The Empty Jar

by M. Leighton

  We stare at one another for about fifteen seconds before we both give in to our laughter. We giggle and snort like two teenagers, and it feels good. It feels good to laugh, maybe even more so because we are covered by a dark cloud of uncertainty. But we are together, and that makes all the difference.

  We are like two young lovers huddled beneath an umbrella in a rainstorm. We find shelter from the elements, warmth in each other’s arms, and solace in otherwise unforgiving circumstances. It’s us against the world.

  Us against time.

  As our merriment wanes, I lie staring up into Nate’s eyes, and he into mine. “I love you more than anything,” I declare softly. It’s nothing he doesn’t already know, but I’m more frequently impressed with the need to tell him these days.

  “And I love you. We’ll get through this,” he pledges, bending to kiss my forehead, leaving his lips pressed to my skin for longer than the simple touch requires. “All three of us.”

  I exhale a breath I wasn’t aware of holding. Maybe I just needed for him to tell me everything will be okay. Maybe I just needed for him to feel like everything will be okay. Whatever the reason, the tension in my muscles relaxes, and I sink further into the mattress.

  Eventually, a tech comes to take me for an ultrasound. Then, when I arrive back in my room, it’s only a matter of minutes before Dr. Stephens walks in to give me the results.

  “Looks like placenta previa,” she announces. “But it’s nothing that I believe you need to stay here to treat, nothing that severe. Bed rest. Stay off your feet as much as you can. No exercise. No sex.” She says the last with a playful amount of emphasis as she turns a warning eye toward Nate. “I can talk to Mr. Li. He’s made house calls before. I’m confident he’ll work with you at home so you don’t have to come out so frequently.” Mr. Li is the Chinese medicine man I’ve been seeing for herbal remedies and acupuncture.

  The doctor goes on to give me a follow-up appointment date and a few other common sense instructions like no baths or douches, nothing in the vagina. No straining, be careful of falls, that sort of thing. Basically, I’m to treat my body as though it’s made of glass. I don’t think that will be a problem. Nate is already doing it for the most part. And, honestly, I don’t care what I have to agree to; I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep the baby safe.

  “But everything is okay? I mean, the baby is going to be okay?”

  Dr. Stephens smiles. “I don’t see why she won’t be. Just take it easy. You’re almost there.”

  At that point, for the first time since I saw the blood, I fully relax.

  ********

  “You don’t have to carry me, Nate. I can walk into the house, for Pete’s sake.” I resist when Nate sweeps me off my feet after I step out of the car in the garage.

  “I like carrying you,” he assures me, swinging us both around as he pushes the car door shut. “It always reminds me of feeding the stingrays in Grand Cayman. Remember that?”

  My head is on his shoulder, but I can hear the smile in his voice. “How could I forget? Someone talked me into feeding them, even though I was afraid of getting squid juice on me and getting a stingray hickey. But still, I was dumb enough to do it.”

  “The part I talked you into went fine. They warned you not to wipe your hands on any body parts. How was I supposed to know you’d brushed your leg after you fed them?”

  “I didn’t mean to do it. It was just sort of habit, I guess. I mean, we were in the water. I just didn’t think about it.”

  “Until a big female stingray came up to suck the smell off.”

  “Yeah, I sure thought about it then!”

  I smile at the memory. I’d gone completely motionless with panic when the stingray swam to my leg and turned its vacuum-like mouth on my skin. It wasn’t really painful; it was more terrifying than anything. At least to me it was. I screamed and tried to get away, but my progress was very slow in the chest-deep saltwater. That had probably only aggravated the situation. But sweet Nate, he’d been so distressed by my upset that, once we got back to shore, he’d carried me all the way to the bus stop and then on to the cruise ship and then the rest of the way to our room when we arrived back at the boat. I wasn’t actually hurt, but he was taking no chances.

