The Man She Married

by Cathy Lamb

  “Dad,” I said again. I put my hand toward him.

  My dad’s face scrunched up, and he put his hands on his knees and leaned over, breathing heavily. The doctors leaned over with him, concerned, until he flipped himself back up, as if a spring had sprung. Both doctors stumbled off as my dad shouted, his face wet with a hundred tears, “My hummingbird, my cupcake, my heart! I knew you would wake up! I knew it. You’re my fighting cowgirl!” He hobbled into the room, sobbing loudly. He hugged me close, as if he would never let go, and rocked me back and forth.

  I was his beloved daughter, his life, and he had lived with the knowledge that I might never wake up, that I would die, that he would bury me in our family graveyard in Lake Joseph and he would be alone. That insidious fear, that grief, had wrapped around him tight. He thought his daughter might die. But now here I was, alive, smiling, holding him.

  I hugged him and he said to me, his voice high-pitched and cracking, a complete departure from his low rumble, “I love you, Hummingbird. My life is not worth living without you. I am so dang glad you’re back.”

  “I love you, too, Dad.” I choked out the words, my brain not working quickly enough. “Love you, too.”

  “It’s you and me and Zack, Natalie. We’re going to the Deschutes!”

  I put my forehead to his.

  We were all crying in that room, Zack and me and my dad in his duck pajamas. Even the doctors became all sniffly.

  I was grateful to be here. Endlessly, eternally grateful.

  * * *

  Later, I turned to the doctors, to Dr. Doom and Dr. Hopeless and Dr. Tarasawa, and the nurses, particularly Bettina and Darrell. I knew them. I knew how much they did for me, the time they spent with me, in consultation with each other and with doctors outside of this hospital. I knew the care they gave me.

  Dr. Doom and Dr. Hopeless had advocated for my father and husband to let me go, but I can’t fault them. That doesn’t seem right, as I am now alive, but I heard the results of my scans. I heard the percentages of people who woke up after being in a coma this long and the damage that was done. I heard all the scary, depressing stuff they said about what my miserable life would be like if I lived. They were doing what they thought was right, given the length of my coma, which was, apparently, almost four weeks long.

  I had been granted the golden miracle.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”

  They beamed at me. “You’re welcome and welcome back.”

  * * *

  My mother arrived. She was wearing a green dress and heels and emeralds. Today was—wait for it—Emeralds Day. She liked her designer clothing and her jewels to match. She marched right in, elbowed a doctor and a nurse aside, and gave me a long hug. She kissed my cheek. She was crying. I patted her back.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay, Natalie.”

  “Me too, Mom.” I remembered her visits, her tears, and her surprising, sometimes touching, honesty.

  She held my face, cried some more, her voice wobbly. “How are you?”

  “Better than I was.”

  She smiled, her eyes crinkling in the corners, her makeup perfection.

  We chatted, she told me she loved me, missed me, she cried; this was very hard on her, it was stressful, it was tiring for her. She had come to see me many times, often all by herself from eastern Oregon. That was true, she had.

  Finally, “We’ll get your hair highlighted soon,” she whispered in my ear. “It won’t always look this bad. Don’t worry.”

  The depths of my mother’s worry and anguish were apparent to me that day. When she arrived, that impeccably dressed woman had on one beige four-inch heel and one black.

  For my mother, that said everything.

  Justine came flying in. I mean, flying. She burst through the door, saw me sitting up with my eyes open like a normal human being and not a closed-eyed corpse, let out a “whoop,” jumped in the air, did a hippie dance, and hugged me. Her tears flew all over my face. “I knew it. I knew you’d pull your dimpled butt through this. I knew you’d come out of it. You wouldn’t leave me.”

  “Hi, Justine.” My voice was rough as if I hadn’t spoken in, well, weeks. My words were slow, stiff, but at least I had words.

  “Natalie. This is the best day of my life.”

  I knew she meant it, so we both cried.

  “Look at you, gorgeous. How are you, Nat?”

  “Still alive.” I smiled, then put my arms in the air in victory. “Alive and kickin’.”

