A Great Big Love

by Alona Jarden

  "I don't want to go into this surgery, okay? I have a very bad feeling about it. I don't think—"

  "Don, this is the simplest and most common operation here at the hospital," Dr. Garrison interrupted, but I knew he wouldn't help in calming Don down.

  "It doesn't even matter anymore." I decided to speak frankly. "You have no choice, Don. You don’t have a choice now, and you never had a choice when Sarah was taken to surgery either." I exhaled slowly as the pain returned to weigh on me and rushed to complete my words before all I could do was scream in terrible agony. "How did you phrase it yesterday? Either go get checked out or stop complaining, right?"

  "Right." His chin quivered, and his breakdown was so understood.

  "You called Dr. Reingold, you scheduled an appointment, now you do as he told you to do, otherwise what's the point?"

  "There's no point, Michelle. That's what I'm saying. I'm not coming out from this surgery, don't you get it?"

  "I get that that's what you think, but I assure you it won't be true."

  "It doesn't matter anymore." He exhaled in aching cramps. "That's probably what should have happened all along. This is probably the end that was planned for me."

  "My gosh, is there no end to the nonsense you're saying? I'm here, okay? I'm here, and I'm just fine. It doesn't hurt anymore, but I'll let the doctor check me out anyway. You'll go into surgery, I'll go and get examined, and we'll both leave here as good as new."

  "I'm sorry." A heartbreaking tear dripped from the corner of his right eye. "You're right. I have no choice. I have to go into surgery, and I will. I'll go to the end of my road. It's actually strange that I even tried to fight it. I think somewhere deep inside, I knew I wouldn't get out of here as I came in. I knew I might not come out at all."

  The doctor allowed us to continue our discussion on that matter without him.

  He walked away for a few short moments, and when he returned, he just released the locks on Don's bed wheels and started rolling him away from me.

  I waited until I knew for sure that he was on his way to the operating room. Only after he wasn’t anywhere around me, and after seeing there was no danger of him taking care of me before himself, did I express the sharp pain that pierced my body with a loud scream and crashed face-first to the floor, calling out for someone to come and help me in a broken voice.

  Chapter 24

  Don

  "Stop! Wait, stop!" I called and tried to sit up, but that damned pain kept me from getting out of my bed and going back to her. "It's Michelle! That's her screaming. Something's wrong with her!"

  "I don't think it's her, but if something is really wrong with her, she's lucky to be in a hospital, Don." Dr. Garrison tried to calm me down.

  "You doctors… You're so arrogant. You think you're God, don’t you?"

  "I don’t, but wouldn’t you like to be in a hospital if you find out that something is wrong with you?"

  "I changed my mind. I'm not having this surgery, and you can't make me, without my consent, right?"

  "You can't change your mind. If your appendix bursts, you'll be in grave danger. You can die. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  "All I hear is my girlfriend screaming in pain."

  "You know what? I'll personally go and check if that's her." Dr. Garrison, who convinced me to roll away from her in the first place, managed to calm me down a bit and continued as he saw the impact of his promises on my expression. "But you can't wait any longer. I'll go check on Michelle, and you get prepped for surgery."

  "Fine," I surrendered. "I'll go and get ready, but I won't agree to be put under before you tell me that she's okay."

  "That sounds like a decent deal to me." He shook my hand. "Well, what are you waiting for? You heard the man. Take off while I'm going to see what all the commotion is about." He instructed the younger doctor standing next to me and disappeared from my vision.

  In the distance, I could still hear Michelle's cries for help. The other, younger doctor, the one who didn’t say a single word up until that moment, thought that it was the right time to break his silence and explained to me that Michelle is in good hands and that we're expected in the operating room, but I didn’t have the strength or the desire to open a conversation with him.

  Maybe in my previous life, I would have. Maybe a few years earlier, I would have been filled with hopes and dreams from their encouraging words, but the innocence I once had, with regard to everything that has to do with the medical profession, was shattered along with the candy bars I smashed that day as I passed one stage after another on Candy Crush outside Sarah's operating room.

