Time jets. My time is divided between morning journeys to the hospital to spend time with the woman I love, afternoons and evenings of eating at The Point, hanging, jiving, and having deep conversation about life, I and Mr. Louis either inside, me leaning against the wall near my sleeping bag and him near his doing the same, or outside sitting on the doorstep, until I wake one morning and realize three months have passed. Quivering from the sleeping bag to lean against the wall, I ponder the pleasant – as well as the unpleasant – moments that have taken place throughout the past months.
Above everything, Jen still hasn’t flashed improvement. Her complexion has become as pale as linen, and I am beginning to feel my patience thinning. I’m giving my best effort not to let the prognoses Dr. Jamison and company have been making to cause me grief, especially considering how passionate of a fighter my girlfriend is, how she fights for things she needs, how she fights to exemplify her love, how she fights until I understand how much she cares for and refuses to live without me. Although she remains attached to life monitors and a machine that continues making a percentage of each breath for her, I still believe in her. I still believe in me. I still believe in us and the life that should be.
As time continues passing, I am learning more about myself. I’m not as patient as I thought. I’m not as tough as I believed because seeing her lie there, lifelessly, without being able to wake to me looking her in the face, without her being able to open her eyes to me embracing her forehead with a tender peck, has brought tears to my eyes a number of nights in the past months. Last night included. In the brief time He has graced me to be, I have never cried so much in my life and never prayed harder than I currently do. I notice myself being transformed into a better person – praying, learning, and maturing from life’s lessons.
More than half of what I have learned in the past months, I owe to Mr. Louis because he has sat and talked with me on numerous instances relating to life – about prayer, about hope, about love, about friendship, about respect, about marriage, and about forgiveness. The more he began sharing knowledge, coupled with just judgment as to what action I should take, the more I began believing my becoming homeless and crossing paths with him happened for a reason. I never had a father figure; he has no children. I never had a levelheaded man of his word to advise me on life; he never had a son to be there for and advise through life. I was without a place to lie until sunrise; he was with a place and spare sleeping bag. Each enigmatic piece fell perfectly into place as if they were constituent components of some plan or will unknown to us.
It’s blistering cold outside. It’s snowy – inches bury the ground as of last night, when we returned home from searching retail store dumpsters for the broad red blanket we thumbtacked over the opening in the wall. The air was so unbearable, particularly throughout the night, that I couldn’t attain the warmth needed to even think about falling asleep. I felt as if someone was stabbing me with a frozen knife. I’ve never experienced anything more painful.
With my grown hair no longer buzzed and full facial hair having grown, and wearing the cruddy tee and jeans I have worn for the past months without bathing or changing once, I place a hand over the outside of my right hip pocket to feel for the engagement ring box. It’s there. I glance in Mr. Louis’s direction. He’s still asleep, snoring like a freight train as though the absence of heat has no effect on him. Not understanding how he can sleep tight and still in such circumstances, I stand to look around, shivering involuntarily like a stroked violin string.
The overfilled trashcan of contaminated garbage and the plate of discolored food have been removed. He and I both grew tired of waking to the sight and smell of filth. It’s not as dirty and polluted as before. It’s not as foul. Trash isn’t strewn all over the floor. Aside from the duffle bag next to the hood of my sleeping bag, the trash bag and King James Bible Mr. Louis has arranged in the corner that’s to the right of his sleeping bag and a few miscellaneous items here and there, there isn’t much of anything but charred blemishes scarring the walls.
I fix my lips to tell Mr. Louis I am about to leave and begin traveling on foot towards the hospital to spend the morning with Jen. I glance in his direction but decide not to speak, out of respect for not wanting to disturb his peaceful sleep. I depart without wearing the duffle bag into the frozen temperatures. Six inches of shin-high snow continues in the same state from the previous night. The instant I step from the front opening of the small brick home, a gust of air strikes my sleeveless arms, my scarfless neck, my uncapped head, evoking gooseflesh from the clothed and unclothed parts of me. I think to jump back inside but am reminded of how much colder it is inside there than out here. A smoky substance appearing from each exhale I make, due to the convergence of warm air being released from my lungs and the cold, I set my mind to the only thing that matters and suddenly am boosted with the determination to tough out a trip.
