“Where am I?” I need to be certain I am in the present and no longer dreaming.
“Outside, near the entrance. Summer told me you were out here.”
“Oh.”
“She exited for a smoke, saw you, and became worried. She paged me.” Dr. Jamison lets her face lower to the cement deck. Her straight demeanor harbors something secretive. There are words she needs to tell me. But she fails to bring them to her lips. Instead of attempting to speak about what I find sensible, she abstains from breaking the news to me, all of sudden heads back inside, her conduct like the mysterious rationale of an outlandish cryptograph.
I need to get to the bottom of this. I spring up onto my feet to trail behind her. She moves seemingly at a snail’s pace, a plethora of theoretical assumptions intensifying the booming bass of my hiked heartbeat. I catch hold of the closing restricted doors that lead to the back, without Summer having to let me through in order to continue my trail. I embark on the elevator, noting a sealed-lipped Dr. Jamison. I’m not sure what to think or assume because I’ve never seen her in a whist manner; I am not sure whether I should ask questions about this mysterious circumstance. I have a peripheral look to the right of me and exert effort in reading her kinesics: her attention in a gaze, her posture in line, the crocs shoeing her feet with heels flat on the floor. I follow her disembarking the instant the elevator lets open to the floor my girlfriend’s room is on.
I want to believe I know the destination but need not assume because she could be leading me to a nursing station. I mimic her until I am led inside a hospital room, a young brown nurse with pulled-back hair and a long frame turning from looking out the window at skyscrapers and assiduous afternoon traffic to look at me as Dr. Jamison eases the door shut. I glance at Jennifer, remembering the promise Dr. Jamison gave me. Everything appears intact as I remember, prior to the breath of fresh air I went out for some time ago. I hope this comes to be the time I witness a flinch or blink or partial smile from Jen. I step towards the bed with great happiness enhancing me, moisture building from my soul to the corners of my eyes.
At the end of the tunnel of prolonged depressions I stomached for a purpose much greater than myself, the moment I anticipated for ten years has come, the moment in which I hope to be able to look her in the eyes and let the sacrifices I have made illustrate how much her life means to me. I have no intention of attracting attention to or exclaiming triumph for myself – in particular, I have no intention of expecting commendation or a pat on the back for doing simply what a man does when his woman needs him. A man should be able to shoulder a companionship when the person he loves falls victim to ailments and being knocked down by life, even if doing so means having to hobble around with back spasms and strains hectoring his legs. One half in a relationship shouldn’t have to tell the other half to do certain things for the other to understand what should be done; certain things that should be done should be evident, like being there, like being honest, faithful.
Imagine how meaninglessly conditional love would be if people behaved based on needing to be told to be there in times of need, based on needing to be told to be faithful or reliable or respectful. Love would be the nightmare it is for those who fall deep into it with the wrong person. Or, shall I say, like, because a true-loving heart understands self-explanatory things, because when in love, a person doesn’t need to be told and constantly reminded to be certain things. Certain things explain themselves.
Jennifer fits the mold for me. She understands me, even more than I do on some occasions. She understands when to listen. She understands when to encourage and when to hammer me with constructive criticism. She understands when to give me space in certain situations – for instance, during televised sporting events. That’s not to compare our relationship to others because not all love is the same; I’m not implying our love is better than all others because their love is theirs to handle and become better in. But not all love is deep. Not all love is patient. Not all love is as kind and selfless as ours; and if we do feel an urge to compare, we compare to couples we hope to become. Like the grizzled couple we run into from time to time in public – smiling; laughing; sincere; inseparable; in the moment of their golden years.
Dr. Jamison steps to have a stand near me, her somber face in my peripheral vision matching the facial expression of the nurse who stands at the opposite side of the universal bed, except the nurse has hers lowered at a slight angle, dull and limpid gaze quivering with an effort to hold back tears. Unlike I was able to see in Dr. Jamison during the walk and elevator trip here, with due respect to Dr. Jamison, I see the compassion the nurse holds for me – her having dried her tears sometime prior to Dr. Jamison returning with me. I see in her hazel eyes that she – herself – faced a circumstance similar to the one I am faced with, one that left behind an excruciating void, the unexpected loss of a significant male – a husband or fiancé, maybe.
