The Man She Married

by Cathy Lamb

  She gives a cry of delight and hugs me tight, a drink in her hand, the ice clinking. “Good to see you, kid.” Her eyes flood with tears. She puts the drink down on a table beside a red 1967 Chevy. The hood is up. She’s in her blue mechanic overalls. She places her hands on either side of my face. “I have missed you so much, honey.”

  “I’ve missed you, too, Grandma Dixie.” She smells like her rose perfume.

  My grandma was a ball-breaker. She was popular in Lake Joseph, our small town in eastern Oregon. She was the mechanic. Everyone said she could get a car without an engine to drive. She shot darts, bluffed her way through poker, and won the rifle shooting contest every year. When she swore it was like listening to a poem or short story. She’d left me all her antique perfume bottles.

  “I’d like you to stay and play poker, kid, have a beer, but you have to go back.”

  “What?”

  “Your dad needs you. Zack needs you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Go back, Natalie.” She hugs me again, cheek to cheek, then lets me go and says, “Go back now.”

  “Go back where, Grandma Dixie?”

  “I mean, get out of here, quick as a hot cat. It’s not your time.”

  “Not my time?” And then I get it. I know where I am. Oh, hell. Not that I am in hell, but hell. I do not want to be here, that’s for sure.

  “Fight, baby. Fight for your life. I love you.”

  She takes three steps back, then rushes forward and shoves me as hard as she can, right in the chest.

  I fall straight back through the soft tunnel, Beethoven’s Fifth whirling around me.

  Chapter 3

  I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t see. I can’t talk. It’s dark in here. I’m in pain. My head is throbbing, every cell shrieking. I need to breathe.

  What is going on? Where am I? What happened?

  “Clear!” someone shouts.

  Ouch! That hurt my chest.

  “Clear!” someone shouts again.

  Ouch! Hurts again.

  “Natalie.”

  It’s Zack. He’s upset. Is he crying? I think he’s crying. He rarely cries. Only a few times, when I told him I loved him, when he asked me to marry him, our wedding day . . .

  “Natalie, breathe, honey. Please. Take a breath. . . .”

  I feel my heart flip. This is freakin’ scary. I feel it flip again; it’s out of rhythm. It’s weak.

  “Her heart is beating,” someone says, panting.

  I force myself to take a breath. And another one.

  “She’s breathing,” a woman says. “She’s breathing!”

  I’m lying down and I’m moving fast. I can hear people shouting around me. There’s something over my mouth and nose.

  They’re telling one another what to do. Medical terms and “stopped breathing” and “blood pressure plummeting . . .” and “severe brain injury . . .” They grab my arm and stick it with a needle. It hurts, but I can’t tell them that. Something stiff is around my neck. Lights are flashing. Bright. My heart is still flipping around. Like a suffocating fish.

  Obviously, something is very, very wrong. I remember having sex with Zack at halftime during the football game last night. We had sex in the bath, too, after he’d undone all the buttons of my white lace negligee. We went to bed, and I gave him a kiss good night. What happened after that? Why am I not at home? Why am I not at work? Am I late for work? I am never late for work. I have clients. Why am I here? Where is here?

  I start to scream. They clearly cannot hear me.

  I don’t know how long I scream. I hear someone shout, “She’ll be out in three, two. . . .”

  * * *

  I wake up in a bed. I am lying flat. My eyes are closed, or I am blind. I hope I am not blind. I cannot move. Not my head, my hands, my toes. Nothing.

  Where am I? I hear people talking. It’s fuzzy at first, then it becomes clearer, as if my brain has shifted, or turned on, and now it can listen, evaluate.

  It’s a hospital. I’m in a hospital. I hear doctors and nurses talking in urgent, sharp voices to one another. They are using medicalese I don’t understand. There are at least six voices. I hear what I don’t want to hear: Brain swelled. Blood on the brain. Brain injury, moderate to severe. Operation went better than expected, but we’ll have to see . . .

  Then someone talks to me. “Mrs. Shelton, my name is Dr. Tarasawa. You’ve been in a car accident and you are in the hospital.”

  A car accident? I was in a car accident? When? What happened? Oh no. Did I hurt someone else? I hope I didn’t. I feel ill. I didn’t hurt anyone, did I? Tell me. Please tell me.

