The Empty Jar

by M. Leighton

  This is all we have left.

  I brush the back of my index finger down her satiny cheek as I think of something to say. I’m momentarily dumbstruck. Her beauty, her goodness, a goodness that shines through the pores of her porcelain skin, is staggering. It always has been. I’ve often wondered throughout the years how I got so lucky.

  Now I know.

  I’m only going to get to keep her for half of my life, not nearly long enough. The price of loving her is that I will lose her. That I will love her forever, even after she’s gone and I remain.

  “You hungry?” I ask.

  I don’t know what else to say that might play into whatever is going on inside her head. I’ve always heard it isn’t wise to orient someone to the present if they are somewhere else mentally. I have no idea if that applies to Lena, but I’m not willing to risk it, so I just go along with her delusion.

  “Starving,” she says, linking her fingers behind my neck and leaning in. I kiss her again, happy for anything that might still the tremble I feel beginning in my bottom lip. It’s getting harder and harder to bury this agony that I’m drowning in.

  I swallow before I speak again, clearing the bulge of emotion currently tampering with my vocal cords. I don’t want my wife to be able to pick up on my dismay. I wouldn’t have a clue how to answer any questions she might have, and I certainly don’t want to cause her any additional stress.

  So I hide it.

  As I’ve made a point to do all this time.

  For the sake of my beautiful Lena, I hide my own pain from her and try my best to act normal. I don’t want her to know that I’m dying in a different way, the kind of dying that will leave my body alive but the rest of me a pile of dead and broken pieces that have no way of healing.

  “Let me make you some eggs,” I offer.

  “Eggs sound wonderful.”

  Reluctantly, I pull away and walk around the island to turn on the soft light over the stove. It will give me just enough of a glow to cook by.

  “How was your day?” I ask nonchalantly as I take a skillet from the cabinet, get the eggs and butter from the fridge, and set about making my ailing mate some scrambled eggs.

  Lena sighs heavily. “Better now that you’re here. I have a patient that I think might be in liver failure or, worse, have liver cancer. She…she…”

  Her words fade into the shadows as Lena falls silent behind me. I turn to look at her, and she has taken six apples from the fruit bowl and is in the process of lining them up on the countertop.

  “She what?” I prompt.

  Lena jumps, turning vacant eyes toward me. “What?”

  “You were telling me about a patient you think might have something going on with her liver.”

  “Hang on. I just need to get these sorted. Give me a minute.” She directs her attention once more to the apples before her. She lines them up from left to right and then lines them up top to bottom, making sure that each apple is touching the ones on either side of it.

  As I scramble her eggs, I keep an eye on Lena. She never offers to move or speak again, though. She just keeps straightening and restraightening those apples, lost once more to the world in which I don’t exist.

  Lost to me.

  The backs of my eyeballs sting as I recall something I read about the natural occurrences that transpire during the last weeks of life, as different organs begin to fail. The article, one I’d found on a hospice site, mentioned that patients often straighten odd things as their time on Earth comes to a close. It’s a subconscious effort to get the affairs of their life in order before they die.

  Before death.

  I have to turn away from Lena and squeeze my eyes shut against the surge of anguish that washes through me.

  I’m going to lose her.

  I’m going to lose my wife. My soul mate. My partner in crime. The very air I breathe. I’m going to lose her, and there is nothing I can do about it.

  For as long as we’ve known her condition is terminal, on some level I’ve refused to think that there is really no hope for her, that there is really nothing that can be done. I believed that, because she’s young and healthy, her body would last longer, fight harder and they’d be able to find a way to make her better. I didn’t purposely mislead myself, but now I recognize that’s precisely what I’ve done—deceived myself.

  Somehow, I managed to convince a part of my mind, of my heart of that inaccuracy, and now the reality of the situation—that my wife’s body is failing her, that she is now steadily making her way toward the end—stabs me in the stomach like the horns of a bull, a bull that has been taunted and is now hell-bent on destruction.

