Originally published at kemptation.com on 29 June 2015. Words by Richard Kemp

Samantha Crain is an expert storyteller, spinning delicate yarns with her beautiful words and music. The following short story was inspired by the singer-songwriter’s latest record, Under Branch & Thorn & Tree.

It’s not until you see it laid out before you that you realise how short this life really is. Do you ever think about that?

It’s so lonely this side of the bed, staring at you through all the pipes and wires that keep your heart and lungs in check. The smell in here, I wonder, do you notice? Do you want to keel over too every time the stench of urine and medicine wafts its way up your nostrils?

The doctors have stopped visiting – the family too, the grandchildren anyway. It was when you started forgetting people’s names. Faces are one thing ­– your sight’s been rotten for years after all – but forgetting the names of your own grandchildren. They’d ask me why you remember one but not the other. It’s hard not to take those things personally.

Our kids still come to see you; do you see them? I’m not sure they want to be here, though. To see you like this, so weak, so vacant: their hero, defeated. Chained to a mechanical bed of plastic and rubber, machines beeping all around you as the help in white coats mill up and down, reminding us all that you’re probably not getting out this time.

What do you think? Your chances, I mean. I can’t tell anymore. I’m sorry, darling, but it’s true. You haven’t spoken in over a year, not past the beleaguered grunts and one-word commands that make no sense at all.

It’s so lonely this side of the bed. Seeing a broken man unable to hold himself up. I often wonder: what do you see? Is it the woman you loved? The one you married so young? Do you see the person who listened to Wagner with you turned all the way up? Do you see the girl you fought for all those times when the family would never approve? Do you see the one who stuck by you even when you did the stupidest things?

Or, do you see a lonely old woman who’s lost her husband to a tiny shell of a once-great man who can no longer speak? Do you see a shattered lover who has nothing left?

People come by the house every day to check on me, to see how I am. The faces keep changing, but the questions remain: can I get you anything? Let me know what you need, won’t you? I tell them all the same: I want nothing. I need nothing. All I really want is you, but then they bring me back here to talk to a statue. Do you even know I’m here? I shouldn’t say such things, but it’s hard to cope sometimes. I wish we’d seen this coming; at least we would’ve had time to decide what to do. Would you still want to be here? If it were me in bed, what then?

Instead, I stare through your eyes and feed you mashed-up apple crumble. I try to remember the man I once knew, the one I loved for so many years, but it’s hard with the smell of shit in the air and all those screams coming from down the hall. Is there anyone I could have loved more than you? I doubt it. When I’m home alone, wrapped up in bed, I try to imagine the covers are your arms, so strong, the pillow your chest. I fall asleep this way, so comfortable, so warm, so safe. I dream of our lives before the bed, a life that seems so far away now.

I’ve taken down some of the family photos – the nephews and nieces we never see – and replaced them with pictures of you and me. That time at the fairground and during the war when we first met.

I was stood on the landing the other day, staring at the photos, when a carer came by. Another new face, a short, skinny man, he said, ‘looked better today. You never know, he might be coming home soon.’ I winced at this and screamed at him, tears filling my eyes as quickly as anger filled everything else. There was no way you were ever coming back, I snarled. How dare he say that to me? The man’s eyes had widened. He was shaking. ‘Sorry,’ he whispered, and sloped off. The carer had changed by the next day.

I went back to looking at the photos, smiling in the way you always smiled at me. A love so pure, so real. I lay a hand on my hip as if it were yours and I thought about where you were now: in the mechanical bed covered in plastic, with the television blaring and food dribbling from your mouth. I thought about that and I thought about you, then I thought to myself, ‘if you ever come back, could you bring my heart?’

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Samantha Crain‘s latest record, Under Branch & Thorn & Tree, is released on 17th July 2015 via Full Time Hobby. Pre-order the record now.