I don't typically post stories in the "Loving Wives" category, but that seems to be where this one fits best. It's shorter than most of my stories, so hopefully that will lessen the pain for some of you.

The inspiration for this story came to me partially from a dream and partially from my own life experiences. It is a work of fiction involving several known truths of science and medicine, with a healthy dose of my imagination thrown it to piss some people off.

***

"Why, Barb?"

I was shocked to hear my husband, Jace's voice. After all, I was alone in my car, my cell phone had been turned off since I had dropped Jace off forty-five minute previous, and my thoughts were on an entirely different man at the moment. I returned my thoughts to navigating the route that would take me to my destination and the man who waited for me there.

"Why, Barb?" the voice repeated, "Why do you want to do this?"

I sighed and answered the voice in my head, "It's not that I simply want to do this, I need to do this. You wouldn't understand."

I giggled as I imagined two little cartoon characters, one symbolizing my conscience and the other symbolizing my free will, each standing on one of my shoulders as they argued their point and counterpoint, trying to convince me of the merits that their opinion held.

"You're right, Barb. I don't understand why you would want to throw away five years of marriage and ruin our family. Maybe if you explain it to me first it will be easier when you have to explain it to the twins."

"Kris and Kara will never know because you will never know," my thoughts responded. "I have purposely planned this for today so that you would not be in any position to find out about it. A couple of hours tops and then it will be out of my system and no one will be any the wiser."

"I'll know. I'll know everything. I suspected your plans since I saw the two of you whispering at your high school reunion. I am with you now, Barb, and while it seems like a dream in my head, I am hearing your thoughts, feeling your feelings. I feel your excitement and your apprehension, but what I am not feeling is a hint of love for anyone other than yourself right now. Why is that?"

"Okay, this is just too weird. Fine, I never mentioned Brent to you before, but he was my first love. We dated through high school until he broke up with me because I wouldn't have sex with him. I was devastated, but committed to being a virgin until my wedding night. When I gave myself to you the night that you proposed, I broke that commitment, but I have never regretted it for a minute. I have always loved making love with you but did feel regrets over missing the opportunity to have sex with Brent. When I saw him at the reunion, I had to admit to myself that I still carried a small torch for him."

"That was obvious to anyone who saw you two looking at each other. You have never looked at me that way."

"Yes, I do!" I screamed in my head. "You just take me for granted so much that you don't see things anymore. You've become too complacent and comfortable with me, and me with you."

"Barb, you know better than that, so don't try to justify your intended actions by blaming me or our relationship. If you don't see the love in my eyes, hear it in my words or feel it in my touch, it is because you have pulled away from that love. You have tossed it away just like you are preparing to toss our marriage away. Your love for this old boyfriend is being rekindled and you are hoping to ignite it completely today. Tell me I'm wrong."

My car's windows were rolled up so people on the freeway who saw me talking to myself as they passed must assume that I was on a hands-free cell phone call instead of talking to myself, otherwise they would be reporting a crazy woman to the Highway Patrol.

"Yes, I have been confused since Brent and I hooked up at the reunion," I thought. "However, I know that I don't love you any less. Isn't there anything in your past that you wish that you had another chance to do over, to change the outcome? That's all I'm doing here. I'm remedying a regret and there is no risk in that where we are concerned."

"So, you won't regret destroying my heart and ruining our marriage? If you do, how do you plan on remedying those regrets, are you going to un-fuck your high school sweetheart?"

"None of that will happen because you will never know about it," I repeated while taking the airport exit from the freeway. "There is no way that you will ever find out. One and done is all this will be."

"You don't think I will know everything that happened when I see you later? After you've cleaned the signs of sex off and changed back into the clothes that you were wearing when you dropped me off. Your thoughts have betrayed you as certainly as you intend to betray me and our marriage."

I pulled into the driveway for the airport Hilton at 11:56 AM and pulled alongside the curb. I had to get the voice of my husband out of my head before I pulled up to the valet parking station. "Listen, let this go. I need to do this and I am going to do this. You will never see any difference in me or our marriage once it's over. I love you."

"I beg you not to do this, Barb. You'll kill me if you do."

"Quit being so melodramatic. I'll see you in a few hours."

The voice in my head sounded so despondent when it said, "Tell the twins how much I loved them. Goodbye, Barb."

