Dying to Remember Page 3

  Elizabeth could feel him struggling with the words.

  “She was walking Poco just a block from our house. The car either passed beside him or over him, but it killed her. It didn’t even stop.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “I moved here because I couldn’t stand to see that intersection anymore. Anyhow, to answer your question, the last poem I ever wrote was for her, and I’m not ready to write one for anyone else, myself included.”

  “That’s so sad . . . but is it fair to you?”

  His eyes looked glazed. “Life is unfair. Otherwise Abby would still be here.”

  After their third walk together, Marshall invited Elizabeth and Rex inside for coffee. He showed her a framed photograph of Abby, an enlargement on the living-room wall.

  “This is my favorite photograph of her,” he explained. “There was one shot left on the roll after we came back from a trip to Las Vegas, so I decided to finish it off with a picture of the two of them. She picked up the dog and . . . there you have it.”

  Abby was holding Poco cheek-to-cheek, and they were both beaming into the camera—Poco showing a little white-toothed grin from the sudden attention lavished on him, and Abby, a petite blonde, relishing the simple joy of being home with loved ones.

  “She’s lovely,” Elizabeth said, making an effort to use present tense.

  Later, after they’d finished most of their coffee, he recited the last poem he’d written for Abby. It began:

  Waxing whispers fill the wings of seabirds sailing south,

  Above the Drake, whose waters churn beneath a shroud of clouds.

  On ocean’s breath they glide across a gray expanse of mist

  And gently float awake, asleep, as long as it persists.

  He recited several more stanzas, and although the poem at first seemed to describe petrels soaring over the rough waters of the Drake Passage near Antarctica, Elizabeth soon realized that Marshall was comparing Abby to an updraft that lifted him above the turmoil of daily life threatening to engulf him.

  “That’s lovely,” she said. She and he were sitting on a couch, with Poco stretched out on a pillow between them.

  “It’s a cliché, but she really was the wind beneath my wings. We used to be a happy family, the three of us. We called him our little hairy baby.” Marshall rubbed Poco’s tummy. “Now it’s just the two of us. I think he understands what happened, and, in a way, I feel as though a part of Abby stayed with him. I like to believe she’s not far away.”

  A glazed look came over him, and in it Elizabeth could sense the magnitude of his loss. Abby had been his light, just as Chris had been hers.

  Yet Elizabeth hadn’t felt that way about Chris for some time now. She wasn’t sure when or why things had changed, but somehow that feeling had slipped away.

  Sitting with Marshall, she wondered whether it would ever come back.

  After their fourth walk together, Elizabeth and Marshall made love. He’d invited her in for coffee, and afterward, when she was about to leave, she’d kissed him good-bye in the foyer. It had seemed innocent. Just a good-bye kiss, or maybe a “you’ll be okay; hang in there” kiss. Not an “I want you” kiss. But it lingered, just a little, and then it was followed by an “I’m here for you” kiss. And her lips just didn’t want to leave his. She breathed in his scent, caressed his cheek—that sad, rugged, handsome face—and then she felt his hands on her, touching the small of her back, running his fingers through her hair. She pressed against him, and his heart pulsated against her chest. The bottom of her blouse slipped out of her jeans. His fingers glided down the curve of her back.

  Between kisses, she heard herself murmur his name, and then he was undressing her, and she was undressing him. They ended up in his bed, on top of the blankets, Marshall on top of her. Accepting him into her, she felt complete, for the first time in a long time. The sensation made her head swim, released her in a way she hadn’t imagined, and in that moment, she wanted him more than she had ever wanted anyone.

  They climaxed together. A few heartbeats in time, but with an intensity that took her breath away. She surrendered to the sensation—shudders, then ripples of pleasure that swept over her.

  Afterward he stayed inside her. She felt he belonged there, connected to her. He held her close, his heart beating against her breast, and she started to drift off in his arms. But then Poco began barking on the other side of the door.