  After that, we’d made the most of the comical situation, and Nate had offered at every turn to strip me down and wash my leg. “You know, to make sure it doesn’t get infected,” he explained with his sexy, suggestive smile. The skin wasn’t even broken, but I always relented anyway, loving how intimate our trip became after that. We touched and laughed and kissed every few minutes for the rest of the voyage. Despite the hickey, there was no point at which I wasn’t blissfully happy.

  That was just before we got married. We were young and energetic, and life was a beautiful mystery that stretched out in front of us like those stunning sunsets on the ocean—to infinity. And beyond.

  If someone had told us then where we’d be now, neither of us would’ve believed them. I suppose no one really expects their life to end early or abruptly or painfully. Many fear it, but few actually expect it.

  Nate gets me safely inside, and it isn’t until he deposits me in our spacious master bathroom that I feel the tears come. Even though my obstetrician gave me no reason to think that I might lose the baby over this, I feel a deep ache behind my ribs that won’t quite go away. A sense of foreboding pounds at the door of my heart, echoing through my muscles in a fine tremor that ends at my fingertips.

  All alone, I shake like my bones are tectonic plates, rubbing together and threatening an earthquake.

  When I finally calm, I move to the large dimpled ottoman and sit down, taking my phone from my pocket. With trembling fingers, I set it to video. I take another succession of deep, steadying breaths and wrestle back the sobs that refuse to vacate my throat.

  Eventually it works.

  A smile into the camera is a totally different story, though.

  It takes me two tries before I can get one to stick, but when I do, I take full advantage of the moment and promptly slide my thumb over the record button.

  “Hi, little Grace. It’s your momma.” As I speak, I rub my rounded belly as though I might actually comfort my child by doing so. Or that maybe my child can comfort me.

  “I know today was scary, but I…I don’t want you to be frightened. If for any reason you don’t make it here to us in this world, I’ll find you in the next. You won’t be alone. I promise. If you wake up in heaven, watch for me. I’ll be there soon. I’ll find you. Then I’ll be able to hold you in my arms. I’ll rock you and…and s-sing to you. And we’ll spend all of eternity together. So don’t be afraid, little Grace. I will always be with you. Always. Just look for me. In heaven, in the dark, in the sound of the waves, in the lightning bugs. Wherever you go, I’ll be there with you. I love you, sweet baby girl. In this life and the next. Always.”

  With strength reserved for my husband and my child, I hold my smile until I stop the recording. The instant the light goes dark, however, I drop my face into my waiting open hands, and I cry quiet tears of fear and helplessness. Of happiness and relief. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel, so I feel everything—the positive and the negative, the good and the bad. The hopeful and the hopeless.

  I have no idea what the future holds, even though I’m afraid that I might, but I have a nebulous chill in my bones that whispers of death. Whether mine or my baby’s I can’t possibly know, but either way, the road ahead seems bleak.

  I weep in utter silence. My sobs make no sound. Their noise is smothered by the agony that chokes me. The only vibration that tickles the delicate bones inside my ears is the sound of time.

  Galloping away.

  Nineteen

  The Hardest Part is the Night

  Nate

  Over the course of the following weeks, Lena’s health begins to slowly decline. It’s as though the dark cloud that has been hovering silently in the distance sweeps in and bursts, pouring rain
of reality and finality over her. Over me.

  Over us.

  It started on the morning following the placenta previa diagnosis and has run steadily downhill each day since. Lena fights it, of course. She still refuses to give up on our baby, but her vigor lessens with every week that slips by.

  She battles depression. It seems almost like poisonous black strings have attached themselves to her heart. I can almost see them coiling and wrapping and knotting, pulling tighter and tighter every day, dragging her down, down, down.

  Nissa has been trying to help with that. She comes over once a day to either read to Lena or watch a movie with her, usually something from their youth, something they sing and laugh to like Grease or Flash Gordon, which I find particularly amusing.

  She combats confusion as well. She told me once a few days ago that it feels as though she’s awakening from a dream, awakening to a life she doesn’t recognize. Sometimes she’s as confused about when she is as she is about where she is.

  I first noticed that in relation to Nissa. She was at the house the other day. She’d been reading to Lena when Lena interrupted her.