I shook my head to try and clear the jumble within it, pulled forward to the valet station, and verified that my cell phone was still turned off. I didn't want any more interruptions, from inside my head or anyplace else.

~~~

"Well, that was an hour of my life that I will never get back," I thought as I waited for the valet to bring my car around.

Brent may have aged ten years since high school, but in that time he had learned zilch about being a decent lover. His amateurish efforts at foreplay should have foretold how disappointing he would be, but I attributed it to him being nervous or something other than ineptitude. Wrong.

He was a mediocre kisser, had no idea how to stimulate a woman's breasts, and expressed total disgust at the thought of licking a pussy. Hell, he barely even wanted to touch it with his fingers.

His cock was not much larger than one of Jace's thumbs, and while size doesn't necessarily mean that a man can't satisfy a woman, Brent had completely lacked any aptitude in that regard. The only reason that my pussy was wet enough for him to slide in as easily as he had was that I had been fingering myself while giving him a blowjob to get him hard.

He came inside my pussy after only two quick thrusts and then expected me to get him hard again with my mouth, which I reluctantly did. When he entered me a second time, I envisioned him lasting quite a bit longer since he had already cum once, and I suppose he did. It took him around ten quick thrusts to have his second orgasm.

I was done. I got off the bed and went into the bathroom to clean myself a bit before getting dressed. As I sat on the toilet, I wondered which embarrassment would be worse; having Jace find out about my little fling, or him learning what a miserable time I had while betraying him.

Brent was sitting up on the bed, leaning against the headboard when I reentered the room. He smiled and said, "That was as amazing as I always knew it would be."

"I'm glad you liked it," I said as I started getting dressed. "I need to get home."

"When do you think we can get together again?" Brent asked hopefully.

I considered my answer as I stared at him. He really had no clue how lousy he was in bed.

"I don't think that would be a good idea. What we had ended years ago. We need to both move on now. I gave us closure on what we both wanted, but I won't risk my marriage over you, Brent."

"I love you, Barb. I've never stopped loving you. You can't be that happy with your marriage or you wouldn't be here now. Why don't you give us a chance?"

"No, Brent. I'm here because I thought that I owed it to you, and myself, to finally see what having sex together would be like. That's over with, so we're over with. I'm sorry."

I picked up my purse and walked out of the room without waiting for any more pleas from him.

While waiting for the light to change which would allow me to pull out of the hotel parking lot and head towards the freeway, I turned my cell phone back on. As it activated, I noticed that I had missed about a half dozen calls from numbers that I didn't recognize. Oh well, if they were important, they would have left voicemails. I would check when I got home. I wanted to take a shower and wash the physical memory of Brent completely from my body before I went to pick up Jace.

I checked the time as I pulled into my garage and saw that it was after two and I was already late to pick up Jace. I wondered if one of the missed calls had been from him since he didn't have his cell phone with him and would have had to use someone else's phone to call me. I dialed my access for voicemail as I walked into my house.

The first message had arrived a little over two hours ago. I must have just missed it shortly after I had arrive at the Hilton. "Mrs. Burns, please contact the surgery nurses' station at Memorial Hospital as soon as you receive this message. Thank you." The recording included a number that matched the one on the caller ID. All the remaining messages were from the same number. I removed my dress as I entered the master bedroom and then dialed the specified number, assuming that they were merely notifying me that my husband was ready to be picked up.

"Surgery nurses' station," a dejected sounding woman answered.

"Hi, my name is Barbara Burns. I had a message to call..."

"Uh, oh yes, Mrs. Burns. Please hold for a moment."

I listened to music on hold for almost five minutes, during which time I stripped out of my bra and panties. I placed them into the hamper and then turned the water on in the shower to let it start warming. I studied myself in the mirror trying to see if any of the changes that the voice in my head had predicted from earlier were evident.

My introspection was interrupted by a male voice on the phone, "Mrs. Burns, this is Doctor Evanston. We met while the bone marrow donation procedure was being explained to your husband."

"Yes, I remember you, Doctor Evanston. What can I do for you?"

"Mrs. Burns, we have some information related to your husband that we need to discuss with you in person. How soon can you get here to the hospital?"

"What kind of information? I will be leaving home shortly to pick him up, so can you tell me now or can it wait until I get there?"

"I'm sorry, but this information cannot be delivered over the phone. How soon can you get here?"

"I can be there in about forty-five minutes," I said. "Can't you tell me anything about what this is concerning? Is Jace alright?"

"Please ask for me when you get here, Mrs. Burns. I'll be waiting for you."

The call was unceremoniously disconnected, leaving me with no answers as to why the doctor assigned to perform the bone marrow donation procedure on my husband was so anxious to speak with me in person. Should I be worried?

Stepping into the shower, I thought back to the discussion we had had with the doctors when they explained the procedure to us, in particular, the potential side effects. Other than the risks typically associated with general anesthesia, bleeding and infection of the site where the needle was inserted were the most common, and easily treatable. Injury to nerves and blood vessels near the site of the marrow withdrawal or damage to the bone were rare, and there had been only one death attributed to bone marrow donation anywhere in the world.

