The Clouds Aren't White

by Rachael Wright

  Wails, disembodied, fill the room.

  Just hold Sophie.

  Everything is black.

  "I didn't get to say goodbye," I say, pleading with God, with the doctor, with anyone.

  I try to hold on to something solid, but everything is slipping away and the world goes dark around me. The world slowly solidifies back around me, but while its unchanged, I am cast about in thousands of pieces. The clock on the wall bellows out eight dull strikes. It's been two hours. I'm still alive and still no one has come so take me to Hugh. Conjured images of his body, on a table, flicker across the screen of my imagination. I squeeze me eyes shut, conjuring him in front of me, making this all a dream. A dream I can convince myself to wake up from.

  Amy sits, watching as I pull my eyes open and struggle to breathe, as I shake in my grief, as tears drip down onto Sophie's sweater. My eyes are on Sophie, but all I see is Hugh and remembering waking up next to him this morning. Remembering the look of his face half pressed into his pillow. An insane urge to run away courses through my body.

  Can you die of a broken heart? For all the broken bones I had in my youth and my experience of childbirth. No pain has ever threatened to tear me apart, not like the torture I endure now. Sophie stirs in my arms, the sounds of her cries become loud enough for me to hear, I fall a little back to earth. The thundering in my chest eases, but each breath feels like a marathon. Like I'm trudging up a mountain and the labor of working my lungs is on the verge of killing me.

  Oh God, I just want one more hug.

  I need to talk to him. David reenters the room, his cheeks flushed and his hair is standing on end. On his shirt, blood. Hugh's. It's Hugh's. In David's wake comes the governor of Colorado. I've met him three times but he doesn't know me. Well, now he does.

  "Emmeline, I am so sorry. I know I can't do much to help assuage your loss, or help you get through this but I'd like to do what little I can. The state will bear all funeral and medical costs. In addition I'd like to offer up rooms in the governor's mansion for you and your family, you'll have complete privacy. You won't have to worry about anything. State patrol will take you when you are ready," he says.

  His voice is soft, hesitant even.

  I should be impressed that the Governor is here to offer help, to apologize. I'm not. He such a small man right now. Not the political heavyweight who made millions in shrewd business deals. He's just a man. He was in the same building and could have been the target. Another man died for him. My man.

  I'm not sure what I'm doing.

  Why am I standing up?

  "Thank you," I say. It’s all I can manage to push out from between my lips. Lips dry and cracked. I extend my hand to shake his and with the other I hold my daughter to my chest. He has a hard time meeting my eyes and when he extends his hand it quivers uncontrollably. I sink back down as soon as the door closes again, exhausted. The governor is replaced by figure in surgical scrubs.

  "Mrs MacArthur? If you'd like you can come see him now." This is the moment and I'm not ready to meet it, but I nod anyways. I place Sophie tenderly in Amy's arms and slip noiselessly out of the room and trudge along in the wake of the faceless guide. The hallway bursts with police officers and men in suits. We turn left, into the bowels of the hospital and away from the horde. As soon as I try to prepare for what awaits me when we stop, we do. In front of a door. A wooden door with a circular piece of glass set at a theoretical 'head height', which must be for six foot tall surgeons. The woman escorting me backs against the wall, waiting for me to enter. Alone. I don't know what I'm doing. Once again my breath comes in great shuddering gasps and I quake where I stand.

  The door opens.

  Not sure how.

  Oh God. He's lying on a steel table, a sheet draped over him. His face is covered, his prominent nose poking up the sheet. The door shuts and I wheel around, almost hoping someone else has entered the room. I close my eyes. I can feel him. There's a calm in this room that I didn't expect. The steps that it takes to turn myself around are hideously painful. My body feels like lead. I finally manage to make the lead fingers work and pull the sheet away from his wonderful face. The face I wanted to see every day for the rest of my life. The man who was my rock. My center.

  When I look at him, I feel calm again. His face is calm. I've never touched a dead person. I never wanted to touch death's chill. If our places were reversed, Hugh would hold me. He would caress my face and kiss my forehead, trace the outlines of my lips. I just stand immobile, trying to summon the courage to reach out and touch him.

