| "If you think for one second that I'm going to sit here and applaud you and kiss you on the cheek and send you gently into the night, you've got another thing coming...You're gonna live - if it's the last thing you do," Josh ordered after hearing Reva Shayne had planned to go out in a blaze of glory, in basically the same way she'd left him twice before. But Josh was still catching up at that point, gut-punched at the prospect of losing her again. For once, he had a chance to really say good-bye - and he couldn't bring himself to do it. He spent the week forced to process that realization, from the second he stormed angrily into her room and found her, stunningly, on the brink of death.
It was a powerful time for all those who made it to Reva's bedside, but perhaps none more than for a blindsided Josh and Cassie, who found love with each other when Reva first set out on her misguided plan to spare them any pain. Imagine the devastation for Cassie, overwhelmed with two major heartbreaks - one so horrible that to worry about the other would feel callous, but you know she couldn't help but let her mind slip there occasionally, when she wasn't making phone calls or assuring someone that she was okay. Maybe when she heard Josh sob to Reva, "I'll never let you go," or when she could barely speak as her sister weakly begged her to take care of him. At one point, Josh and Cassie sat shell-shocked together in the waiting room, close enough to touch but not touching, until a nurse brought them the three wedding rings that Reva had worn on a chain around her neck. Cassie gave them to Josh, who dangled them in the air until they literally eclipsed her face. "Nothing has changed," he unconvincingly reassured her. "My sister is dying. She never wanted to leave you; she never stopped loving you. Everything has changed," was Cassie's emphatic, hollow response, as she prepared to step respectfully aside (for now). That's what Billy, sweet Billy, had to do - singing gently to his darlin', declaring his love and standing quietly by when she called for her "Bud." As Josh curled up in bed with Reva later, as if to leech away her pain, he dismissed her efforts to push him into Cassie's arms. "Whatever I am, whatever good I've done, it's been because of loving you," he whispered, his purpose single-minded. "I don't want to let you go, but I will." He would have to make good on that, as news of Reva's illness spread through town, touching Buzz, Alan, Harley, Dinah and even Olivia, and Tammy tracked down a faithless Jonathan to offer him brief comfort in the chapel before he went home to his wife. Eventually, it was time. "Tell her it's all right. Tell her we'll be okay," urged Billy, his face full of peaceful adoration, the tears literally dripping off his cheek. Josh haltingly repeated those words, finally giving her permission. "Always," sighed Reva, before slipping away as the flat line toned dully over images of Buzz's prayer candle going dark. Jonathan and Lizzie smiled at their daughter on a sonogram monitor, and Josh's mask of grief. She really didn't leave them, of course, but it was still a blaze of glory. And as Josh rejoiced at being granted yet another miracle, everyone filed through to wish Springfield's spitfire (an opportunity she had denied them before) in a heartwarming montage set, appropriately, to Jewel's "Life Uncommon." Whatever you though of Reva's seemingly selfless, inherently selfish decision to keep her cancer secret, you had to know that this week, at least, GL would make it all seem worthwhile. |