No, this was a safe procedure that Jace had insisted on having when his blood type matched that of one of his coworker's children suffering from leukemia. Turning off the shower I began wondering if the doctors had detected something in Jace's bone marrow that caused them concern. My God, could Jace be sick with cancer or something else?

Concern for Jace finally overcame me and I cursed myself for being so lackadaisical about getting back to the hospital to pick him up. I dressed as quickly as I could and was headed to the hospital within five minutes. I called my mom and asked her to pick up the twins from daycare unless she heard from me before their normal pick-up time of 4 PM.

It took me more than fifteen minutes to find a parking spot at the hospital, and it was at the farthest extremes of the visitor lot, which put it almost a half-mile away from the buildings. I ran, walked, and ran again on my way to the hospital entrance. I knew where the surgery area was from our earlier orientation on the procedure, so I ignored the volunteer at the information desk trying to assist me. The elevators in hospitals are notoriously slow but they never seemed slower than right then.

Finally reaching the surgery nurses' station on the fourth floor, I explained who I was, asked how Jace was and asked to see Doctor Evanston. I was directed to a small, private waiting room where I paced nervously for several minutes before the door opened and the familiar face of Doctor Evanston appeared. He was accompanied by a middle-aged woman and they were both wearing surgical scrubs.

"Mrs. Burns, this is Doctor Wilton," Doctor Evanston explained. "Please have a seat."

I reluctantly took a seat on the small sofa while the two doctors each took one of the chairs in the room. They sat facing me with serious expressions on their faces.

"How's Jace?" I asked. "Were there complications with the procedure?"

Doctor Evanston glanced at Doctor Wilton and then back to me, "I'm afraid that we never actually got to the procedure, Mrs. Burns. I'm sorry to inform you that your husband's heart stopped soon after the general anesthesia was administered."

I gasped. Well, if a person's heart is going to stop, being in a hospital is probably the best place for it to happen. "Did he have a heart attack? Will he be alright?"

Doctor Wilton spoke for the first time, "The heart was functioning normally, right up until it just stopped beating. There were no signs of any type of distress typically associated with a heart attack. Our pathologist will be conducting an autopsy tomorrow, but as of this time..."

"AUTOPSY!" I screamed. "You mean that Jace is dead? You couldn't save him?"

Tears flooded my eyes, blurring the faces of the two doctors present, but I recognized Doctor Evanston's voice as he explained, "Every effort was made to save your husband, including me cracking his chest and massaging his heart with my own hands. In all my years in medicine, I have never witnessed anything as sudden or final as we experienced with your husband. I'm sorry."

Doctor Wilton handed me a box of tissue and said, "All of the monitor logs will be reviewed by the pathologist and no stone will be left unturned to try and understand what went wrong. We are especially interested in the EEG monitor logs. The anesthesiologist saw brain activity just prior to the heart stopping that should not have been occurring in an unconscious person, yet every other indication was that your husband was fully sedated."

I was inconsolable as I came to terms with what I had been told. My husband, my partner, my soulmate, the man that I intended to spend the rest of my life with was gone. The father of my twin daughters, our rock. Gone.

There had to be some mistake. Jace couldn't be dead. He was always so alive, so compassionate and giving to others. He had demonstrated that by offering to donate his bone marrow to save a child that he didn't even know. I finally composed myself enough to ask, "Can I see him?"

Doctor Evanston stood and said, "Of course, I'll escort you to him."

I rose and Doctor Evanston gently took my upper arm to support me as we exited to room. Doctor Wilton didn't join us as we headed toward the elevator bank and Doctor Evanston pressed the 'down' call button. As the elevator doors opened, I am certain that everyone on it recognized the situation with a crying woman being escorted by a physician in scrubs, still holding a box of tissues. We stepped on and the doctor pressed the button for the basement of the hospital.

Doctor Evanston and I were the lone occupants of the elevator when it opened in the basement. He led me down a long hallway and through a doorway labeled, "Pathology". We walked past several rooms before he opened a door for me and followed me in. I had seen enough depictions of morgues on television to recognize what the wall of large drawers likely contained.

Only one of the drawers had a tag affixed to it. Doctor Evanston released my arm and placed his hand on the drawer handle. I stood aside to allow him to pull the drawer out as far as it would go. The sheet-covered body halted directly in front of me. Doctor Evanston folded the sheet back, exposing Jace's head.

Tears flooded my eyes again as I gazed down at my husband. Jace's once handsome face held an expression of torment such as I had never seen. His eyes were closed, but there was no mistaking the fact that he had died while experiencing something terrible. Doctor Wilton had mentioned that Jace was completely sedated, so he shouldn't have been able to feel anything, and according to Doctor Evanston, nothing had yet been done to him. The procedure hadn't yet started.

I leaned down and gently kissed Jace on the lips. They were so cold. "I love you, Jace. I will always love you."

I stood back up and watched as Doctor Evanston replaced the sheet over Jace's head and slowly slid the drawer closed. When he stepped back to face me, I glanced over at the tag on the drawer.

"Burns, Jace C. / T.O.D.: 12:01 PM"

"What does 'T.O.D.' mean?" I asked as Doctor Evanston took my arm again and began escorting me out of the morgue.

"It stands for 'Time of Death'. Although we continued trying to restart your husband's heart for over half an hour, the T.O.D. listed is when it actually stopped, so that is the recorded time."

Realization hit me like a sledgehammer. I collapsed to the floor screaming, "Oh God, I killed him! I killed Jace..."

