by Noelle Adams
Emily stared at him through bleary eyes.
“The first act begins outside of Elsinore Castle in Denmark,” Paul began. “Bernardo comes to relieve Francisco, who’s on guard outside the castle. It's dark. Bernardo says, ‘Who’s there?’”
FOURTEEN
Paul jerked awake with a painful throb in his lower back.
He’d fallen asleep in the chair beside Emily’s bed, and his eyes cut immediately over to where she lay. She was pale, damp, and tossing restlessly, and Amy was bending over the bed and trying to wipe her face with a cool cloth.
Emily had been too sick for the last three days to fly back to Philadelphia, so they were still in the hotel suite in Hawaii. She’d had a fever now for over seventy-two hours, and Paul couldn’t quell a heavy weight in his gut that seemed to signal they were nearing the end.
Her fever wasn’t getting better this time because it wasn’t going to get better. Ever.
He had to force down the insistent toll of warning in his mind. If he thought about it, he wouldn’t be able to function at all.
And Emily needed him.
“She’s not any better?” he asked, his voice cracking with fatigue and emotion.
Amy shook her head. “She still seems to be getting worse.” The woman sounded strained, which was disturbing in someone as no-nonsense as the nurse. “I’m going to draw her another bath.”
Paul forced himself to his feet, although his sore back and his neck both resisted the motion. He took Amy’s place wiping Emily’s hot face as the nurse went into the bathroom to turn on the water in the tub.
Emily squirmed in evident agony, throwing off the sheet that had been covering her. She was dead white, and perspiration streamed off her skin. “Paul,” she gasped, arching up as her eyes flew open.
“I’m here, baby,” Paul murmured. He tried to sound comforting, but his voice cracked again. He felt groggy and heavy and like he couldn’t think clearly. He hadn’t slept more than a half-hour at a time in three days, not willing to leave his wife for so long.
She didn’t appear to hear him. Her eyes stared blindly up at the ceiling. “Paul, don’t! Please, no!”
Paul couldn’t tell what she was seeing, what she was imagining in her delirium, but it must have been a nightmare scenario. He only hoped he wasn’t the one hurting her in her fevered dreams.
She kept mumbling and occasionally crying for him to stop. To stop doing something.
“It’s okay, baby,” he murmured, reaching toward her with the washcloth again. “It’s okay.”
It wasn’t okay, but there wasn’t anything else he could say.
She jerked away from his touch, her blue eyes still wide and wild. Before he could pull back his hand, her arm flung up toward him, her fingers tightened in a fist.
It connected hard with his cheekbone, just under his right eye. He grunted at the sudden impact and pain.
“Are you all right?” Amy asked, emerging from the bathroom and hurrying back over to the bed.
Paul blinked dazedly through a shock of pain. His eye watered reflexively. “I’m fine. She’s delirious again.”
Emily was writhing frantically now, her legs and arms flailing with aimless motion, and she kept crying for Paul to stop.
Amy had pulled out the thermometer and was trying to hold it against Emily’s forehead, but her head was tossing too wildly against the pillow. “Can you try to hold her still?”
Paul reached back down to the bed, his face still throbbing from where Emily had punched him, and he grabbed her shoulders tightly enough for Amy to take her temperature.
When Amy pulled back the thermometer, her face changed. “Oh God,” she muttered, staring down at the digital numbers of the tiny display.
Paul swallowed hard, a wave of cold panic overwhelming him. Amy had never been anything except calm and professional, but she looked scared now at how high Emily’s temperature had spiked. Paul couldn’t bring himself to ask how high it was.
“We need to get her into the bath,” Amy said, putting down the thermometer and looking calm again.
Together, they managed to take off Emily’s clothes, and then Paul fought through her struggling until he was able to gather her up in his arms. She landed one more punch—this time to the side of his jaw, but he barely felt the pain.
The pain in his chest was much, much worse.
“Paul, no! No, no!” Emily screamed hoarsely, her voice loud and piercing in his ear as he carried her.
He managed to lower her into the tub without hurting her, although she was writhing and flailing so frantically that the bathroom floor was soon covered with water. The cool water seemed to soothe her a little, and her screaming soon subdued to mumbled pleas.
Paul knelt down beside the tub, his trousers and t-shirt soaked through with water. Every part of his body ached, but none as painfully as his chest. He took a clean washcloth, dampened it with cold water and wiped at Emily’s face as she squirmed and choked out incoherent words.
Emily tossed her head a few times, and then her wide eyes landed on Paul. For just a moment, she appeared to see him. “Paul, help!”
Paul closed his eyes briefly, swallowing hard over the tightness in his throat that just wouldn’t go away. “I’m trying. I promise I’m trying.”
Amy took Emily’s temperature again. After checking it, she left the bathroom without explanation.
Paul was too distracted to even wonder what the nurse was doing.
“Please help!” Emily gasped again, arching up in the tub. “Paul, please!”
He wiped at her face with the cool cloth. “I don’t know what else to do, baby,” he choked, his throat almost too tight to even speak.