“I’m sorry, Gabriel.” Dr. Jamison’s emotions choke her up through her words.
She’s apologizing for what? I pin my attention on Dr. Jamison. She collapses like a dam, communicating a remorseful look at me, like someone from corporate headquarters came down on her, tied her hands. She cuts an eye at the ventilator, one at the nurse, one at me, and then faces her attention ahead to zone out in a daze.
“Wait a minute.” I think back over the nonverbal cues she gestured at me from the deck to here. “Bringing me here had nothing to do with Summer. You brought me here to watch you pull the plug.” I look at Dr. Jamison. The simple fact that she goes mum and lowers her face with no intention of anteing up a response confirms me right. The thought of spending the rest of my life without my best friend devastating me, I lower my face like hers, miserable, misled, and forsaken, to let my soul cleanse me of feelings in my heart that feel to me like molten, fluid rock scalding against the inside of my chest.
Dr. Jamison promised me she would hold true. “I promise that, no matter the time or place, I will find and bring you here whenever, if ever, she flinches or blinks or flashes the partial smile you cannot wait to see.” Though I was unsure and investigating for clues, I followed her here out of thinking – out of believing – the moment had come, that me and my girlfriend’s moment to reconnect had come, an eon after a grim catastrophe wrenched apart the physical realm of our relationship. I admit Jen not being in good health for me to embrace has been a challenge, but never to a degree in which I let the member that hangs from my crotch have dominion over me, not in a time when she needed me to be more spiritual and emotional than I ever had in my life. I experienced close calls but was graced to persevere through them all. And now when I need faith, hope, perseverance, and courage, and strength the most, they all leave me alone to deal with the fact that my girlfriend Jennifer inches this close to fifteen percent of her oxygen being unplugged. I’m faithed out, standing here tearing up in my eyes about what may be the end of her.
I thought I would be able to hold Dr. Jamison to her word. Past slandering her for the sarcastic remark she flashed once before, which turned out to be none other than marital complications hindering her intellect and performance, I thought I would be able to depend on her. I was able to for a while. But am not certain if I can any longer. She hasn’t given me reason to come unglued other than apologizing for something I’m in the dark about. I was able to use sound judgment to realize she used Summer as a pawn to manipulate me up here. I was able to use sound judgment to read the manner in which she cut an eye at the ventilator. She doesn’t understand the heartbreak sledgehammering me in the heart – therefore, she cannot even bring herself to look at me.
I mayn’t seem capable and educated through the stench and appearance I bear, but I am. I understand the difference between truth and deceit. I understand the difference between genuine and counterfeit as well as the one between forthright and cover-up. And bringing me here was nothing more than to confine and blindside me with an actual reason. But before it could be spoken from her mouth, I unraveled the
truth. And now that the purple elephant in the room no longer exists, she cannot find three letters of a word to speak.
“You ran out,” Dr. Jamison breaks the silence.
“Of time?” I ask, perplexed.
“Of money.”
Her response baffles me so much that I look in her direction.
“Angie, chief administrator of the billing department, called me to her office. Dropped the hammer on me, threatened to have me fired if I chose not to follow through.” She looks at me with tears leaking from her remorseful eyes. “I’ve no choice, Gabriel. The bank contacted her this morning, said you don’t have the funds to cover the transaction for this month.”
“That can’t be. Has to be some sort of mistake,” I tell her.
“She had the branch manager fax a notarized statement of your account this morning,” she informs me, reaching into the distant pocket of her long coat to hand over proof.
