Her Loving Husband's Curse

by Meredith Allard

  “Sarah?” he whispered.

  She didn’t respond. He pulled a chair to the side of her bed and sat beside her. He tucked the blanket closer around her in case she was cold, she was always cold, Sarah, then he brushed a few matted curls from her cheek. He took her hand and watched her sleep. The doctor backed away, leaving them this time alone. James wished he couldn’t hear what was happening outside. The doctor was talking to the nurse who had first found James asleep.

  “I'm calling the authorities.” She sounded defiant, ready to stand up to the doctor, the administration, and anyone else who would tell her she was wrong.

  “I examined him in my office,” the doctor said. “There's nothing wrong with him.”

  “Then bring him here. Let me listen to his heartbeat.”

  James heard the uneasy pause. “No need for that,” the doctor said.

  “We're not safe,” another woman's voice said. “How can you let him stay here? What if he attacks someone?”

  The doctor laughed. “Did she tell you about her crazy ideas? Really, Maria, I thought you had more sense than that.”

  “But they're real,” Maria said. “It's been proven. And that man,” James could feel her pointing through the wall, “is one of them.”

  “Does he look like he's going to hurt anyone? He has a daughter. He's worried about his wife. Leave him be.”

  The nurse grumbled as she walked away. James knew from the bass in her voice and the thunder in her step that she wasn’t through. She would report him, and report him again, until someone took her seriously. She would tell anyone and everyone. James knew the self-righteous smile without turning around to see it, the leering glance, the turn of the head that said, “I know you’re there and I refuse to see you.”

  The end was coming. Life as he knew it, with his wife, with his daughter, would no longer exist. He knew that as well as he knew he was sitting in a hospital room looking at his injured wife. If he hadn’t been turned he never would have attracted Hempel’s attention. If he had never attracted Hempel’s attention, his name would have never been on that list in the cabinet in the dead man’s closet. The hysteria about the Vampire Dawn sweeping the world would be an interesting aside for him, entertaining reports on the news, a reason to watch a You Tube video or two, a reason to say, “That’s too bad” or “How could they do that?” and go on with his day because he would be awake with everyone else. But now Sarah was suffering because of what he was. If he could have found a wooden stake he would have run it through his own heart. At least he couldn’t hurt Sarah any more.

  Sarah sighed. “Sarah?” he said. But she didn’t respond. He stroked her arm, stared at her face, looked for the smallest trace that she was in any pain or needed immediate medical attention.

  James shook his head, blocking out the whispers coming from outside the room. When a blue-scrubbed nurse opened the door to check Sarah’s monitors, they stopped speaking. They didn’t need to bother, he thought. He could hear them through the wall.

  “Is everything all right?” James asked.

  The nurse nodded. She checked the numbers on the monitors, checked the IV bags hanging from the rack, checked the connection to Sarah’s arm. She didn’t seem nervous with James in the room. She didn’t hesitate or back away, but he knew there were others who were afraid.

  The cell phone in his pocket vibrated and he looked at the number. It was Olivia.

  “James, oh thank God. Where are you?”

  “I’m at the hospital. Sarah is…she’s been…”

  “I knew something was wrong. I felt it around midnight last night.”

  “Yes,” James said. “That’s when the accident happened.”

  “Oh, James.” Olivia stammered her words. “How badly is she hurt?”

  James explained the accident that was even then a high-speed blur in his memory. “It all happened so fast, Olivia. I should have been able to react quickly enough.”

  “Don’t you dare blame yourself, James. You saved Sarah’s life.”

  “I didn’t help her at all. I’ve been promising her I would protect her, I would never let anything bad happen to her again, and she nearly died because of me.”

  “She most certainly would have died if you hadn’t had control of the car as well as you did. You need to stop thinking that way, James, right now. You need to stay strong for Sarah.”

  “How is Grace?” he asked.

  “She’s fine. Francine said she’s sad, she keeps looking for you, but she’s all right. Theresa called me when you two didn’t come home last night. Where were you during the day?”

  James sighed. “I’ll explain later,” he said.

  “I’m coming to Maine right away. I’ve closed up the shop, I’m packing my bags, and I’m coming.” She paused, and James heard the sorrow cracking her motherly voice, as though her own children were suffering. “Are you all right, James?”

  “I’m hanging in there.”

  “All right, dear. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  James sat back against the chair and closed his eyes. He felt a wound of seeping sorrow, imagining his daughter going to sleep every night for the rest of her life without him. He would never tuck her in again, tell her a bedtime story, and, in later years, never help her with her homework. Never give her boy advice. Never walk her down the aisle or hold his grandchildren in his arms. He saw it all slipping away. All those lonely years he knew before he found his wife again were like a lingering dream compared to the shock of the reality he now faced.

  When the pain became too much and he had to take his mind off everything or else begin to gnaw his own arm off, he turned on the television hanging high on the wall.

  We’ve got a great show for you tonight. To begin, I have some late-breaking news to report. Congress has decided, being the learned, compassionate group they have proven themselves to be time and time again, to round up vampires for no other reason than (whispers) because they can. Here is Congressman John Heckle-Green talking to reporters on the Capitol steps explaining why, by the slimmest of margins, our august leaders decided to bury the undead alive.

