Broken

by Megan Hart

  She didn’t leave. She went to the counter and brought back two of the biggest chocolate cupcakes I’d ever seen. She put them in front of us and handed me a fork.

  “The icing’s made of Godiva,” she said. “And if ever a woman needed an overdose of premium chocolate, it’s you.”

  A good sister is one who won’t be embarrassed when you burst into tears in public. A better one will hand you tissues until you stop. The best is the one who will go get you another latte to go with the ginormous chocolate orgy she’s already laid in front of you.

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” she demanded, stabbing her fork at me. “God, Sadie, you must have been going out of your mind.”

  “It’s not that easy to talk about.” I licked icing that had come straight from heaven. “And you had Evan and Lily to deal with, and then you were pregnant again and having James…you didn’t need to listen to my grief.”

  She made a face. “I’m pissed at you.”

  “You are?” I paused with my fork halfway to my mouth.

  “For thinking I wouldn’t have listened.”

  “You’d have listened,” I told her, “but it wouldn’t have been fair of me to make you.”

  She looked like she wanted to protest, but then nodded. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have been able to listen well enough. I’m sorry. I suck.”

  Our sisterhood fit like a pair of faded jeans. I’d missed Katie.

  “I didn’t want you to think I don’t love him,” I admitted. “And when he stopped wanting to go out it felt…”

  “Disloyal.” She nodded, as though she understood.

  “Yes. Disloyal.”

  “Nobody would blame you for having a life.”

  “That’s what Adam said, too.” I thought of the one support group meeting I’d attended. The wives had taken turns praising each other’s sacrifices and trying to outdo each other’s martyrdoms. Scowling, Katie stabbed her cupcake when I told her about it.

  “It’s just like those holier-than-thou mothers in my play-group. God, you’d think I was committing a mortal sin by hiring a sitter for my kids so I can get my hair cut.”

  “It’s not like I didn’t understand them,” I said. “I mean, from a professional point of view, I could see how focusing on the tiny details is the only way some people can deal with trauma. Understanding them only made it harder, though. Because I know I shouldn’t feel guilty for being angry sometimes, or bitter.”

  “Knowing something is beans,” Katie declared. “Besides, I don’t have a problem with anyone who thinks devoting their entire life to the happiness and comfort of someone else, be it a husband or a child, is what makes them a good person. My problem is when they act like anyone who doesn’t spend hours scrapbooking every freaking detail of their kid’s first tooth is not only a bad person, but a shitty mother, too!”

  We stared at each other for a moment, then burst into laughter.

  “God, that felt good to say,” she told me.

  “I’m sorry it’s been so long, Kates.”

  “Me, too. Don’t let it happen again, or I’ll have to kick your ass. Or steal your cupcake.”

  I made a show of guarding it. “I’d like to see you try.”

  Chocolate, caffeine and girl-bonding left me languid with relaxation. I gobbled the feeling as greedily as I’d done the cupcake.

  “Don’t tell the mommy police, but I’m thinking of going back to work. From home, at first, until the kids are older. A few mortgages here and there. I ran into Priscilla from the old bank a week ago, and she told me they’re looking for someone part-time.”

  I blinked and found my coffee suddenly very interesting. “Oh, really?”

  “Yep. Oh, and you’ll get a kick out of this. Remember how we used to mock those people who used those wedding invitations with the pictures of little kids on them? The ones that say ‘I’m marrying my best friend’ or something like that?”

  I remembered.

  “Well, Priscilla’s getting married and she showed me her invitations. And guess which ones she’s using.”

  Chocolate lurched to my throat, but I couldn’t tell if it was from bitter satisfaction or morbid fascination. “Today, I marry my friend?”

  Katie crowed, clapping her hands. “Right on, sister. Ugliest invitations I’d ever seen. Ever. I mean, c’mon, the woman’s in her thirties, for God’s sakes.”

  “When’s she getting married?”

  “In June, apparently. But she’s like the checklist queen, so…” Katie shrugged. “I think she’s got everything planned out to the millisecond. Her poor fiancé, I bet she’s got him jumping through hoops.”

