Once More With Feeling Read online

  I slipped from the airless waiting room, and made my way to the ladies room down the long, battered-white corridor. Inside, the industrial avocado-coloured walls beaming in the too-bright fluorescent lights made my head hurt, but I splashed water on my cheeks and tried to ignore the alarming contrast between the pallor of my skin, the hectic colour in my eyes, and what looked like full-on bruises beneath.

  I just want my life back.

  Somehow, that was the one thing I never dared say. I was afraid of the pitying looks, the patronizing comments, maybe. I was afraid that admitting that was wrong somehow, that I should be all about my anger over what had been done to me and less about what I’d lost. I had been so afraid that if I said it to Tim, he would shake his head like he’d done the night I’d thrown him out, and say something like he’d said then, staring up at me from the driveway below, his clothes and shoes strewn around him like a halo.

  I wish there was a way to do this without hurting you, Sarah, he’d said, sounding very nearly apologetic, which wasn’t, it had taken me long weeks to realize, the same thing as actually apologetic. But there isn’t.

  I wished, as I had then, and as fervently, that my pain – my loss – wasn’t viewed as an acceptable risk to him. To Carolyn. That my feelings mattered so little, that their relationships with me were so meaningless, that they’d wanted each other more than they’d wanted to spare me this – I still couldn’t think about any of that without getting a little dizzy.

  I thought of Tim’s still, sad body in that bed. I thought of the machines wheezing and beeping around him, of the IV punched through the pale skin of his hand. I felt that lump in my throat again, and that ache inside me that was far too complicated, far too messy, simply to be my feelings about what had happened to him tonight.

  I want my life back.

  Back out in the hallway, I kept my head down and stared at my shoes as I walked back towards the waiting room. One step, then another. My body still functioned, and part of me remained distantly amazed by that. No matter how much I hurt, no matter how unbearable life felt, I still kept on. I didn’t fade off into the ether, or wither away on my couch. I was able to walk down this hallway, breathe, carry on. Maybe there was a kind of strength in this mindless survival. Perhaps the only thing to do in times like this was to concentrate on the small, necessary tasks. Like walking, for example. Or shoving my cold hands in the pockets of jeans I really should have washed weeks ago, so limp and baggy were they.

  But when I glanced up to gauge my progress, Carolyn was coming towards me, her few minutes in Tim’s room evidently over.

  Be gracious, I cautioned myself, even as my stomach clenched and my shoulders tightened with another hard kick of that ever-present tension. Even as that other part of me protested, not wanting to be anything but exactly as mean and careless as Carolyn already had been. Was, in fact, still being. Be the bigger person here.

  Carolyn drew closer, and there was no question that she was wildly, chaotically upset. Devastated, even. I could see the sheen of tears in her eyes, the moisture beneath, the way her mouth trembled. I could see and hear how her breath came too quickly, and I knew her well enough to know that this was her version of a complete and total panic attack. A breakdown.

  On some level, I had to admit that I was surprised Carolyn cared this much about anything that wasn’t Carolyn. That had certainly never happened before, and it made a kind of alarm go off deep within me. More than that, I wondered why she was putting on such a show – theatrical as always, even in a terrible situation like this where a little decorum would go a long way. That was certainly the thought guiding my own behaviour. But none of that changed the way Carolyn managed to focus on me then, her grief-stricken gaze narrowing into something else.

  ‘This feels so unfair,’ she said, her voice sounding strangled. I had the strangest notion that she was trying. To be polite? To be gracious, as I was trying to be myself? I didn’t know. But she was definitely trying. ‘He gets so little visiting time anyway and we have to chop it up into all these pieces.’

  And I felt everything inside me, that whole great mess, spiral smaller and tighter, until I felt that I was nothing but one hard, concentrated ball of it, heavy and mean. And deeply, exultantly, petty.

  Some part of me loved it. Finally, I thought. Let’s do this.

  ‘We?’ I echoed, the strain in my voice washing through my limbs.

  We? Really? Who the hell did she think we were in this scenario? I was Tim’s wife. She was just his tawdry piece on the side. Did she really think that the fact we were related by blood made us connected somehow in this? Did she think it erased all the facts of this situation?