  “I should be going,” Elizabeth said. Then she added, “That was a longer good-bye kiss than I had expected.”

  “I would say I’m sorry I kept you,” replied Marshall, “except it couldn’t be further from the truth.”

  She quickly got dressed and kissed him good-bye again. This time she didn’t linger.

  Crossing the street with Rex, she left behind what had just happened. Already it seemed like a long time ago, as if somehow time had sped up, or maybe all of this had never really happened. But part of her could still feel him touching her, could still feel him inside her. What must he be feeling?

  For him, she thought, it must have been an escape—an escape from the pain of his loss, however brief. And for her? For her it was a chance to share an intimate moment with a sensitive man not afraid to show vulnerability.

  But it couldn’t happen again, not if she hoped to keep her marriage. If it happened again, it would happen a third time, and a fourth, and it would keep on happening until she got caught. And she didn’t want to get caught. She didn’t want to lose Chris.

  Two days later she saw Marshall again, and they walked their dogs together. But afterward she didn’t go to his place, and she didn’t kiss him good-bye.

  “I can’t do it again,” she told him.

  “I understand.”

  She wasn’t sure he did. “I just . . .”

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  But it wasn’t okay.

  Two weeks later, Elizabeth’s period didn’t start when it should have. A week after that, still nothing, and she was feeling tired and nauseated.

  It’s probably just stress, she tried to convince herself. But to be sure, she took a pregnancy test.

  The result left her lightheaded.

  Either Chris or Marshall could be the father. Telling Chris would infuriate him. She had no idea how Marshall would react. Regardless, she needed to tell Chris first. That much she owed him.

  But how could she tell him? “Can I get you some tea, and, oh, by the way, I’m pregnant and the baby might not be yours”?

  The shame was overwhelming. She had broken her vows, had betrayed the man she loved, or at least used to love . . . no, still loved . . . yet part of her didn’t regret what she had done. What did that say about her? And what would Chris do when he found out?

  It doesn’t matter, she told herself. You must tell him.

  But she wasn’t sure she could.

  Chapter 5

  Elizabeth finished her peanut butter and jelly sandwich and tried to focus on a couple of books she had purchased in Toronto. The first was titled Pregnancy and Child Care; the second, Brain Pathology. She picked up the second and began to read.

  But her focus kept drifting. She thought about Chris, lying comatose in Toronto, and she wondered what he must be going through. He would probably never recover, and if he did, would he ever forgive her? She had told him about her pregnancy and her affair in that order. The first confession had left him furious; the second . . . worse—he’d regarded her with such a menacing expression that the hair had stood up on the back of her neck.

  Elizabeth had reread the same page of her book three times, absorbing almost nothing, when the doorbell chimed. Rex got up to escort her to the foyer. The house was equipped with a state-of-the-art security system, and Elizabeth had armed it when she’d first come home. That and Rex provided ample protection, but now the idea of an unexpected visitor made her uneasy. Who would come by unannounced at such an hour, and on Thanksgiving of all days? She hoped it wasn’t Marshall.

  Tur
ning on the outside light, she peered through the peephole of the front door. She wasn’t in the mood for company, especially someone lacking the courtesy to ring her on the telephone first.

  Resigning herself to the situation, she entered her alarm code into the keypad on the wall and unbolted the door. She took a deep breath and sighed. This was not her day. Why couldn’t it simply be over? Why couldn’t the whole year be over?

  She opened the heavy door and took a step back as cold air rushed in.

  It’s okay, she consoled herself. Barring more bad news about Chris, this evening really can’t get much worse.

  But in a moment, it would.

  Chapter 6

  Eleven days later Barnes opened his eyes to white ceiling tiles and a flood of light. With the light came sounds—beeping, clicking, hissing. He tried to turn his head to get a better look at the source of the noise, but his neck felt as rigid as a pipe. All he could see were heavy curtains and metal cabinets. Beneath him an air mattress massaged his back and legs, inflating and deflating asynchronously, constantly changing pressure. To prevent bedsores, he realized. This was the Cadillac of mattresses. Nothing but the best for him.

