Listed: Volumes I-VI

by Noelle Adams

  “You just what?” Paul was on his side too, and he was doing his best to force down his instinctive reaction.

  “I just don’t want to die when things aren’t good with him.”

  Paul swallowed. “Of course not. You should do what you can to clear things up with him.”

  “Yeah. I’ll do what I can, but he doesn’t like it when I defend you.”

  “You don’t have to defend me,” Paul said, very slowly.

  Even in the dark, Emily’s expression was transparently outraged. “Of course, I have to defend you! Damn it, Paul, whose side do you think I’m on?”

  He just stared at her.

  Emily’s face changed as she gazed at him. “Oh, Paul, did you really think…” She scooted over and nestled against his side with one arm draped over his belly, which was evidently her favorite position. “Of course I’m on your side,” she breathed, pressing a little kiss on his chest.

  He tightened one arm around her and used his other hand to stroke her hair. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t feel capable of saying anything.

  His heart was still beating too fast, but he tried to slow his breathing, tried to relax his body. The week and a half of the trial had taken too much out of him, and if he didn’t sleep he was just going to drop.

  He thought about his father. And, for once, it didn’t hurt so much he couldn’t breathe. Maybe he could get some sort of closure. Maybe he could somehow move on. Maybe his father didn’t have to haunt his steps for the rest of his life.

  At least there was hope.

  Emily must have been exhausted too, since she was asleep in less than ten minutes. She still clung to him in her sleep, and her warm presence and slow, steady breathing helped him to relax too.

  She was dying, but she had an extra month that they hadn't known she had. Maybe there was a cure for her.

  At least there was hope.

  Paul didn’t know how he would have gotten through this trial without her.

  Then he had one more thought before he fell into unbroken sleep.

  He couldn’t remember the last time someone had been on his side.

  ***

  Paul woke up early the following morning.

  He immediately knew something was strange—maybe wrong—although it took him a minute to figure out what it was.

  He finally realized that Emily wasn’t draped all over him the way she normally was when he woke up. Paul's body felt cool, and none of his limbs had lost circulation. When he turned his head, he saw that she was huddled up on the opposite side of the bed, facing away from him.

  Her position and lack of cuddling was so unusual that he thought initially she might have a fever, so he reached across the bed and gently turned her over onto her back. She was asleep, and she moaned softly at his disruption of her slumbers. She didn’t wake up, though. When he felt her forehead, she wasn’t unusually hot.

  Relieved she wasn’t sick, Paul left her alone to sleep and went to work out for an hour. He’d been working out more than usual lately, since he had a lot of physical frustration to channel, and he worked himself particularly hard this morning. He was hot, sweaty, and tired when he returned to his bedroom an hour later to take a shower.

  It wasn’t even six in the morning, and Emily was still sleeping—huddled up in a ball again on the edge of the bed.

  Once he’d showered and dressed, Paul got some coffee and went into his office to work. He had a mountain of email to get through, since he’d gotten behind because of the trial.

  While normally that would be considered a good excuse, he knew he was still in a probationary period with the board, and he wasn’t going to ask or expect any sort of leniency because of his personal situation.

  He was so absorbed in clearing his inbox that he lost track of time. When the phone rang, he glanced at the clock and was surprised that it was already after ten in the morning.

  As he reached over to pick it up, he wondered when Emily had gotten up and why she hadn’t stopped by to say good-morning to him.

  “Mr. Marino,” a voice greeted on the other end of the line, “It’s Dr. Franklin calling. I hope it’s not too early for a Saturday.”

  “No, of course not. Is everything all right?” For a moment, he felt a flare of hope. Maybe Dr. Franklin had a potential treatment for Emily. Why else would he be calling the morning after they’d had an office visit with him?

  “Yes, yes, everything is fine. I just wanted to check in about one of your wife’s concerns yesterday.”

  “I see,” Paul said, although he didn’t really see at all. The flicker of hope was extinguished, and he grew worried instead.

  “She didn’t bring it up as we were talking, but I guess Mrs. Marino had mentioned to my nurse during the physical exam that her menstrual cycle had stopped a month or two ago. She was asking if that was normal with this kind of virus.”

  “Oh, yes,” Paul said automatically, pretending he knew what the doctor was talking about. He didn’t know about it. Since Dr. Franklin obviously assumed he did, he added, “Is it normal?”

  “It’s difficult to say what’s normal in a case as rare as this, but I will say that an illness such as this affects the body so fundamentally that I’m not surprised she stopped menstruating. It’s probably a hormonal response to the progress of the virus in her body. I think it’s likely she'll be infertile for the remainder of her life, unless we find a cure for the disease.”

  “I see,” Paul said, shifting in his desk chair.

  “I trust this isn’t…” For once, Dr. Franklin faltered with his words, “I trust this isn’t a disappointment. I know you and your wife are recently married and haven’t had the chance to have children, but…”

  “But she wouldn’t live long enough anyway,” Paul finished for him. “Yes, naturally we weren’t considering having children.”

