Before I Wake

by Robert J. Wiersema

  Or at this past year’s Christmas party, when Sheila brought me over to where they were standing and introduced me to his wife. It didn’t even seem to faze him. “Oh, yes, this is Mary. She’s been a big help to me. You two should get to know each other. You’ve got so much in common…”

  I just about dropped my punch cup when he said that, as if we hadn’t spent the afternoon in my apartment.

  I moved stuff around on my desk. I opened up the Berkman and Radinger files. I told Sheila that Mr. Barrett had phoned to explain what was happening. She must have known that I was lying—all incoming phone calls go through her desk—but she didn’t let on. I’m sure she knew about Simon and me, what had been going on for months.

  I had noticed the way she had started to look at me. I’m sure she had seen it all before.

  I’m not a home-wrecker or anything. I’m not one of those little twenty-year-olds that come to the Christmas party and are introduced as “My wife, Tiffany,” all dressed up in Armani or Versace, when it’s perfectly obvious that not so very long ago Tiffany was going to school with her current husband’s daughter.

  I wasn’t interested in marrying him. Not really. I just liked what we had, those times when we were together, at work and alone.

  I’m a lawyer. His junior, but he really listens to my opinions. Respects my thoughts. I like the way he looks at me, the way he nods and kind of smiles when I say something that he is not expecting. We respect one another. That is the main thing.

  But just once I wanted to be able to watch him sleep. Our afternoons were too short, so cramped by the time and excuses for being out of the office that we had never had time to relax, to really let go.

  Instead, I would watch him as he dressed, his tight butt and legs, his narrow chest with its light dusting of dark hair. And after he disappeared into the bathroom I would dress hurriedly, ensuring that my clothes were right, that my makeup was perfect by the time he returned.

  I wanted to watch him sleep, watch his face as he drifted away, as the mask loosened and disappeared. To watch his face soften, just to see what it was really like, to see if I really knew him as well as I thought I did.

  SIMON

  I think time passes so slowly in hospital waiting rooms because there are so many ways to keep track of it. The rhythmic beeping of machinery, the patterns of security guards and orderlies with carts, the Muzak, the grating laugh tracks from the television mounted on the wall, the ongoing misery of the other people waiting. Time is an almost physical presence.

  Nevertheless, I kept checking my watch until Karen put her hand over mine to stop me.

  “Sorry.”

  Every time a doctor or nurse emerged from behind the desk we both half-rose, and every time we were disappointed.

  Karen paced. She sat. She called her mother in Winnipeg. She paced more. She waved away the offers of more painkillers. She finally allowed a nurse to guide her back to the curtained bed just so that the IV could be removed from her arm.

  I bought us each a cup of coffee from the vending machine near the nurses’ station. The paper cups sat on the table in front of me, mine black, hers with a little cream. Piled alongside them were several packages of sugar.

  “I thought we should try to keep your blood sugar up,” I explained. “Not being on the IV anymore…”

  She laid her hand on my thigh and squeezed it gently.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Barrett?”

  The doctor, a vague shadow in green scrubs, was reading from a metal clipboard. We both stood before he finished saying our names.

  “How is she? Is she going to be all right?” Karen asked. “Will she be okay?”

  I watched his face—his mouth and his eyes—as he spoke.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Barrett, let’s sit down.” Karen grasped my hand as we sat back down, and he took the chair opposite us.

  “I’m Dr. McKinley. I’m on call today.” He didn’t extend his hand. “I performed the surgery on your daughter.”

  “How is she?” I asked, watching.

  “I wish I had better news for you…”

  I took a deep breath. “Is she…?”

  The doctor shook his head. “We had to open her skull,” he said. “There was a lot of bleeding. A lot of pressure that we had to let off. We managed to stop the bleeding and we removed some debris that could have caused some problems. The surgery went very well.”

  “Oh my God,” Karen cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Oh my God.”

  “Then she’s going to recover?” I asked.

  “In situations like this there is quite often a lot of damage that we can’t see, at least in these early stages.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Your daughter is in a coma. It’s too early to tell…”

  We waited for anything that might sound like reassurance.

  “It’s important to remember that the coma is a resting state, a chance for the body to heal itself in the places that we can’t get to. In cases like this, quite often the patient will spontaneously pull themselves out. That’s the way we’re treating this. Your daughter is having some problems breathing so we have her on a respirator, and right now it’s just a matter of waiting.”

  Karen leaned toward me, whispering. I draped my arm around her.

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor said, leaning forward to hear better. “I didn’t hear what you said.”

  “Sherry,” I said. “She was telling you that our daughter’s name is Sherry.”

  The doctor flinched. “I know.”

  “Our miracle,” she whispered. I don’t think the doctor heard.