  “How are things with you and Mark? I’m sorry I haven’t asked in so long.”

  Nissa reached across the couch to lay her hand on Lena’s. “It’s not like you’ve got a lot on your plate or anything.” I saw the wink she shot my wife, and my wife’s answering smile, sad though it was.

  “Well? How are things?”

  “Not great. No better, no worse, I guess. I just wonder sometimes how long we can go on this way. I mean, we might as well just be roommates. And babysitters. Well, that’s mostly just me.”

  “I’m so sorry, babe.”

  Nissa shrugged. “It’ll come to a head one of these days. I’m not too eager to push it until the kids are a little older. I have no idea what I’d do if he left me right now.”

  Lena nodded, her expression rife with sympathy, and the two sat in silence for a few minutes. Slowly, Lena’s eyes began to get heavy, and she dozed off. Nissa watched her from the couch. I watched her from the island in the kitchen. I wondered if she hurt as much as I did to see my beautiful, vivacious Lena this way. Because it was damn sure breaking my heart.

  She only napped for about ten minutes. When she woke, she smiled over at Nissa as if she hadn’t been asleep and asked, “So, how are things with you and Mark?”

  To Nissa’s credit, she handled it well. Didn’t miss a beat with her response. “He’s an asshole, but I’m not surprised. He’s always been an asshole.”

  The two laughed, but I died a little inside.

  For a few days, Lena wouldn’t talk about it. Tried to hide her slips. But I could see it. Even without the overt example of that conversation with Nissa, I could see it. I’m as aware of every subtle nuance of my wife as I am of my own body.

  I know how she struggles, just as I know her reasons for not wanting to talk about it, to acknowledge it. She’s trying to protect me. And I’m trying to protect her.

  That doesn’t change the facts, though.

  The facts are that Lena’s disease is progressing. And there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. For me, that means that I’m destined to watch the love of my life slip away from me in the most excruciating way imaginable—little by little, day by day, and with no recourse whatsoever.

  I keep a watchful eye on Lena at all times. Periods when I feel like she isn’t really with me are getting more and more frequent. Nights seem to be the worst. For that reason, I never let myself fall into a very deep sleep. My fear is that she will get up in the dark and I won’t hear her. And I’m afraid that if she does, something bad will happen. She’ll hurt herself or need my help. I’m terrified that I won’t be there for her, so I sleep with one eye open at all times.

  Tonight, Lena fell asleep on the sofa. She skipped supper altogether, which isn’t like her. Even so, I was hesitant to wake her. I’m okay with letting it go this one time, but if it becomes a habit, I’ll have to consult the doctors. Lena has to eat. For her, for the baby, she has to. I hope this won’t be a trend, but I know if it is, I’ll have no choice but to involve the doctor.

  I want Lena to do well on her own for as long as she can. I know that’s what she wants, too. What she needs. Besides that, I’ve read enough about terminal cases such as Lena’s to know there is a point of no return when it comes to their ability to sustain their own life. Having to be fed through a tube is one of those points, and I’m in no hurry for my wife to arrive there.

  I carried her to bed and tucked her in around eleven, and I’ve been drifting between wakefulness and sleep ever since. The moment Lena’s weight shifts off the bed, I’m wide awake.

  I bolt upright.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “Fine, fine,” she answers, her voice sounding clear and lucid. “Just going in here to get some orders.”

  Orders?

  I slide out of bed to follow her. My eyes quickly adjust to the darkness, so I have no trouble seeing her as she makes her way down the hall. I also have no trouble seeing her when she stops, glances down at her arms, licks her finger, and begins flipping through papers that aren’t really there. I watch her as she closely studies something, running her finger down the imaginary page. I wonder what she’s seeing. And why. Obviously it’s work-related, which doesn’t surprise me. She’s been a nurse practitioner for most of her adult life. She’s as comfortable in her white lab coat as she is in her pajamas.

  “Elevated ammonia levels,” she mutters before tucking the nonexistent papers against her chest and resuming her walk down the hall.

