Part of Rick loved her despite her coldness. He still loved the polished woman he married who laughed out loud at his jokes and brushed her hand through his hair for no reason. He loved her body and the way she smells and her smile. But he never sees her smile anymore, she isn’t polished and her body verges on repulsive. She smells like sweat and she never laughs anymore, not at anything.
Rick grabs a carton of chocolate milk and a cellophane-wrapped pimento cheese sandwich then heads for the cashier. None of it sounded good but he has to eat something. The cashier glares at him accusingly.
“What? What are you looking at?” Rick says defensively.
“Your change, sir.” The lady with a hairnet and plastic gloves holds a dollar bill and some change out for him to take. He takes it in a huff and storms off.
A row of partially-filled lunch tables run along the windows. Rick chooses a seat as far away from anyone as he can get. He picks at the cellophane in an attempt to unwrap the sandwich without tearing it. Giving up, he rips into the cellophane with his teeth biting off the corner of the sandwich and starts chewing wildly with his mouth open. It tastes good. Two more bites and it’s half-gone. After wrestling with the carton he takes a long pull on the chocolate milk. The food quenches him like a sigh of relief. He feels a sudden rush of energy.
After his meal he heads back up to the room with a spring in his step. He says hello to the nurses as he passes the main station.
“Mr. Gleason, do you have a minute?” The head nurse walks around the counter and approaches him with a clipboard.
“Sure, what’s up?” Rick says, a little out of breath.
“The doctors have asked me to lower the medication that’s keeping your wife asleep. We plan to do it gradually over time so she can wake slowly…if she is able to.”
Rick heard the hesitation in the nurse’s voice, if she is able to. “That’s great news. How quickly will it happen? When will we know?”
“It’s hard to say. Every case is different. It’s a watch-and-see game. We’ll adjust the medication in response to her. If there are complications we will increase the medication again until she’s ready.”
When Rick returns, the room feels cold and dark. It smells of disinfectant from the cleaning crew. They cleaned the floors and wiped down the desk. He sits down heavily in the chair next to her bed and feels a wave of exhaustion comes over him. The meal weighs on his stomach. He picks up a magazine then tilts the chair back and begins to read. He falls asleep before finishing the first paragraph.
The sweat drips down from her temples in streams and it pools in the hollows of her collar bones. The vein in her neck pulses hard against her skin. She screams at him spraying his face with spit and sweat but no sound comes out of her mouth. She throws her hands into the air with every statement and tries to get through to him but he can’t hear her words.
Finally in anger toward his deafness, Alison balls her hands into fists and slams them down onto an invisible table. She pushes her face toward him stopping only an inch from his nose. What is she saying? She keeps repeating the same thing and slamming her fists and pushing her face toward him. What is it? ‘Your. It’s your’. It’s your what?
Then, like surging out from under the water words find sound: “It’s! Your! Fault! It’s your Fault!” She repeats it over and over. Rick shakes his head no. “No. No. No it’s not.”
“It’s your fault! It’s your fault!”
“No!”
“It’s your fault…” Over and over, each time spitting in his face. Her lips never pausing, just shouting over and over. “It’s your fault.”
“SHUT UP! Shut up, you bitch! Shut up!”
Then she stops. Her mouth closes and her expression softens. A bead of blood forms at the corner of her mouth then she coughs and blood sprays him in the face. Rick is reliefed, thankful for the silence. Finally she’s quiet.
He watches as her body falls backward in slow motion, daylight showing through a hole in her chest. Rick looks down and sees her beating heart in his hands.
Rick wakes to the sound of an alarm. He turns toward Alison and sees a tube dangling from her arm. A nurse rushes in then slows down when she sees no emergency.
“How did this happen? Did she move her arm? Did you see her pull out the tube?” The nurse says excitedly.
“I, I don’t know. I was asleep.”
“Well she must be coming around, maybe too quickly. We don’t want her hurting herself.”
The nurse reattaches the tube and flushes it. She pauses to check all the readings then leaves the room. Rick watches Alison for more movement. Her face moves slightly. A wince forms and then releases like she’s having a nightmare. Rick stands and starts to move away, but then walks back to her side before he reaches out and strokes her head gently.