  There are remnants of him in this room, I can feel them. His strength. His desire to live. His love for me. The sobs start again; I collapse on my knees on the tiled floor. The sobbing gives way to primitive howls. I'm being ripped apart and being forced to live, tortured to the edge of death. I'm standing in the room where my husband died. This shouldn't be happening. Yet it keeps happening. I open my eyes and I'm still here. I could curl up on the linoleum, never to move again. Death seems like a welcoming friend and so easy a decision to make. It would be easy...its living that's the hard part. Standing before him is easy compared to the terrifying long trudge of days in front of me. I'd rather stand here in the room with my dead husband than face the living. Except Sophie. My poor fatherless Sophie.

  The smell of bleach nauseates me and coupled with the horrendous quiet I feel as though reality is slipping quickly away. I stand again to look at Hugh, but something has shifted while I lay on the floor. There's nothing in this room anymore, no feeling of the man I love. There is only death and I am shattering, crumbling, being ripped and torn into someone unrecognizable. It is the price of lovethis pain. When earlier today I was married a sharing a life and child I am now widowed and a single mother. It is what I am now which frightens me most of all. Alone. A strangled half cry/half plea escapes my lips and hovers in the room...hanging on the air.

  "Please don't leave me," I moan. My fingers sneak out, searching for his hand. I grasp at the hand, as if by squeezing it I could remind him that I'm still living, that I need him. There's nothing. There's no answering squeeze. Only the cold bite of metal pressing into my skin. I slide off his wedding band without thinking.

  My brain feels like it's been turned to mush, I can't seem to process anything. I stand in front of a sheeted body searching for something. There's no answer though and no comfort to be had. So I do one thing, with a shaking hand I touch the soft brown hair and run my fingers through it one last time.

  I was ordinary and Hugh made me special and together we created a beautiful life. I wish I could scream, wish I could get anything out past the chocking. If I did scream I could just as easily fall apart...never to be put together again. So I leave. At the door I turn and closing my eyes I can picture him, standing in front of me, with a half grin and I whisper that I've never loved anyone else, that I still love him, that I'd give anything for one more embrace. It treasonous leaving his body, accepting the fact that he's dead and I'm still alive.

  I can't breathe again.

  Hugh always said drowning would be his least favorite way to die.

  I'm drowning...drowning in the weight of being alive. It's then that an unearthly scream rents the air. A howl that's splintering at the edges. The small pieces of my heart shatter yet again. The nurse standing in the hallway looks askance as I freeze and then sprint down the hallway. The howls tear my chest apart; it’s the only reality now. I burst back into the awful room to find Sophie being forcefully restrained by Amy. She wails a combination of 'Mommy and Daddy.' Tears run in rivers of grief and terror down her face. Our bodies crush into each other with astounding force, giving tenuous stability to my world again. We are standing on the head of a needle in the middle of a raging sea, Sophie and I. Clinging desperately to each other.

  We rock. Or I rock her, the way I did when she was a baby. It always calmed us both. I had no idea what I was doing when she was born. I had to work at it. Had to fight for every smile. It didn't matter to he
r; I was her place of refuge, shelter, safety, comfort, and love. I was her rock. Whatever we are now, that much remains. She's still mine. A tiny piece of Hugh.

  Minutes later, I realize I'm waiting for Hugh...waiting for him to appear and tell us its time to leave.

  "I don't know what I'm doing," I say, watching as Amy wipes away her own tears.

  "I'll go tell David and he'll find out who's going to drive you"

  She stands up, her voice broken. I'm suddenly very glad she's here.

  "Thanks. Make sure his parents can say goodbye to Hugh as well.”

  Amy nods slips silently out of the room.

  "Oh God..." I whisper at the ceiling.

  Sophie shakes convulsively in my arms. All I know how to do is hold her more tightly, grip her to my chest to try and shield her from the world. David comes back in and talks about a ride. I automatically try to turn to Hugh so he can take Sophie, she's so heavy and he wouldn't want me to trip, but an empty chair greets me. I gasp for air and don't even try to stem the flow of tears. I grip Sophie even more tightly and step forward, the lead body returns.

  I'm in a police car again. The second time in the space of a few hours and I haven't been in one in years.