  “You sustained a head injury. We operated. The operation went well.”

  You operated on my brain?

  “Mrs. Shelton, I want you to squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

  I try. I cannot squeeze.

  “No movement,” he says to someone.

  I try for movement. No go.

  “Mrs. Shelton,” Dr. Tarasawa says again. “I need you to squeeze my hand.”

  I try to squeeze. I can’t.

  The doctor mutters, “She should be awake by now.”

  I am awake, I try to shout to Dr. Tarasawa.

  “She shouldn’t be in this coma,” another doctor says.

  I am not in a coma! Am I?

  “I don’t know what’s wrong,” Dr. Tarasawa says.

  I know what’s wrong! You can’t hear me!

  “We’re consulting with other doctors. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Damn,” Dr. Tarasawa mutters again. “Mrs. Shelton. Can you hear me?”

  I can hear you.

  I can’t see you.

  I can’t talk to you.

  I can’t move.

  But I am here. In here. In this body, this nonmoving body with a brain that’s been operated on. It’s me, Natalie. I am in a coma. It is a Coma Coffin, because I am trapped and stuck.

  I am hooked up to machines. I can hear them beeping. There are IVs in my arms. I can feel them.

  I am locked in my own body. Locked in.

  Locked inside.

  I try not to scream in fear, in terror.

  It doesn’t work.

  I scream.

  Dr. Tarasawa doesn’t hear me.

  No one hears me.

  * * *

  The next time I wake up, Zack is with me. I can feel him. I can smell him. He smells like the wind. He smells like mint and soap and fir trees. Somehow he reminds me of my grandma’s apple pie, my favorite. I always tell him, “You’re my apple pie,” and he laughs.

  “Hey, baby,” he says, so quiet, so depressed. He kisses my limp hand, and I hear him start to cry.

  I want to hug him. I want to talk to him. But I can’t move. I can’t talk to him. I can’t say, “I don’t remember any car accident and the last thing I remember is going to bed with you last night, Zack, so what happened? What’s going on now?”

  Zack, I cry inside this bleak hole, this bleak place, this waiting place, maybe a dying place. Help me, please, baby. Help me.

  He cries on the side of the bed.

  I cry in the bed.

  * * *

  I remember seeing my grandma Dixie recently. I remember smelling her rose perfume. I remember she had a drink in her hand. She was working on a car, a red 1967 Chevy, in her blue mechanic’s outfit. I remember her giving me a shove, which wouldn’t have happened. Grandma Dixie would never shove me.

  Plus, Grandma Dixie’s been dead for years. This is so confusing. I would love to have one of her apple pies, though. She loved baking pies. Didn’t like to cook. Her cookbooks gathered dust, but she found peace in making apple pie crusts and mixing brown sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg together.

  Why do I feel as if I recently gave Grandma Dixie a hug?

  * * *

  “Hummingbird, it’s time to wake up.”

  It’s my dad. My lumbering, grizzly bear dad. “Darling Hummingbird, please. Open those blue
eyes of yours and smile at me. One smile, only one . . .”

  Next to Zack, my dad, Scott Fox, is my favorite person. I adore him. He’s six foot four, ironically the same size as Zack, and built like a human tractor. He’s a man with a barrel chest, black and white hair, and dark brown eyes. He has been a metalsmith for a famous outdoor artist named Margarita Hammer for a number of years. Before that he was a roofer.

  He cries when he watches Pride and Prejudice, says Jane Eyre is one of his best book friends, reads voraciously in all subjects, and loves to hunt and eat whatever he killed that afternoon or hooked on his fly rod that evening. He was trained to shoot by my grandma. His shot is excellent.

  “Oh no, oh no, oh no,” my dad cries. “Please, my hummingbird. You are my life. Wake up, wake up.”

  My dad holds my hand, his hand hard and rough from years of working outside, putting roofs on houses, working in our orchard, and taking care of our animals. He says, “Open your eyes, my blue robin. Open those bleepin’ eyes. Come back to your daddy.”

  Zack and my dad sit beside me in my hospital room. They have always gotten along. The atmosphere is grim. Heavy. Depressing.

