Before I Wake (3 page)

I gathered him into my arms. I could feel his back start to shake as I stroked it.

“She's so small. Oh God, Mary, she's so small. And all the tubes, there are all these tubes—”

“Shh,” I soothed. “Shh.” He buried his face in my shoulder and I could feel the heat of his tears through my shirt.

I let him cry. I held him until he went silent; his life, his pain, filling my arms almost to bursting. Then I asked, “Do you want to go anywhere?”

“What?” He raised his red eyes to mine. “No.”

“I thought—it's a beautiful day. Maybe a walk would help clear your head.” I knew it wasn't going to happen, but I wanted to offer. We never take walks. It's one of the rules of being the other woman—the wife has custody of public spaces—but I felt like he might need the fresh air and shouldn't be on his own.

“No…” He shook his head, looking away. “I have to go back to the hospital soon. I think I'd like to just stay here.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

Our eyes met. Without warning, he pressed his mouth to mine. His lips were cold, hard, his breath a hot rush.

“I'm sorry,” he muttered as he was kissing me, his voice cracking again. “I need…” His arms tightened around me, drawing me into him. “I need…”

“It's okay,” I said. “It's okay.”

I wanted to blanket the pain he had brought with him from the hospital.

He pulled my clothes off as we stood in my living room. He popped a button from my shirt, and looked down at it for a long moment, as if shocked that such a thing could happen. That something so small could be broken so easily.

After I was naked, he undressed himself quickly, his eyes never leaving me. He pushed the coffee table to one side and pulled me down onto the couch. He made love to me desperately, as if trying to hide within me. He controlled everything, his hands on my hips setting the rhythm, his mouth at my breasts, my lips.

After he came, he didn't release me like he usually did. Instead, he pulled me closer, laying his head against my breasts.

I could feel the rough tug of his whiskery face, and the heat of his tears, as he softened within me.

SIMON

I hated myself for being there, for being so weak I had to run to her. Hated myself for lying there, watching Mary as she stood up, her high, small breasts, the dark, narrow line of her sex.

I tried to rise, but she touched me gently on the chest with the palm of her hand, pressing me backward with an even pressure. “No, you stay here.”

“I have to—”

“You can sit for a minute. There's time.” The tone of her voice brooked no argument, but it wasn't her court voice. It was smoother, warmer, like honey in tea.

I glanced at my watch. 6:42. There was still time to stay, to sit. I had left the hospital at 5:32, caught a cab from the emergency room door, arrived here at…

MARY

What was that expression? That little lift in his lips as he slept.

Was it satisfaction? Relief? Comfort?

Comfort…

Could I really settle for comfort? Probably not. But for now, I'd settle for the thought that I could help take his pain away for a little while.

I curled myself into the sofa between him and the picture of my parents on the end table. He slept with one arm at his side, palm up, the other hand draped across his belly, rising and falling gently as he breathed.

His sandy hair was just beginning to hint at gray. I knew that he would comb it fastidiously before he left—he always
did, no matter the weather, no matter if he'd have to comb it again once he got to wherever he was going. He never went out in public unless he was absolutely perfect.

If he were younger it would have annoyed the shit out of me. “The great tragedy of middle age,” my best friend Brian had once said about the carefully coiffed men who were always trying to pick him up, “is watching these guys trying so desperately to hold on to a youthful beauty they only imagine they had.”

But Simon was beautiful. He hadn't let himself go. His belly was flat, his chest tight, his face barely touched by wrinkles at the corners of his mouth and eyes.

I liked that he wasn't young. He was old enough to be sure of himself, to be confident, to be powerful. He could change the mood of a room with a single glance, a curled lip or a doubting lift of his eyebrow. His stare could make you feel like you were on trial, or that you were the most adored person in the world.

I should wake him up and send him back to his daughter. He shouldn't be gone too long.

I pulled the quilt up over my shoulders. Leaning my head back against the cushions, I watched him sleep, the flickering of his eyelashes, the tiny tremors within. I'd let him sleep just a little longer.

 

Locking the door behind him, the stranger turned the hot-water faucet as far as it would go. Steam began to fill the small bathroom, and the rushing water drowned out the sounds of the emergency room next door. The stranger slipped out of his coat, hanging it on the hook on the back of the door with his satchel.

Plunging his hands into the scalding water, he began to scrub the dirt of the road from his nails, from the creases of his knuckles. He couldn't remember the last time he had been properly clean. The dirt of a continent stained the water brown.

With red and swollen hands, he set his wire-framed glasses on the back of the toilet tank before dunking his head into the steam. He splashed handfuls of water over his face and his closely shorn head. It burned, but he scrubbed at his cheeks, rubbed at his skin until it squeaked.

Shaking his hands, he tore off a strip of paper towel and dried his face and head.

From the hanging satchel, the stranger withdrew the cool, stiff white circle of a collar, which he laid on the back of the toilet, next to his glasses.

It took him a moment to button the top of his black shirt, closing the fabric over the scarred loop of russet, twisted flesh around his throat.

The careful placement of the collar hid the evidence of his shame.

If they could see him now, he thought, all those who had come to him so willingly—who would come again, he knew—would turn away, repulsed by the sudden realization of his transgressions. But when they saw his collar, they saw their own chance at redemption, the promise of the glory, the rightness of the path. Who better to show them the way than a man of God?

KAREN

The steady rhythm of the respirator was lulling, its cool, measured pace encouraging sleep. But it was impossible to ignore the reason for that rhythm, the ebb and flow my daughter's breath. It was impossible to close my eyes knowing that.

The doctor had come in on his rounds about half an hour after Simon had left. If he was surprised that my husband was gone, he didn't show it.

“How are you holding up, Mrs. Barrett?” he asked. I was relieved to see he didn't have to check the file for my name.