  “Yes, indeed, you are!”

  Justine put her forehead on mine. “I missed you so much. I had to go to my shrink and get more antianxiety medications. I’ve had panic attacks. I had to stick my head out the window at work every day so I could breathe. I thought I was having multiple heart attacks, so I kept going to the ER. All because of you. Natalie, I love you. Don’t do this again.” Then she sobbed as if her heart was going to burst.

  * * *

  Chick and Braxton came. Chick stumbled in and said, leaning against the doorway, pale as a sheet, “Hi, friend.” Her voice was soft for once, her chin trembling. Chick is a tough woman. She can run a business, six kids, and a husband all at the same time. She hunts. She fishes. She drives tractors. She won all sorts of awards in 4-H.

  She stood and inhaled, ragged, her face flushed and smeared with her tears, Braxton supporting her as if she couldn’t stand. Then she teetered over to my bed, Braxton’s arm clamped around her as she was not steady.

  I was propped up in bed, and I held my arms out.

  She leaned in on a choked sob and didn’t say another word, which is so not like her. Braxton held her.

  She wouldn’t let me go for a long, long time, her red hair a veil around us.

  It was like being hugged by a bear. A warm and friendly best friend bear who cried into your neck and moaned.

  * * *

  In second grade Justine, Chick, and I named ourselves the Moonshine and Milky Way Maverick Girls. We had heard the term moonshine in a song that my dad sang to us about making tequila: “In the back woods, next to those ’coons, we know how to make the moonshine right, because we got the bad boy might. . . .”

  We loved Milky Ways. And we heard that maverick meant that you were a rebel. We learned what rebel meant and that appealed to us. We could be rebels . . . after we did our math and studied spelling and went to music class to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  Justine invited us over to play the day we named ourselves, but when we saw Mrs. Knight in the bathtub with the blue whales in the living room, her husband beside her, along with the midwife, Mrs. Zeebach, we knew the next Knight baby was coming.

  Mrs. Knight was wearing her pretty, white lace “birthing dress.” This baby would be number five. She had her knees up and her head back, her black hair wound into a ball. She was panting, gritting her teeth, and moaning.

  Chief Knight was pale, his hand in his wife’s, soaked with water. He saw us that day and put us to work watching the younger kids.

  I gasped as Mrs. Knight screamed and said a bad word that started with an F. She never said bad words!

  Chick wet her pants and said, “That scream scared me. I wet my pants.”

  Mrs. Knight let out a moan from the bottom of her toes. It scared the devil out of me. She said something like, “Damn you, getting me pregnant again. You just sit there, holding my hand, making me go through this pain. You take five minutes making the kid and I spend hours in agony. . . .”

  “Honey,” Chief Knight said, his voice pained. “I told you we should go to the hospital and get the drugs. Every time I tell you that, but you insist on it being natural. We can go right now—”

  “Shut up! Nothing’s natural about this pain!” She screamed again. “Get it out! Get it out right now!”

  We hurriedly took the kids outside, me carrying Melody. The Knights had five acres and we headed to the end of it, by the fence, under the oak tree. We could hear Mrs. Knight’s screams now and then, but the c
rows overhead cawed and the stream behind us gurgled, so that blunted it out.

  Later, when we couldn’t hear any more screaming, we went back in the house.

  I have no idea how it happened, but I ended up holding the new baby, Savannah, while Mrs. Knight was fixed up by the midwife on the floor of the living room. Chief Knight lay down for a while, being so tired from the birth and all.

  I think that’s why Savannah and I have always been close. I was the first person she saw. But she’s always been nervous, too. She writes scary scripts for Hollywood thrillers, and whenever she sells another one she has a nervous breakdown because she doesn’t think she’s “good enough.” You would think the opposite would happen, but it doesn’t.

  I think it’s because she was positioned wrong and Mrs. Knight was screaming a lot during that birth, so it started things off badly for Savannah in the nerves department.

  We ate pickles and peppermint ice cream for a snack, Savannah in my arms. We decided then and there that this would always be the Moonshine and Milky Way Maverick Girls’ favorite meal.