For a moment, he was swallowed up by the helplessness. His wife was dying. She was dying in front of his eyes, and there was nothing in the world he could do to stop it.
Amy returned to the bathroom then with a bucket of ice in her hands. Paul watched blankly as the woman dumped it into the tub.
Evidently reading his look correctly, Amy explained, “We need to bring her fever down.”
“I thought ice baths weren’t good for fevers.”
“In general, they aren’t, but her fever can’t stay this high for long or it might…damage her brain. We need to bring it down quickly.”
Paul froze.
Amy’s expression was still composed, but there was a brief flash of pity in her eyes. “Keep cooling her down. I’ll get more ice.”
Paul fought through the bleak despair until he could move again. He swished the ice around in the bathwater and then cooled down the washcloth again with the freezing water.
The drop in temperature seemed to have an effect. Emily stopped writhing and let out a long sigh. “Paul,” she breathed.
With a painful gulp, Paul kept cooling her down. When Amy came in with more ice, he said, “It seems to be helping.”
Amy checked Emily's temperature again and looked relieved at the result. They kept her in the bath until she started to shiver, and then Paul gathered her small, wet body up into his arms again. She seemed to weigh nothing at all, which was terrifying and heartbreaking. It felt like she was slipping out of his grip for good.
When they dried her off and got her into bed, she drifted off into an exhausted sleep. Paul’s chest could finally unclench, at least for the moment.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” Amy suggested. “You’ve been awake for days.”
Paul shook his head. “I’m not going to leave her, but you need to rest too. I can sit with her while you get some sleep.”
Amy started to object, but Paul insisted, “I mean it. I’m not expecting you to work around the clock.” He should have hired another nurse to relieve Amy, but he wasn’t willing to risk his precious wife with a stranger. Not at this point. A doctor stopped by twice a day, and they kept in regular contact with Dr. Franklin. He’d had another treatment he wanted to try, so the local doctor administered that yesterday and then again this morning.
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br /> The new treatment obviously wasn’t working any better than the other ones had.
“All right,” Amy relented. “If you’ll take a shower, change clothes, and get something to eat first, I’ll rest for a couple of hours.”
It was a reasonable compromise, and Paul agreed. It was ridiculously hard for him to even leave the room, though. He showered quickly, put on clean clothes, and then swallowed down a sandwich and soup that room service had brought up. He barely tasted it, but he finished it quickly so he could get back to Emily.
When he returned to the bedroom, he saw that she was still sleeping peacefully. Her fever hadn’t broken, but at least it had lowered enough for her to sleep. Amy went to her room to rest, saying she wouldn’t be more than a couple of hours, and he should wake her if anything changed.
Paul sank into the chair where he’d spent most of the last three days.
“Paul,” Emily gasped, her eyes opening without warning after several minutes of silence.
“I’m here,” he said, leaning over to cool down her face. Her hair was still wet from the bath, and it clung to her hot skin.
Emily turned to look at him, and it was clear she knew who he was now. She smiled at him weakly. “Hi.”
He smiled back, almost choking on a surge of emotion. “Hi.”
“You should get some sleep.” She shifted beneath the covers and pulled her arms out from beneath the sheets to rest them on top instead.
“I’m fine,” Paul lied. “This chair is comfortable.”
Emily snorted, but her expression changed when she looked at his face again. “What happened to you?”
Paul frowned, confused and worried by her flare of anxiety. “What do you mean?”
“You…you’re…beat up.”
He remembered that she’d punched him twice earlier. He’d barely noticed, but his face must be starting to bruise from the blows. He gave a nonchalant shrug. “It’s nothing.”
“I did that,” she said, licking her dry lips.
Paul reached for the bottle of water beside the bedside and helped her take a few sips. When her eyes still studied him anxiously, he quirked his mouth. “I’m sure I deserved it. Don’t worry about it, baby.”
She fumbled for his hand until he offered it to her. She brought it up to her lips and kissed the palm.
The fond little gesture was almost too much for Paul. He looked away and breathed shakily.
She gave him a moment to recover, but, when he looked back at her again, she asked, “Do you feel up to reading more Hamlet? We just have the last act to go.”
“Of course,” Paul agreed immediately, standing up to get the book from the top of the desk in the room. He'd been reading to her from it in her lucid moments for the last three days.
He didn’t actually feel up to reading. His mind was so blurred with fatigue and emotional strain that he could barely focus on the words, and his voice rasped painfully as he spoke.
He would deny Emily nothing that was in his power to give her, however, and this was one of the few things he could.
So he began to read Act Five out loud, and he continued to read, even when Emily started to shift restlessly in the bed with discomfort. He paused a few times to cool her down a little and give her more medication, but otherwise he read straight through.
He tried not to think much about what he was reading, particularly when characters started to die. The reflections on death at the end were almost too much, and he could barely get through Hamlet’s dying speech.
Tears were streaming down Emily’s face when he finished the final lines of the play, with Fortinbras's instructions for Hamlet's body to be carried away in honor.
He had to look away again for a moment, but then he managed to ask, somewhat casually, “So what did you think?”