  "Are you Don Denver?" A beautiful doctor approached my bed as I was rolled into a fairly freezing operating room.

  "Yes."

  "How are you?" She didn’t wait for my answer. "My name is Dr. Benjamin, and I'll be your anesthesiologist."

  "Okay."

  "Why are you so quiet? Are you worried? You have no reason to be worried," she stated what I assumed was her truth.

  "If you say so."

  "I do say so. I'm serious, Don. An appendectomy is a short, simple, and almost completely safe surgery. I promise you won't even have a visible scar left. Only three small dots that won't even be seen in a few months time."

  "Fine." I continued carelessly and stared at the door of the operating room, waiting for Dr. Garrison to come back and update me on Michelle's condition.

  The staff began to move around me like a well-oiled machine.

  I closed my eyes and imagined Sarah being in the same situation after I sent her alone into the freezing operating room, though she begged me to go in with her.

  Karma really is a vengeful bitch.

  Just as Michelle argued with me, so did I argue with Sarah. I told Sarah that she was exaggerating, I also said that everything would be fine and that she had no reason to worry and I was wrong. Just as Michelle was.

  I counted the number of people who were there while remembering that Sarah's surgeon claimed that one more person would be a burden. I mapped out seats where I probably could have been sitting without disturbing anyone and wondered if she had been freezing like this as well, before going to her death on the operating table.

  "Don, I assure you that everything will be fine." Dr. Benjamin stroked my hair suddenly, and I shuddered from her touch. "Really, everything will be just fine."

  "You can't know that. Bad things happen, Doctor. Bad things happened to me..." I paused in pain, but more than anything else, my conscience was hurting me.

  It was hard for me to imagine that this was how Sarah felt. I couldn't ignore the fact that the ironic reality of my life led me to follow her exact footsteps and experience her last moments in the world.

  "We'll be ready to start soon, okay, Don?" Dr. Benjamin placed an oxygen mask on my face, and her eyes took on a look full of pity for me.

  "No, we're not! Absolutely not!" I tried to get up and was amazed that I didn't notice my hands were bound to the sides of the bed. "What is this? Release me right away!" I demanded.

  "Dr. Benjamin? Are we ready? Can we start with the anesthesia?" Someone in a green uniform asked her.

  "No!" I exclaimed. "Not yet! He hasn't arrived yet! He was supposed to update me. Someone please tell me what's going on with her!"

  "With who?" Dr. Benjamin continued to talk with me calmly and nodded toward one of the nurses standing in front of her.

  "No, I'm begging you. Don't give the instruction. Not yet. He hasn't arrived yet!" The tears ran out of my eyes without any control. "Someone please tell me what's wrong with her!" I howled.

  "Tell me, Don. Who is it that you're waiting for?" Dr. Benjamin asked, and I don't remember anything after that.

  It was clear to me that I was dreaming, as the one I waited for, came, and sat down beside me on the bench, in the hospital waiting room.

  I inhaled her scent deep into my nose, leaning slightly to the right and rubbing my shoulder against her, but still, I was worried about tu
rning my head and looking straight at her. It was only after hearing the sounds of her breathing and feeling the warmth of her body that I found the courage to turn my tearful eyes to her.

  "Am I going to wait here much longer, or are you going to explain what the hell you’re doing here?" Sarah asked me.

  "I think I came here to do what you did."

  "And what exactly is that? Play Candy Crush?" Suddenly my cell phone appeared in my hand, and that damned game was reflecting on the screen.

  "I don't play that game anymore." I threw the device on the floor, and it broke into pieces. "I swear to you I haven’t touched it since… I uninstalled it after you..." I couldn't complete my sentence. Not to her.

  "After I what?"

  "You know what happened to you."

  "I do, but I want to hear you say the words."

  "What's the point?"

  "I agree. What's the point, right, Don?" She smiled, and my whole body burned for her touch. "Sometimes, I see you wonder what's the point of going on living if..." She did not go on.