  Barnes managed to turn his head ever so slightly. The top of a heart monitor and respirator came into view. The trappings of an intensive care unit.

  He became aware of his physical condition, the little sticky patches on his chest—electrodes from the heart monitor—and the air tube protruding from a hole in his throat. A machine forcibly inflated his lungs in a constant rhythm, reminding him with every inspiration that he had lost control of his basic bodily functions.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, a heavyset nurse in scrubs stood over him. She disconnected the respirator from his tube and instead inserted a suctioning device to clear secretions out of his airway. Gagging, he reached for his throat, but his hands wouldn’t move from his sides. Thick strips of gauze bound his wrists to the metal rails of the bed, no doubt to prevent him from pulling out his tracheostomy tube or the IV in the back of his hand. At the moment, all he wanted was to be able to breathe again. Every fiber of his being struggled to do that, to regain control.

  “Oh, you’re awake!” she exclaimed, looking into his eyes like someone peering into a fishbowl. “You’re awake!” She withdrew the device and reconnected him to the respirator. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

  Barnes jerked weakly against the wrist restraints as the machine again forced air into his lungs. Where did she expect him to go, and what was she thinking to leave him still tied up? He wanted to order her to come back and take out the tube, to let him breathe on his own, but until someone plugged his tracheostomy, he wouldn’t be able to utter a word. He concentrated on turning his head. Left, right, left. A little farther each time. Then up and down. That’s when he noticed his facial hair. He could feel a beard when he rubbed his cheek against the side of his neck and shoulder. Maybe half an inch of growth. That meant nobody had shaved him for two weeks.

  A balding man with a stethoscope draped around his neck came to the bedside and leaned over. “Dr. Barnes,” he bellowed, “can you hear me?”

  Barnes nodded as best he could, wondering why someone would assume that being half-dead meant also being half-deaf.

  “Can you hold up two fingers with your right hand?”

  He couldn’t move his arm because of the restraint, but he held out two fingers.

  “Excellent. I’m Dr. Gallagher,” the physician enunciated. “In a little while, after we check your blood gases, I’m going to have this respirator unhooked and you’ll be able to talk. You’re going to be all right. You’re a very lucky man.”

  Barnes didn’t feel lucky. He had a tube shoved through a hole in his throat, another running into the back of his hand, and a third he’d just noticed sticking into his chest near his clavicle. The IV line from his chest ran across the bed and up a metal pole to a fluid-filled plastic bag he recognized as an intravenous nutritional solution for patients incapable of eating. Out of his penis ran another tube, a Foley catheter that drained into a bag attached just below the rail of the bed. The bag was outside his line of vision, but his urine in the tube looked normal—no redness from blood and no obvious cloudiness from infection.

  Where was Elizabeth during all this? She must have been there earlier, or maybe she was nearby but outside his line of vision. She could be standing on the other side of the curtains consulting with his doctors.

  Then Barnes thought about the chronic nature of his condition. He’d been unconscious for quite some time, and eventually Elizabeth would have had to go back to work. That’s probably where she was now, repairing someone’s hip or knee. But he needed her here. She would know how to manage this situation, make everything better. He closed his eyes and pictured her watching over him. If he could just ignore the ventilator and go back to sleep, she would most likely be there when he woke up.

  Dr. Gallagher decided to keep the respirator connected for another day. Barnes was still producing excessive secretions that could interfere with his breathing.

  “We’ll observe you overnight and take it out tomorrow morning,” the doctor told him.

  Barnes shook his head.

  “I know it’s uncomfortable, but it’s for your own safety.”

  Unable to talk, Barnes could do nothing but shake his head.