  My dad sings me a song. “Old McDonald Had a Farm.” In choosing that song, a song he sang to me as a kid, I know he’s lost it. His voice breaks and cracks, but he does all the animal sounds, and inside my coma, all trapped and stuck, I cry.

  Who knew the sound of a goat could cause such emotional wreckage?

  * * *

  I hear many doctors coming in and out of my room. They do not know I can hear every word they say.

  “She was hit by a van,” one doctor tells another. “Hit-and-run. The van was stolen, driver wasn’t caught. Police have been here.”

  Ah. So that’s what happened. I must have been on my way to work when I got in an accident. I don’t remember being on my way to work, though. I remember hugging Zack last night—was it last night?—and that was my last memory before I went to sleep. But I would have been going to work in the morning. I am always on time.

  I am furious that a driver hit me and drove off, but I am so relieved that I didn’t hurt anyone I can barely catch my breath. I have always known that I could not live with the guilt if I hurt someone else. I couldn’t bear it.

  “She took the full impact,” the doctor says. “Truck totaled. Flatlined. Paramedics brought her back.”

  I want to scream at them to do their jobs, to save me, to pull me out of this.

  “Mrs. Shelton!” they say to me. “Can you hear me? Can you squeeze my hand?”

  I can’t answer and I can’t squeeze.

  My brain is trying to tell me something. It’s like when you have a word in mind but you can’t get it, can’t grab it. My brain has something on the tip, something that I can almost remember, something I need to know, but then . . . poof. Gone. It has something to do with Zack. It has something to do with the accident. I wish I could remember the accident. I feel as if the thought is dangerous. It’s . . . scary. But how can that be? Zack never scares me.

  This does, though. This coma scares the heck out of me.

  * * *

  That night I have a nightmare in my Coma Coffin.

  I don’t know how this is done. Anyone seeing me would think I was in the deepest sleep of all without being dead. But sometimes I wake up inside my coma and I realize I’ve been asleep.

  In my nightmare I see a man. He’s white, he’s heavy with a round face, his skin fleshy. He’s bald. He has tiny, dark pig eyes and a mocking slash of a mouth with teeth like a crooked picket fence. His nose is bulbous, red veins shot through, scratchy like a crow’s claw.

  The worst part is the evil rampaging through that man. He is laughing, one of those sick people with a smiling smirk who are the most dangerous of all.

  He is trying to kill me.

  * * *

  Zack says to me, in a broken voice, “I am so sorry, Natalie.” My tough, reserved, protective, smart, loving Zack is trying not to cry.

  I don’t know what he’s sorry about. Why is he sorry? He didn’t do this. I heard the doctors talking. I was hit by a van. I don’t remember it, but I know Zack wasn’t driving the van, so it’s not his fault. We don’t even have a van.

  I wish I could see him. I am petrified.

  I don’t want to live like this. I don’t. I know that.

  But I don’t want to die. I am too young to die. Of course, I will think I am too young to die when I am ninety, too, and part deaf and walking with a cane and wearing a diaper, but I want to live.

  Zack and I are going to have kids. A bunch of them. A gang of kids. We are going to build our dream house. One day. We are going to plant a ton of white daisies because they’re my favorite flower.

  But wait. Zack . . . what’s wrong? He’s on his cell phone. He’s furious. He’s threatening someone. He’s swearing at them as he leaves my hospital room. Come back, Zack, come back.

  When Zack comes back, he holds my hands in his and cries like I have never heard him cry. I cry because he’s crying, and it hurts me to hear.

  “I am so sorry, Natalie. This shouldn’t have happened to you. It should have happened to me. This is my fault. All my fault.”

  I don’t understand. What is his fault?

  * * *

  “Natalie.”

  I hear my voice being called. I have to come up through a fog. Was I asleep or was I dying? I don’t know. But I do know Chick’s voice. I would know Chick’s voice anywhere. I’ve been hearing it since kindergarten.

  I picture her. Reddish hair, the sunlight glinting through it, turning some of it golden. Chick is curvy and, as her husband says, “sexily lush, that’s my woman.” Brown eyes, sharp, smart, they take no crap. Her personality is somewhat tractor-ish, as in, she will mow you down if she needs to.