  “He probably doesn’t care.”

  “Well,” said Katie, “A guy who agrees to use wedding invitations with little kids on them sure as hell can’t be very good in bed, I’ll tell you that.”

  To this, I said nothing, and the conversation switched gears again. In my car, where once I’d sobbed against the steering wheel because of him, now I gave in to laughter that was no less hysterical. Every time I thought I was done, I’d picture those invitations again and burst again, until at last I was wrung dry.

  At home, Adam was absorbed in his computer, which didn’t concern me. The fact that that I found Randy snoring downstairs in front of the television, however, did. I shook him awake and dismissed him with a brusqueness that seemed to offend him, but he was lucky I didn’t kick him in the ass on the way out the door.

  “Don’t think I’m not going to call the agency tomorrow and complain, either.” I pounded Adam’s pillows in preparation for helping him into bed. “I didn’t even ask him to stay to help me do the transfer, that’s how angry I was.”

  “Sadie-me-love,” Adam said quietly. “Did you have fun with Katie?”

  I turned from my molestation of his bedding. “I did. Yes. A lot, actually. It felt really good.”

  “Good.” He closed the open documents and then maneuvered his chair away from the computer. “I’m glad. Don’t let him ruin that.”

  “Adam, he was supposed to be watching you, not dreaming!”

  “I was fine,” he said. “I told him to leave me alone.”

  “That doesn’t matter.” I took off my jacket and laid it over the back of the recliner, then unbuttoned my blouse. “Did he at least take care of you if you needed something?”

  He didn’t answer me at first. When I looked up, he’d gone pale, his eyes squinted tight like he was in pain.

  “Adam?”

  He opened his eyes and gave me a smile I failed to believe. “Got a headache, that’s all. Eye strain, maybe.”

  Alarmed, I started checking him over. His face was clammy, his forehead damp with sweat. When I put a hand inside the front of his shirt, his chest was dry and hot.

  “Adam, talk to me.”

  I opened his shirt and ran my hands over him, checking as best I could for signs of an irritation. I bent to run my hands up and down his legs, straightening them. I checked his feet at once for an ingrown toenail, anything that could be causing his body trauma.

  “When’s the last time he cathed you?” I looked up and fear tried to steal my voice. I forced it aside. “Adam. Look at me.”

  His head was drooping, eyelids fluttering. His body trembled slightly all over. He didn’t respond.

  Fuck fear. Terror crashed over me and tried to pin me to the floor. I ran for the bathroom, where I wet a cloth with cold water and brought it back to place on the back of his neck. He was gasping a little.

  Autonomic Dysreflexia. It happens as a result of distress, even something as simple as not emptying the bladder often enough. If not treated immediately, it can be fatal.

  “How long have you had the headache?”

  The headache’s caused by a spike in blood pressure. The body’s protection mechanisms are amazing.

  And he might be having a stroke.

  I put aside my terror as though I’d shoved away an annoying dog nipping at my shins. I knew how to
take care of this. I could take care of it. I would. I would do this…

  I did not think. I acted. I yanked open the drawer storing the catheter supplies, spilling out plastic packages all over the floor. My fingers skidded on the slick packets as I tried to open his pants with one hand and grab up the catheter in the other.

  I had to stop and center my actions before I continued. It was only a second, but every second counted. I opened his pants. I tore open the sterile package, yanking out the coil of thin, flexible tubing, which promptly slipped from my fingers onto the floor. I couldn’t stop to untangle it. I grabbed another package, ripped it open and pulled out the catheter.

  “Just a minute, Adam. Adam, stay with me, baby, please.”

  I said his name, over and over, explaining every step. I took him in my hand, ready to insert the tube that would drain his bladder and stop his body’s stress reaction. No bowl to catch the urine, nothing but a towel slung over the arm of the chair.

  No time to find a bowl, no time to care if I spilled or made a mess. Time to steady my fingers, but only then because they had to be steady in order to do what was needed.