When I arrive, shivering like someone put an ice-cold finger in my blood, I grab the thick blanket from the couch before the broad window of her room, and I have a seat in the armchair, stationed close at the side of the bed, undoing the blanket’s neat fold to wrap myself in a bundle. I’m freezing. My teeth chatter uncontrollably. My face, my chest, my arms, my legs, and my feet all are frozen like glaciated blocks of ice. I’m so debilitated that I spend half an hour just sitting with my head slouched to the side, resting my eyes, letting the blanket’s overwhelming warmth help unthaw my body temperature back to normal.
I’m surprised Dr. Jamison or another medical practitioner has not entered to document the vitals of Jen’s electrocardiograph monitor displaying her heartbeat and the modish ventilator supporting a percentage of each of her breaths. Speaking of Dr. Jamison, I have not seen or spoken to her in a long while. I thought I would maybe run into her as I was disembarking from the elevator, traveling the hall, wending here to spend time with my girlfriend. I thought the medical practitioner boarding the elevator as I was disembarking was her – she had the same hair color, face shape, and complexion but was someone different, a medical student, by the appearance of her short coat. If not for me having overheard someone explain the difference between short and long coats to the inquisitive parents of the scalded infant, attached to a ventilator, in a room across the hall, I would not have been able tell the difference.
I prefer long coats examining Jen. It’s nothing against medical students. I just do. I prefer to be given a prognosis from an actual medical practitioner than someone she sends in her place to provide me with the forecasting of a probable course and outcome of an illness, which still retains my girlfriend here, physically preventing her from returning to the level of embracement we have. It is a prognosis I still am awaiting because Dr. Jamison and assisting medical practitioners have yet to determine the problem.
The last time she and I spoke, Dr. Jamison provided me with the exact same expression and words she and the remainder of them have been giving from the beginning – a perplexed headshake, informing me of how normal her vitals appeared, how her CT scan, her bone scan, her endoscopic biopsy, her mammography, her barium enema, and her blood tests all appear to be normal, like it’s new information, like I haven’t been listening to a word of what she and they have been saying all along, the complete opposite of what a loved one of a current patient expects. I understand that not all illnesses can be determined. I do. What I don’t understand is how a medical practitioner, whose job is to move mountains, probing for an explanation as to how and why a woman of good health suffered a seizure, ending with her in a coma, can come in here beating the same dead horse over and over again. I’m frustrated. I’m discombobulated about how things are being handled. I don’t want to be reminded of there being no progression. If there is not new information nor a breakthrough of some sort, I prefer not to be spoken to at all. I understand there are protocols. I do. I’m certain the manner in which they continue beating the same horse, to them, seems unintentional. However, when they do so, it makes it seem like ne
ither of them are doing their jobs. It’s a can of worms I prefer not to open because there’s no telling what I would do, if that’s found to be true. I just want to come be here, with her, and treasure spending the beginning of my days with her, appreciate her in spirit because it’s all I have of the love of my life.
The feeling in me, my face, my chest, my arms, my legs, and my feet tingle back to normal. I remove the blanket from over me. I stand. I refold and return it to the couch to step into the adjoining bathroom and urinate. Without glancing into the mirror on the wall above the sink in the minute space, I clean my hands. I remove myself from the bathroom to have a seat and give her the undivided attention she deserves. Not some. Not half. But all I have to offer. It’s the reason I have the back of the armchair I’m settled into with its back to the door. I don’t care who walks past the outside of it. I don’t care what issue erupts in that hall. I don’t. All that concerns me in life lies in front of me in a universal hospital bed, on her back, with her arms at her side beneath the bedspread, with a ventilator helping deliver oxygen to her lungs.