  “Natalie, can you hear me? It’s me, Chick.”

  Hello, Chick, I think, deep inside my Coma Coffin. Chick’s real name is Esther Thornton-LaSalle. She was given the name Chick by her brother, Jed, because they had little chicks when they were kids. She raised them in her bedroom and loved them and would only cluck like a chicken for weeks and refused to speak English. Chick is married to Braxton, her high school sweetheart, and they have six kids.

  “And me, Natalie. It’s Justine. Please open your eyes.”

  Hello, Justine! I picture Justine, too, my other best friend, who I also met in kindergarten. Justine and I co-own our accounting firm Knight and Fox in downtown Portland. She’s the rainmaker, the hand shaker, the one who brings clients in, and I handle the numbers and accounts. It’s a perfect business marriage. We have four employees. Five. Three. I can’t remember.

  Justine has black hair, long, fashionable. Hazel and gold eyes, a blend. Gorgeous, naturally, and knows it but isn’t snooty about it. She can’t help what she was born with. She’s a brilliant accountant and the oldest of eight kids.

  She is desperately in love with Chick’s brother, Jed Thornton, and has been since we were seven. She has a secret. I know the secret; Chick does, too. The secret hurts her every day, like a tiny, searing knife cut.

  “Open even only one eye,” Justine pleads with me. “One. That’s all we’re asking. One eye. Even half an eye.”

  Inside I laugh at Justine’s plea that I open “half an eye.”

  “Come on, Natalie,” Chick says. “Buck up and wake up. Rooster’s crowing, rise and shine.” Chick has always liked farm phrases.

  They are tearful, their voices desperate. They are begging. Justine, Chick, and I are the Moonshine and Milky Way Maverick Girls, and one of them, me, is dead and not dead at the same time.

  I try to open “even half an eye,” but I can’t. I’m living in my body, but my body is not living. It’s hard to explain, but we are two separate beings in here. My body, which doesn’t work or respond, is one, and then there’s me. I am a brain and a heart and a soul stuck inside bones and skin.

  “Please, Natalie, you’re our best friend,” Chick pleads. “We’re the
Moonshine and Milky Way Maverick Girls. It’s the three of us. You have to fight. Fight like a you-know-what-bad-word that starts with an M and has an F in the middle. Fight like a bull is chasing you down a field, like that one time when we were fifteen.” I remembered that. That bull was fast and snorting. “Fight like a wild cat.”

  “I love you, Natalie,” Justine whispers to me. Her tears drop on my cheeks.

  “I love you, too,” Chick says. She hugs me, gently. I am covered in tubes, a collar around my neck, something over my head, bandages; you name it, I have it. I can’t see myself, but I can imagine.

  “This is all gonna end soon,” Chick says. “I mean, it’s not going to end, in your death. Don’t think that. Didn’t mean to freak you out, Natalie. I mean, this is all gonna end when we see that smile of yours again. Bring it on. Bring the smile over the horizon.”

  “Yes, we’ll take the smile. And the dimples in your cheeks. Not the dimples in your butt cheeks.” Justine makes a sad, gaspy sound. “Those are cute, the butt dimples, but we don’t need to see those. I don’t know why I said that. Why am I talking about her butt dimples? Why? I’m so upset! I can’t breathe. Is there air in here? Is there?”

  I am fortunate that my best friends don’t need to see my butt dimples. We have seen one another’s butt dimples. We used to skinny-dip.

  We used to jump off The Rocks at the lake, too. We haven’t done that in years, as we’ve all had jobs and responsibilities and blah. Plus, we’ve all chickened out. If I get out of here, I’m jumping again. I am stuck between life and death, where no one should ever live, and that jump will tell me that I’m alive and well.

  I hear the Moonshine and Milky Way Maverick Girls crying.

  I feel terrible for the pain that Zack, my dad, Justine, and Chick are going through. This is not fun for me, but it’s killing me to hear their pain.

  Ha. Killing me. This is my strange sense of humor boiling up through my corpse.

  But if I do not use humor in here, I will have a total and complete nervous breakdown.

  * * *

  Justine Knight and Chick Thornton and I met in kindergarten.