TEN YEARS LATER
We do not get to choose when we die, but I lost my soul ten years ago. When he was admitted.
My face flushes, and I am shaking, too scared to look, but I force my watery gaze in his direction. He is not a stranger to me. I’ve known him most of my life, but I am crestfallen to see him this way.
Standing at a safe distance, behind a frame of glass and locked doors, I glimpse his dead eyes watching me. Or is it the mind-numbing drugs they pump through his veins each morning (8:00 a.m. precisely) that create that cold, detached expression?
I see him in the same position every day, sitting upright in a chair, clothed in white scrubs, barefoot, glassy-eyed, drool trickling in thick threads out of the bracketed spider-webbed corners of his gaping mouth.
Even though in his forties, he appears older, much older, a legend, some would say, his shock of white hair shaved tight to his leathery skull. His skin as paper-thin and translucent as a glass of water. Knuckles knobby and arthritic, bony in their skeletal posture; hands interlaced like pretzels on his lap, motionless.
Depending on the time of day I visit, usually early morning because I’m awake, I observe the seasonal lighting spilling into the cubbyhole corner of the room from a high window above him, as if he were a performer in a spotlight. The kaleidoscope of winter colors, sallow shadows of death, shrouds him in deep sadness. His face is waxy, faded and aged with time.
There was a feeling of disquiet when I walked in an hour ago—feels longer, like I’ve been here all day—a deadly whirring like a buzz saw when I signed in at the front desk, noticing, pointedly, the sinister, straightforward greeting of the female receptionist. Seventy. Eighty. Ninety. You age fast in here. This is her place of work, not mine, and I can leave at any time.
My knees quiver and my thoughts vibrate like a tuning fork. I watch him behind a glass wall, as if he were a caged animal in a zoo, a science experiment, or a window-dressed mannequin. The top of his shaved head and dark, sunken eyes awaken an inventory of traumatic images in my mind, a new horror that strangles me in my sleep, suffocating my screams. Most nights are long, like a labyrinth corridor of endless halls, or a winding staircase that continues climbing into obscurity, and it feels like the house stopped breathing years ago.
I manage to get out of bed every morning, rain or shine, and carry on with my life. I am still sad that David is not in the house to enjoy all three meals, our afternoon strolls around the neighborhood or late night talks with me, but life goes on whether we like it or not. I am as strong as I can be, given the grim, unfortunate circumstances.
I force myself to look, curiously or naively, at the two small holes punctured at the top of my partner’s skull, a Russian sleep experiment exercise performed while he was hospitalized. After all these years, it is supposed to have drained the demons from his brain. I shudder at his lingering, unblinking glare. Sweat seeps and cools like a dying breath beneath my winter coat, freezing me in fear.
I remember coming home late at night from work, seeing David scared to death. Seeing the fear in his eyes and hearing the pain and distress in his voice. I listened to his calls for help. I held him, told him everything would all right, that he’d be safe, that I’d protect him. But none of it was enough. And now, seeing him here sends cold fingertips tapping across my skin. I shiver at the sight of him.
He doesn’t see me. Not in his spaced-out, withered gaze. I am invisible, his long-ago partner, caretaker, lover. Never husband, I recall, thinking back to the time before all this happened and fingering the plain gold wedding band on my left hand. My fingers are slippery, damp with sweat, and I almost lose the grip on David’s proposal.
“I want to spend my life with you.” His future pitch to me before all of this happened, before chaos reigned and our lives were changed. Forever.
I fit the ring back into place, and raise a hand to the glass, my moist palm leaving an imprint that I was here, existed.
I do not say goodbye, or wave, or blow a kiss, because I will be back.
Tomorrow.
Nothing changes.