I undo the creased fold in the document, praying we have the sufficient funds to handle the transaction. But the detailed fine print in the notarized document disappoints me. There’s nothing that can be said or done to dispute fact that a zero balance stares me in the face. The evidence jerking tears from me, failure rams an emotional nail through my heart as I rip the document up to let the pieces tumble to the floor. I glue my attention on my best friend, my girlfriend, my light, Jennifer Haden. I press my knees against the side of the bed, admiring her, and can do nothing but lean and hug close to her cool frame, blubbering apologetic words I thought I would never have to stand before her and speak. Behind everything she has ever done, I failed her. Her knight in shining armor failed to rescue Her Highness from the deep unconsciousness that keeps me from cuddling her asleep, keeps her from the deeply-moved feeling she gets from being the only star in my universe; and I am the man of hers.
The instant Jennifer becomes stiller, close to deceasing into a corpse, yet maintaining meager inhalations and exhalations on her own, Dr. Jamison storms out, not able to stand looking after she pulls the plug from the ventilator, the nurse missiling to this side of the bed to console me from behind. I cannot believe the sacrifices I made led here. I knew there was a chance of an unwanted outcome but somehow manipulated my mind to tunnel-vision on the unconditional “ever after” I remember hearing her speak about, whenever speaking of movies she enjoyed most. I was allotted ten years to prepare for this moment, yet I stand here wishing for more time. Then again, no amount given would give a man long enough to prepare for something as devastating as losing a love like this.
A love that leaps at the chance to make him smile.
A love that lives to be his needs.
A love that takes pride in spending life with him.
A love destined to be.
How is a man to prepare himself to handle something of this magnitude, when the thought of losing his reason to breathe alone is enough to heart-attack him to a slow death? I’m not sure how most would phrase their answer and do not care because the manner in which their business is handled does not concern me. But as for me and my response of choice, impossible! I see myself miserable, unable to find a replacement, or mere substitute, for my loss because there’s not a woman on earth like her. Unable to solve the purpose in me having been dragged through the torment of her never opening her eyes again to me, I see myself faithless. I see myself taking something that would make my name a headline in the deceased section of the newspaper. I’m not worth the busted shoes on my feet without her. Life has no meaning. Everything I am I owe to her because she gave me reason to believe in love.
Unable to witness a second further, I bail. I scramble to the nearest exit, panicking to distance myself as far as possible from the premises of the godforsaken place. I ignore the automobiles that steer down the main street as I cut through. Peeved drivers slam on brakes, honking their horns at how I barge through traffic in order to get through to the sidewalk on the far side of the street from the deck I was found on. I not once looked both ways before I crossed. I tear down the sidewalk to continue distancing myself from the place I will never step foot in again. My love, my faith, my hope, our future are gone, just like that. And nothing can be done about it. I haven’t a choice but to begin preparing for the miserable hell that lies ahead – because I not once believed it all would end this way, with her there and me here pissed off about the decision He made. There went the memories we talked about creating. There went a reason to breathe. There went everything, down the drain, with the nearing final breath of her life.
I hear a scream.
I halt on a dime. I listen in. I thought I heard someone. I resume walking, and there shouts the voice again – my name, I think. I listen in again, over the loud traffic and meager voices of those people traveling on foot like me. Thinking my mind is tricking on me, I take after a statue for a moment. It’s loud, with automobile engines and horn honks and disharmonized genres of music. I must concentrate like life depends on this impending moment because I cannot afford to mistake this voice as I did with the dream I consider a remindful reenactment of everything I overcame to be able to stand here with an ear submitted in the direction of the hospital deck.
“Gabriel, come back! She moved!” yells a winded voice.
Mouth gasping open, eyes filling with tears, I incautiously tear back through traffic for the hospital room I bailed from; and I am whacked by an automobile, throwing me airborne to slam against its outdated hood and then its windshield with life whooshing before my eyes as I tumble to strike down in the middle of the street.