~~~

I awoke in a haze. Examining my surroundings, I easily deduced that I was somewhere in the hospital, and judging by the curtains around the bed and the sounds outside the curtain, I was likely in the emergency room somewhere. I raised my arm and saw that I was still wearing the clothes I had been wearing when I arrived to pick up Jace, and then the realization of why I was there struck with a severity that I wasn't prepared for.

"JACE!" I screamed.

The curtain was quickly pulled aside and a nurse stood beside me, "It's okay, Mrs. Burns. You fainted and we put you here to allow you to rest. I was just preparing something that Doctor Evanston prescribed to help you calm down. Here you go."

I felt her swab my arm, followed by the gentle prick of a needle as she gave me an injection.

"Now you just rest and give the medicine a chance to take effect. You'll feel better in a few minutes."

I don't know what was in that shot, but it was some pretty good shit. My body relaxed and my mind calmed enough for me to try to understand what I had experienced when hearing Jace's voice in my head. Had he actually been inside my mind, fully aware of my intentions to betray him and our marriage with Brent? I tried to recall everything that his voice had said, and the more that I reflected on them, the more convinced I was that Jace had somehow done just that. Those weren't cartoon characters arguing on my shoulders, that was my selfishness arguing with the man that I loved more than anything in the world. How had he done it, and why hadn't I listened to him?

The nurse returned to check on me. I asked her if it would be possible for me to speak with the anesthesiologist who had been in the surgery with my husband. She said that she would check and let me know.

The concept of time had escaped me, but it must have been around fifteen minutes before a pretty middle-aged woman with red hair visible under her scrub cap pushed the curtains aside and stood beside my bed.

"Mrs. Burns, I'm Doctor Fender. I am sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," I said. "Were you my husband's anesthesiologist?"

"No, that was my partner, Doctor Yu. She is on leave while the circumstances of your husband's death are investigated. Are there any questions that I might answer for you?"

"Do you know what happened with Jace?"

"I was present at the surgical post-mortem briefing," Doctor Fender said. "I know as much, or as little as anyone right now. Everything was perfectly normal and your husband was tolerating the sedation drugs without complication when his heart just suddenly stopped beating without warning. You have to understand, we monitor the heart very carefully when administering sedation drugs. The heart is a critical indicator of physical response to the drugs being administered. If there are any issues with the body tolerating the drugs, the heart rate or rhythm is usually one of the first indicators. Your husband's heart never showed any signs of distress or intolerance. It just suddenly stopped, and we couldn't get it started again."

I nodded and said, "Dr. Wilton mentioned something about Jace's brain activity..."

"Yes, that is something that the pathologist wants to discuss with a neurologist."

"What could the significance of the brain activity be?" I asked.