  I could see that she did.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, wiping at her eyes. ‘We. I guess we’ll have to share.’

  Suddenly, the itchiness within me seemed to spill over into a swirl of questions. Why exactly should I be expected to cater to her many moods and panics, her upset here in the hospital where Tim lay in a coma, just because I was human and empathetic enough to notice them? Why had she never stopped and worried over my feelings while she was leaping into bed with my husband? Why was I beating myself up for being petty while Carolyn got to revel in it as much as she liked, in a bed and breakfast in the middle of town, where everyone who wanted to could hear them through the walls and probably did? Why did she so matter-of-factly imagine that she got to dictate the terms here – and why didn’t she recognize that it had been an act of charity on my part to let her see Tim at all?

  We would have to share? Was she insane?

  ‘Did you enjoy seeing Tim, Carolyn?’ I asked, in a supernaturally calm voice that I only recognized as my own because I could feel my mouth moving around the words. I was so angry it felt like I was electric – like I could power the whole town.

  ‘Did I enjoy seeing the man I love laid out on a hospital bed, unaware that I was even there?’ Carolyn asked unevenly, some new-for-her emotion making her voice waver. Her eyes flashed and her hands trembled, and I didn’t care at all. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I hope you got a good look,’ I said in that same tone. I didn’t shout. But it felt like I might have. Like the walls might have buckled with the force of it.

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Carolyn asked, frowning at me.

  ‘Tim and I haven’t filed for divorce,’ I pointed out, still so calmly. So deliberately. Almost kindly, in that detached, dispassionate way. I was aware of my parents coming out of the waiting room into the hallway, but I didn’t turn to look at them directly. I didn’t look away from Carolyn, not even for a second, as if that tight ball inside of me, darker and heavier by the second, might disappear if I did. ‘We’re not even formally separated. We’ve just had a few conversations.’

  Carolyn seemed to realize belatedly that I wasn’t simply narrating all of this, all things that everybody knew, just for fun. She froze in place, her gaze turning shrewd, as if finally, finally, she was seeing me.

  It was almost enough.

  ‘What’s your point?’ she asked, her voice still rough. She rubbed at her nose, her mouth. Then it seemed as if she were trying to be careful, but it was too late. ‘Do you … do you think a near-death experience will change Tim’s mind?’

  Carolyn being careful was someone else’s bullish rampage through the proverbial china shop. And I was tired of it. Of her. Of this entire situation.

  ‘It’s not Tim’s mind you should be worried about.’ I discovered that on some level, somewhere outside that focused core, I was very nearly enjoying myself. Close enough to count, surely. More than I had since September. ‘It’s mine.’

  Carolyn only frowned and shook her head, as if I wasn’t making sense. Yet I was aware that I was finally making the only kind of sense that mattered. The kind of sense I should have made from the start.

  ‘I’m Tim’s official next of kin,’ I said, very distinctly. ‘I get to tell the ICU who can visit Tim and who can’t. And guess what, Carolyn? You just lo
st your visiting privileges.’

  That lay there between us, crisp and uncompromising, as if I had demanded a duel in the old-fashioned way, like in all those movies I loved to watch on Masterpiece Theater. As if I’d thrown it down on the ground at her feet.

  Carolyn seemed to stop breathing, her face paling. But I felt as if, finally, I were expanding. Taking up space. Claiming something, anything, as mine. Making this one thing in my life Carolyn couldn’t violate, even if it was temporary. I heard one – maybe both – of my parents say my name in decidedly unhappy tones, but I ignored them. I watched Carolyn fight to process what I’d said, and for the first time since I’d walked into my bedroom and seen the end of my life as I knew it writhing on top of my favourite sheets, like two rutting, red-faced animals, I felt like myself again.

  And I couldn’t even bring myself to feel badly about it.

  ‘You can’t do this …’ Carolyn’s eyes searched mine, and widened at whatever she saw there. ‘You’re not really going to do this, Sarah?’

