by W E DeVore
She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “No. I think I’m going to be like those old Italian women and wear black for the rest of my life. Stop waxing my lip. Stop plucking my chin hairs. Maybe grow a beard. What do you think?”
He finished his drink and set it on the nightstand next to Derek’s flowers. “I think you’d look good in a beard.”
“Ask me a question, I’ll tell you no lie,” she whispered. It was Sanger’s favorite childhood game and one that they’d played only once before. Sanger had been shot. Q had been powerless to help him. At the time, it had been a distraction from the danger threatening them both. Now, she was the one who’d been shot and Sanger was powerless to help.
“Why haven’t you cried?” he asked.
“I can’t. I’m too numb. I just want to be numb.” She swallowed hard around the sharp aching that swelled inside her throat. “Please don’t make me.”
“Alright then, ask me a question and I’ll tell you no lie.”
She decided to ask him the one question she’d never dared mention before. Now that Ben was gone, it didn’t really matter what the truth of it was. “What did you say to me at Freddy’s Joint that night we got drunk together after you got fired and that fuckhead reporter told the entire country that I’d been raped?”
He drained his glass and asked, “What you talking about?”
“We were sitting there drinking and you were telling me about getting fired for trying to help Ben get out of those murder charges. You turned to me and told me I was beautiful - just out of the blue - then you said something in Hebrew. What did you say?”
“I don’t know. I was drunk and it was years ago.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” she chided. “You remember everything and you’re supposed to be telling the truth. I only got pieces of what you said and it doesn’t make sense.”
“Of course, it doesn’t,” he replied, grinning slightly. “Your Hebrew sucks.”
“Well, I had this huge crush on my piano teacher when I was a kid,” she explained. “He was Israeli, too. I learned how to say ‘I’m falling in love with you,’ in Hebrew. Only, I learned it the wrong way. Got the genders all messed up because my Hebrew sucks, as you succinctly pointed out. But I still remember the phrase and you said it that night.”
His eyes traveled over her face. “What was his name? Your piano teacher?”
“Dori. Dori Gilat. He lived with us while he was in college. He was stunning. That man played Schubert like… I don’t know. Like Schubert should only be played, like ever.”
“Did he let you down easy?” he asked.
“As easy as a twenty-five-year-old man can let down an eleven-year-old-girl, yes.”
“What did he say?”
She closed her eyes and tried to remember Dori’s face. “He told me that if I were fourteen years older or he were fourteen years younger, I would have made him the most lucky man in the universe.”
Sanger nodded in appreciation. “That’s a good line.”
“I know, right?” She grinned at him. “So, what did you say to me? You’re not getting out this.”
He stared through her. “A much better line than Dori’s.”
Q flushed and stuck her tongue at him. “Save it, flirt. You did not. What did you say?”
“Ani messugelett lehiteahev bekha berega zeh.”
“Which means… what?” she asked.
He exhaled and admitted, “I could fall in love with you right now.”
She kicked her foot at him and scolded, “Aaron, I was engaged to Ben.”
“And I was drunk and had just gotten fired for helping you, what’s your point?” He refused to blink and Q backed down. “I guess I thought I’d take my shot and it’s my best line.”
“You used a second-hand line on me?” Q was mildly insulted.
“No,” he corrected. “I used a well-rehearsed line on you.”
She giggled. “Does that actually work?”
“Hell yes, it does,” he said. “But I was too drunk and my heart wasn’t really in it. So, my game was a little off.”
“Why wasn’t your heart in it?” she asked.
“I’m not a thief.” He winked at her. “I certainly wasn’t going to burgle a man’s bed while he was rotting in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. I mean, there isn’t a Jewish hell, but if there were, I’m pretty sure that would land me in a fairly deep fire pit.”
“Ben would be so relieved.” Her eyes grew heavy and she whispered, “I'm never going to see him again, Aaron. I’d do anything to see him again.”
As she slipped towards sleep and her breathing steadied, Sanger got out of the bed, laying her back down. He covered her with the blankets and kissed her forehead. “It’s going to ok, Clementine. You’ve got me. You’ve always got me.”
◆◆◆
When Q opened her eyes, it was dark. Moonlight shone through the sheer curtains of her bedroom casting a silver sheen, covering the room in an ethereal haze. She blinked several times, struggling to get her bearings. The nightmare had been so real. She pushed back the blankets and exhaled in relief to see her belly swollen. She smoothed her hand over the taut skin and Little Bit moved against it. Ben rolled over next to her, sighing her name in his sleep. She shook off her remaining terror, wiping away the dampness on her cheeks before leaning over to kiss him, inhaling the lavender and allspice sweetness of him.
She yawned and reached for her water glass on the nightstand. Finding it empty, she slid out of bed and took it to the bathroom to refill it. As she drained the cold water, she felt her grief and horror slip away.