  I trail her into the kitchen where Lena pulls out a stool at the island and sits on the edge like I’ve seen her do at work so many times. It seems a habit that many medical personnel adopt—to perch right on the edge of those black vinyl stools that can be found in every emergency room in the country. The ones that roll. Maybe it’s so they can get up quickly. Or maybe it’s because the stools themselves aren’t very stable. I don’t know the why of it; I only know I’ve seen many of them do it.

  Lena sets her unseen papers on the granite in front of her and flips through the pages again. She examines them for a couple of minutes, flipping back and forth as though she’s looking for something specific. Finally, she reaches out into space and grabs at the air. She grasps with her fingers, appearing to take something from several invisible slots and adding them to her pile. I assume she’s compiling the orders she said she was going after, probably getting them from the tower of black cubbies I’ve seen stacked on one corner of her desk, the kind that keep stacks of papers organized.

  She has no idea that she’s in our kitchen or that I’m standing behind her. She’s present in a world that only she can see and hear and touch.

  A lump forms in my throat. It feels roughly the size of my first car, an old Buick that had a rusted fender and mismatched tires. I swallow several times, but it doesn’t lessen the ball of grief lodged there. It’s painful to watch, seeing my wife in such a weakened, fragile state, but watch her I will.

  I won’t leave her. Not now. Not ever.

  So I lean against the wall in the kitchen and keep an eye on my Lena as she fills out papers that only exist in her imagination. She works diligently on them for five or six minutes, writing with a pen only she can feel, before she picks up a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter and holds it to her ear as if it were a phone.

  “I need you to put in orders for the patient in room six. Ultrasound of the liver, a liver function panel, and I’d like a repeat CBC done as well. I think it might be a good idea to get a PT/INR, too. As soon as possible, please. Thank you.”

  Before she hangs up the banana phone, she holds it out and stares at it. She laughs softly and lays it aside, but makes no comment. I wonder if she finally realized that it isn’t a phone at all.

  Lena resumes her “work,” stacking her papers over and over and over before laying them neatly on the counter and folding her hands over them
. I wait to see what she will do, but she seems content to just sit where she is, in the dark, in the quiet, lost in another world. Eventually, she begins to murmur, to work out the details of her patient’s case in the muddled halls of her mind.

  “Right upper quadrant pain, loss of appetite, increased fatigue, confusion” she ticks off as though she’s putting puzzle pieces into place. “I bet it’s the liver.”

  I know little about medicine, but between spending nearly half of my life living with a nurse and attending numerous appointments with Lena over the past months, I’ve picked up enough to know what some of this means. She’s treating someone with some sort of liver dysfunction, and I can’t help wondering if her own fears, fears of how the cancer has progressed in her liver, are playing out in her mind. Is it possible that some part of her is cataloging her symptoms and working out her own condition?

  Suddenly, Lena’s murmuring ceases. When she remains quiet for several minutes, I give up my position against the wall and speak softly as I cross to her. “Hey, babe. Wha’cha doin’?”

  Lena turns toward me, a breathtaking smile spreading across her face. It makes me pause. I feel like I’ve been hit with a gale-force gust of wind. It rocks me all the way down to the bottom of my soul, that smile. I’ve seen it hundreds of times throughout our years together. It’s the smile I fell in love with, the smile that says she’s happy to see me, the smile that says she’s happy period.

  It’s the smile I haven’t seen in a while.

  Since the diagnosis, all she’s been able to do is pretend at perfect happiness, but it’s just that—pretend. I can see it now, plain as day, when I compare this smile to the ones I’ve seen since she was declared terminal. She’s done her best to hide her heartache from me, but I know.

  And down deep, she’s withering.

  “What a nice surprise!” she exclaims, tilting her face up to mine for a kiss. I oblige her. Gladly.

  These days, I feel like I can’t touch her enough, can’t get close enough, can’t stay close enough. Like if I blink, I’ll open my eyes and she’ll be gone, having disappeared without a trace. I’m afraid of missing something. Anything.