Waiting for Eden

by Elliot Ackerman

  There was a twenty-four-hour daycare where she could leave Andy. She started to dress her daughter, but the girl wanted to dress herself. Still, Mary insisted on brushing both their hair. Mary set the brush back in the bathroom. Then she dropped Andy off at the daycare, and when she did the girl cried.

  Outside, a thin haze, like a frost, still hung over everything. It was now early morning and cold. The main hospital building rose above her, a column of glass and steel. In the haze it gleamed artificially, a soft coronet rested around each light. She walked through the sliding double doors and inside everything was bright and quiet. The receptionist sat bunkered behind her desk and paid no notice as Mary passed into an empty elevator. She rode up four floors and then cut down the hallways, arriving at Eden’s door, still sniffing from the cold as warmth returned to her cheeks.

  The room was dim and lit only by a corner lamp. Her husband’s eyes were open but flittering, their rims red and pulpy as they looked at the lamp. The sheets on his bed had been pulled loose and his neck rocked slightly as he breathed. Before he’d always looked bad, but contained: tucked neatly under his sheets, his burns covered, his eyes either open—staring at nothing—or closed as he slept. Now, he was still alive but uncontained and trembling. These hundred small electrocutions hinted at a migration that had begun in his body, one taking him away from life. As prepared as she felt to let him go, and as much as she wanted that final release for him, and for herself, she now felt a desperate want for him to hold on.

  She sat on the side of his bed, shut her eyes and placed her hand on his head as though her touch could pull the darkness from him like venom through a wound. Then she noticed a sweet and stale smell, like the wet cigarettes she kept in the can under her mother’s house. She looked up and Gabe had returned.

  His thick arms worked above her, fields of black hair combing their backs like a crop in the wind. He continued to work, hanging IV bags from a stand with his stumpy fingers. He switched out Eden’s fluids and there was a gentle elegance to his movements, one that belied the grim purpose in all his work. Finished, he wrapped the expended bags in their cords, and placed them into a red biohazard bin, reaching to the bottom so that the noise of them falling wouldn’t disturb his patient, or her.

  Even as Gabe tried to be quiet, my friend started clacking his teeth and banging his head against his pillow. It began slowly and with a very deliberate rhythm.

  Mary put a hand on his shoulder. “Shhh, you’re okay,” she whispered.

  Eden kept at it, the muscles in his neck straining as his pace quickened.

  “Shhh,” she said again and looked up at Gabe, who crossed the room and pressed a button above the bed. Then he stood over Eden, checking the IV bags he’d just hooked up and the bank of monitors.

  “Weak vitals but nothing erratic,” Gabe told her. He looked down at his patient with a mechanic’s interest. Eden’s eyes were wide open now, but his lids were swollen like the edges of a gash and his irises were so faded and yellowed they looked like old bones. He chomped his teeth in a rhythm, but to Gabe and Mary it was an unintelligible one.

  Gabe did nothing but watch. “He’s been going like this for hours,” he said. “It’s hard on him.”

  She nodded.

  “I can give him some strong stuff. It’ll make this whole thing easier.”

  “So he’s going then?” she asked.

  “I can’t say, but where he is there’s a lot of pain. If you let me, I can take that away.”

  She looked down at Eden. Sweat streaked his forehead as he thumped against the pillow and clacked his teeth together in rhythm. There was so little of him left, and the less of him there was the more desperately she clung to it. And now this, his pain or his insanity; whatever it was, it was something else she was being asked to let go of.

  Mary stood over his bed as he thrashed and clacked his teeth. Then, slowly, a redness spread in his mouth. She looked into it for a moment as though something sensual were returning to that parched space, but as she saw what it was she winced and raised a hand to her own mouth. Gabe saw it too, and pinned my friend’s head to the side so he wouldn’t choke.

  He’d bit off part of his tongue.