She was pale and incredibly weak, and obviously in a lot of pain, but she smiled at him through her tears. “I loved it. It was the right one to…to end with.” Her face twisted with another surge of grief.
Paul couldn’t stand. He just couldn’t stand it. Every instinct in his body was screaming at him to escape. It hurt too much. He couldn’t remember anything hurting more.
He couldn’t leave her, but he couldn’t answer. So he distracted himself by checking her temperature and wiping her face again. Her fever was still high—almost 103⁰—but not nearly as high as it had been earlier.
Emily didn’t say anything. She just gazed up at his face with an expression that looked like understanding.
When he was able to speak, he said, “Don’t talk that way. This isn’t the end.”
But it was the end. He knew it. She knew it.
It just was.
Emily smiled at him but didn’t argue or respond.
She moved around in the bed, evidently trying to find a cooler spot. “What a work is man…what was it?”
Paul knew exactly what the garbled question meant. “‘What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable!’”
She nodded as he quoted the lines from Hamlet. “How old was he when he wrote this play?”
“I don’t know. Mid-thirties or something, I’d guess.”
“Imagine doing so much before you were forty. Writing something so true and beautiful and…and good. Something that lasted so long. All I’ve done is my list.”
“You’ve done a lot more than that, baby.”
Tears streamed out of her eyes as she nodded in acknowledgement.
On the verge of total collapse, Paul focused enough to pull the list out of the nightstand drawer and unfold it. Only one item remained. He knew what she would need without her having to ask, so he found a pen.
She was too weak to hold the pen, so he positioned it in her hand and guided it as together they crossed through the last item on the list.
They both stared down at the worn paper—fourteen items, now all crossed off.
The fulfillment of twelve-year-old Emily’s dreams for her life.
The pen dropped out of her hand, and she closed her eyes with a smile. “I love you, Paul. Thank you so much for helping me do all this.”
“You’re welcome, baby. I love you too.”
After a brief pause, she added, “I can’t believe you had those lines memorized. You really are kind of a geek, you know.”
The amusement surprised him into a choked laugh. “Just don’t tell anyone else.”
She didn’t reply. Paul stared down at her, and the amusement disappeared in an instant. Something dark and heavy and awful started to rise up in his chest.
Her body had relaxed. Her eyes remained closed. Her skin and lips were as pale as the white sheets beneath her. She looked satisfied, at peace.
Finished.
“Emily,” he rasped, pushing the pen and list out of the way and grabbing her hand. “Emily, don’t you dare give up!” His voice was rough, insistent, absolutely desperate.
She didn’t respond. Didn’t react. She let out another long breath, and her body seemed to grow limper. It was as if she were letting go—of everything.
Panic swallowed him up, and he fell on his knees beside the bed, clinging to her hand. “Emily, baby, please don’t leave me. I mean it.”
She didn’t even seem to hear him. Maybe she had just fallen asleep in absolute exhaustion, but something had changed about her body, about her face. Paul was terrified she wouldn’t wake up again.
He fumbled for her pulse, and it took a minute before he could feel that her heart was still beating faintly.
“Emily, please.”
She didn’t respond in any way. And he knew—he knew—she was leaving him.
The room, the whole suite, was silent and empty around him. The future—alone, without Emily—rose up before him like a dark, gaping maw. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t stand the thought of all those endless days of living without her. He gripped her pale, little hand with both of his and clung to it desperately
. He might have been hurting her, but he couldn’t seem to let it go.
She didn’t react. She didn’t open her eyes.
She’d always been tough, unrelenting. Years ago, she’d lectured him for cutting in line in her dad’s store. Several months ago, she’d agreed to testify against a powerful mob boss, when no one else was brave enough to do so. She’d fought every battle in her short life without flinching.
There were some fights you just couldn’t win.
He buckled under the weight of his grief and buried his face in the bedsheet beside her. His shoulders shook helplessly for a minute, and he strangled on emotion he just couldn’t force down.
His face was damp when he finally raised it, and he stared down at Emily in a blurry, throbbing haze.
She was dying.
With a rough sound in his throat, he heaved himself up and got into the bed beside her. He wanted to pull her into his arms, but he didn’t dare let his body heat raise her temperature.
So he lay beside her, clinging only to her hand. Her left hand, on which she still wore his rings.
Only a few months ago, she'd approached him with a ludicrous proposal, and he’d accepted it because he had pitied her, having no idea that he would love her, that he’d be remade and then broken by it.
He lay beside her and closed his eyes, listening to her faint breathing as it became slower and slower.
Hamlet had believed that a divinity shaped the ends of human lives. His mother had believed it too. It had been over ten years since Paul had believed in any such thing, but he prayed now anyway—instinctively, in final desperation, to whatever or whoever had any sort of power in this bitterly unknowable universe.
He needed Emily to live, and he had no power to make her live.
She was leaving him breath by breath.
* * *
Paul woke up with a jerk, his aching body jarred painfully.
He must have fallen into an exhausted sleep on the bed beside Emily. He had no idea how long it had been. He had no idea what day it was, what time it was, what room this was.