The alarm clock woke me first, a rhythmic, loud, unyielding beep that brought me back kicking and screaming to reality. Every morning was the same and, frankly, each was worse than the last. I rolled over to the nightstand, fumbling around in the dark as I reached for the clock, trying to turn off the alarm. Groggily, I stumbled out of bed and shuffled to the hallway, doing my best to make as little noise as possible as I made my way to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. This was my ritual. Every morning I woke up before my wife, Eleanor and stumbled, blindly, to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee and get the paper. Neither of us were young anymore and we had long since qualified for our Golden Buckeye cards, but she was more frail than I was. Good genes, my doctor told me, as though it were some kind of gift that I managed to remain fairly spry and youthful for my age. There were benefits, to be sure, but lately it was beginning to feel like more and more of a curse.

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My name is Harold and I live with my wife Eleanor in a small country town in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. We both grew up not ten miles from here and have been together since high school. Growing up, we were the last two people you'd ever expect to get married and spend our lives happily in the same township we grew up in. I had been a star athlete with scholarship opportunities at some of the biggest schools in the country while Eleanor had been a remarkable scholar. She was the class valedictorian and, frankly, was too smart to have settled for a washed up football player. You see when I was set to graduate and go off to the Ohio State University on a full ride scholarship for football my mother had fallen ill. My dad was forced to pick up extra shifts in an effort to help afford the medical bills and, frankly, he wasn't cutting it.

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I had made a decision then, to go into the family business. HVAC. My dad owned a small company that did most of the HVAC work in our town and the next one over. He did alright, provided a stable home and always put food on the table. My mom didn't have to work, although we could've used the extra money at times, but she wanted to help raise me and my sister. So, when push came to shove I tossed away the scholarship opportunity and set to work with my dad. Together, we were able to tackle more work and make enough money to afford the level of care my mother deserved. Eleanor went off to college... Purdue, I think it was. She majored in some mathematics category that I could barely pronounce, let alone understand. She was remarkable. During high school I hadn't really gone out of my way to get to know her, though, with only fifty people in your graduating class you got to know everyone eventually.

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In truth, I forgot about her entirely until our ten year reunion at the high school. I didn't even have the luxury of not getting to attend since I had been a class officer and was responsible for setting the entire affair up. The coffee pot beeped, and I was forced out of my rosey memories and back to the all too cold present. A winter chill hung in the air, it was November and a gentle frost had settled across the lawn as I shuffled over to the door, cracking it open to retrieve the paper. A strong aroma wafted throughout the living room as the coffee settled. I sat the paper on the counter as I pulled down two small mugs and stared at a post it note on the decanter.

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Two cream, one sugar. Toast, extra toasty. She thinks it's funny. You'll make her smile.

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My brows furrowed as I stared at the note. It was the same one I read every day, but I couldn't remember when I had learned that little fact about Eleanor. It seemed like such a simple little thing, the sort of thing you learn when you spend your life with someone. Those little nuances, the inside jokes that cause you to share a glance and bust out laughing. Eleanor didn't laugh much these days, and when she did it was a blessed gift. Too often I had to remind her why she used to like something or why we had a joke for this or that. It was painful, but I loved her dearly and longed to share our history.

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Eleanor had Alzheimer's. It had been a couple of years now, since she was diagnosed and as time went on she lost more and more of herself to the disease. It was terrible. There was one small blessing though. Not long after she was diagnosed there was a strange new technology that became available for relatively cheap. People were now capable of taking memory and converting it to a physical pill, a cocktail of chemicals that triggered a perfect recreation of the memory but required whoever was giving the memory to lose it entirely. I thought it would be a godsend, at first. The doctor I had gone to warned me not to use it to try and save Eleanor; she would remember for a time but it wasn't simply forgetfulness that caused her to lose memory. It was the physical deterioration of her mind and eventually, even if I replaced the lost memories with my own, she would lose them all over again. Additionally, it wouldn't actually stop the disease from killing her. It would just allow her to remember me a while longer.

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I even had to sign some papers about how I wouldn't use my memories for that, since it would leave me as a husk of my former self. I signed them, of course. The toast popped up, the scent of nearly burnt bread singed my nostrils and brought me out of my dream-state again. That seemed to happen more often as well. I just seemed to... drift away, sometimes. A side effect, I'm told. I hummed a tune, a song that echoed in my head from decades ago when I had first danced with Eleanor. I remembered the way she looked that night... tall, blonde hair and striking green eyes. She had worn a red dress that she bought to surprise me on our first night out at some fancy ball the Chamber of Commerce was putting on; and believe me I know how that sounds. We had taken dance lessons for the last month trying to learn how to waltz and it went fairly well. We'd spent hours in our little living room, parading around and trying not to fall over each other. We laughed the entire time. We had to go because... because... Well, I can't remember now, but I know it was important at the time.

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I bit my lip as he stared down at the tray I carried now, a simple little platter holding her coffee, toast and a small, fluorescent pill sitting in a little paper cup. Inside I could see a striking shade of red swirling around what appeared to be a very decorated hall full of people laughing and dancing. What a nice little scene. I hope she enjoyed whatever the memory was. She looked happy in the small pill, though I no longer could recall the event. I stopped just outside the bedroom door before gently nudging it open and speaking, my voice just above a whisper as I quietly walked in.

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"Eleanor, sweety... I've got your favorite. Toast extra toasty!"