  Not since Hugh left police work. My sobs wreck my body. It isn't a matter of if I'll fall apart, but when. I try to think about Sophie, try to be good for her. 'Keep Calm and Carry On,' and all that. The officer who's driving me keeps looking in the rearview mirror; I distantly hear the opening lines of Handel's aria Ombra Mai Fu From.

  I wouldn't have pegged this cop as an opera lover...

  Wait...

  Ringtone. David slipped the phone back in my purse. There are a hundred missed calls. I can't handle a phone conversation. I decline my father's call and text him instead.

  At Governor's Mansion. Sleeping there. Tell in-laws to go to hospital.

  I stare dimly ahead. I don't understand any of it. I'm outside of my body looking in, seeing a wrecked 30-year-old woman holding a beautiful little girl, but this woman doesn't look anything like me. She's wearing my wedding rings and my clothes and holding my child, the life has gone out of her eyes, and they are glazed over and hung with the weight of the world.

  The damn phone keeps going off. I consider chucking it out of the window when we pull to a stop. Looming in front of us, the governor's mansion. I'm barely shown through the side entrance before my arms are screaming with the weight of my daughter. I stop in the hall, unaware of where to go. Its library quiet in here and every step I take echoes off the expensive marble tile. Just as I'm beginning to feel uncomfortable a recessed door opens and an older woman in a crisp black uniform meets me. She introduces herself as Nancy and motions me upstairs.

  "The Governor and the First Lady haven't lived in the mansion during the entire length of their term so all of the rooms are available. The Governor had us prepare three rooms, but he thought that you and your daughter would be most comfortable in the larger suite. It'll give you more privacy."

  She looks me straight in the eye as she says this without pity or trepidation. Her manner is efficient, professional, as if I were just another guest.

  "Thank you," I say, pleased that I'm able to manage some modicum of politeness.

  There are minimal lights on in the house; the rain from the storm lashes at the windows the many whips. I imagine I should feel safe, surrounded by luxury and safe from the elements. But the storm could just as well be breaking over my head, pouring down on me, drenching me in pain.

  "Just a few more steps," Nancy says consolingly as we near the second floor.

  She opens an ornate door, leading us into a three-room suite. It's stocked as though royalty were coming to visit, crisp pulled back white sheets and even a little plate of complimentary Colorado chocolates. I try to nod and listen but Nancy backs out of the room before I'm aware that she's left. I lay Sophie down carefully on the plush bed. There's a crease between her eyebrows but she's sleeping. I envy her. I envy her naivety. I am imploding. A scream is trying to claw its way out of my throat. I clutch at my mouth to keep it in. Sophie moans for me, it is a pitiful thing to hear. I climb in gratefully into bed next to her, not even bothering to take off our shoes.

  "I love you Mommy.”

  There's no shaking or racking sobs coming out of her, just her body curling into the crook of my arm. How much of death a five year old can understand? I'm not even aware of how much I understand. I'm not sure of how much I know about being a mother. Hugh would know what to say and do and how to comfort Sophie, and all I can do is mindlessly pat her back and try not to scream.

  Deep breaths now.

  She's so warm. I've always loved cuddling her. It's cathartic, rubbing her back, not thinking. Trying not to exist. Tendrils of sleep and exhaustion pull at me-drag me towards the abyss of nothingness. And I welcome it. I welcome the escape and go gladly.

  Hours later, I jerk so badly that Sophie lets out a little hiss, feeling as though I've only just dropped off to sleep. I smile into her back and then roll over trying to find Hugh's chest. If I reach out just far enough, I can pull him closer to me, make him enfold the two of us in his arms. Find happiness there. But my hands grasp at sheets, at nothingness, and my eyes fly open. My father's face, barely six inches from my own, meets me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  "Dad," I shriek, seizing the comforter and dragging it up to my chin.

  Angry words die in my throat as my eyes adjust to the light. Dark crescent shaped bags lie under his eyes, as if he's had a nasty bout of the flu. Which he hasn't. This isn't even my bedroom. He stares. A mirage clouds my vision, a man and dead on an emotionless steel gurney.

  For three seconds I forgot. The price of those three seconds is astronomically high. The weight of my loss washes over me and I gasp for air. For three seconds the grief was gone, my body light and carefree. Its nothing but a lie now. My body convulses, wrapping in on itself, with suppressed sobs and a howl of misery tears at my throat. I throw myself into my father's arms and wish to be a child again.