  Eden’s mind wasn’t gone. It was the clearest it’d been in years. Frantically he clacked, trying to give his message—END, END, END—and then, all at once, he felt Gabe’s meaty paw leaning down on his neck, pinning him to the side. In the back of his throat was a warm iron taste. His senses were dull, but he knew he was breaking apart. Still, every part of him said: struggle. He needed to be heard and in that desperation he felt a freedom he hadn’t known since the pressure plate, the freedom of a purpose. Dear God just let them know that I’m in here just let them know I want to end this let them know let them know please God.

  He could smell Gabe on him, like a fog, his rank sweat. That big strong bastard, he thought, no one’s going to shut me up. He kept clacking his teeth and thrusting against the arm that pinned him down. He wouldn’t stop even if the only person who could feel his message was the same person who was trying to silence him.

  He thought he smelled soap and water in the room. Was she also close and watching this? He could see the light from the lamp, but strained to see the shadow in the light which might be her. He needed her and thrashed his body some more, trying to look around, but still the arm pinned his head to the side. He could feel the calluses on Gabe’s palm grinding against the charred skin of his face.

  He grew too tired to buck, but still he clacked with his teeth. And as he lay there, he began to feel a wet warmth trickle down his cheek and pool by his mouth. He inhaled the wetness and it slurped past his forever-dry lips. It became difficult to breathe. Then the strong hands flipped his head to the other side, where a puddle hadn’t yet formed. Still they pressed on him.

  Now there was another shadow in the room, breaking up the light from the lamp, coming near him. It was her. It had to be.

  The shadow wandered toward his bed, coming closer. It teased him like full clouds, yet to rain, wandering over cracked and droughty earth. He pushed against the arms that pinned him to the bed, blocking his view. He craned his neck, straining to see the dark rumor of her. He thought she would come to him, pet his head and give him what he needed: her, just to listen and to hear the very little he had left to say.

  Through his bedsprings, he felt more movement in the room.

  Another shadow mixed with hers. The other shadow came closer. He clacked his teeth harder and again bucked against his pillow, banging out the same message in tap code. It was useless, Gabe’s strong hands held him down. This other shadow mixed with what he thought was hers and soon he’d lost track of who was who. Then he watched one of the two leave the room, and he felt the vibrations of a door shutting. He felt suspense in that brief moment, the same as when a coin is tossed, caught in one hand and slapped on the back of the other, covered and awaiting the verdict of heads or tails.

  The remaining shadow approached quickly and straightways, with a purpose. Then, on his side, against a soft and unburnt patch of skin, he felt the sucking coolness of alcohol. He bucked and gnashed his teeth and spit up the iron-tasting warmth that was liquid in his mouth.

  She hadn’t heard his message. She’d gone and signed the consent form.

  The needle pricked and there was a biting warmth that spread into a hot blot inside him. Now the thick arms that had been holding him loosened. He tried to bang his message against his pillow, but something soft and even heavier than the man’s arms pulled him down. It was the lamp across the room. He sunk into its light, which spread, unyielding, until everything became white and there were no shadows left and he was lost in all of it.

  Before we deployed I lived in the barracks, and in the barracks, the privates and lance corporals bunked three and sometimes four to a room. No kitchen, just a head, four cinder-block walls, some beds and som
e footlockers. One of the privileges a corporal had was his own room. But it didn’t seem like a privilege to me. I was lonely there. The ruts in the carpet where beds had been, the peeled paint where posters used to hang and the extra footlocker that had never been dragged out, these were all things that made me lonely. On the weekends, when the chow hall was closed, I ate lots of takeout, Chinese mostly, and having meals like this made me loneliest of all. So I bought a hot plate and sometimes cooked for myself. I’d fry a steak or make an egg on the one burner. It helped. Everything associated with preparing a meal helped: cleaning a dish in my bathroom sink, washing a pan, keeping utensils in my desk drawer and making trips to the PX for a few groceries.

  That’s where I bumped into Mary again.

