“Ya know, maybe you should make dinner if you’re so damn impatient.” She snapped.
“Look, Alison, I don’t know what your problem is but…”
“I don’t have a flipping problem. Why don’t you just…”
The sound of a loud crash shattered his ear. He heard the phone hitting the car floor then Alison yelling “Fuck” at the top of her lungs and Eli screaming. Rick could hear her yelling at him to shut up. He kept wailing and telling her he was bleeding. Rick could hear spit as he spoke and envisioned the blood flowing into Eli’s mouth as he spit it away, bawling. Jake finally spoke, telling her that Eli was really hurt. Alison continued to tell them to shut up. It wasn’t that bad. She needed him to calm down so she could think.
Eli ended up with a long gash in his forehead that required twelve stitches. Rick never got over how cold Alison acted toward the boys, her own sons. How could a woman be so cruel? Could he actually hurt his children by staying with her?
“I’m going to get the boys out of here, Rick. I’ll get them some food and fun, try to take their mind off her for a bit. You need to eat something. You won’t be any good to your wife when she wakes up if you don’t start eating.” She leaned down and kissed him on the head. “I love you.”
“Bye mom. Thank you.”
Silence fills the room once again except for the persistent beep of the machines. Rick takes a deep breath and pulls himself up, steadying himself as he goes to keep the room from spinning. He walks around the bed and approaches her side looking earnestly at her swollen face for some sign of emotion.
“Why are you so evil?” His voice sounds foreign to him. The lack of response leaves the question hanging in the air. “I hate you.”
He couldn’t believe he actually said it aloud. “I hate you. I said it.”
Patiently he waits but detects no response. Nothing. He turns and walks out of the room.
Rick walks stoically down the cold tiled hallway and follows the signs that lead him to the cafeteria. He passes a little girl with no hair and stares at her. She smiles and he half-smiles back. What could possibly be worth smiling about when you are a sick little girl with no hair?
When he reaches the cafeteria he steps into line behind a man wearing a long blue robe, a hospital gown peeks through from the neck. The man uses a walker and ambles slowly as the line progresses. Rick scans the room for something that seems appetizing. He sees a tall blonde woman with a tight top on and her breasts ready to spill out the top. He imagines himself shoving his face in her cleavage then stops himself.
They hadn’t had sex in a year. In the beginning of their marriage Alison had an unquenchable thirst for him and demanded sex every night, sometimes twice a day. Then the babies came and she settled down, only asking for him a few times a week. When her sister became sick she seldom wanted sex at all, but Rick understood. She was probably depressed and stressed, but even after her sister died their sex life was never the same. Once Alison started running and training for the crazy ultra she didn’t want sex at all, saying she felt tired and uninterested.
‘Screw her. I’m the one who should’ve had an affair’, he mumbles under his breath. The elderly man turns to him and gives him an awkward glance then turns away again.
His emotions had danced back and forth since she went missing. When he first realized she was lost, his heart raced and dipped and sank at the thought of her hurt and in pain. The thought of his kids without a mother and him alone pulled at him, but in the next minute he had a strange sense of relief, as though he could suddenly breathe now and had something to look forward to.