  * * *

  Zack did not leave my side for two days. He hardly slept. He kept smiling, though. He hugged me, held my hand.

  “It really bothers me that I can’t remember anything about the morning of my accident, Zack.” My words were still so slow, plodding. I was thinking much faster than I could talk. “The last thing I remember is going to bed with you and then waking up here. But I feel like there’s something important I’ve missed. Something I don’t know, I don’t get . . . I can’t explain it. Nothing happened that morning that was odd? Or different? Or bad? Are you sure?”

  “I think that the accident, and losing that morning, is traumatic, Natalie. You can’t remember one of the most important days, the worst day of your life. You want to know what happened, I get it.”

  “But is there anything else besides what you’ve already told me? It was a normal morning, right? Whenever I try to remember that morning, I get this lost, scared feeling.”

  I saw a vein throb in his temple. Not a reassuring sign.

  “We got up. We got ready for work. We had breakfast. You had too much coffee, as usual. You went to work and you were hit by a van.”

  There was more. My mind had a memory about that day and it kept slipping in and out and I couldn’t grab it. “There was nothing different at all?”

  “It was a normal morning, honey.” That vein throbbed again.

  No, it wasn’t a normal morning. He kissed my cheek, and I momentarily became distracted. Zack was so handsome. Cowboy handsome. How did I ever get such a handsome husband? A little voice in my head said, A handsome, lying husband.

  “Thanks for listening to your crazy wife.” He wasn’t going to tell me anything, but he was hiding something, I knew it. Maybe we’d had a fight? But what was the fight about?

  “You are not crazy, Natalie.” He cupped my face with his hands and kissed me. “You are the most sane person I’ve ever met.”

  “I insanely love you.”

  “And I insanely love you, too.”

  I knew Zack loved me. I did not doubt it for a second.

  But behind that love there was something else going on here.

  I tried to put my squished and battered brain on it.

  What was it?

  What was it?

  * * *

  A memory pushed itself out after he left. I was in the bathroom of our home. I was staring at myself in the mirror. I looked shocked. The door was locked and Zack kicked it open.

  Did that really happen? Zack would never break down a door. Why on earth would he do that?

  I did not tell anyone that I was awake, in and out, when I was in my coma. I would tell the doctors, later, because they needed to know for other patients who are locked inside their skeletons in the future.

  Maybe it’s because I simply can’t process it myself. Maybe it’s because I don’t want my family and friends to know. It would simply cause them more pain to know that I was trapped inside a nonmoving body. I mean, how would you feel if a person you loved awoke from a coma and told you about the horrors of believing that they would live forever like a vegetable or how claustrophobic and panicked they constantly felt, how utterly trapped? How would it feel to hear about their crushing fear of death, and yet their even stronger crushing fear of living like that forever?

  Not pleasant.

  I might tell them later. Not now. They have had more than enough to deal with and don’t need anything else.

  But I had another reason for not telling anyone. It’s not a warmhearted reason. Something is up with Zack, and I need to figure out what that is. If I tell him I heard him apologizing to me when I was in my coma, taking calls, calling someone a son of a bitch, if I tell him I felt his fury, if I tell him I know that he knows who sent that cut-up Barbie, I won’t be able to. He’s hiding something, and I want to know what it is.

  My gut level is that he’ll lie to me. Again.

  If I could remember the morning of the accident, it would shed some light, but I can’t, so I’ll wait this out. It is devastating to know that Zack has a secret.

  * * *

  I am having health issues, some more difficult than others. You don’t simply boing out of a coma and everything is fine and dandy. My brain had time to do some healing when I was in my Coma Coffin, but it didn’t become a gray mass of intellect and understanding all of a sudden. I’m having memory issues, light to moderate headaches, dizziness, speaking issues, thinking issues. Lights bother me sometimes, and though I am trying to add numbers in my head for practice, they’re still spinning.

