I am touched by her fear. She is mangled and crumpled and lies in an ICU bed with an amputation bridge over her from the waist down. But I know that she isn’t really afraid of that. The pokes and prods and needle sticks by the nurses make her wince, but she really isn’t afraid of those, either.
The future, which twenty-four hours ago was a happy family vacation in Bavaria, is now no vacation whatsoever. It looms large and will need to be dealt with. But she isn’t afraid of that, either. Her mind will already have begun to figure out work-arounds for losing her right arm, as well as her legs, searching for a way that will allow her to practice radiology.
Death. She has no fear of that. And I know she has thought about death.
This is the first time we’ve seen each other. Alive. It is me. I am the source of the fear.
I am not angry. I am not menacing her. I am not remonstrating with her. I am just standing here, with the competing emotions of ecstasy over seeing her alive and anguish over why this happened to her causing tears to spill down my cheeks.
But I know that she isn’t really afraid of me. The fear is that I might not have been able to stand there, and, more importantly, that tomorrow, next week, next month, or five years from now I will not be standing by her. The fear is that I will leave. She is not afraid of my presence. She is afraid of my absence.
But she is also afraid of constraining me, and that is what touches me so deeply. It is so thoroughly and genuinely Linda.
“I will understand if you don’t stick around,” she said as she squeezed my hand. Those were the first words I heard, not a wailing, tearful “Don’t leave me!” Just a measured “I’ve been thinking about this, and I would understand.”
A concern for my happiness, my future as a doctor, my desire to have a family, my love of an active, outdoor lifestyle resulted in her being able to glibly allow me to leave. No questions asked.
We are husband and wife; we are not new to each other. She has been making me a better person for more than six years. I stand touched to my core by that fear and by the way she has accommodated it.
Fuck this bullshit. I’m staying! my mind screams.
Will I miss her piano playing? Will I miss watching both hands fly across the keys while both feet race over the pedals of the pipe organ? Will I miss having her ride her Bianchi alongside me while I run? Will I miss the hikes in the mountains? Don’t ask.
Will I miss having her climb, with bare feet, up onto my shoes so she can reach me with her lips and give me a kiss, a spontaneous gesture of love and caring that I have always savored? Will I miss having her right and her left arm looped around me for a hug? Will I miss gazing at her sexy, slim legs and the gentle caresses of her right hand? Don’t let me think about those things. It hurts.
I am here, where I belong, and I am staying. Even if our lives are reduced to the simplest of activities, she can still be my sunset and I can still be her moonlight.
I have done a lot of thinking through the night as well, most of it recognizing the cruel reality that she might be dead by morning. I have dealt with her death and the prospect of life without her. To find her alive this morning is a gift beyond imagining, and I am ready to push on at her side.
“Olsie,” I started, “let’s think about it this way. None of my cancer patients, at the time of their diagnosis, know whether they will get better or get worse. Many do get worse, but they still fight hard. Your trauma was yesterday. You are not going to get worse. We are going to work and fight to make you get better little by little. My cancer patients do this. We can do this.”
I know slow progress both from my practice and from my long-distance running. I have learned that even when you can’t see the finish line, if you keep going, you will reach it. Concentrate on some small goal on the trail ahead of you, and then refocus on another small goal that allows you to go long and seemingly impossible distances without having to think about their magnitude. Running has taught me patience.
I am here. I am staying. I’m happy to be here, even though there is no finish line in sight.
Running to save her switched my soul into reverse. She had been making me a better person for six years. I knew I was a better doctor, a better man, and a better husband yesterday than I had been before we met. I hadn’t done this to myself. Her soft and gentle influence had washed away and abraded some of my sharp edges, anger problems, and perfectionism. Her tolerance of me and my hard personality went beyond patience. It was her.
But she wasn’t finished. There was still a lot of work to do. She owed me a lifetime of this. I wanted a lifetime of it. My soul was not ready for life without her. So I ran to her. My soul was ready to die beside her. So I leaped in front of the train to grab her and hold her. My soul wanted to be intertwined with hers from then on. Dead or alive.
This morning, my soul is not ready for life without her under any circumstances. Where would I go? And, most important, what kind of life would that be?
Fuck that bullshit! my brain screamed again.
So, here I am. I’m staying. There’s work to be done, so let’s get started.