  It was a Saturday, just before Thanksgiving, and we still had a couple of months until deployment. It’d been weeks since that night in the gym parking lot and I hadn’t been back to see her since. I’d walked to the PX from the barracks, and as soon as I grabbed a basket and turned down the first aisle, she turned down its opposite end with her shopping cart. Had I seen her sooner I probably would’ve avoided her, gotten my groceries elsewhere, or not at all, maybe just ordered Chinese again, but there she was, and I wondered if she would’ve avoided me given the chance.

  Her shopping cart was nearly full and she pulled up alongside me and we talked. She told me that Eden was out of town training. She couldn’t remember the course or if he’d even told her what it was. I told her it was a medical course and that I was going to the same one next week, missing out on Thanksgiving. She looked away when I said this, as if searching for something on the shelves. I think she was upset, though. Not that I was going, but that I knew what course he was at and that she didn’t.

  Then she looked at my basket. “Just picking up a few things?” she asked.

  “Dinner,” I said. “You?”

  She looked at her full cart. “Dinner,” she said.

  A quiet moment passed between us, and in that moment it seemed one of us should move, but neither did. Finally she said: “You want company?”

  I nodded and was glad for some company while I shopped. I took a packet of marinade from one of the shelves. My idea had been to panfry yet another steak.

  “I’ve got plenty here for both of us,” she said. Her cart was filled with simple ingredients: a couple of onions, some pasta and a little bread, nothing fancy, nothing like Eden would’ve made.

  I had thought that the company she’d offered was for the shopping trip, but now I realized the invitation was to cook me dinner at her house. A thankful yet grim look passed between us like what passes between two people when one saves the other from stepping into oncoming traffic. But I wasn’t sure which one of us was choosing to step into traffic.

  We loaded groceries into the back of her car and barely spoke on the drive to her house. Eventually, I asked her something about work and she replied: “Fine.” But I couldn’t think of anything else to say. She turned on the radio and after one song we pulled into her driveway.

  She put the car in park, but didn’t get out. She switched off the music and looked straight through the windshield, as if into that place where her strength was. The car still idled and then she turned off the ignition. We were held in the silence between us. It made its own noise: a quiet like ringing. Then she looked hard into my eyes, as if reaffirming some decision she’d already made.

  She got out of the car and went inside, leaving the groceries and dinner in the trunk. Behind her, she left the front door open. I followed, stepping into the small entryway and glimpsing her heels as she walked quickly up the stairs. Most of the lights were on in the house and I could see the photos of her and Eden on the small table in the entry and also the photos of them hung along the stairs. In the hallway above, she moved quickly between the rooms. I could hear her scrambling as I walked up to the second floor. The house dimmed as she went from lamp to lamp, turning out each one.

  Then it was completely dark.

  I stood at the top of the stairs, by the banister. She found me there and grabbed my arm above the bicep, not my hand. She led me into a room. The moon was just rising and a little light came in from a glass sliding door that opened onto a porch. It was a pale light, and she looked silver and beautiful in it. She shut the blinds and again it was completely dark. As purposeful as she was, I knew she was fragile. This was their bedroom. I wanted this, but it was something I could ruin by the slightest miscalculation, so I sat on the edge of the bed like a child in a room of adults, moving very little, trying to behave.

  She jointed her legs between mine and stood there for a moment. My head was at her breasts and the soft smell of her rested sleepily on me, slowing everything down. I reached my arms up her back and felt the rough lace of her bra beneath my fingers, but I didn’t feel like I had permission to do anything more. She shifted in my arms, trying to lose her body’s awkwardness by fitting into mine. I thought we might kiss, but instead she collapsed on me and I fell back onto the bed. She breathed near my ear and it felt like a stale wind. My hands were still on her back and she shook a little, like a branch pulled on too hard and then let go. And then she stopped and it was like that same branch had snapped. She couldn’t go any further, so I rolled on top of her. She looked at me, touched my face and then crudely went for my pants, unfastening first mine and then hers. As we worked our hips free, I stopped and asked if she had anything for me.