  What am I doing? Hugh.

  This isn't real. I can't do this, Hugh. Just come back. Just come through the door. I beg God, offer to sacrifice everything he might take in order to have Hugh back. My Dad shifts his arm a little and I feel a tug on the hands covering my face. Sophie's there, bleary-eyed, with her curls all pushed to one side and her bottom lip trembling. She's still half asleep but there is no denial in her eyes, no false hope her father is alive. Its just pain. It looks like my pain. I pull her close to my chest and move back to the bed, hoping this will protect the both of us.

  "Mommy..."

  I try to clear my throat so a scream doesn't come out. "Ye...yes baby?

  "Mommy, can I have Daddy now? Can I just hold him?" I wonder if she knows how much I want the exact same thing. "Sophie," I begin, after a pause. I pull her face up to look at mine

  reciting what I memorized last night, "Daddy isn't coming back sweetheart. He's gone but he didn't want to leave you. He didn't want to leave us at all, but he's gone Sophie," I say, choking out the words in between sobs.

  My father shuffles on the bed beside us.

  "No Mommy. No, he's not gone...He's not...He's not," Sophie says, shaking her head at me, shaking it as though by sheer denial, she can make it all untrue.

  "Sophie..." I start, but I don't know what to say.

  How am I supposed to be a mother in this situation? I don't even know how to be a person right now with the core of our family ripped away.

  "Mommy, please, please I just want him..." the words choke themselves out of her tiny little body.

  "Oh baby I do too. I do too."

  We hold each other for a long while until Sophie moves to go to the bathroom and I dutifully follow her. The woman looking at me in the mirror looks as if she too is dead. I tear my gaze from her, from the dead eyes and the pale face. I try to find something to clear off the tracks of mascara smeared over my face. Sophie stands slackly by my side as though
she has lost all sense of who she is.

  "Lets get you into the bath for a bit," I say, steering her in the direction of the white claw foot tub.

  Baths. Balm for the soul.

  "Ok."

  We aren't bothered in here, we can sit in silence. I run my hands under the water, testing the heat, and see Sophie hang her head. I barely have the strength to move my arms to wash Sophie's body, but it's cathartic. Sophie relaxes in the warm perfumed water. A hazy film lays over her eyes. We go through the motions; they seem like the trappings of another age-another time.

  When I wrap her in a warm white towel which drags the floor and comb out her hair she looks much more alive. She's crushed in spirit but at least clean and enjoying the scent in her hair. There's nothing for it but the day old clothes so I pull them on again, even though Sophie sighs at the sight of the stale shirt. She sinks to the floor while I take a look in the mirror.

  "Can we stay in here?"

  "For a little bit. What do you want to do?" I say and slide to the floor with her.

  "I could give you a bath," she says with a faint forced smile.

  "Maybe tonight.”

  Sophie takes my hand in hers, tracing the lines of my wedding ring. Her fingers are warm against my own cold hands. Closing my eyes, I let my head fall back against the cabinet. Feeling the pull to give up right here. I could just refuse to take the next step forward. Going back out to face whatever family has gathered is as daunting as summiting Everest without equipment. Basically failure. Failure wrapped up in stupidity for even trying.

  Yet I'm on my feet and Sophie and I stare at the bathroom door as if it’s the last thing in the world we feel like opening. It looms in front of me, a mass of dark wood, a monstrous beast. Fear runs rampant, shutting down my lungs and inflaming my heart rate. Voices come from beyond the door.

  I can't face them.

  I don't want to be touched.

  What will I say?

  I'm going to pass out. I do make it out of the door, although I'm not sure the brass door handle didn't burn me when I touched it. Across the hallway lies an open door, giving view to the four people huddled together there. Sophie makes no movement towards any of her grandparents. They aren't looking for us. Sophie starts to back up in the direction of safety, the room we share. Her hand darts out and grabs at an object by the nightstand. As she curls up in bed Sophie pulls up a picture, on the phone, of Hugh and her at the house, they're smiling at the camera with their arms around each other. Tears stream down her face and she caresses the screen, even bringing it to her lips to kiss his face.