My Hand Mitten

by Austin Thacker

  Kennedy did visit Mary once. They talked for a short burst of time. Kennedy—along with so many others—brought a present accompanied with some get-well balloons. Kennedy brought a small, blank sketchbook and some candy but quickly knew it wasn’t the right present, since she was unable to ingest or draw. Only Mary and Kennedy knew what she did, and this never changed. Mary’s father, Mr. Kenny, also visited many times over. He was as strong as Mark when it came to seeing his little girl. He couldn’t control the agony that followed. He started throwing vases, knocking down lamps and dressers, stabbing his walls with a knife, destroying his once keen, perfectly arranged house. He emptied out the pantry, threw his bed down the stairs, and shattered his box television on those cotton white tiles. Then he cried. Control out of his reach for the second time in his life, he couldn’t stop what he knew would come. After three weeks of Mary continuing to thin and whiten, Mark began to drink almost every night at Applebee’s. He would give the bartender Aaron’s number, so once it was closing time, Aaron would race over with his coat over a Metallica nightshirt with worry and anger in his eyes. Mark was at that bar so frequently that the bartender posted Aaron’s number on the wall. “Look over here,” the bartender said while pointing to the wall and casually swooshing the cocktail shaker with ease, “next we’re going to put your name on one of these benches. ‘Reserved for Mark Wegman’!”

  Mark would then wake up and work out with the hangover. It was painful, and Mark never accomplished any gain in muscle mass. Aaron knew that he did it because it blocked out the pain of Mary, the migraines from the alcohol. The self-inflicted pain made sure of that. Aaron told Mark’s oncology doctors about what he did, like one sibling tattling on another. The nurse practitioner yelled at him, listing all the extra dangers caused by the mixture of alcohol and medications for his early remission stages with cancer. She explained how his ferritin levels were too high, how there was iron in his kidneys from the extreme amount of blood transfusions during treatment, and how the amount of chemotherapy and radiation he’d received already made his liver vulnerable enough. “If you continued to drink,” the nurse told him, her eyes like the eyes of a concerned yet angered mother, “your liver would most certainly shut down.” Therefore, Mark stopped taking his medications. He discarded everything but Mary’s alphabetized prescriptions, neatly organized in a corner of the medicine cabinet. Her narcotics went through the IVs. Pills had been used for the first few days of her sickness, but Mark kept them in case she ever needed them, hoping that soon, she could take them again.

  Aaron asked for assistance at the police station as well. They were able to give Mark rehab at the Rester Recovery Facility and Institution. It had two campuses on its twenty-acre property. The one on the left was a rehab facility, and the one on the right was an insane asylum. The neighboring building was motivation for the rehab patients to recover. It was sometimes that extra push they needed—anything to help those poor souls.

  Mark began to panic because of their offer, as Satan’s Little Helper also told him to take a few days off with his wife while he went to therapy, a genuine smile on his face as he patted Mark’s shoulder and shook his hand. He quit his drinking completely and automatically, knowing that if he didn’t, the chief of police would extend his leave, lawsuits on his mind, as his alcoholism would be too risky for the station. But Mark did not go to the recovery facility—at the end of it all, no one except Aaron seemed to care. Aaron, on the other hand, had his own growing addiction as well. He became obsessed with Mark, watching him with a cold glare from across the station, replacing his kitchen knives with plastic and transporting Mark’s personal rifles and hand guns to his own house. He then called a psychologist from Phoenix, offering the stubborn, self-absorbed man $2,000 to drive down and evaluate Mark in secret.

  “He has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” the sixty-eight-year-old man said as he pulled out a Camel cigarette, the flame in his lighter starting with a very forceful flick.

  “How severe is it?” Aaron worried.

  “Very severe. You said he’s a police officer?” He stroked his trimmed facial hair.

  “Yes, we are both at the same station.”

  “Suspend him. Ask whoever’s in charge to give him a position that cannot place him in any danger, something off the field.”