It was just a dream. Just a stupid dream.
Looking at herself one more time in the mirror to confirm that she was both awake and still very pregnant, she walked back into her bedroom. A strange, gurgling sound caught her ear and she quickened her steps.
Ben was lying in bed, his eyes wide in wild fright, his throat was pierced by two gaping holes, and the sheets were covered in blood.
“Ben!” she screamed. She ran to him and clutched at his throat. The sticky warmth oozed between to her fingers. As she grasped Ben to her, screaming for help, her own body cried out in agony.
Her eyes flew open. She was sitting upright in her dimly lit hospital room. The stitches in her abdomen burned and she fell back to bed in impotent pain.
Sanger jolted awake from where he’d been sleeping in a nearby chair. Seeing her distress, he quickly stood up. “Clementine, what is it?”
Q felt like the skin below her belly button would split open in an instant and she couldn’t speak, only press her hand against her wound. Sanger pulled back the blanket and cursed.
“You tore your stitches. Goddamn it.” He pressed the call button and shouted for a nurse to come in. “Hold on, Clementine. It’ll be ok.”
Forty-five minutes of minor torture later, it was. The Cesarean incision had opened at both ends when she’d jolted upright, but only on the outside. The nurse had redressed her wounds and sedated her, but the pain lingered for longer than Q thought she could stand. She finally felt the strain of it ease and she relaxed into the bed, her skin melting with narcotics and the absence of the agony that had been burning her from the inside out.
Sanger sat on the edge, holding her hand in silence. “You want to tell me what the hell happened?”
“I had a bad dream,” she said.
“Must have been some dream. You’re lucky you didn’t open that incision all the way.”
She looked away from him. “Would have been better if I had.”
His body tensed and she could feel him biting back whatever angry retort he was holding in his mind.
“Just say it, Aaron,” she said.
“Ben didn’t die so you could give up. You have to find a way through this.”
She didn’t answer, knowing that he was right.
“What time is it?” she finally asked.
“Late.”
“It’s over, isn’t it? He’s buri
ed now.”
Sanger glanced towards the television in the corner. “Ben’s second line was on the news. I watched it, while you were asleep. It was huge. Everyone was there.”
“Not everyone, cowboy.” The tears flooded her eyes before she could stop them and she grimaced against the torrent. Her lip trembled and she gasped, “He’s gone.”
Shloshim: The First Thirty Days
Two weeks later, Q was finding herself growing more accustomed to the life of an invalid in a hospital. The regular checks of her blood pressure and pulse became a rhythm she could rely upon. The visits from her family and friends were a distraction from this rhythm that she tolerated mostly by staring out the window. Somehow the surreal detachment of living in a hospital kept her grief at a comfortable distance. It was a skill she practiced each morning. Every morning she woke up seeing Ben’s dying breath and every morning she shoved it into the darkest reaches of her subconscious until it felt like it had happened to some other woman.
The world felt spongy. Everything was malleable, pliant. Everything except her injured body that reminded her daily of the pain she wasn’t facing, even as every member of the medical team that buzzed around her became increasingly insistent that she prepare herself to leave their hive and return to her home. Today, she’d been instructed that she was being weaned off her narcotics and expected to get out of bed on her own and take a shower.
After the less than sympathetic nurse had left her room, Q forced her body out of bed, struggling to stand straight against the pain in her lower abdomen.
Two hours.
Two more hours until she could take something for the pain and her body was shrieking against it. Sanger walked in mid-shuffle, carrying a small plastic bag.
“You’re up,” he said.
“Against my will. The nurse is making me take a shower,” she explained.
He wrapped his arm around her waist and helped support her the rest of the way across the room. “That’s good. It means you’re getting better.”
“Really? Because I still feel like I got shot three times and had my uterus sawed in half.”
They got to the bathroom door and Sanger handed her the bag he was holding. “I brought you a new nightgown.”
She leaned against him for a moment to rest. “You don’t have to keep doing this, Aaron.”
He kissed the top of her head. “I don’t mind. But do me a favor and wash your hair, would you? It’s seen better days.”
She glared at him. “So, have I.”
When the door was closed, she rested against it to take off her sling and hospital gown. She examined her wounds up close for the first time and grimaced at the swollen, jagged caesarian scar on her abdomen. Averting her eyes from her body, she slowly shuffled to the shower, easing her wounded leg up over the low, tiled step. Despite her resistance to it, she had to admit that the water running over her skin felt good. Even if it wasn’t hot enough. Even if there wasn’t nearly enough water pressure. And even if she could only use one hand to wash herself.
