He was a good guy. She was a bad girl. And then they came together.
He was born to a man of the cloth. His upbringing had been strict. At some point, he made the decision to remain on the straight and narrow.
She'd never known her father. He left before she was two. Her mother did many things to make ends meet. One of those was visits by uncles during which she was told to wait outside their one room apartment.
By fifteen she had her own clientele.
The outreach was to those who lived on or hustled on the streets. When he turned and saw her, he knew (without a doubt) that she was the one. He also knew, almost instantly, that it was going to be an uphill task following through.
First, he had to wrestle his own dreams and expectations, in the wife department, to the ground. Getting her to listen, consider and agree took months. Months of frustrating doggedness and exasperating response. Then he had to break the news to those who had a right to know, starting with his parents. It had not taken them too long to come around. His mother's reservation was still discernible though.
Then the talk began.
Two years plus after marriage, they were yet to abate.
Now, it was that she could not get pregnant -- having committed too many abortions.
What only he, his wife and their family doctor knew, was that the challenge lay with him. When the test results showed that, it broke him. She encouraged him, promising they'd get through it together. Her reason was simple: he stayed with her when he could have walked. She would not leave him.
He turned to his wife with a smile. She was the best thing ever. Even waking him up this morning to announce she was expecting came a distant second.
"Babe, look out!"
While his brain was registering the danger, his hands were twisting the steering away from the car that just emerged from the side street onto the road.
He slammed into it anyway. His last conscious thought was that the airbag did not deploy.
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