"The purpose of general anesthesia is to remove the patient from a state of consciousness and place them safely into a state of unconsciousness. Consciousness has two parts, arousal and awareness. Arousal describes the degree to which an individual can interact with their environment. Awareness is the depth and content of an aroused state. In other words, the individual is cognizant of themselves and their surroundings. We monitor patients carefully to ensure that they are neither aroused nor aware during a surgical procedure. The physical sedation of your husband was undeniable, but the brain activity tends to indicate that his brain wasn't aroused, but it might have been aware to some degree. It was like he was asleep, but aware of being so. Something like that."

"Doctor, have you ever heard of someone having telepathic experiences while under general anesthesia?" I asked.

"Why do you ask?"

"After I dropped my husband off, and around the time that he would have been under general anesthesia, I heard his voice in my head. These weren't merely thoughts of him, I heard his voice as clearly as if he was in the car with me. We actually had a conversation about something that I was preparing to do which he didn't agree with. I dismissed it as my conscience impersonating my husband, but now I'm not certain that was the case. Have you ever heard of anything like that?"

Doctor Fender considered my question and said, "No, but there have been unsubstantiated reports of people in various stages of coma communicating telepathically with their loved ones. Most commonly, these reports have been attributed to retrocognition where the loved one remembers something about the comatose patient that they had forgotten. What you are describing is intuitive telepathy, where your husband, while under general anesthesia, transferred information from your mind to his and communicated with you about that information."

I nodded and said, "That is exactly what I believed happened. Is it possible?"

Doctor Fender answered, "I know of no reported instances where general anesthesia is concerned, but I have enough respect for the human mind to never discount anything related to its powers."

"Thank you," I said.

"Again, I'm terribly sorry for your loss," Doctor Fender said as she scooted around the curtain and disappeared.

I would never be able to prove it, but then, the only person who had to know the truth was me. I truly had been the cause of Jace's death and I now knew it. Somehow, someway, his mind had reached into mine and seen my pending betrayal. As he was being prepared to unselfishly donate life-saving bone marrow for a child he didn't know, the woman who had vowed to love, honor, and forsake all others was preparing to break every one of these. He knew it and it broke his heart so completely that it stopped beating.

I had taunted the voice in my head, telling it that Jace would never know, but he had known. Now I know that he had known and he couldn't tolerate what I was planning to do. Whether he willed his heart to stop or if that was a physiological reaction to the shock of my betrayal will not be answered during my mortal lifetime. The result was the same and I was responsible.

~~~

I know that a lot of people will think that I got off easy, but they would be wrong.

Jake lived mere minutes with knowledge of my betrayal, I have to live with it for the rest of my life. I face the guilt every second of every minute of every hour of every day. I have to look into the sad eyes of my twin daughters every time they think of their father, the man that they resemble so much and adored unconditionally with the knowledge that they are growing up without him due to my selfishness. Oh believe me, I am suffering more than you will ever know.

I did confess my suspected role in Jace's death to his parents, and while they were disappointed in my infidelity, they dismissed my belief that Jace had died because he had been aware of it and tried to talk me out of it through some telepathic intervention. I'm not certain whether they doubted me or they just wanted to maintain a relationship with me that would allow them to continue seeing their granddaughters.

I didn't have to get any lawyers involved before the insurance companies for the hospital, the surgeons, and the anesthesiologist all started throwing settlement offers at me. When all was said and done, along with Jace's life insurance through his work, the girls and I were set for life financially, including their college funds. The money still sits mostly in trust accounts except for that which I used to go back to school to get a doctorate in clinical neurologic therapy. I work exclusively studying patients in various stages of disordered consciousness and their responses to targeted telepathic communications. The controlled studies involving people who claim to have telepathic abilities have less than a ten percent success rate while the controlled studies involving members of the patient's family have achieved almost three times that. The studies will be published next month.

Understanding the ability of an unconscious person to communicate telepathically with another person came too late for me. I hope to save anyone else from the grief that not understanding caused me.

***

My best friend while growing up sustained a head injury while on duty as a police officer. He lived for seven years in a vegetative coma with no evident cognitive abilities, yet there were many times that his wife or children would insist that he had been speaking to them in their minds, telling them that he loved them and communicating about something related to his care or condition that concerned him. When they would visit and inquire about the concern, they would learn that something had changed in his care or situation without them being notified.

Whether you believe in telepathy or not, the ability for emotional stress or the experiencing of a shocking event such as the death of a loved one has been documented in several medical cases as the cause for a person's heart to stop. Sometimes referred to a "Broken Heart Syndrome", it occurs most frequently with women, but men are not immune from its affects.