“I’m sorry. I’ don’t hate you. I don’t. I just don’t understand what happened to us…to you.” A tear slides quietly down his cheek.
At six-thirty the boys return with their grandmother. Rick hears her shush them before they walk into the room as though she thinks too much noise will disturb Alison and possibly cause her to stop healing. Rick greets the boys with a booming hello and feels a little twinge of happiness at the sudden pained expression on his mother’s face.
“Did you boys have fun?” Rick punches Eli jokingly.
“Grandma let us eat ice cream for dinner! Mom would kill her!” Eli stops suddenly when he realizes what he has said.
“It’s okay son. You’re right. Your mother would be upset! And you know what? She may have heard you. The doctors are letting her wake up slowly.”
Rick’s mother puts her hand to her chest, “Really Rickie? That’s good news, right?”
“Sure it is! They’re going to taper her off the medicine and let her wake up gradually. They don’t want her to wake up too fast so we still need to be patient. But she moved today while you were gone. She pulled the tube out of her arm even.” Rick feels his own excitement at seeing Alison awake again. He imagines her waking up as the woman he married, gentle and loving. But then his heart drops as he imagines her waking up and yelling at him. Maybe she’ll find something wrong with him or the way he cared for the boys while she was in her coma. He imagines her blaming him for the accident.
“Rickie?” His mother touches his shoulder.
“I’m okay mom. My mind is exhausted and my body is too. These beds here are hard and the nurses come in every hour for some absurd reason.”
“Go home son and get a good night’s rest. You’re no good to her here the way you are. I’ll pick up the boys in the morning and keep them all day.” She rubs his back with long up and down strokes.
“I can’t mom. If she wakes up I want to be here. I can’t leave her.” Rick stares blankly at the bed where his wife lay unmoving.
“You are such a good man, Rick. Such a faithful husband. Those people haven’t a clue how good you are to her. How dare they…” She trails off and purses her lips in anger.
“Who do you mean? Those people. Who?” Rick says defensively.
“Oh, never you mind. I’m sorry I said anything.”
“How dare they do what, ma?” Anger fills his words.
Silently she shakes her head then grabs a tissue from the fold of her sleeve and wipes her nose. She cries but holds back her emotions.
“What ma? What’s wrong?” Ricks anger melts to concern for his mother. He steps over to her and kneels down peering up into her face. “Mom, what’ going on?”
“The talking, that’s what’s wrong! They are talking. Her people. They called the house and threatened me. Said they were getting a private investigator…said we should get a lawyer.”
“What?” It comes out with a slight laugh. “What are you talking about? A lawyer for what? What’s there to investigate? You know, I want to know what happened to her just as much as everyone else! Why the hell do I need a lawyer?” He stops at once, noticing the fear in his mother’s eyes. He sees his hands on her sho
ulders then realizes he has been shaking her as he bombarded her with questions.
“I never should have said anything.” She says in hushed tones. “It’s stupid, stupid threats. They’re just mad honey and they’re looking for someone to blame this on. They’re blaming you because they can. Don’t worry yourself with it, it will go away.” She stands and pulls her purse-strap onto her shoulder.
“Of course you should have said something mother! They can’t call and threaten you. I’ll be damned if I am going to let them do that to you. If they have issues they need to call me!” Rick puts his hand on her arm to keep her from moving toward the door.
“When Alison wakes up she’ll tell us what happened and you‘ll be the hero you are and not the murderer they make you out to be. I have to go, honey, I need to get home with the boys.”
“Murderer! Is that what they’re calling me? Those bastards!”
“That. Is. Enough. You get a grip. You have sons here and they don’t need to hear you talk like that about their aunt and uncle or their grandma and grandpa. You need to be the bigger person right now. I will do my best to avoid them and keep the kids from them and their lies. But you need to forget about it. Let time tell the truth.” She turns to the boys who both stare at SpongeBob as he dances across the television. “Come on boys. Let’s get back to the house, we’ve had a long day.”
“Jesus, mom. I just can’t believe this.” Rick drops his head and takes in the whole situation.