  “You don’t need one,” she said.

  “I think I better.”

  “Really you don’t,” she replied and then looking away added: “I’m already pregnant.”

  Having come this far there was nothing to say, so I eased into her. And as I did, she looked back at me.

  All through it, her eyes never left mine but her look was cold. She studied my face like it was an equation to be solved on a page. What we were doing wasn’t a reckless and passionate infidelity, but a decision calculated by her. Then, when it was done, I started to move my hips off hers, feeling defeated. And it surprised me when she reached up and held me inside her. Still she didn’t say anything and she wouldn’t let go. Her face remained a mask of concentration. Her lips moved in little trembles. It was like she was counting.

  To stop her lips, I kissed them and reluctantly she kissed me back.

  She then rolled out from under me. We sat up on either edge of the bed and, facing away from each other, fixed our clothes. There was a lamp on the bed’s end table. Once she was dressed she didn’t turn it on. Instead she opened the curtains and everything in the room became dim and silver in a cold type of light.

  “I wanted a child for a long time,” she said, looking out the window. I wasn’t certain who these words were meant for. Not knowing what to do, but wanting to be kind, I stood behind her and kissed the top of her shoulder. She spun around. In the look she gave me, I knew this had been the wrong thing to do. I stepped back and the space between us became cold as the light.

  “I’m sorry to have brought you into this,” she said.

  “I’m sorry he’s leaving,” I said. “I didn’t know about the baby.”

  “Neither does he.”

  I wanted to ask her why she hadn’t told him. I wanted to tell her that if he knew about the baby, he might not come on this deployment. There was still time. They’d drawn up his reenlistment papers, but he hadn’t signed them. He’d made nothing more binding than a promise at this point. But before I could tell her any of these things, she walked away from the window and turned on the lamp. Standing with her in their bedroom, after what we’d done, I had no right to try to help either of them. I’d stolen my moment and wanted to go back to the barracks, to be alone.

  Not wanting to be any trouble, I asked her to order me a cab. By the time I got to my room it was late and I still hadn’t eaten so I called the Chinese place, but it was closed.

  After Mary sign
ed the consent forms she sat outside Eden’s hospital room, waiting. She could hear the muffled thumping of his head against the pillow and Gabe’s inaudible voice, talking with one of the doctors as they delivered the sedative. They’d assured her this was powerful stuff and that it would dull his pain, making the end easier. They’d been perfectly nice about it, but curt. Long ago she’d begun to resent the stream of doctors and nurses. She’d spent the last three years dealing with them. They came and went and none had been in this ward, or at this hospital, as long as she, and all of them offered advice so freely on her husband’s life and now on what they told her was his death.

  Mary sat there, clutching the release form, examining it for the first time. It was an unintelligible hieroglyphic of drugs: lorazepam, propofol, ketamine, sodium thiopental. It all meant nothing to her and she ripped up the form into small pieces and threw them into the trash can down the hall.

  She returned to her seat and now, from Eden’s room, she could hear only silence. From her pocket, she took out her cellphone. It’d been a couple of days since she’d flown back to the hospital and she wanted to check in with her mother. She dialed, and the phone picked up after the first ring. But before her mother could speak, she did. Mary explained everything: his heart attack and stroke, the medications they were putting him on and how, if she wanted, he could painlessly be taken away.

  Her mother said little but listened.

  “The staff thinks it’s best to speed things up,” Mary said.

  “It’s been long enough, too long,” her mother replied. “He would’ve wanted what’s best for you and Andy.”

  “And what’s best for us?”

  “He never had to go on that deployment,” her mother said, her words becoming sharp. “It’s all gone on long enough.”

  The phone went quiet for a moment. “That’s not how it was, Mom.”

  “He abandoned you,” her mother said.