  For some reason—for absolutely no good reason—he felt a pang in his chest as he spoke the words. He couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to have a future with Emily, to have a baby with her. He snuffed the thought as soon as it crossed his mind, however, since such idle imaginings were dangerous and futile.

  “Yes. Anyway, I hope you’ll tell her not to worry about it. Nothing has changed physically, so it’s likely a hormonal response to the virus.”

  “I’ll tell her. Thank you.”

  When Paul hung up the phone, he sat for a few minutes and tried to talk himself down from being deeply annoyed with Emily for not telling him a possibly important detail of her health situation. He didn’t know how she would feel about the fact that her reproductive system was shutting down, a first step in the decline of her whole body. It might be hard for her to hear, though, and it wouldn’t help if he were bristling with indignation over being left out of this information.

  When he decided he was suitably under control, he went to find her. He was very surprised to discover that she wasn’t yet out of bed. Normally, she would have been up for at least an hour or two by now.

  She could be really tired. His father’s trial had taken a lot out of her, and she hadn’t gotten to bed until after one the night before. He fixed her a cup of coffee and carried it into his bedroom.

  She was still curled up under the covers, but she opened her eyes halfway when he approached the bed with the cup of coffee. She didn’t smile, though, which was unusual.

  “Good morning,” he said, putting the coffee down on the nightstand on her side of the bed. “Are you feeling all right?” He sat down on the edge of the bed beside her and reached to feel her forehead again.

  She grumbled and rolled away from him, but he’d felt her enough to be assured she didn’t have a fever.

  “I just got a call from Dr. Franklin,” Paul said. He knew she was awake, and she seemed to be in a bad mood. However, he also knew she wouldn’t appreciate his holding onto any information he had about her. “Do you want to hear about it now?”

  She rolled over onto her back and looked up at him through heavy eyel
ids. Her hair was a tangled mess around her face, and her lips were curved down in an uncharacteristic droop. “What did he say?”

  “He said you’d asked the nurse about your period stopping, and he wanted to let you know that wasn’t an unusual hormonal response to an illness like yours. You probably won’t be fertile again.”

  “Oh.” She stared at him blankly. “Why did he talk to you and not me?”

  Paul lifted his eyebrows. “Because I was the one who answered the phone, and you’d signed the form that allowed him to share with me your medical—”

  “Fine, fine,” Emily interrupted. “It’s no big deal.” She rolled back over onto her side, facing away from him. “It’s not like I can ever have a baby now anyway. I might as well not have to mess with cramps and PMS.”

  “Emily?” Paul asked, feeling irrationally annoyed again that she seemed to be closing him out for no reason. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  She made a muffled grunt that he couldn’t identify as any specific words.

  “Emily?”

  “I just didn’t,” she mumbled. “Do we have to talk about this now?”

  “No, we don’t.” Paul stood up and stared down at her messy hair and stiff back. He felt hurt and confused and almost snubbed by her obvious desire to get rid of him. She’d never acted like this with him before.

  But she’d just woken up, and that was hardly the ideal circumstance to have a serious conversation. So he said, “We can talk later.”

  She made another wordless sound but didn’t turn over as he left the bedroom.

  Feeling annoyed and restless, he went back to work and managed to distract himself for another hour and a half.

  His mind kept straying to Emily, however, wondering what was going on in her mind and if she was really all right.

  He finally got up to go talk to her again.

  He was genuinely worried when he found her still in bed. It was almost noon now. Not once had he known her to sleep so late. The coffee he’d brought in earlier was sitting cold and untouched on the nightstand.

  “Emily?” he asked, not really caring if he was waking her up now. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

  She shifted under the covers and turned to glare at him over her shoulder. “I’m sleeping.”

  “It’s almost noon. You don’t sleep this late.”

  “I do today.”

  Something was definitely wrong. He walked around to his side of the bed so he could see her face. Her eyes were shut, and her hair was hanging over her cheek. “Emily,” he said, an edge of warning in his tone. “You have to tell me if you’re getting sick.”

  “I’m not sick.” She scowled with transparent impatience before she rolled over onto her other side, showing him her back again.

  Paul sighed in frustration, but he was too worried now to be genuinely angry. “Then why aren’t you getting up?”

  “What’s the point?” she muttered, almost too muffled for him to register the words.

  He did hear them, though, and he suddenly understood them.

  If all of this had happened to him, he would have fallen into a depressed (and probably drunken) stupor weeks ago. Emily wasn’t him. She was bright and strong and resilient, and she’d handled tragedy better than he could have dreamed of doing. But she was still human, and yesterday one of the biggest tasks she’d had left to accomplish had been completed.

  Since he was tired of standing next to the bed, he got into it, propping himself against the pillows in the middle so Emily couldn’t get very far away from him. “My dad’s trial wasn’t the only reason you have to get out of bed, Emily.”

  She turned to peer at him over her shoulder but then frowned. “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me. I just want to sleep in.”

  “You’ve already slept in. It’s almost lunchtime. Now it’s time to get up.” He kept the surge of sympathy out of his voice—since he knew she’d resent it—so he sounded bland and matter-of-fact.

  “Why exactly?”

