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Back then, I had been a prisoner of another kind. Leaving those texts unanswered took a lot. I could feel the clock, ticking down, like a bomb waiting to explode. Minutes seemed like ages. I could feel the seconds slipping past. Her absence was felt in the marrow of my bones. With each passing minute came the destruction of my willpower. My resolve was wearing thin, even as I tried to hold on.
I made it a point to keep busy. The hours passed, each one eating at me, eroding my conscience, chewing slowly at my core. Thankfully, work was hectic. Work was always hectic. The dying do not stop for the living.
Over the weekend, I made sure my schedule stayed jam-packed. I met Jonathan twice for racquetball, even though he is a far better and far less distracted player than I am, and I hate to lose. Especially to my little brother.
I volunteered to do the grocery shopping, picked up the dry cleaning, and took Ellie to the park. I smiled and swallowed my unease as I watched her on the slide. I pushed her on the swings. I helped her build a dirt castle. A damn fine dirt castle. I had the sense that I was being watched. That I needed to be careful. It just never occurred to me how careful.
Mostly because my mind was somewhere else. All the while, the inevitable was barreling down on me like a freight train.
It had not helped that I’d dreamed of Laurel the night before. A barren dream, endless and desolate, it entered me like an angry spirit, taking hold, refusing to let go until I gave in and fed it what it wanted.
By the time Monday rolled around, no matter what I did, I couldn’t exorcise the thought of her skin on my skin, her wry grin, the noises she made when I finally had her where I wanted her. I could think of nothing else. The price for my thoughts: I hated myself on a sliding scale, more and more every single second.
Still, that morning I carried on with it, as you do. I saw my daughter off to school, kissed my wife goodbye, assessed three patients. Patients who were not so much unlike me, dying from something that could not be seen, only felt.
The first half of my day had been, for the most part, uneventful. I held an Ensure to Mrs. Martin’s lips and pled on her son’s behalf for her to take a few sips. I went through the motions. I wrote scripts for morphine, ordered feeding tubes, monitored dosages, spoke with family members, played God.
As morning gave way to afternoon, as the minutes bled into hours, Laurel was always there, like a nagging memory, in the back of my mind, in the space between breaths. The only bright spot in a sea of monotony. I was careful. Careful to stay focused on work, on dosages, knowing that if I so much as blinked it would be her face I saw in the darkness. Her sighing. Her teeth biting down on her bottom lip, her eyes squeezed shut, her head thrown back in ecstasy. Her coming.
It was a scene that often played on repeat, breaking me down until my mind wandered forward and backward, into the inevitable. The momentum of it carried me until I had no choice but to give myself over to her and her stupid, intrusive, impulsive texts. Until the only thing left to do was to respond—to let what would be, be—to devour her, to swallow her whole, just as she was doing to me.
Chapter Four
Laurel Dunaway
Journal Entry
The first thoughts to properly stick were about the timing. Specifically, how very bad it was. The second was the taste of bile rising in my throat. I could feel it. This is it. My life as I knew it was over. He’s going to die, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. This is where it ends, I thought. This is where I don’t get him back. I plead into the darkness. Not now. Especially not now.
James would brush it off, if I were to tell him how bad it really got. How far down the rabbit hole I went. If I were to tell him, which I wouldn’t—I won’t—he would tell me I was overacting. But then, how could he know that? It’s hard to say until you get to the end, and we weren’t there yet.
In my mind, it wasn’t an exaggeration. It was real. It’s always real. I pictured a double funeral. I imagined caskets shoved together, placed side by side. Monuments to every man I’ve ever loved. God, please don’t let this happen now, I said, my fists balled tight.
The mind works in mysterious ways under extreme duress. In the haze of being woken from sleep, the pieces of the puzzle rarely fit. It’s always the same, and yet, it never is. My heart races. I pray it will all be over quick. Sometimes I trick myself into believing that it might all just be a dream. I have them sometimes—nightmares about losing him.
This time, though, it wasn’t that. I can usually tell by the sickly feeling deep down in the pit of my stomach, where if I just heave a bit, the contents of my stomach, even empty as it was, would all come out. This wasn’t a fire drill. All of it, all of the thoughts swirling, and I hadn’t even opened my eyes.
The alarm chimed persistently, growing louder and louder by the second, reminding me this is reality. This is life and death. Even in the thick of sleep, I was keenly aware it wasn’t the normal alarm. It was the alarm.
Rubbing my eyes, I checked his Dexcom monitor first. My heart sunk further. Three characters told me everything I needed to know. The situation was dire. There wasn’t even a numerical reading. It just read: low.
I lurched out of bed, picking up the pace as I half-stumbled down the hall, slowing only when I got to the stairs, then power-walking as I rounded the corner into the kitchen. I opened the fridge, grabbed one of the two-dozen bottles of
orange juice we keep on hand, precisely for this kind of situation.
I wiped my sweaty, shaky hands on a dishrag, took a deep breath, and then deftly twisted the cap off the juice. I grabbed a straw from the drawer, flung it in, and made a beeline for the stairs. My bladder clenched and released, making it known my body had needs, too. Although there wasn’t time to think about that. I would live. He, on the other hand…
It helped, surely, that my mind had already lurched into the future, ticking off the list of things on my to-do list. It’s Thursday. Laundry day. A medical appointment. Dinner with investors. Or rather, as my husband would remind me, should he live, potential investors.
No. Wait. That’s wrong. It’s not Thursday. As usual, I’m ahead of myself. Today is Wednesday…A dentist appointment. A meeting at Caring Hands. An all-team meeting at the office.
Fuck. It didn’t matter, actually. No matter what was on the agenda, I’d be exhausted. Another thought flittered in and then out. If he makes it. I could very well be spending the afternoon making funeral arrangements. I shook my head, as though I could push those thoughts away. I’m careful to maintain a vise-like grip on the cold juice as I climbed the stairs, taking two at a time through the dark.
In life, it’s important to keep perspective. In a medical emergency, it’s not an option. Thoughts about failure like these are inconvenient and pointless when you’re neck-deep saving a person’s life. The mind, however, begs to differ. It does what it does, drifts where it will. I gritted my teeth, catching myself on the sharp edge of my thoughts. I reeled them in. My husband needs me. I know how to do this.
Finally, when I reached our bedroom, I flipped on the light and threw back the covers. His eyelids fluttered.
What if I can’t wake him?