A slim, albino woman heaves from behind the wheel with hands at her mouth to check on me. She disbelieves the fact of the occurrence, apologizing for not having seen me. Her apologies mean jack squat. The world I thought was gone moved. I pop up into a stand without a break or sprain or nick. I do not understand how and am not about to blow precious time disputing how I was able to rise past something like that. I have someplace to be. Without paying mind to the apologetic woman or the travelers on foot who transformed into onlookers the instant I was run over, I pick back up where I left off racing to be near the person I see as the future. I haven’t a second to think. I haven’t a breath to waste. I should be there – as I should have remained instead of storming off. I shouldn’t have abandoned her. I should be there. I should be there! I should be there holding her hand, encouraging her. I instead am racing back with the nurse who was in the room earlier, onto the hospital deck, through the double-door automated entrance, into the back, up the elevator, down the hall of the sickest floor.
I do not understand how I let the predicament be like this to begin with. I should have remained near her side until instructed from there, like she would have done for me, had I been trapped in a coma. Abandoning her to breathe her final breath alone was selfish. Personal feelings. Personal emotions. Personal frustrations. I not once thought of her – her feelings, her emotions, how lonesomeness could dull her to the soul – when I understand her feelings; when the fact I understand her emotions from having spent the greatest years of our lives together makes devastation an understatement that could be the beginning to a legion of emotional scars, if she opens her eyes for the first time in a decade to me not being there.
There’s nothing like betrayal. There’s nothing like expecting a person will remain near your side through tribulations – only to have your trust be broken by the person’s sudden decision not to be there. I should have known better than to react without thought. I should have known better than to respond in frustration. I acted out of thought of just myself, not out of what was best for us. And of all circumstances, I let asinine behavior like that flash in a dire circumstance, in this dire circumstance, when I know firsthand how it feels to have my trust be broken by someone who so-call cared for me for not who I am but for what benefits could be reaped out of having me around.
Noticing the oxygen mask fixed over her pallid face, I step near the bed. Jen shivers and wheezes beneath the tucked sheets as if her res
piratory system functions with debilitated means. I see her courage, her fighting to overcome the devastation that has us apart from one another. I will not forsake what she expects from me ever again. I will not leave her side through the restoration phase, no matter how long it may be. I lean at her face to lay a sensual kiss on her forehead. I have a thorough moment to simply admire the extraordinary person she is, pull up a chair to lower myself into. And I just sit still with my attention on her.
Never mind homelessness. Never mind my appearance and my stench. Never mind being without because have-nots do not matter to me. I’m not about to let my attention drift from what matters to irrelevancies that do not. Finances do not. Malnutrition and thirst do not. As long as I have her and she has me – as we were before a seizure severed the physical realm of our relationship – those irrelevancies will handle themselves. I aspire nothing but to be where I belong, here, preparing for the moment she and I will be able to look one another in the face, and smile, and embrace the love that has helped us hobble through a supercell storm, ill-fated lightning, massive hailstones, damaging winds, and yet we outlasted them all. Having done so has filled me with a happiness I cannot describe, a happiness I see spanning for the rest of my life; memories I aim to look back over and be reminded of how blessed we were to overcome the storm that nearabout slashed us apart.
Eleven
I, Dr. Jamison, make an entrance to find Ms. Haden arranging herself to sit along the edge of her universal bed. I notice her squinting and pressing her eyebrows at the gentleman slouched asleep in the armchair as if her mind seems not to recognize his homeless appearance.
I hope she is able to make certain identification of the gentleman in front of her. It would be unfortunate to stand here and witness another common aftereffect of a coma. I have borne witness to heartbreak. I have borne witness to separation and divorce. I have borne witness to retrograde amnesia – in which memories created prior to a convulsive attack are lost while new memories can still be created. I have witnessed a share of things in this hospital and still am bearing witness to many things. I have a scalded nine-year-old patient with a melted face, fighting for dear life, after having been dashed with scorching peanut oil by a son-of-a-bitch stepfather, all because she refused to let her innocence be taken by his rapacious intentions for adolescent girls. I also have a single mother – of triplet boys – with one stab wound to her vestibule and nine to her breasts. Her husband attempted to stab her to death after she came clean about him not being the father of their nineteen-month-old fair-complexioned children. Her parents call numerous times to check up on her because their finances prevent them from being able to afford flights from Havana.
My Bridge To Forever Page 15