  That bull of truth gores me.

  Through and through.

  I slide the skillet off the burner and take a step back, bracing my arms against the edge of the stove and letting my head drop down between them. I stand motionless for a handful of seconds trying to collect myself.

  It takes everything I have in me to control the devastation that’s wrecking my heart. It takes every bit of my concentration, and even then, it’s another minute or so before I actually achieve an acceptable degree of equilibrium. Only when I’m once more composed enough to let Lena see my face do I turn toward her again.

  Then I’m shaken again. To my core, I’m shaken. The sight of her…

  Jesus H. Christ!

  Lena is still lining up apples, still getting her life in order. And it still feels like she’s ripping my soul out of my chest rather than organizing our fruit.

  “Eggs are on,” I say as brightly as I can, smiling when Lena’s eyes flip up to me. Her brow wrinkles as though she has no idea where she is or why I’m here with her.

  “Eggs?”

  “Yep. You didn’t get dinner. You need to eat.”

  “Oh right, right. I’m starved,” she says again, as if the previous ten minutes hadn’t just elapsed.

  I plate her eggs and walk them to the island on legs that feel like a newborn colt’s—shaky and uncertain. When I set the saucer down, it clanks and rattles. My hand is anything but steady.

  I grab a fork from the drawer and hand it to her. Then, quietly, reverently, I stand in front of the love of my entire existence and watch her scoop eggs into her mouth and laugh at something I can’t hear.

  I watch her, and I mourn her, already agonizing over the battle she faces, the battle I’ll have to watch her fight.

  The battle she’s going to lose.

  And I’m already dreading what the rest of my life is going to be like without her.

  ********

  The confusion worsens over time. There is nothing the doctors can do because any medication they could give to help flush the ammonia from Lena’s system, a build-up caused by her deteriorating liver function, is hazardous to the baby. This is part of the disease, I’ve been told, and is prognostic in and of itself.

  It doesn’t bode well.

  Lena doesn’t have much more time left.

  My strong, amazing wife has already made it past the twenty-eight weeks she was aiming for. On days when she’s coherent and awake, she’s extremely happy about that fact.

  I’m happy that she’s happy, and that she’s lucid.

  I’ve learned to take advantage of those periods, to say what needs to be said, to enjoy every moment as if it were the last, because in truth, each one could be.

  During the good times, we continue making our videos. They’ve gotten shorter and shorter, though. Less and less animated. Now, they’re more or less little thoughts that Lena wants to pass on to her daughter, disjointed words of wisdom sprinkled with the occasional anecdote.

  I treasure them just as much as I do the ones that make perfect sense, but they’re harder to watch. It’s as though I can see my wife fading right before my eyes. She’s a pale, ghost-like version of the vibrant woman who’d begun making the videos, and each second of film is like a stake to my heart.

  Today, I’m aiming my phone at her, nodding for her to begin.
When she does, my stomach crunches up into an unbearable knot of grief.

  “Laugh often and love deep, little Grace,” she says, her eyes seeming to look through the camera lens as if she can already see her daughter’s face somewhere on the other side of it. “Fill your jar. As long as your jar is full, your life will never be empty. And every chance you get, put your face in the sun, and show the wind how to fly. Be fearless, my baby girl. Be fearless.”

  Usually she ends each video with a smile, a bright one that belies what’s going on in her life, in her body. But this time, her voice cracks, and her brow pleats as she struggles not to show her true emotion. I wait for several seconds, wait for her to recover and either continue or end it, but she never does. She just sits quietly on the couch with her head bowed. Through the screen of my camera, I watch her. I catch the steady rise and fall of her chest and realize she’s drifted off to sleep.

  She does that more and more often these days—just falls asleep. Nods off unexpectedly. She’s beginning to sleep more than she’s awake.

  I wonder how long it will be before she just doesn’t wake up at all.