  "If what?" I wanted to turn and change my sitting position in her direction, but my hands latched onto the bench and didn't allow me to do so.

  "You tell me, Don. There is no point in living if...?"

  "If you're not in my life. I can't live if you're dead." Her flushed cheeks looked so lively, and I wanted to slide my fingertips over them, but they didn't move off the bench. "You're dead, Sarah. You're not alive anymore."

  "Well, I see you haven't changed a bit." She laughed out loud. "You still remain an insensitive and blunt buffoon. Who are you calling dead? You're lucky I died, otherwise, this comment of yours would have surely killed me on the spot." She managed to make me laugh.

  "I miss you, baby."

  "You better be missing me, stupid." She wrapped me in her arms, but I still couldn't move my hands to hug her back.

  "Oh, Lord. I miss you so much." I burst into tears.

  "Can you answer my first question more seriously now? What are you doing here? Why are you outside my operating room?"

  "I'm not really here." I breathed in frustration and went on explaining. "It's a dream."

  "So, where are you now?"

  "I'm sound asleep on an operating table."

  "You? In surgery? What happened? Are you okay?"

  "I'll probably die," I went on without giving her the opportunity to dismiss my claim. "You should know what this feels like. Just as everything finally starts to work out, things deteriorate and fall apart."

  "Like what happened with us? Like what happened to you with me?"

  "I knew it." I shook my head in disapproval of the way life turned out for me. "I knew that if I allowed myself to admit aloud that everything was going great, something like this would happen."

  "So is that why you made sure nothing would be great for so many years? Is that why you kept holding on to the sadness over me dying?"

  "I held on to it because that's all I had left of you, Sarah. I came back from the hospital that day empty-handed. I left our house with the hope of a family and came back to a tasteless life."

  "And now?"

  "Now, I'll die. After I finally found my way to being happy again, I'll die here, and she'll—"

  "You're not going to die, babe," she interrupted me, and sat on my knees. "I mean you will, someday, but not today. Not now."

  "So what am I doing here? Maybe you can tell me what the hell am I doing here?"

  "I don’t know. Could it be that this may not even be about you, Don?" She raised my chin with her fingers so that I looked directly into her beautiful blue eyes. "You were there for me so that I could spread my wings and fly to achieve my wildest dreams. You were also there to pull me back to safe ground, and maybe this is all happening so that this time, I could pull you back to life?"

  "If that's your way of saying you owe me one, you better let go of the rope and let me drift off to the hell I deserve. I deserve to rot there for having left you alone in that operating room. I shouldn’t have allowed you to fly away without coming back to me."

  For some long minutes, I just cried. I can't remember if anything else was said between us. Sarah hugged me, my tears soaked her blouse and my heart was pounding so rapidly, as I knew my time with her was borrowed and that she could disappear again at any given moment.

  "What are you doing with her anyway?"

  "With whom? Michelle?"

  "You do know that she looks nothing like me, don’t you?" Suddenly she sat by my side again, while I wasn’t crying at all and my breathing was regular and calm.

  "I'm crazy about her eyes. They're the same as yours." I frowned trying to find the words to explain my claim to her.

  "Yes. I've heard you say it once before, but you know that's not true. You claim she reminds you of me, even though we both know that there's not a single point of similarity between us."

  "Why would you say that?" I started crying in pain.

  "I'm not really saying anything, Don. You're dreaming, aren't you? If that's what your subconscious made me say, you probably need to hear these things more than I need to say them."

  "The look in her eyes." My heartbeat accelerated again. "Michelle, she's—"

  "She's nothing like me, Don." She gestured toward a hospital bed that passed in front of us, and Michelle was lying on it. "Look for yourself," Sarah finished, and I stared at what was happening in front of me.

  Michelle was transported quickly to the operating room and around her ran a bunch of hysterical doctors who shouted instructions everywhere.