After her shower, she sat on the toilet to dry off with the rough, thin towel before retrieving her new nightgown and buttoning it up with great difficulty when her left hand refused to cooperate. Fatigued by her exertions, she successfully attempted to get her left arm back into its sling without assistance and limped to the sink to look at her reflection in the dim light. Her face was pale and haggard, like the female ghoul that was supposed to crawl out of the mirror if you said her name three times.
Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary. Bloody fucking Mary.
She brushed her teeth slowly, leaning heavily on her left leg while her right leg continued to remind her that it had been hit by a bullet three weeks ago. Staring at her reflection while she ran the toothbrush over every surface inside her mouth, she tried remembering what she used to look like and failed. The wrinkles at the corners of her lips seemed new and she wondered if her skin had always been so pale. She rinsed her mouth and gazed at her own eyes. Hot rage reflected back at her.
It should have been you.
Turning away from the angry mirror, she left the bathroom to find Sanger had remade her hospital bed and was lying down on top of the covers, one foot crossed over the other, both hands folded over his stomach. He was snoring slightly.
She sighed in viscous guilt as she regarded her friend in the late afternoon light. He’d lost weight in the weeks since her shooting. He was working on a three-day growth of beard and a three-week darkening beneath his eyes. Glancing at the couch where he’d been sleeping since she’d regained consciousness, she decided to let him rest where he was and hobbled back to bed to join him, climbing in under the thin sheet and thinner blanket to lie next to him.
When she lifted her legs back onto the bed, she involuntarily cried out as her abdominal wounds yelled at her for doing so and he woke up with a start, blinking his eyes several times to recover his bearings.
“You ok?” he asked, sitting up to check on her.
Muttering in the affirmative, she lay down close to him, trying to find a comfortable position. “I'm freezing. Lay down, will you?”
He rested back against the headboard and opened his arm so she could lay her head against his shoulder. He turned his nose to her hair.
“Much better. You were beginning to smell like a zombie.” He yawned. “I’ll go get us some dinner, you rest.”
Q closed her eyes. “No, don’t go. Nothing hurts right now and I’m finally warm. Besides, you’ve been here every day. All day. When was the last time you slept in a bed?”
“While you were in your shower,” he admitted.
“That’s what I thought.” Free from pain for the first time in weeks without some narcotic assistance, she drifted down into a comforting sleep. “Don’t go, Aaron. I don’t want you to leave.”
“Then I’ll stay.” He closed his eyes and tightened his hand on her ribs. “Get some sleep, Clementine. I’ve got you.”
◆◆◆
It was dark outside her window when she woke up. Sanger was still asleep beside her. When she moved slightly, every inch of her screamed in agony. She panted against it, trying to remember where the call button for the nurse was located. Thankfully, she didn’t have to use it. Her new night nurse came in and walked to the bed.
“You finally got some sleep,” the nurse whispered, glancing at Sanger. “Let’s not wake him. He gets less sleep than you.”
“Everything hurts,” Q whimpered.
“That’s my fault. I didn’t want to wake you. I shouldn’t have let the pain get ahead of you. But I thought maybe you might not need it.” She put two pills into Q’s mouth and helped her to drink some water to swallow them. “This will kick in soon. Give it fifteen minutes.”
Q nodded and thanked her. The nurse said, “I just wanted to tell you that Scarification is my favorite Dark Harm album. I can’t believe I get to take care of the Archangel.”
“I’m not the Archangel,” Q said. “Not anymore. Some asshole killed my wings. You want the gig? I’ll give it to you.”
The nurse blushed and quickly left. As the door closed, Sanger blinked awake. He looked at Q’s face in concern. “What do you need?”
She breathed slowly, trying not to think about the shrieking points of pain. “Tell me a joke.”
“Very funny, Clementine.” Aaron Sanger was a lot of things, funny wasn’t one of them.
“Tell me about the best birthday you ever had,” she panted, still seeing stars and saying the first thing that popped into her mind.
“No,” he said, “It might make you sad.”
“Why?”
He hesitated before replying, “It was that first year you and Ben took me to Jazz Fest.”
“Bullshit. You were miserable all day.”
When she whimpered involuntarily, Sanger pulled her closer. “But my best friend sang a song she wrote, just for me. I drank beer with my other best friend all afternoon. I sat and watched the rain with the two of them. And I learned how t
o eat boiled crawfish. It was a perfect day.” He exhaled slowly, prohibiting the sadness just below the surface from manifesting.
The pain medication started to work and Q relaxed somewhat, remembering all the good things that had happened on Sanger’s birthday five years ago. “It was, wasn’t it? Until Savion died, anyway.”
“He didn’t die that night,” Sanger reminded her.
“That’s right, you saved him.” She sighed and moved nearer to him. “How many people have you saved?”
He was quiet for a moment and she thought he might have gone back to sleep, but he finally replied, “Not enough.”