Pain shooting left arm. Shooting left arm pain. Left pain shooting arm. Four words echoed in my head.

My wife said, “Have a drink, Bibi. Just have a drink.”

Everything I’d learned about love, I learned it from Greene. He saved my marriage three times. But this was too close to fiction and I didn’t like how it ended.

“I don’t think it was dinner. It’s something else.”

I lost the fix in my left leg and fell toward her dresser. My cheek hit the edge and my arm swept the little apothecary’s chest of perfumes onto the floor. The broken stench doubled the pain and amplified the ringing. Starkness crept into my vision – red and white pixelation.

It saddened me. My only thought was that she didn’t rush in. She didn’t rush like I’d have wanted her to.