  (Cut to a dapper middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair, a well-fitted gray Armani suit, and a fixed smile. The dapper middle-aged man says, “These undead creatures take the form of wolves and bats, and they leave their coffins at night and they feed on the blood of the living.”)

  So they take the form of wolves and bats and feed on the blood of the living? Ooh, scary. You know where he got that from? The 1931 movie Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. That’s right. The Congress of the United States of America has made the decision to imprison people, who happen not to breathe, based on the dialogue in an eighty-one year-old movie. And you know what? The dialogue isn’t even very good. They had a habit of stating the obvious back then. Here’s another example of dialogue from the movie:

  (Mimicking Lugosi’s vampire voice): This is very old wine. I hope you will like it.

  (Mimicking a weak man’s voice): Aren’t you drinking?

  (Lugosi’s voice again): I never drink wine.

  Wait, here’s more: My, what a big bat!

  And (in an angry Lugosi voice): You know too much to live. (Snaps his fingers) Van Helsing!

  I think the learned men and women of Congress should memorize every line in the movie, and then every time they’re questioned about how they can justify imprisoning those who haven’t been convicted of any crime, they can repeat those quotes and look like the assholes they really are.

  Now it turns out a number of vampires willingly added their names to the government’s watch list in an attempt to show how they’ve assimilated into society and aren’t to be feared. Now the government is using that list as the basis for their decision to round up the vampires. Here’s Senator Ben Jove:

  (Cut to another dapper middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair, a well-fitted gray Armani suit, and a fixed smile who looks remarkably like the first dapper middle-aged man. This one might be rounder. T
his dapper middle-aged man says, “At this time, there are over ten thousand names on the watch list, but we estimate that there are hundreds, if not thousands more who haven’t come forward. Why haven’t they come forward? What do they have to hide? We can only assume that those still slinking away in the night are not sympathetic to our concerns, which makes us afraid for the safety of the American people who are unwillingly living next door to an undead. We must act swiftly and decisively to keep the American people safe.”)

  Congress used the fact that there are still unknown numbers of vampires out there as the basis for their decision to round up the vampires and imprison then. Now, with the decision to round up the vampires, there’s another debate raging about where to keep them. For more on this part of the story we go to Frank N. Stein. (Audience laughs. The host turns to the monitor, showing a dark haired reporter wearing the top of a Frankenstein mask.) Frank, what can you tell us about plans to imprison the vampires?

  The exciting news about the upcoming internment is that, after the vampires are forcibly rounded up, expelled from their homes, their families, their lives as they’ve known them, and forced to live imprisoned in squalor and deprivation, at least the vampires will be surrounded by like-minded individuals such as other vampires, of course, as well as other bloodsuckers like politicians, Wall Street profiteers, and community organizers. Sources close to the White House say, contrary to popular belief, there are currently no plans to waterboard the vampires with blood since the general consensus is that the vampires would actually enjoy that, thereby cancelling the negative effect the waterboarding is meant to produce.

  So where are they planning on holding the vampires?

  Right now, Guantanamo Bay is the best choice for obvious reasons. Hey, who doesn’t want a beachfront flat rent free? It looks like it’ll be either Guantanamo Bay or somewhere near the Sierra Nevada in California’s Owens Valley.

  Didn’t they intern Japanese-Americans in Owens Valley in the Manzanar camp during World War II?

  That’s correct. In seventy-one years, the United States government hasn’t learned a f(beep)g thing.

  And what about the fear of copy cat crimes? You know, that humans will begin pretending they’re vampires and commit acts of violence?

  We need to practice prevention. Watch your children. If they begin running around with a black tablecloth tied around their necks as though it were a cape, or if you catch them in front of a mirror with an emery board sharpening their eyeteeth, you must intervene immediately.

  Should I be concerned if my son likes to play Dracula? Surely that’s an innocent pretend game. All children like to play pretend sometimes.

  Only if he has real blood dripping from the sides of his mouth and you can’t tell where it came from. And the family cat is missing.

  We’ll be back after this.

  Chapter 21

  Finally, Sarah opened her eyes. James pulled the chair as close to her as he could. He kissed her hand, watched her monitor, brushed her sweaty, matted dark curls from her face. Finally, her eyes focused and she saw him and she smiled, that sweet, beautiful smile he lived for. When he leaned over to kiss her he struggled to hold back the emotion so the thick red tears wouldn’t streak his face. Sarah touched her hand to his cheek.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Everything hurts,” she said. “Where’s Grace?”

  “She’s fine. Theresa and Francine still have her. Olivia is coming. She’ll be here soon.”

  Sarah closed her eyes. James said nothing, pushing every other thought from his mind except the one that told him she needed to be well again. She needed to be strong again. When she opened her eyes she looked through the glass wall and saw the nurses watching them, their faces curious, their eyes judgmental. James couldn’t bear to see the anguish in Sarah’s face, still swollen and bruised from the crash but every bit as beautiful as she ever was. He closed the blinds to keep the prying eyes away. When he turned back Sarah was crying.