  HENRY DENTON

  I didn’t kill that little girl. She just floated away.

  I turned away for a second, that’s all. I saw her and her mother in the crosswalk, and I changed lanes to go around them. I checked my mirrors as I changed lanes, and when I looked back…

  She rose up into the air.

  She floated away.

  I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. I just watched her as she floated away. I watched her mother scream, but I couldn’t hear it over the Tragically Hip tape and the sound of the engine. She was reaching out for her child.

  I cut back around the block and parked the truck in my usual slot by the air and I called 9-1-1 from the pay phone at the gas station. My hands shook as I punched in the numbers. I wanted to try to explain, but I couldn’t find the words. As I hung up the phone I couldn’t help myself—I threw up all over the wall of the phone booth, the concrete floor. I managed to miss my pant legs and shoes. I kept heaving until nothing else came out, until I could see these patches of light and dark with my eyes closed. My head felt like it was going to split open. I wanted to scream.

  I kept seeing her, floating up, hanging in the sky just above me, watching me. Watching me.

  I stumbled out of the phone booth, dropping my keys on the ground beside it. I felt like I was going to be sick again.

  One of the day-shift guys called after me, but I heard him the way you sometimes imagine hearing your name in a crowd. I don’t think I could have answered even if I had tried. Instead, I turned toward Hillside, stumbling across the intersection. I followed the walk lights wherever they guided me, and everything behind me fell away.

  KAREN

  On television, hospitals always seem so clean, so new, so carefully organized and arranged. Even on ER the chaos is rendered attractive. Television did nothing to prepare me for the reality of this place. Crumbling plaster, leaking ceilings, gray floors that didn’t even look swept, let alone waxed. I was expecting nurses who would be able to tell us what was going on, to help us. Instead, they treated us like children, doling out information in careful measures. I was expecting technology, a glassed-in room where doctors would fight for Sherry’s life as we stood outside the window looking on. Instead, we were able to stand by her bed in the critical ward, no barrier between us and her profound silence.

  Her head was bandaged tightly, a tracery of pink along the edge of the dressing. Her blood
. Tubes entered her nostrils and her mouth, taped down to the soft skin of her cheeks. They ran to the respirator at the side of the bed, its accordion bag rhythmically inhaling and exhaling, filling and shrinking, Sherry’s chest rising, falling, rising, falling. An IV line ran into her arm, and under the covers she was catheterized, cloudy urine collecting in a bag at the edge of the bed.

  But she was still my daughter. Still my Sherry, so tiny in the full-sized bed. So fragile that she needed all of these tubes, these adhesives, these machines to keep her together. I gently rubbed the inside of her left arm, the only place I could, telling her that she would be okay, that Mommy and Daddy were here, that everything was going to be all right.

  At the beginning we had spent so much time in the hospital with our Sherry. The first few weeks of her life we spent huddled around the incubator, our arms around each other, our faces pressed to the clear plastic. Those days brought us closer than we had ever been before. Parents. Together.

  And now another hospital. Another bed.

  Simon stood perfectly straight, fingers tight around the cold steel rail. The set of his jaw, the tightness of his shoulders, frightened me.

  I lightly touched the back of his hand. “It’s gonna be okay,” I whispered, willing him to turn toward me. “She’s gonna be all right.”

  He slowly faced me. “I know,” he said, after too long a pause.

  “She is,” I urged him. I could feel the heat of tears on my cheeks. “She really is.”

  He rubbed away the tears on my face with his thumb, nodding in agreement.

  “She seems so small, lying there.” My words were too loud in the small room.

  Simon took a deep breath and checked his watch. “I have to go into the office for a couple of hours. I need to clear some stuff from my calendar, move some stuff around.”

  “Really? Can’t you—?”

  He continued to speak, directing his words to the air above Sherry’s head. “If you need me, call me on my cell. I won’t be long.”

  I wanted to argue with him, to tell him how much we needed him here, how much I needed him here, but I just stared at him.

  “I can clear my schedule for tomorrow. That way I don’t have to worry about it.”

  I pulled him close. “Don’t be too long,” I whispered into the wool of his jacket.

  His hand came up to cradle the back of my head. “I won’t be. A few hours.” He kissed me fleetingly on the forehead. “I’ll be back soon.”

  He looked at me from the doorway, and I could see the worry stretching his face, but he was already reaching for his cell phone.

  Already gone.

  MARY

  I went to him the instant he came through the door. I had been sitting on the couch with a Diet Coke, pretending to read A. S. Byatt. He had called me from the hospital to let me know that he was on his way to my place, that his daughter was in a coma.

  He looked terrible. His skin was gray, his hair unkempt, his tie askew.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  His eyes met mine before he could answer, and his expression seemed to break open. “Oh God, Mary,” he said. “Oh God.”

  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.