Final Flashbacks of Love

The bright, sterile lights of the operating room cast a ghostly glow on her skin as she lay on the cold table. The scent of antiseptic filled the air, crisp and clinical, yet her mind wandered elsewhere--far from the steel and the masked faces surrounding her.
The anesthetist's voice was calm, almost tender. "Mrs. T., can you tell me about the last book you read? What was it about?"
She parted her lips to answer, her voice soft, dreamlike. She began to speak, her words floating in the air like delicate petals caught in a breeze. But slowly, steadily, consciousness slipped from her grasp, like sand through cupped hands.
They say that in the final moments before sleep or oblivion, the mind becomes a theater of memory--a place where the past plays in vivid flashes, unbidden yet relentless. Ten minutes, maybe less, where the happiest joys and the deepest sorrows intertwine. A reckoning of sorts, an intimate dialogue with oneself.
She, too, had her ten minutes.
And the first memory that surged through her veins was pain. The moment she lost trust in the world, the day her innocence cracked like fragile glass. Her father's voice, sharp and unforgiving. His hand, the sting of it against her back. The betrayal of it. The weight of love turned cruel. The tears she swallowed that day, warm and bitter, like unshed screams.
But pain was never the only thing memory carried.
A breath later, another face emerged from the haze--a light, a salvation. Him. Her lifeline. She had once been asked why she called him that, and with a wistful smile, she had answered, "Because life was never kind to me. It never loved me. But as if by some divine mercy, the sky sent him."
At first, he had adored her like something sacred. He called her my liver--a phrase so strange yet so tender, for in his world, losing her meant ceasing to exist. And she, too, clung to him as if he were the last warmth in a cold, indifferent world. Their love was not just passion; it was necessity, the quiet kind that binds souls tighter than flesh ever could.
In those fleeting moments before darkness took her, she saw him again--his eyes, filled with longing, the way they shimmered when they kissed for the first time. She saw the way he reached for her in his sleep, just to make sure she was still there. The way he traced gentle kisses along the back of her hand, as if worshiping the very air she touched.
She remembered how he carried regret in the smallest of moments, how his gaze softened when she was hurt, how his presence alone could quiet the storms inside her.
She had wanted to be his forever. A childish wish, perhaps, but wasn't love, at its core, beautifully foolish?
As the world around her faded into a soft blur, the anesthetist's voice echoed distantly. Her mind, however, clung to one last vision--his smile, his warmth, the sanctuary of his embrace.
And just before the final whisper of consciousness left her, she smiled and breathed out a single word, barely audible, yet heavy with love.
"Luv..."
Even in the depths of her most anxious moment, he was the only thought that remained. He was her comfort. Her refuge. Her treasure.