“Good morning,” I say to the woman I walked five miles in freezing weather to spend the morning with, reminiscing about the smile of hers that used to exist. “Before I say anything, I’m sorry for the way I acted yesterday morning, for how I embarrassed you, for how I embarrassed myself, for how I embarrassed us both. Don’t know what I was thinking. I was frustrated with the way things were being handled here, but that gave me no right to snap the way I did on him. It was wrong, completely out of character for me. It won’t happen again, unless there’s an absolutely good reason for me to accuse him of not doing his job. It’s just – I got so frustrated with the thought of losing you, I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t. I can’t help the fact I love you so much. Can’t help but feel the need to protect you when I feel you’re not receiving the attention you deserve. Hope you can find it in your heart to understand that. I’m not making excuses. I take responsibility for my actions. Just simply expressing myself – like you said I should do more often. I know this isn’t the way we imagined it being, but it’s a start, right?” I pause and make myself all ears as if she can actually answer me.
I never was the kind of man to prefer talk over active expressions through something done or compromising the two together to help hone the communication amongst us. I believe expressing yourself through something done is most effective; actions aren’t difficult to understand, unless you let stubborn tendencies prevent you from interpreting the truth. It wasn’t until a talk we had one morning that she expressed how meaningful, and important, hearing me express myself feels to her heart, how words validate action, how words help bring her a better understanding for the reason behind certain actions of mine.
I admit I’m not the most verbal of men. Being less verbal is something my mother instilled in me. I can hear her now – “When it comes to expressing love, one word can cause more misunderstandings than a million lies all together. But actions can never be misunderstood. How you hold her, how you kiss her, how you look into her face, how you protect her, can never be misunderstood. It’s authentic. It’s real. It’s from the heart and doesn’t have time to be misled through the filtering process that happens when a feeling travels from the heart to the mouth.” I was thirteen when my mother lectured me on how and when to be gentle, how to compromise, when to stand firm in what I believe as a man. I learned much from her.
I can tell her teachings were encouraged in Mr. Louis through his own mother or some lady of significance because a number of his morals are quite similar to mine. Nevertheless, the wisdom his mother had given him didn’t quite impact his marriage the same as the advice my mother had given me has done so far in my relationship. One week back, I believe, to be exact, I was seated on the floor against the wall near my sleeping bag, and he was doing the same near his, when he opened up about the marriage he was a part of before he became homeless.
He wedded the love of his life. Or so he thought. The following morning after vows made them husband and wife, he woke to find that she, the automobile, and the money had all Houdinied without a trace. Nine hundred thousand dollars, money he had saved long before he met her, planning to establish an ice cream corporation, but he never got the chance. Instead of doing as he had dreamt, he ended up getting evicted from a condo due to not having the finances to handle the rent, and then he was terminated from his management position of the renowned construction company he labored for – for about a decade – grossing upwards of one hundred thousand dollars per year, in addition to performance-based bonuses. And even sadder, like me, he was preparing to name his corporation after the love of his life. I understand life isn’t fair, but no man deserves to find out he married the wrong woman through underhanded means like that.
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything but imagine how he must have felt the morning he found out, her not answering the phone, her not leaving behind an explanation or note for the manner in which she walked out on him. I imagine he was more heartbroken than anything. And he had the right to be. The heartbreak in his words as he gave testimonies reminded me of how blessed I am to have a woman like Jennifer in my life – how much of a blessing not having to anguish over whether her love is true for me. She and I experience our fair share of disagreements, but instead of hiding behind excuses, blaspheming, or intentionally hurting one another, we choose to endure for the sake of the good times that are, instead of the one time that isn’t – the reason our companionship outlasts the ambushes life is known best for bombing a monogamous couple with.
