Chey’s smile was bright, her hair could be compared to rays of reddish sunshine.  She had sparkling blue eyes that were deeper than oceans.  Her laugh was like bells and when she cried even the skies wept with cold rain.  She was an angel on earth and more importantly she was mine.

Chey beamed as she peeled the potato over the white porcelain sink.  A small black radio on the windowsill sang a soft summer pop tune that all the ‘kids’ these days were into and played constantly from their expensive car stereos, she sighed.  She really likes music from the 90’s better.  How could she really complain?  Her husband loved the music.  She looked up at clock; the big black digital numbers told her it was a quarter to four.  He would be home soon.
            After she had a good pile of potatoes peeled she filled a pot with warm water and turned the burner on high.  She yawned.  She had spent the day cleaning the apartment, talking with her sister and kicking her junkie brother out of her apartment building.  Event the small tasks made her weary.  She had been like this for most of her life, she was ill a lot when she was a child so this was just something she was used to.
            She sat down on the sofa in the living room and drifted off to sleep.
            “Chey?” a male voice said, “Cheyenne?” he said shaking her sleeping body lightly, “Cheyenne!” he yelled.
            “mmmm…what?” she groaned, rubbing her eyes with her left hand.
            “I was worried about you!” he barked at her.
            “Peter, I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes downcast a small frown appearing on her lips, “I was just so tired…”
Peter sighed, feeling terrible for yelling at his wife, “No,” he paused to help her up, “I am sorry for yelling, hard day at work, Fae-lynn says ‘hi’ though.”
            “Oh, well ask Fae for th- Oh no! I forgot about dinner!” she ran past Peter into the kitchen.
            Luckily the potatoes were just finishing and the chicken was fine.
            “You always cook too much food.  Who are you trying to feed?”  Peter asked, looking down at the plate of food his wife set in front of him.
            “I am trying to feed you, goofball!” she giggled as she sat down at the table.
            “Fair enough” he replied, sticking his fork into the chicken.
            “Your mom called today,” Cheyenne said after a moment of silence.
            “Oh?  What did she have to say?” he asked, it was unlike his mother to call on days he worked.
            “She called me to call me a cradle robber and asked when you’d be home”
            Peter sighed “I don’t know what to do anymore Chey’ she’s being horrible to you” he looked into her cerulean eyes apologetically.
“I don’t mind, she’s half right.  I thirty and you are twenty” she grinned affectionately, “but she’s wrong I do love you more than anything”.

Years passed, Cheyenne’s condition never improved, trivial tasks wore her out and she could never understand why.  One cold day in December just after her thirty-fifth birthday she fell ill with pneumonia and was hospitalized.
It was there doctors noticed her poor immune system and later found a cancerous tumour in her left breast.  Peter was horrified that his lovely wife was getting sicker and sicker with no hope for recovery.
He walked slowly into the dimly lit hospital room, the walls were and eggshell white, it ran into the grey floor.  The room’s only splash of colour was the vase of pink and blue daises.  How did the flower shop colour the daises like that? He thought to himself as he stood in the doorway.  One the bed by the window she sat.  She was looking up at the clouds roll by in the crystal blue sky.  Peter frowned she was different.  Her long thick strawberry blonde hair was now thin and coarse looking.  She was thing and pale.  So lifeless, like the flowers sucked the very life and colour out of her soul so she matched the room.

Peter sighed.  The house was empty without Cheyenne.  He had gone to see her today, but she had spent the morning vomiting.  The chemotherapy and the insane cocktail of drugs they had put her on periodically made her ill.  It isn’t fair he thought to himself as he flipped though the channels on their large television, why does she have to be sick? Since Cheyenne was so involved in the community they had gotten many gifts, mostly flowers and pink ribbons.  The man who owned the Home Depot remodelled their apartment and filled it with fancy appliances.  People loved Cheyenne.
They had met when he was a high school senior, she was president of their city’s local MADD chapter and had been working closely with his High school’s SADD.  He was never really interested: he was seventeen and had thing to do and people to see.  However, one day he saw Cheyenne carrying a stack of papers to the main office.  She tripped and fell and to make a long story short it was love at first sight.  The age difference made it difficult, so nothing was really done until he approached her after his graduation ceremony.  They dated until he was twenty, and then were married.  Peter’s mother disapproved greatly but he loved Cheyenne so much he shut his mother out of his personal life.
People were running out of the room in a hurried panic.  
“Her heart is stopping” someone shouted.
“How do we stop the vomiting?” another asked frantically.
Doctors and nurses were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.  Peter had been in the room prior to the crisis but was shoved out by an odd white haired nurse once things to busy.  He was now standing in the hallway, completely oblivious to anything that was going on around him.  All the sound bled into a constant hum, much like an active beehive.  All he really knew was she was dying.  She was dying and he wasn’t aloud to see her.  “Nurse!” a doctor screeched “we need morphine NOW!”  A chubby nurse ran from a hidden room with bottles and IV bags into the room that his wife inhabited.  He was frozen; his legs forgot how to move.  He was dying inside, just like she was on the outside.
The hours passed slowly, her condition stabilizing slowly but the grim shadow of death hovered over he fourth floor ICU.  Peter was finally allowed to see her.  He sat in the dark room; only a small lamp was turned on.
Cheyenne groaned as she rolled over to look at her sleeping husband in the chair beside her bed.
“Peter” she whispered weakly.  
His sleep was light and his hazel eyes flickered open “you should be sleeping…”
he scolded gently, a smile breaking his stone lips.
“One would think that,” she mused, “But I wanted to tell you something” her voice began to crack as a serious mood hit the room, “I’m not going to last long…so I wanted to say… I love you and you made my life on this earth a joyful one” a single tear ran down her withered cheek.
“I…I love you too,” he choked out fighting back his sadness, “I’ve accepted it, but I will still miss you more than ever, mom even said she loves you…she never hated you”
Cheyenne smiled, “I love her too.” She said sleepily as she laid her head down on the pillow and drifted back to sleep.

Chey’s smile was bright, her hair could be compared to rays of reddish sunshine.  She had sparkling blue eyes that were deeper than oceans.  Her laugh was like bells and when she cried even the skies wept with cold rain.  She was an angel on earth and more importantly she was mine.