  I have lost nearly all my strength, my balance is off, and I basically feel confused, lost, and off-kilter. I continue to think way better in my head than I speak. My words sound almost slurred, as if they’re surrounded by mud. Sometimes I’m hit with an exhaustion so deep, so fast, it’s like some naughty sleep fairy cast a spell over me.

  “I walk like a drunk, old penguin,” I told Zack.

  He laughed. Those light green eyes are so warm for me, sweet, indulging, loving. “I will take a drunk, old penguin for the rest of my life, baby.”

  “Good to know, Zack. I have always liked penguins. We can incorporate my penguin-ness into our love life. Here, hold my flipper.” I held out my hand and he kissed it. “Thanks. You’re my apple pie.”

  “Always.”

  Recovering was going to take a long time. I tried not to let that discouraging realization drown me.

  * * *

  The nurses washed my hair and brushed my curls back into a ponytail after my sponge baths, and I appreciated it, but on day four of being gratefully alive I rasped out that I wanted to take a shower. Dr. Tarasawa said I could. Two female nurses, one of whom was in special shower-wearing clothes, got in with me.

  They untied my hospital gown, and I made the mistake of looking at my face, at my body, in the bathroom mirror.

  “Oh no . . .” I cried out, harsh and shocked. “Oh no . . .”

  “Honey,” my nurse, Latisha, said, “Now, don’t you worry.” She flipped her long black braids under her shower cap. “You’ve had a bad time of it. After your shower we’ll get your hair brushed and dried. I’ll go and find you some lipstick and mascara and you’ll feel much better—”

  “I’m a hundred years old.” My words came out slow, as usual, wobbly. My blond hair was a wreck. It looked as if I’d had a swarm of bees land on my curls. Part of my head had been shaved for the operation, and that part wasn’t much more than stubble, my jagged scar visible.

  My face was pale, with a yellowish hue. My lips were invisible, my eyes were dull, and my boobs. Oh, my gosh. No perk. No lush. No oomph. I was too thin. I had always liked my curves, feeling healthy and solid, and this mess of skinny bones was not me.

  “I look like a skeleton. A creepy skeleton.” I started to cry. “I look like I’m dead.”

  “No, no . . . you look fine,” they reassured me. “Here, take a shower, we
’ll get your hair done . . . we’ll fatten you up, don’t you worry, dear . . . high-caloric drinks . . . dessert after dinner . . . we’ll get you some cake. Do you like cake?”

  My shoulders sagged, I saw it. My face sagged. My mouth sagged. “I am Cruella de Vil. I am dead clay.”

  The nurses gently turned me away and I took a shower. I cried, all my tears mixing with the hot water sluicing down. Latisha washed my hair. I used the washcloth. I had trouble standing, so they propped me up on the shower bench, then they dried me off and put a fresh hospital gown on me. I climbed back into bed. The whole thing exhausted me.

  Luckily, Latisha knew what to do. She put a dollop of cream rinse and a squirt of mousse in her hand and worked it in. I didn’t ask where she came up with both. She brushed my hair out and then gave me lotion to put on my scraggly face and my prunelike hands. I caked it on. I could feel it soaking in. I put more on.

  “You’re a beautiful lady.” She wagged a finger at me. “Don’t you forget it.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out a lipstick. “I’m not supposed to do this, but . . .” She handed me the lipstick and I put it on.

  She dried my hair with a hair dryer, then handed me a mirror.

  “I don’t think I can look at myself again. It’s like looking at a human Godzilla. All I need is pointy teeth and no one could tell the difference.” I felt self-pitying tears rise in my eyes again.

  “Trust me, Natalie.” Her voice was soft, her braids falling over her shoulder. “Trust me.”

  I trusted her.

  She held up the mirror. “You see?”

  I saw.

  Now that was better. The bees were gone out of my hair, at least. She had arranged my curls so that part of the shaved spot was covered. I did not look like a living skeleton so much. The lipstick gave my mouth a smile. The lotion somehow magically softened the lines.

  “Thank you.”

  She gave me a hug. “Mrs. Shelton, things will get better.”

  “They already have,” I told her. “I’m not stuck in a Coma Coffin and I got to hang out with you in the shower.”