*
Standing in the doorway of the bedroom eavesdropping, unnoticed, I tune in to the sound of Mr. Louis singing an old-fashioned song as if he is the artist himself – dancing, performing on stage in front of a live audience with his back turned. I have never heard the song, a song that must have been penned before I began listening to music. If it was penned after, by the sound of the lyrics I can tell it belongs to a genre I haven’t heard because I can’t recall the title. And though he sings a cappella, I hear that it involves a degree of love and soul – something about a man expressing how he will love a woman, no matter what she does.
Not speaking or making known my presence, I just stand in silence, not knowing if I should interrupt his graceful voice or remain silent and allow him to keep impersonating an onstage performer by acting as if he cannot remove his attention from a fictitious audience member sitting in the front row. I and Mr. Louis are the only ones here, me struggling to keep from laughing about him being silly near his red sleeping bag with his back still to me.
I applaud him although he has yet to reach the end of the song.
He swings around. “Oh. Ain’t know you was standin’ there.”
“Bravo! Bravo! Encore.”
He bows, and his lips quirk upward as he raises a hand to acknowledge me as though I’m a member of the audience he entertained. “Lenny Williams ain’t got nothing on me.”
A remembrance resurfacing in my mind, I bring the applause to an end. I rid all impressions of laughter from me, my face’s demeanor stern.
Returning home from the hospital, I pondered extensively about something I failed to mention while there visiting Jen. I was so engrossed in spending time with her and leaving her with a pleasant reminder of our camaraderie to hold her spirit until tomorrow morning, I made an honest mistake, failed to mention an idea I have been pondering for the past month. I’m certain she wouldn’t mind. She would consider it to be a great idea. I’m maturing to like expressing myself to her. That way we both are aware of matters that can affect our relationship, our commitment to one another. In addition to that, she and I both agree to be frank about everything – even minor things that stand a slight chance of causing us turmoil.
“Mind if I talk to you about something?” I have something I need to ask him.
“Errthing alright?” he asks, gesturing his facial expression to match min
e.
I step near my sleeping bag. I lower myself to plant my backside on the floor, to lean back onto the wall with his attention glued to me.
“Errthing alright?” he asks again, concerned.
“Have a seat.”
He crouches carefully toward the floor to sit on his side of the window as I am on mine, grunting like an eighty-year-old gentleman.
I have a moment to collect my thoughts – repairing the crevices in my mind – in order to keep what I plan to ask intact without bits and pieces slipping here and there. I inhale deep, exhale slow and smooth. Once all tension is removed from me, I hold a straight face. “Once all this is over and done, you find your way and I find mine, when my girlfriend wakes up from her coma, I want you to be my best man.”
His eyebrows shoot north and his jaw floors as he gives me a look. “Best man?”
“Will you?”
He takes a long look at me. He arranges his moved expression to look straight ahead, doing everything imaginable, glancing up at the ceiling, rolling his eyes, inhaling deep, exhaling smooth, to keep from letting his tearful eyes cry. “’Fore you came along, ain’t have nobody. No friends, no relatives; all of ’em were ashamed of me. No one that’d gimme a chance to prove I’m a human being, a good-natured man in an unfortunate predicament.” He blinks, tears gliding down his face to disappear into his beard. “’On’t care what nobody say, you a damn good man. Friend, brother, husband-to-be. Without a doubt, the best person I’ve met. You ’on’t judge. You ’on’t talk down on nobody. You ’on’t be walking ’round boasting, bragging, talking ’bout what you used to have, what you done, done for people. You as down-to-earth as they come, and I ’preciate that.” He pauses for a long moment to gather himself. He raises a palm to brush across his eyes, down his face, wiping out the streak the tears left behind. He beams, his lips raising, his nearest eye to me wrinkling at the corner. “Guess I’ll be gettin’ rid of this, huh?” he says, raising the pads of his fingers to run them from temple to temple, across his lion’s mane beard. “Lemme warn you ahead of time, though. I clean up nice, so, don’t be surprised when one of the bridesmaids asks for my hand in marriage in the middle of the ceremony. Tend to have that effect on women,” he says, bantering in a teasing manner.
My Bridge To Forever Page 10
