Joey POV

I'm on my way to check my mail outside at my mailbox. Looking up at the sky, I can tell there's rain coming in. When I reach into the box and retrieve my mail there's an assortment of junk mail, and a bill or two and a envelope that has some nice hand writing on it. I open the envelope and a cracking thunder rumbles in the distance in perfect timing as I see the pictures on the wedding invitation. Max is looking all cool and tough, but Madison is not the female face smiling on the card stock paper. It's my Susanna. No, it can't be.

In a mad dash I started running like crazy to get to her apartment. It never occurred to me to hop in my car, until I was already at the apartment door. Madison came to the door and her face was stained with tears. "Madison! Where! Is! Susanna!" It comes out more as yelling, than a question.

Only able to make blubbering sounds through her tears. She finally manages to get me to understand, "Dress... shop..." She collapses back on the couch with a 5 gallon of Neapolitan ice cream, after slipping me a piece of paper.

"Thanks! Sorry!" I say before dashing out of the apartment and until I reach the dress shop Madison had wrote down.

Today I'm acting first, thinking later. I stampede into the dress shop and am being chased by a woman screaming, "You can't go back there!" I don't listen, just keep going until I reach a display room and there she is.

Susanna. Dressed in a breath taking white dress with sleeves I finally stop and I'm starring at her. She turns and has the most beautiful smile on her face. Her mouth opens and I hear her say, "There's the man I love." I go to step forward and hug her, when suddenly Max passes me by and hugs her instead.

I collapse to my knees, crying out, "NO! Why?" I hear sobbing and then I realize that it's me. I give a shudder and glance around. I let out a sigh, "Thank you, God, for that just being a dream." My eyes wander to the hospital bed beside me. Susanna is still lying there, the only sign of life the beeping of the heart machine next to me.

Susanna may not be marrying someone else, but the woman that... I ... deeply care about is lying here in a hospital bed with terrible injuries. I feel my heart breaking as I look at her still body and closed eyelids. But the steady beeping of the heart machine and the rise and fall of her chest tell me that she is still alive. I close my eyes and send up another prayer.