  I know eventually that will happen. She’ll slip into a coma and never wake up.

  That is my last thought every single time she dozes off—Will I ever get to see your beautiful eyes again?

  I press the record button to turn off the video. Slowly, I rise to my feet and walk silently from the room. Only I’m around the corner and out of sight do I sink to the floor, running my fingers into my hair and giving in to the sensation of defeat.

  I save all the fight I have left for my wife. I keep my chin up for her. Anything to keep her going.

  But when she can’t see me, I crumble.

  ********

  The following week, when Lena is thirty-one weeks along, the pain begins. The first thing I noticed was her grabbing her right side and wincing, gasping and holding her breath for a few seconds.

  “You okay?” I asked initially.

  Each time she’s done it, I’ve watched my wife gather her courage, the fight she refuses to let go of, and smile.

  I watch her put on her own mask.

  “Yep. Just a little twinge.”

  Over time, the “little twinges” have come more and more frequently and lasted longer and longer. Mr. Li is coming twice per week now, doing everything he can to ease her discomfort. Different herbs and teas and powders. More acupuncture and aromatherapy and guided imagery. Nothing seems to help very much, though. Lena just grits her teeth and gets through the pain, smiling at me once they’ve passed as if nothing is wrong.

  Even in her sickness, even in her pain, she’s constantly trying to comfort me, to make me think everything is okay, that she is okay. But I can see right through her efforts. Of course, I can. I know her.

  I know her.

  I can see the odd pallor of her skin, the circles under her eyes, the dazed expression she carries more often than not. I can plainly see that she is not okay.

  There are times when I want to scream at her to show me how she really feels, to stop hiding it from me. Some part of me gets angry about it because sometimes it feels like she’s trying to protect me because she thinks I can’t handle it, that I’m not strong enough. But the rational part of my brain always slows my roll, reminding me that this is just who Lena is. She’s nurturing, loving, protective. This is her way of loving me the best way she can.

  The only way she knows how.

  That’s why I squash those stubborn bursts of anger. There’s no room for ego or pride or selfishness anymore. There’s just not.

  As it turns out, the pains in her side were only the beginning, the beginning of worse things to come. Little by little, Lena’s ability to eat is becoming compromised.

  At first, I learned to blend nutritious shakes for her to eat, anything to offset the whole foods she was no longer able to swallow. I added the herbs that Dr. Li recommended to help with her pain and with her liver function, and for a while it seemed to work. Her weight didn’t suffer, and her labs, all but a few, looked good, so I kept that up.

  For the most part, she’s existed on those shakes for two weeks. It wasn’t hard for me to see when the tides were taking another turn for the worse, though. Lena began to get choked trying to swallow drinks of the shakes. She also began to get tired more and more quickly.

  But now I know things are going downhill. No suspecting or guessing or supposing. I know.

  She just weighed in for her weekly appointment with the obstetrician, and my fears are now confirmed—Lena is losing weight.

  “I think it’s time to think about getting her some supplemental nutrition,” Dr. Stephens says, her face wreathed in sadness. When she speaks, she addresses me. Lena has all but stopped participating in the doctor’s visits. These days, she spends the majority of her time in a world that doesn’t include us, doing odd things that make sense only to her. Today, she’s busy lining up pens on the small desk that’s attached to the wall in the corner of this tiny exam room.

  Over and over, she tidies the pens, as if nothing in the world is more important. “And we need to consider options for delivery if…well, if her level of confusion continues to increase and a vaginal delivery becomes problematic at any time.”

  “C-section is fine. Whatever is best for Lena and the baby.” I hear a man’s voice bounce off the walls in the claustrophobic room, but it doesn’t sound like mine. I don’t even recognize the hollow monotone.

  From behind me, I hear a voice, I hear words that cause my heart to stutter in my chest, like it’s threatening to stop.

  “Goodnight, stars. Goodnight, moon. Goodnight, lightning bugs. Come again soon.”

