have some stranger call any of