  Aaron stood up in his chair, aggravated as both his hands tugged at his long, straight hair. “He won’t shoot himself, sir—”

  “It’s not just about him,” the psychiatrist added severely. “It’s also about others on the scene, civilians around the scene, police officers supporting the scene. There are triggers for this disorder, and you won’t know what they are until it happens! And it happens just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Only an absolute moron would allow him to stay in the police station. You get him out of that. Make the right choice. But for goodness sake, why should I care?” the man said as he blew some black smoke into the air. Aaron’s head fell in shame; he, like many times over, had nothing to say to his comment, no reason to argue.

  “Was it the cancer that caused it?” Aaron asked shyly. The psychiatrist asked Aaron for silence, and they listened intently behind the walls into Mary’s room. One of those noises was a slight sound of weeping, loud enough to make your ears shiver, for your stomach to drop as you listened to those sobs, those that come from the deepest part of your throat, and while inhaling, the struggle to breathe can be heard past your ears, more painful than anything you could imagine. It was Mark’s deep voice inside that room while Mary slept: his quiet yet masculine sobs.

  “It’s because of her.”

  Later, Aaron convinced the chief of police to temporarily make him a community resource officer, which he seemed to easily agree to. “That man’s going to run my station to the ground,” the chief of police grumbled to Aaron as he clipped his lengthy fingernails on his desk, “but I do wish him and his wife the best.” The chief then let out an unexpected, unnatural smile. It was quick, no more than half a second, yet this was enough for Aaron to be thrown back, shocked to find the chief so understanding. But there were two separate reasons behind his flashed grin: one was because he was going to retire soon, and although Aaron was young, he planned on passing down the torch to him, knowing that he would treat the position with more respect than anyone else. He had also been told by his doctor that his blood pressure was through the roof and had been prescribed anger management classes over at the community center.

  Then, once Aaron left the station, he drove over to Mark’s house, well aware that he was not there. In fact, while Aaron trotted on the bear-brown tiles with his skinny legs toward the front door, Mark was walking to the chief’s office, calling on his Bearcat to drive back to the station and sit down with the old man. Mark was at home when he was called, only on the second day of leave to be with his wife. Aaron knocked on the front door and waited, hearing the click of shoes inside, Mary’s home nurse skipping toward the door. Kenny paid for the home care plan, still very wealthy from his Pants Plants idea even after so many years. She opened the door: a tall, dirty blond nurse, a little broader than normal with a square jaw and an overwhelming addiction to exercise and weight training, yet with a beautiful, rare case of heterochromia iridum, having two different colored eyes. One was a dark blue, the other more of a turquoise. They had spoken to each other at least a dozen times since Aaron had been there during numerous occasions, yet no special bond between them was ever made, as both their positions in the house were different, and there was no attraction between the two.

  “I need you to tell Mark he can’t see Mary anymore,” Aaron demanded after she opened the door, his voice slightly cracking, knowing how suspicious his request was. “Tell him that her immune system is too weak. It is very important that you do so as soon as you can.” The nurse’s mouth was so wide open that a small dove could have flown in. The nurse responded with a kind of sharpness in her voice that indirectly told him how ridiculo
us he sounded.

  “Why in the world would I tell him that?”

  “The psychologist told me that if he doesn’t, Mark will kill himself!” Aaron lied, his voice louder and louder the more he spoke. “You need to tell him when he gets home. I’m begging you.”

  The nurse was blown away. “I—I need to hear Mr. Kenny say it. Or it will never happen!” She stormed off, irritated and disturbed, and shut the door so hard Mary woke from a drug-induced sleep, beginning to moan again from the pain. Aaron didn’t waste a second to visit Mr. Kenny at the hospital, speeding sometimes over twenty-five miles per hour and running into the building eight minutes after the nursed had slammed Mark’s front door in his face, like a disease-infested rat. He was only a few years short of his doctorate degree. Mr. Kenny was more productive than ever before because of his daughter’s condition. He ignored the situation by being overly busy with work and education. Aaron ran through the newly inserted hospital door that let in vibrant light through the windows, the same window Mark would escape through two decades later. Aaron called Kenny on his giant phone. He rushed down when Aaron panicked, claiming that there was an urgent update on Mark and his daughter.

  “He’ll kill himself?” Kenny questioned with high suspicion, his voice slightly agitated.