  “Stay with me,” I murmured, over and over while I worked. “Gonna take care of this, Adam, just stay with me. Damn you, don’t you dare pass out on me!”

  I made a messy job of the catheter, bringing blood. The moment I slid it in, the tube filled with dark yellow urine, too much of it. It flooded over my hands. Wetness dropped on me from above, and I thought he must be crying.

  It wasn’t sweat or tears but saliva, a long, silver string of it I slapped away as I got to my feet. I pushed his head back, looking into his eyes. I didn’t know what to do. Panic gnawed me.

  “Don’t you leave me!” I shouted. “Damn you, Adam, not now! Don’t do this now!”

  Adam blinked in slow motion, each open and close of his eyes taking too many seconds. I grabbed the phone and punched in 911. The voice on the other end asked me the state of my emergency, and I could not answer, struck dumb by panic.

  “Please state the nature of your emergency.”

  Adam opened his eyes. He saw me, I know he did. I want to think he smiled at me.

  “I need an ambulance! My husband’s a quadriplegic and he’s—” I could not say it, but I didn’t have to.

  “We’ll have someone there right away.”

  And I’m sure they did, though I couldn’t tell you how long it took them. Hours or minutes, in the end, it didn’t matter.

  Forever is how long it takes to search for the reason your husband is dying in front of your eyes and being unable to find it.

  Chapter

  17

  I don’t know why our society seems to think grief is something to be shared when everybody really prefers to view it from afar. The people in my life sat beside me at the service and hugged me seemingly at random, though my stiff inability to hug them in return seemed to put them off. They brought me casseroles and sent cards and flowers, or made donations to the Christopher Reeve Foundation. They left messages on the answering machine telling me to call them if I needed anything, oblivious to the fact I could barely manage to figure out which shoe went on which foot, much less focus on dialing a phone number and asking for what I needed.

  In the days and weeks after Adam’s accident I’d yearned for this sort of support, but I guess illness and injury are terrifying in a way death is not. Perhaps people don’t fear catching death the way they do a broken spine. At any rate, when all I wanted to do was sit in silence to mourn, I found myself at the mercy of friends and family who, bless their hearts, meant well.

  My mother meant well when she said, “See? I knew you’d be strong.” My father meant well when he said, “It’s better this way.”

  They praised my strength, so I was strong. They complimented my composure, so I was composed. They spoke in whispers they thought I wouldn’t hear about how “good” I looked, and how “well” I was taking it, so I was good and took it well. Everyone made a point of being “with” me, yet I was always alone.

  Adam’s mother meant well when she moved in and took it upon herself to fire Mrs. Lapp and Dennis. Maybe she thought I genuinely didn’t need them any longer, and she was doing me a favor. More likely, their presence made her as uncomfortable as they always had, a constant reminder just how much care Adam had needed.

  She rearranged my kitchen cabinets, brought in my mail and answered my telephone. She helped a lot while doing nothing, buzzing around me like a fly I didn’t have the energy to swat. Maybe like everyone else, she was waiting for me to tell her what I needed.

  Katie didn’t wait. She came the week after the funeral, ignored my mother-in-law’s unsubtle protests that she “meant” to get to it, and washed, dried, folded and put away three weeks worth of clothes and bedding. She also mopped my floor, cut and stored my plethora of casseroles into single servings complete with dated labels, and sorted my mail into neat piles with post-it notes on the bills that had to be paid at once.

  Then, most gloriously of all, she left.

  It was the greatest thing anyone had ever done for me, though at the time I could do no more than nod my thanks. She understood.

  “I’ll call you,” she said, and wonder of wonders, she did. Not just once, but every few days. She called to ask me what I needed.

  For three weeks I listened to Adam’s mother sob at night when I couldn’t shed a single tear. I said nothing while she ingratiated herself into our house as if by entwining herself with me she could bring him back. I greeted her over the breakfast table and listened to her mourn, her grief solid and all-encompassing and selfish. It left no room for mine. I let her stay not out of compassion, but of the inability to ask her to leave.

