Before I Forget His Name novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Seventeen Calls

The cabin door sealed just as his voicemail ended.

I had listened to it standing in the boarding line with one earbud in.

"Livia, I read the label. I looked up the word. I'm calling off the wedding, so don't get on that plane."

There had been a long pause, and I could hear him breathing.

"I'm coming to you. Wait for me."

I got on the plane anyway.

He called seventeen more times before the flight attendant stopped beside my seat and asked me, very politely, to switch my phone off.

I held my thumb on the screen until it went dark.

Then I typed one last message that would send when we landed.

"If you called it off because I'm sick, leaving is still right."

I read it twice before I sealed it.

Guilt was not love, and gratitude should never turn into a life sentence.

The plane landed in Zurich in the late afternoon.

A medical coordinator from the surgeon's team met me outside customs, holding a sign with only my initials.

I had barely settled in her car when the cheap phone in my bag began to ring.

I had bought it for Zurich, and only Philip, Bruno and my doctors had the number.

The screen showed a number I didn't know, with a New York area code.

I let it ring out.

The car drove down into the hospital's underground garage, where the lights were low and yellow.

The smell of burning wood filled my nose.

The coordinator was saying something about parking, but her voice stretched and slowed.

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