  “Yes, and the nurse won’t stop him from seeing her unless you give your consent,” Aaron quickly claimed, wiping stress sweat off his forehead. Kenny shot him a look, his hands on his hips, an unwelcoming sign.

  “There is no way the psychologist told you and not the nurse. She said no because you’re an idiot.”

  “He wanted to suspend Mark,” Aaron hesitated, dissolving his insufficient, short-lived lies. “This job is everything he has! I can see it in him, how much the difference in atmosphere changes a man. At his house, he is constantly reminded that Mary will not live. It’s his only distraction left. We need to help him keep this job for as long as we can. Kenny, you have to trust me.”

  Kenny, so remarkably furious that his legs were shaking, stomped toward Aaron and slapped him across the face. Aaron retreated a few yards back, staring at Kenny as if he were a ghost, shocked beyond belief from Kenny’s hostile reaction.

  “Not my boy! Don’t screw with my boy. If you touch him, I will make sure you’re out of this town!”

  “You don’t think I care for him, too? Think about it, Kenny. If we suspend him from work, he will stay at home more and see Mary more. Mark nearly barfs in her sight! When you get off your shift, go see Mark for yourself, step in my shoes, and watch your precious son-in-law’s eyes. Listen to his voice and tell me, with complete honestly, that he could last even a week without his escape!” Aaron screamed, his heart racing as memories of his half-forgotten father began to flood in once again, awakened from the burning sensation in his left cheek, bruising like an apple and heating up like a torch.

  “Then get him a job that requires no weapons—”

  “We both know if that were on his mind, he’d find one!” Aaron yelled, echoing through the room as the front desk man at the end of the windy hallway began to walk over, twenty-eight seconds away. Kenny’s eyes were red with so much anger, his skin seemed to glow with it as he bit his lower lip with tremendous force, yet he was speechless. Kenny didn’t say a word as he turned from Aaron. He didn’t slap him a second time or tell him that he was an idiot. In some mysterious way, Aaron filled with excitement, as he knew that he had convinced Kenny. Aaron, under the simple illusion that he finally had control, let out a simple half smile. It wasn’t enough though—he needed more from Kenny than his acceptance. He needed much more. Aaron yelled at Kenny, his demand so unexpected, so obnoxious. But somehow, they both felt it. They both felt as if this were a foreseen event, destined to be said.

  “I need you to also convince him he’s not allowed to see Mary anymore.”

  Kenny stopped next to a painting on the wall of peaceful scenery, with flowers as gentle as the sun’s rays and meadows full of endless sunflowers, blowing in the delicate wind, frozen in time. He pounded the wall, his knuckles creating a grapefruit-sized crater in the plaster and knocking the painting off. The glass shattering, scattering across the ground with a desirable force to do so. He later bought the hospital a new painting of a gentle storm in the sea, rocking waves back and forth on a suffering ship, on an endless voyage toward nothing but the same, dark blue unavoidable wave ahead.

  “You want me to use my marketing skills to lie to my son,” Kenny’s calm, collective voice stated. “You’d much rather have me do this than yourself, because you feel that I am the voice of reason, that my demands are far more impactful than yours. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Aaron replied as Kenny continued to pound the same spot on the wall until his fist did go through. Then he snapped around, locking eyes with Aaron.

  “What will happen if he learns that it’s a lie? What will happen if she dies and we are to blame for her husband’s absence? Have you thought even a little about the danger in your ignorant scheme? We both know she will, and I don’t want this blood on my hands, that Mark wasn’t there to be with her when she passed.” Then Kenny began to walk off, his feet hammering on the ground, as he was seconds away from a breakdown. It was the first time he had spoken about the fast-approaching death of his little girl; before that, they were all only just thoughts. “I was there for my wife!” Kenny yelled, while the front desk man, five seconds away, began to jog over as he spotted the shattered painting and the hole in the wall of the freshly remodeled floor. “If I had missed that moment with my wife, I would have never forgiven myself. I’m not damning Mark into a life of regret.”

  “Hey!” the man from the front desk yelled, both hands pressed hard against his temples, fingers deep in his hair. “You need to pay for all this. The new painting and the hole in wall.”