  "Michelle!" I tried to get up, but my body remained confined to the bench, and all of a sudden, my phone reappeared in my palm, and that damned game was playing on the screen again. "What's going on with her?" I kept yelling at the group of doctors, but they ignored me. "Someone tell me what's going on with her!"

  "What is it?" Sarah calmly asked. "What's the problem, Don? You're here, with me. You've been waiting for me, haven't you?"

  "Where are they taking her? Do you know what happened to Michelle?"

  "Don." Sarah directed my gaze to hers. "You say you've been waiting for me for these past few years, so where are you trying to go?"

  "I must know what's going on with her!" I watched the glass doors close behind Michelle’s bed as the battery of doctors and nurses rolled her through them.

  "You know where you're trying to go, right, Don? Answer me, sweetie. Who are you waiting for?"

  "I don't want to answer that question, Sarah." The tears came down on my cheeks again.

  "We keep no secrets between us, have you forgotten?" She gathered my face with her fingers.

  "I... I'm ashamed to tell you the answer, Sarah."

  "But you said I was dead. I don't exist anymore. If you're ashamed to admit the truth, it's only from yourself."

  "The truth is, I stopped waiting for you." I breathed out helplessly, feeling so very guilty. "I'm sorry, but for the last few months, I've been waiting for her. Only her."

  "So, you're actually here waiting for Michelle?" she asked as if wanting to be sure.

  "Yes. I'm sorry, Sarah. I'm sorry, I stopped waiting for you to come back. I... I'm sorry but this... She..."

  Sarah's soft lips crashed into mine.

  I closed my eyes and delved into the chills that her palms passed through me. My head tilted to one side as our tongues went out to each other in a dance whose steps I’d almost forgotten, and I wanted this moment to last forever.

  "You need to wake up now, Don," she said, and I refused to open my eyes. "Now, Don. You have to wake up now."

  "Is that it? Is my surgery over?" I asked with my eyes still closed.

  "Yes. Your surgery is over, and you are still alive. All you have to do is open your eyes and wake up."

  "I can't."

  "Are you worried that when you do, I'll be gone?"

  "No. I know that when I do that, I'll return to my house empty-handed. Again." I managed to say before a strong light came throu
gh a crack that opened in my eyes, and I found myself in the recovery ward.

  Many machines were beeping around me, and other than their sounds, silence prevailed.

  I didn't even look for Sarah around me. I had obviously been dreaming of her. Of course, she was dead, and of course, I was actually having that conversation with myself, but still, something about me felt very different.

  I remembered how I was left frozen on the bench as Michelle was rushed to the operating room and realized that at that moment, something in me went off. It was as if I knew that when I woke up, some staff member would be standing next to my bed with a concerned countenance that I hated to know and would update me that she had passed away.

  "Hello there, stud." Dr. Garrison suddenly appeared in front of me, and I didn’t dare ask him about her.

  "You first called me 'brother' and I corrected you. Do you honestly believe you'll make a better connection with me if you call me 'stud'?"

  "What would you like me to call you?"

  "You could just call me Don and stand up to your commitments."

  "I see. You have no recollection of us talking about half an hour ago?"

  "What? No!" I tried to rub my forehead, yet no memory of a conversation with him came to mind.

  "That's okay, Don. It happens. When you wake up from anesthesia, you usually get confused. Sometimes you go back to sleep for a bit and only then fully recover."

  His words became like background noise to me. I could hear him explain how he talked to my surgeon. In the half words I picked up, I realized that during the surgery, they found I actually didn’t have appendicitis after all and that after a thorough search of my abdominal cavity, they found that the cause of my inflammation was actually my gallbladder. I vaguely heard him explain that all this had taken longer than planned and that the prolonged anesthesia had made my recovery more difficult, then he ended by saying I had no further complications, and the rest of his words went through the walls of my head without leaving any mark.

  I knew. I knew that if he had good news about Michelle, he would have opened with them. He knew she was the last thing I talked about before surgery, and if he could say something positive about her, he would have, but all he did was inform me that I was the one who was still alive as if I hadn't noticed.