  “There are things to do, and you have a husband who’s getting bored trying to amuse himself.”

  She snorted, but she did roll over onto her back, instead of huddling away from him, so that was improvement. “I don’t have anything I need to do today.”

  “Then we’ll find something to do. Your birthday is next week. We can start making plans. Do you have any thoughts about what you'd like to do?”

  “Nothing,” she mumbled, glancing away from him. “What’s the point? Nothing is going to change.”

  “What does that mean? It’s a birthday whether things change or not. Tell me what you’d like to do, and we’ll do it.”

  “It’s not like I can have a party or anything.” She sighed and stared at a blank spot across the room. She didn’t seem to be whining as much as reflecting poignantly.

  “Of course, you can. You have a lot of friends in the neighborhood. Who do you want there? Just tell me who you want, and I’ll make sure they come.”

  Emily gave a thick exhale and a little shrug. “I don’t know. It would be weird to have all my friends hanging around me waiting for me to die.”

  “I don’t think that’s why they’d be there, but we can do something alone, if you’d rather.”

  She didn’t answer immediately. She just stared down at her hands, where she was idly twisting her emerald and diamond engagement ring.

  “Do you have any ideas about what you want for your birthday?” he asked, when she still didn’t respond.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We can figure it out later. But you still need to get out of bed.”

  She rolled her eyes at him, which he thought was an improvement, since he’d rather see her looking annoyed than depressed.

  “You have an extra month, according to Dr. Franklin, remember?” Paul said. “That’s good news.”

  “Yeah, an extra month to suffer through fevers. Yay me.”

  Paul’s chest twisted painfully. “You won’t be sick the whole time. You feel fine today, right? So why waste it?”

  Her blue eyes darted up at him, almost questioningly, before they returned to stare at her ring.

  “Emily?” he asked softly, feeling a sudden cold wave as he thought about why she was staring that way at her rings. “Is there anything else bothering you? You’re happy…you’re happy with our marriage, aren’t you?”

  It had meant so much to Paul last night that she’d said she was on his side, and he believed she’d meant it. She’d never been in love with him, though. Maybe, now that she had an extra month to live, she was tired of being shackled to such a mess of a man.

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “That doesn’t sound very convincing.” His tone sounded a little forced to his own ears, but he kept his expression as natural as possible. “You know, if you decide you want out, all you need to do is—”

  Emily made a choked noise of outrage. “I don’t want out of the marriage. What the hell are you talking about?”

  Her grumpiness was more comforting than any kind words would have been. The tension in his chest eased. “I was just checking. So you’re satisfied with everything about our marriage?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly, with a strange twist of her mouth, “It’s good. I just…”

  Paul’s breath hitched. “You just want?”

  She opened her mouth as if she would answer, but then she just shook her head and looked away.

  “Emily, you have to tell me.” He reached out and took her by the shoulders. Made her look at him. “If something in our marriage isn’t working for you, you have to tell me what it is so I can fix it.”

  Her expression changed. Grew soft. She gazed up at him with obvious affection. “It’s nothing for you to fix, Paul. You don’t have to fix anything. You’ve been a better husband to me than I could ever have imagined. There’s nothing you need to fix.”

  He wanted to lean into the words, let them wash over him, but he wasn’t sure if he could really believe t
hem. It had felt like she had something to say. Something he needed to know. He pushed the thought aside for now, since he still needed to get Emily out of bed.

  "All right. If it's not the marriage, then tell me what's wrong," he said.

  Emily slumped down again and shook her head.

  "Were you upset about what Dr. Franklin said this morning?"

  She gave a half-shrug. "Not really. I mean, it's kind of depressing, but obviously I wasn't going to have a baby anyway." She sighed and darted a glance over to him. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it. I just…"

  "You just what?"

  "It's just embarrassing," she admitted, making a pained face, "That my body isn't working the way it's supposed. That nothing is working. I didn't want you to treat me like I was…like I was…"

  "Like you were what?"

  "Broken."

  Paul made a rough sound in his throat and wrapped an arm around her to pull him against her. "Emily, you're not broken. You're just sick. It's not going to change how I treat you." He wanted to comfort her, but he wasn't entirely sure if the words were true. The sicker she became, the more he would want to protect her, shelter her, make her better.

  It wasn't right—it was just wrong—that there was virtually nothing he could do.

  She leaned against him. She wasn't crying. She just looked so, so tired. She didn't say anything for a long time.

  Then she finally admitted in a small voice, "I don't want to die, Paul."

  He made another husky noise and wrapped both arms around her, holding her tightly, too tightly. "I know. I know."

  There wasn't anything else he could say. He was still hoping he could find a way to save her, but she might be angry if she found out he was trying.

  Part of him wanted to give her a day to stay in bed and mope. She deserved it. She had more reason than he'd ever had, and he'd done plenty of brooding in his life. But it just didn't feel like Emily.

  “What about your list?” he suggested, “I know the trial has distracted us from it, but you’ve only gotten halfway through. We need to start working on the rest of it.”

  “Oh. I guess so. Yeah.”

  “Maybe we can get something on the list done today. That would be reason for you to get up.”