  Kenny passed the man without a glance. “I will pay for it,” he told the man, quietly, his words not going past the distance between their ears. “Go back to your front desk with me, I will write out a check for the labor cost, a new painting, and the supplies to fix it. Tell your boss that Mr. Kenny is sorry—if he has a problem, he will speak with me.” When Kenny began to move again, through the windy hallway, toward the front desk, Aaron’s voice echoed through the halls one last time.

  “You know very well that if he watched his wife die, they’d share the same funeral.” He then ran through the new door, the new exit, toward the parking garage.

  The following day, Kenny had the Saturday off to visit Mary. He walked in to find Mark completely exposed, without the gown, gloves, and mask, crying at her bedside. He wasn’t afraid of the sickness, its contagious origins. Mark remembered Kenny standing there, watching him cry with a distraught look on his face. Kenny left the flowers he’d brought on Mary’s end table and left. She was looking worse, her stomach completely concave, as her torso seemed to only be made up of her ribs, popping out like a curved xylophone. The nurse told him that she just recently got pneumonia, as well as terrible bedsores from not moving for such a long time. ”You should start thinking about goodbyes,” the nurse told Kenny, her expression overly saddened as both her slightly brawny hands were on his shoulders, “although I believe there is nothing else we can do but wait and pray.” The rest of the day Kenny spoke with Aaron at the coffee shop named Tempus Garrapatas, the expensive joint where many college students studied but never purchased anything more than a black coffee. They left at around seven o’clock in the evening, both with utter grief in their faces.

  “It’s for the best,” Aaron stated. “He needs our assistance.”

  “Ask me for wisdom, but I will never contribute anything more than this. I don’t want to be involved with any more lying or scheming. Our actions are not honorable. They are cruel and sickening. But I feel that we do not have many choices,” Kenny stated firmly. Aaron was upset, originally planning to ask for Kenny’s assistance whenever he knew he lost contro
l, but he accepted his request and whispered his bitter, dry response.

  “So be it.”

  That night, Aaron ordered Chinese food and scarfed down over two thousand calories of lo mien, knowing what this emotional roller coaster would entail, knowing when Mary died, he would have to control him all on his own. That was the last day Mark remembered seeing Mary. She was weak and almost breathless. But still she was small, beautiful, and adorable. He adored her, loved her because of the soul she had, and squeezed her motionless hand until Kenny walked through Mary’s door.

  “Mark,” his harsh tone demanded, “I need to speak with you.”

  There were, of course, shinier diamonds in the world, but nothing was brighter than Mary, nothing was even close to the value she had to Mark. In fact, she was the only thing left her cared for. She was the last motivator that told him life was worth living. If she recovered without a voice, he could sit with her all day long and would give up all the noises in the world to make her gleeful. If she forgot who he was, just the knowledge of her joy would be enough. If she were to die, then friendly words, friendly voices, memories, and the world would have lost its purpose. Her cooking was magnificent; he could still feel the bits of spaghetti stuck in his teeth, smell the blueberry muffins she usually made every other Friday. He could her the way she hummed, always the same hum, when she cooked. The whisks of her paintbrush could still be heard as she painted, cassette tapes of classical music flowing through the hallways like the soft rays of a warm spring day, kissing his skin all over. He could hear the violins, violas, the snare drum, clarinets, and sometimes, if he listened hard enough, the bass vibrating in the background. Then her laughter: it was the caffeine to his heart; it made him smile and it caused him to blush. Her laughter was why he woke up so much earlier so he could make them coffee, why he kissed her forehead when he brought her the cup with room for cream and sugar. It was why he fought so hard for her. All he wanted in life was her laugh, their happiness as a collective body, their vows to live on until their bodies were old enough to accept Death knocking on their door. Mark remembered receiving his check from the police station. It was a Friday and was about to rain. He walked over to the fridge without glancing away from this paper, this valuable paper. Mark then stopped, grabbed a magnet off the fridge, and examined it. It was a bunny hugging a carrot. His cheeks were rosy red, with a smile that ran across his entire face. Then he placed the check level with his eyes—it was almost on the top, above them all, towering over Mary’s and his own. He was now in the lead. After a few weeks into Mary’s illness, at the end of her life, he was now seventeen dollars ahead.