  The next day he improved, and a surgeon closed his tracheostomy while Dr. Gallagher wrote orders to transfer him from the medical intensive care unit to the internal medicine wing. Barnes also lost the cardiac monitor and the nutrition line in his chest, but not the IV in his hand. As an orderly wheeled him down the hallway, he felt relieved to be out of the intensive care unit. The ICU was like a fork in the road. One direction led to recovery. The other, death. He had just taken the road to recovery. Content in knowing that, he drifted off to sleep.

  Sometime later he awoke in a private room. A male nurse stood beside his bed, adjusting an intravenous line.

  “What are you doing?” Barnes’s throat burned when he spoke, but his concern regarding the nurse’s actions overrode any discomfort.

  “Just making sure this is working properly.” The nurse was tall and prim looking, with sharp features and thin hair. He stepped back to assess the IV line. “That looks about right.”

  A boat, Barnes thought, noting the Canadian accent.

  The nurse addressed the IV bag. “You’re going to be fine.”

  Barnes didn’t recognize his surroundings but knew this must be a hospital or similar health-care facility. “Where’s Elizabeth?”

  “Elizabeth?”

  “My wife. What are you doing?”

  The nurse was adjusting the IV again. “Just making sure the flow rate is all right.”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Saline.”

  Looking at the slow drip and the lack of special labels, Barnes knew it was harmless. He turned his attention to the room, trying to orient himself. “What time is it?” Someone had taken his Rolex.

  “Eleven thirty in the morning.” The nurse smiled pleasantly.

  “What day is it?”

  “Wednesday. December 9, 1987.”

  “December. I don’t believe this. How’d it get to be December?”

  “I don’t know, but it happens every year.”

  Barnes tried to remember what had caused him to end up in the hospital. An accident? He thought back and remembered a naked woman. Maybe that had been a dream. Certainly he wouldn’t have cheated on Elizabeth. But the image seemed too vivid for something imagined: a naked woman in a bathroom doorway.

  Cheryl!

  He turned back to the nurse. “Did a blonde woman bring me to the hospital?”

  The nurse wrote something in the chart at the foot of the bed and replied without looking up. “I wouldn’t know that. You’ve been in the ICU. You should have asked there.”

  “When are visiting hours?”

  “All day until ei
ght this evening.”

  “Where are my cigarettes?” The nicotine might help him think.

  The nurse frowned at him. “There’s no smoking here. Besides, you’re a doctor. Physicians shouldn’t smoke. It sets a bad example.”

  “I’m not here to set an example.” Barnes didn’t hide his irritation. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a patient.”

  “Yes, and a difficult one.”

  Barnes raised himself on his elbows. He wanted to sit up but didn’t have the strength. The nurse seemed not to notice, just scribbled in the chart.

  Barnes lay back. “What time is it?”

  The nurse glanced sideways at him. “I just told you. Eleven thirty.”

  “If you just told me, I think I would have remembered.”

  The nurse sighed. “I don’t wish to argue with you, Dr. Barnes. The time is eleven thirty. Eleven thirty-four to be exact.”

  “Fine.” Barnes sighed, too. “What day is it?”

  Chapter 7

  The nurse informed Dr. Gallagher of Barnes’s short-term memory impairment, and after a brief conversation with Barnes to confirm the problem, Dr. Gallagher consulted Dr. Vincent, a neuropsychiatrist.

  Sitting up in bed with the covers over his legs, Barnes was watching Wheel of Fortune on television when Dr. Vincent entered the room.

  Barnes turned from the television to size up his visitor, a portly clinician with horn-rimmed glasses, a striped polyester tie, and a white coat. The man’s face appeared pasty and bloated, and his pointed nose looked out of place with the rest of his features, as though reshaped by cosmetic surgery.

  The physician ran a hand through his dark hair, combed over the top from the side to cover a bald spot the size of a coaster. “I’m Dr. Vincent. I’m a psychiatrist with specialized training in neurology.”