Nightmares

As day broke over the city he awoke from the nightmare.

"NO!!! Don’t leave me!!!"

His cries shattered the silence of their bedroom, jolting her to wakefulness. Her arms went instinctively to him, and she pulled him into her warm embrace.

"Hush now…" she whispered soothingly. She drew him closer as her lips brushed through his sleep-tousled hair. "I’m here, I’m here… It was only a bad dream. I’ll never leave you…"

Later that night, in their empty bed, he recalled the early-morning nightmare, and the later, waking one, just after dusk, when he’d had to identify her lifeless body.