  I glance around at Lena and find her staring down at her belly. She’s rubbing in big circles, and in her other hand is a miniature jar of some sort, something she evidently found at the desk.

  Lena cradles it in one hand and her stomach in the other, her voice gentle and kind as she repeats the rhyme to our unborn child. “Don’t go to bed with dirty feet or an empty jar. Say your prayers every night, and never stop chasing the lightning bugs.”

  Grief gushes under the door, out from the vents, through every tiny crack in walls. It fills the room to overflowing, promises to suffocate me. For a moment, I feel like I can’t breathe, like air has simply ceased to flow into and out from my lungs.

  I gulp at the dense, heavy atmosphere. Still I can’t take it in.

  “Excuse me,” I mutter gruffly on a gasp, practically leaping from my chair. I lunge for the door and lurch out into the hall.

  Fumbling my way along the ever-narrowing hallway, I grab the first handle I come to and nearly fall into an empty exam room. Slamming the door behind me, I slump to my knees and let my chin drop to my chest where I give in to the urge to panic.

  My muscles shake from head to toe as I kneel here, picturing my wife in the next room, reciting her father’s nursery rhyme to our baby. All I can think is that there is a tremendous likelihood that our child, that our sweet child for whom my wife is giving her life, will never get to hear Lena say those words. Grace will probably never get to see the way her mother’s features soften as she rhythmically recounts the short tale. She’ll never get to feel the tender touch of those slim fingers on her face. She’ll never be held by the arms that love her most.

  The tragedy of it is consuming me faster than I can recover and today…today I just can’t fight it.

  So I don’t.

  On my knees, I let sorrow have its way. I let my face crumble and my eyes tear. I let my fists clench and my chest heave. I let my heart break and my soul scream. I let it go until I’m too weak to move.

  Only then do I breathe.

  Only then can I breathe.

  Taking deep, calming swallows of air, I inhale and exhale slowly. A picture comes to mind, one of my wife in the next room, confusion written on her stunning face as she wonders where I went. And why I haven’t come back.

  I can’t bear the thought th
at she might, even for a single heartbeat, think I’ve left her. It’s that thought, that image that brings me to my feet and sends me back the way I came, back to the one who has brought me the most pleasure of my life.

  And, now, the most pain.

  Twenty

  Stick to Your Guns

  Nate

  A loud crash followed by a dull thump wakes me. I’m on my feet and out the bedroom door before my brain has time to fully process the fear that’s gripping me.

  “Lena?” I call.

  No answer.

  Frantic and bewildered, I search first the kitchen and then the living room, berating myself as I go. How did I fall into such a deep sleep that I didn’t hear her get up? How did I let myself relax so completely?

  I know the answer—exhaustion. I haven’t slept soundly in weeks. That, coupled with constant worry, has finally caught up with me.

  When I put Lena in bed last night and crawled in beside her, she’d turned to snuggle into my side like she used to do. “I love you,” she’d murmured right before she fell back into her coma-like rest. My heart had been so full of adoration and agony, I thought I’d never be able to sleep.

  But I did.

  I must’ve dozed right off and stayed that way through her exit from the room.

  “Christ Almighty!” I breathe when I spot my wife lying on her side on the brick paver patio. She’s visibly struggling to help herself up, but very ineffectively. She’s reaching for something to hold onto, but her fingers grasp at thin, vacant night air.

  Rushing to her side, I take her gently under her arms and ease her into a sitting position. “Are you okay?”

  My eyes rake her from head to toe, pausing at the pale cotton material between her legs to look for signs of bleeding. I exhale in relief when I see none.

  Lena laughs, a high-pitched sound like a little girl. “I slipped in the wet grass,” she explains, patting the bricks beside her. “But I almost got it. Look!” She’s pointing up into the dark sky, gesturing toward something only she can see. “Get it, Daddy! Get it before it gets away.”