  “They know,” she said. James lowered the bar on the side of her bed and he sat next to her and took her into his arms, gently, not wishing to hurt her. He pressed her head to his chest, his hand on her shoulder, holding her close, his lips in her hair.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He wanted to protect her, to save her from the anguish, but he didn’t want to lie to her. He had promised, and she needed to know. He told her what happened, how he fell asleep in the lightless room, how the nurse found him and thought he had died, how frightened she was when she saw him sit up in bed after the doctor said he had no pulse. She had called the morgue to come pick up the body of the dead man, and then the dead man opened his eyes and asked about his wife. He told Sarah about the doctor, who was doing all he could to protect them.

  Sarah was startled when the door opened.

  “It’s just me,” Doctor Masters said.

  “This is Doctor Masters,” James said.

  “How are you doing?” the doctor asked. He listened to Sarah’s heart, looked into her eyes, checked her stitches. He wrote some notes into her records. “You’re doing well, Sarah. Much better than expected. You’re a strong lady.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” James said.

  The doctor stopped writing when he saw Sarah sobbing.

  “She knows,” James said.

  “Don’t worry, Sarah,” Doctor Masters said.

  James looked at his wife with the most reassuring smile he could manage. The sleep medication the doctor slipped into her IV worked quickly and she fell asleep.

  When Sarah opened her eyes James wasn’t there. She looked out the window, saw the nighttime darkness, and knew something was wrong. James should be there, and the fact that he wasn’t frightened her. The blinds of the glass wall that looked out into the ICU had been opened, and she saw Doctor Masters talking to two police officers. Sarah’s heart raced in fear. Were they looking for James?

  She saw the doctor shake his head, look at her, and she saw the urgency in his face though she couldn’t make out his words through the glass. The officers walked toward her, watching her as if they expected her to run, as if she could escape in her condition. The officers were stern, humorless. They scanned the room as if they were looking for some crime to charge her with.

  “Where’s your husband?” the younger officer said.

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said.

  “Some of the nurses said they saw him here as soon as the sun went down. Where might he be?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said. She knew they might find him, take him away, maybe even forever, but she wouldn’t help them. They kept looking around, as though James might magically appear. But when Sarah said nothing more, looking at Doctor Masters for help, the doctor opened the door.

  “She’s still in Intensive Care,” he said. “No more today.”

  “Let us know when she’s able to talk,” the older officer said. The doctor watched them walk away, then closed the door behind them.

  “James is fine,” he said. “He’s at Theresa’s house. Your friend Olivia took him there.”

  “He knew the police were coming?” Sarah asked.

  “He overhead some nurses talking.”

  Sarah nodded, relieved at least to know he was safe. “Why were they here?” she asked. “Are they arresting him?”

  “They said they weren’t going to arrest him. They said they just wanted to ask a few questions.”

  “What questions?”

  The doctor shook his head. “They wouldn’t say.”

  Doctor Masters looked at the clock on the wall. He took the remote control from the nightstand and turned on the television. “I think you should see this,” he said.

  In other news, the armed forces, in cooperation with local law enforcement agencies, are out tonight identifying those individuals on the undead watch list. According to sources at the Pentagon, no one is being arrested or deported to another location at this time.

  “We’re simpl
y verifying their places of residence,” said a well-lined army general in full dress.

  “Are there plans to remove them another time?” a reporter shouted.

  “Are you verifying that the people are dead once you discover them?” shouted another. “Are you taking pulses and listening to heartbeats, or are you just taking people’s words for it?”

  “There have been reports of false accusations where some are listing the names of living people,” said another.

  The general grimaced, his mouth disappearing in a maze of wrinkles.

  “We’re in the process of verifying the living status of those we’re questioning. Those with pulses and heartbeats are immediately removed from the list.”

  We’re hearing now that the President will be coming into the White House Press Room at any moment for an unscheduled conference. We have cameras standing by. I understand the President’s walking in now. Let’s listen to the President:

  My fellow Americans, we have been faced with an unusual challenge, a unique circumstance in our history. With the confirmation of the existence of vampires, it’s not surprising that Americans are experiencing differing reactions. Some are for the vampires, and they’re out there in their fake fangs and their Dracula capes, reminding us that under our Constitution all American citizens are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Others are afraid. Vampires drink blood, they say. Vampires are only out at night when it’s not so easy to see who else is out there, they say. Today, after much intense debate and discussion with Senators Heckle-Green, Jove, and O’Bunnion, along with a joint committee representing both parties in Congress, we’ve decided it’s best to be safe in this particular instance so we’re going ahead with the removal of the undead to a desert facility. We need to know who these vampires are, what they’re doing, who they’re with, and, most importantly (laughs), where they’re finding that blood to drink. Just so you know, I’m not planning on sharing any of mine, especially not with some guy who sounds like Bela Lugosi (Reporters laugh). I know there are many who disagree with this decision, but I feel it’s the best for everyone. We need to keep America safe.