  ‘It’s done,’ I said, with more satisfaction than I would have thought possible, welling up from all the hollow, empty spaces deep inside of me. Maybe that tight, hard ball wasn’t meanness after all. Maybe it was my spine finally returning and doing its job. Whatever it was, I liked it. I more than liked it. ‘But don’t worry, Carolyn. I’m not like you. I wouldn’t ruin your life on a whim and leave you no recourse. You can get back on that list anytime you like.’

  ‘Let me guess.’ Carolyn’s voice was strangled, her face utterly devoid of colour. Her hands crept to her belly, as if she was nauseous. ‘You want me to turn back time? Act like none of this ever happened? Go off somewhere and never come back?’

  ‘All of that would be great,’ I said, and had to bite back an inappropriate, probably incendiary smile. ‘But nothing so dramatic is necessary.’ I leaned forward slightly, made sure Carolyn was completely focused on me. ‘All you have to do is apologize to me, Carolyn. And mean it.’

  Carolyn’s lips pressed together, hard. For a moment I thought I saw some kind of misery on her face – but, of course, that was impossible. That would mean she cared about me at all. That she had even a passing acquaintance with regret. And despite that small, almost forgotten part of me that wanted my big sister to act like a big sister for once, I knew she didn’t. She simply didn’t. She never had.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said after a long moment, her voice curiously flat. Her hands moved as if she wanted to hold on to something, or, more likely, punch something. Like me, I assumed. There was a kind of anguish in her gaze then, but more than that, an implacable wall. She sighed. ‘I’m not sorry.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, without a single drop of surprise. Or pity. I straightened, and shrugged. I felt lighter than I had in longer than I cared to remember. ‘I guess that leaves you with quite the little quandary, doesn’t it?’

  She scrubbed her hands across her face again, as if fighting to keep the tears back, but I couldn’t let that bother me. I felt free. And if there was something dangerous in that, something hectic and a little bit crazed, I told myself I didn’t care at all. That it was better by far than the numbness and inaction that had preceded it.

  ‘Sarah.’ She said my name like it hurt her, and if it did, I thought, it would be the first thing that ever had. ‘You can’t do this. You really can’t. I’m not just saying that.’

  ‘Girls …’ Dad said from the doorway of the waiting room, in that gruff warning tone of his, and I hated it when he called us that. So dismissive and diminishing. So condescending. I was thirty-three and Carolyn was thirty-five, for God’s sake. A little long in the tooth to be called girls. Not to mention the fact that I didn’t wish to be thought of as part of any collective that involved Carolyn.

  ‘This is no place to air all this family’s dirty laundry,’ Mom chimed in from beside him, her voice at its coldest. She glanced behind her as if she thought a phalanx of our friends and neighbours lurked there, judgements at the ready. ‘We all need to concentrate on Tim. If you can’t handle that’ – and it was unclear which one of us she was talking to then, as she looked back and forth between us, and then at Dad, too, for good measure – ‘I suggest you take a walk up around the halls or down into the lobby until you get yourself under control.’

  I ignored them, and so did Carolyn, who was focused entirely on me. Too much so. As if she thought her attention alone could bend me to her will.

  In her defence, I thought uncharitably, that had more or less worked with Tim, hadn’t it?

  ‘I understand that you’re hurt, that I hurt you,’ she said after a long moment or two, and if I hadn’t been able to see the way her chest heaved, as if her emotions were fighting to get out, I might have been fooled by her calm tone. ‘I understand that you feel betrayed and that you feel you have no choice but to get revenge on me this way. But this isn’t just about me and Tim, and what happened between us.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. Dryly. ‘Because I have to tell you, Carolyn, that’s pretty much entirely what it’s about for me.’

  ‘A divorce is bound to bring up all kinds of bad feelings on all sides, obviously, but what happened last night has nothing to do with any of that,’ she argued in the same rational, calm manner. I watched her take a deeper breath. A longer one. Her gaze was glued to mine, her eyes wide now, and the same hazel colour I knew I shared with her. I’d always hated that we had even that much in common. And I knew her tone of voice was all for show. I could see the panic lurking there, just beneath the skin, making her face seem tight. ‘We have to concentrate on Tim now. On what he needs and what he would want if he could sit up and tell us himself.’