“You can call me Karen,” I said, as if this were the most normal situation in the world, just a couple of people getting to know one another while a machine breathed for my daughter.

“Karen, then. Are you doing all right?”

“I'm fine.”

“Have you had something to eat? You're recuperating too.”

My fingers strayed to the bandage on my head.

“I'll get them to bring you a dinner,” he said, making a note in the file. “And later on I'll see to it that they wheel in a cot. These chairs are a pretty uncomfortable way to spend the night.”

“Thank you.” I was on the verge of tears again.

He waved it away. “It's too bad this room isn't a little bigger. There's only enough room for one cot, so someone's going to have to spend the night in the chair.” He winked at me. “You'll have to draw straws.”

I tried to smile.

“So how's our other patient?” He leaned over the rail, taking Sherry's narrow wrist between his thumb and forefinger, timing her pulse with his wristwatch. Untucking the stethoscope from his pocket, he gently folded back the bedclothes and raised the gown she was wearing.

I stepped back a little, tasting bile. Her body seemed to be a mess of bruises, mottled black and purple, bandaged in places.

He noticed me staring. “It's not as bad as it looks. Just bruises, from the impact of the truck and from the fall.”

I nodded.

“We've bandaged up the worst of the contusions. They'll clear up pretty quickly. Nothing to worry about there…” He snapped the stethoscope in his ears and leaned over her, placing the cold metal disc just under Sherry's left nipple. He stared out into the middle distance as he listened, moved the stethoscope and stared into the distance again.

He nodded slowly as he straightened up, lowering Sherry's gown and tucking her back in.

Then he carefully lifted her eyelid with his thumb, moving the forefinger of his other hand slowly across her line of vision before taking a small light from his pocket and following the path of his finger with it.

He slid the light back into his pocket and made his notations in her file before he spoke. “Well, all of her vital signs are stable. Her heartbeat is a little slow and her temperature is a bit high, but that's to be expected.”

“Will she…” The words were out of my mouth before I realized it, and I wished immediately that I could take them back.

“Will she be all right?” he asked.

I nodded.

He took the briefest of moments before he spoke.

“It's still too early to say, one way or another. We just don't know.” He shrugged. “But we are going to do everything in our power to ensure Sherilyn's full recovery. Everything we can do.”

I smiled wanly at him.

“Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“Good. Now I'm going to get you some dinner and we'll see to it that you get a cot in here.” He turned toward the door but then stopped. “I want you to take care of yourself, okay?”

I nodded again.

 

File of Barrett, Sherilyn Amber
4/24 18:25

Notes: bp 90/60, P 54. Pupils sluggishly reactive. Glasgow Coma Scale 6. Low grade fever. Bibasilar rales and increasing oxygen requirements. Possible early ventilator associated pneumonia. Start ceftriaxone and gatifloxacin now.

S. McKinley

 

KAREN

I pulled the chair to the foot of Sherry's bed and angled it so that I would be able to see when Simon returned. I looked up every time someone passed the open doorway. Nurses would
stop and glance in, ask me if I wanted anything. An orderly brought dinner, covered with a plastic lid, and left it on the table without a word.

I waited for my husband, listening to the machine breathe for my daughter.

“Mrs. Barrett?” The man in the doorway was a dark shadow against the bright lights from the corridor.

“Yes?”

He took several steps into the room, a tall stranger in a black coat, clutching a battered brown book to his chest. The light from above Sherry's bed reflected off the smoothness of his head, from the wire rims of his glasses and from the white of his clerical collar.

“Mrs. Barrett, I'm—”

“No.” I shook my head. “No. We don't need you here.”

He let the hand holding his Bible fall to his side. “Mrs. Barrett—”

“I'm no longer in the Church,” I said.

He nodded. “I understand. But faith can be a comfort and a source of guidance in these times.”

I shook my head. “Did my mother call you? Did she?” Calling a priest to come to the hospital was exactly the sort of thing my mother would do.

“No, I was making my rounds.”

“Please…I don't need you. We don't need you.”

He nodded as if he had heard that response before. “There's a chapel here, if you change your mind.”

He stood there for a long moment, staring at me as if waiting for me to speak.

I turned my attention wholly to Sherry. Eventually I heard his footsteps receding down the corridor.

The Church. That was the last thing I needed.

“Karen?”

I glanced up again, barely recognizing the woman who stood there.

“Jamie?”

When she threw her arms around me and hugged me, I tried to remember how long it had been since I'd last seen her.

“How is she?” she whispered.

“I don't…The doctors don't know. They say she could wake up at any time.”

“Oh, Karen.” She kept an arm around me as I turned back to the bed.

We both looked down at Sherry as her chest rose and fell, rose and fell.

“It's been a long time, Jamie,” I said.

“Couple of years.”

“I sort of dropped off the map.”

“You had a new baby. It was natural to want to stay at home.”

“Is that really how long it's been?”

She nodded. “I think the last time we really spent any time was at the baby shower.”

Jamie had been my closest friend at the paper, my only confidante. “I'm sorry.”

“It was as much my fault as anything,” she said, gently squeezing my shoulder. “Water under the bridge.”

“How did you hear about Sherry?”

“Someone at City picked up the 9-1-1 call on their scanner this morning. Did all the usual follow-up, and when it came back that Karen Barrett had been involved…Everybody's hearts are with you, Kar.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you okay?”

My hand went to the bandage. “Bumps and bruises. Nothing that won't heal.”

“And Simon?”

“What?”

“Is Simon around?”

“Oh, he'll be back. He had to go in to the office, clear his calendar.”

“How's he taking it?”

“Well, you know Simon.”

She didn't. Not really.

“Can I get you anything?”

I tried to smile. “No, I'm okay. But thanks.”