  Until the Baby Jesus did me in.

  I came downstairs from a night of restless sleep, groggy and wanting only the palliation of coffee to get me started. Stubbing my toe on the manger scene sent the cradle and its holy contents skidding across my kitchen floor. The camels protested by breaking. I gave my commentary in a serious of one and two syllable words, mostly ending with “ing.”

  Someone had vomited Christmas all over my house. Long unused decorations scattered most empty surfaces. Elves might have been the likely culprit, but for the fact they didn’t exist, and I knew at once it was my mother-in-law’s hand. Rearranging my cabinets and peeking at my credit card bills was one thing; this was an invasion of an even more personal sort. I found her in his bedroom, sorting a pile of clothes from his dresser.

  “I needed to keep busy,” was her explanation.

  “I’d rather you didn’t touch Adam’s things. I’m going to take care of them.”

  “But, Sadie,” Mrs. Danning said, slightly aghast. “I’m his mother!”

  I’m not proud to say I lost it. My temper, my patience. Quite possibly, my mind. People often speak in anger and later claim they didn’t mean what they’d said, but I meant every word. It wasn’t the first fight we’d ever had, but it was probably the worst. She wanted to be in the house where her son had lived. I wanted her out of the place where he’d died.

  I won, in the end, though victory was bitter. It gave me no satisfaction to tell her I would be the one to decide what would be done with Adam’s possessions, or that she wasn’t welcome to comment on my choices. She was grieving, too, and if I could barely comprehend what it was like for me to have lost my husband, I couldn’t come close to imagining how she felt at losing her son.

  “But we need each other!” she cried.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “But I can’t be what you need right now.”

  She drew herself up. “Well, if you don’t want me here—”

  “I don’t need you here,” was the kindest answer I was able to give her.

  When the door shut behind her, I waited, at last, to weep.

  And yet, I found no tears. Where had they gone? I knew myself not incapable of crying, for I’d wept when they put him in the ambulance and later, at the hospital when he didn�
��t wake from the stroke that killed him. Yet, surrounded by people who were judging my grief like it was some measure of my love, I’d been stony-faced and dry-eyed. Three weeks since Adam’s death, and I slept, ate dressed and bathed, spoken and been spoken to…but I had not cried.

  I tried, standing with one hand against the front door for support. I let out a sigh, long and slow, giving myself permission to let go. It was like anticipating a sneeze, or perversely, an orgasm. I could feel the sorrow lodged in my gut and the tears waiting in the backs of my eyes, but neither would come out. I imagined tugging it, like a hook caught in a fish’s throat. Yes, it would rip me apart when I pulled it free, but at least it would be gone.

  I waited for a long time, and there was nothing but the pain of wanting something I couldn’t seem to find.

  My world had many different colors. All of them were gray. Depression is insidious and masks itself as fatigue, aches and pains, general malaise. It would have been easy to let myself fade into the gray. To stay in bed when I knew I should get up, to wear the same clothes instead of choosing fresh. I could have allowed my grief to consume me.

  I don’t pat myself on the back and brag about how wonderfully I pulled through. If anything, my refusal to give in to sorrow was as much a mistake as wallowing in it would have been. Maybe if I’d allowed myself a few weeks of wallowing I’d have been better off, but the problem with looking back when you should be walking ahead is that you usually end up walking into something that hurts.

  So I got out of bed. I showered. I dressed. I ate sensible meals, when I thought of it, and oatmeal or toast when I didn’t. I saw my patients, who, if they noticed my consideration of their problems had become considerably less warm and fuzzy, they didn’t complain.

  Day by day the need to weep leached away until I wondered how I could ever have thought tears would make me feel better. Week by week I set about recovering my life, getting back to the business of working and paying bills. I expected the holidays to be hard, but all I felt was relief. No tree. No decorations, not even the ones Adam’s mother had tried to put out. I didn’t have to cook a meal and I could accept my parents’ invitation without worrying what to do about Adam. I was a guest all season long, dining out on the premise of my sorrow.