  She sounded so reasonable. So calm and adult. If she had been talking about someone else’s husband, who knows what I might have done? But she was talking about Tim, and he was still mine. Legally, anyway. No matter how much she wanted that to be otherwise. No matter how much he might want it otherwise. She had no standing here, and he wasn’t awake to argue about the unpleasantness any longer.

  For once, in all of this mess, I was the one who got to make the decisions. I couldn’t pretend that didn’t make me happy.

  ‘That was a pretty little speech,’ I said, my voice soft in the quiet of the corridor. Almost kind. ‘But I can’t help but notice that you can’t even bring yourself to apologize.’ I lifted my shoulders and then dropped them. ‘Saying that you understand why I might feel how I feel is really just a convoluted way of not apologizing for having made me feel that way in the first place.’

  I shrugged again, as if I were done caring about any of this, and turned around. I thought maybe I’d head down to the cafeteria, which had to be serving breakfast any time now, surely. I could see light through the windows, indicating that morning had finally come, and instantly felt all the exhaustion I’d been holding at bay throughout the night slam into me. If not food, there had to be coffee …

  ‘Sarah.’

  I was tired of the way she said my name and I didn’t stop, didn’t turn back again. I didn’t want to deal with her any more and I didn’t see why I should have to. Another decision I got to make, and it felt just as good as the first.

  ‘Sarah! You don’t understand!’ she cried out, as if the words were ripped from deep inside of her. She made a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a scream, and it made my stomach flip over in reaction. Or possibly foreboding. ‘For God’s sake,’ she gritted out, her voice heavy with something I couldn’t identify. ‘I’m pregnant.’

  And that was when it hit me, for the very first time, right there in the sterile corridor of the Rivermark hospital with my whole family looking on, that my marriage might really be over, after all.

  4

  The days passed, becoming a week of wholly interchangeable mornings, noons and nights. November gave way to December. It snowed, twice, and there were more and more holiday ornaments festooning the corners of things. There were happy blinking lights and relentless carols. Wherev
er I turned, there was the insistence of Christmas cheer when cheerful was the very last thing I felt.

  Tim was better, the doctors said.

  They said it every day, with varying degrees of qualification. He had been taken off the drugs that were keeping him in a medically induced coma a few days after the accident, but he hadn’t woken up then as they’d expected him to do. He was now in a coma of his own making, the doctors told me, because there was so much healing he had yet to do inside, and because sometimes that’s just how it was with patients with his kind of injuries. He would wake up in his own time, they said. They hoped.

  And I sat there with him after they left each day, the dutiful wife, while my head spun wildly and I wondered why I couldn’t seem to feel anything but this great heaviness. It wasn’t sharp enough to be grief, or not entirely, but nor was it flattening enough to be full-on depression. It simply sat on me, thick and suffocating, allowing me to move and breathe but never, ever escape its weight.

  They were having a baby.

  They might even have planned to have a baby. That meant they had a future together – that there would be no way to pretend otherwise. They had a future. And I had …? I didn’t know.

  I hadn’t wanted any further details that first night, when she’d told me. When, I supposed, I’d made her feel she had no choice but to tell me. I’d run in the opposite direction, in fact – had run so far through the slippery, antiseptic corridors and the dingy, forgotten stairwells that I’d found myself in the bowels of the hospital in some dim, forgotten radiology centre or other before I’d allowed myself to stop. There had been no one there to watch me collapse on the ground, bury my face in my hands, and sob. And sob. I could almost pretend it hadn’t happened. That she hadn’t said those words that changed everything, irrevocably.

  I’d returned to the ICU waiting room when I could breathe again and the redness had gone down around my eyes. The baby Carolyn carried, the one that made all of the things I’d been thinking and hoping and holding onto so irretrievably, humiliatingly foolish, became one more thing we didn’t discuss. Like my plan to bar her from Tim’s room. That just … disappeared. I might have been on fire with pettiness, but even I could see that banning the mother of a man’s child from his hospital room while he was balanced somewhere between life and death was not the right thing to do.