assumed the expression he wore was the one of constant apathy, that was permanently shaped into his features. His stormy blue eyes never held me with love, or even interest. After that I stopped even saying good night to him. He always got into bed after me, and I faced the window at the edge of the bed, pretending to be asleep. He didn't try any more. He just faced the other way. Every night, and every morning.
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be intimate with him again. I imagine it to be awkward and unsated, devoid of love or lust: an ugly experience. A nurse came in to check on me and I snapped back into the room. She wrote a couple of things down and let me know they had finally gotten in contact with my husband and he was on his way here. It was a Friday night, so he had probably been holed up gambling and drinking whiskey. When I didn't respond to her comment, the nurse looked at me with pity in her eyes. It was the same look my friend Rachel gave me whenever she dropped by my house to see me; I think she was checking to see if I was still alive. Once a month, on a Saturday, smiling and floating around with an abundance of energy, she would come into the kitchen and we would have peppermint tea. Darryn was usually out on the weekends.
“God, you need to leave! I don't understand why you stay when you are so miserable here. You're not my Sara anymore.” She clapped her hands over her mouth, her hazel eyes wide, after the words burst out of her. She was exasperated with the one word responses I had been giving her that day. I stared at her, as what she said got through the fuzz of politeness and attempted pleasantries.
“That's not how it is, Rachel. You make a commitment to love your husband. That's just what you do. That's what love is.”
She would leave, deflated, with that same look of pity and compassion that the nurse gave me.
“I've got some tablets for you hun, so I'm just going to raise your bed up a little.” My energy was so depleted from the attack, she had to tip the pills from the paper cup into my mouth. The oxygen was still straining through my airways, and my chest felt tight as soon as the mask was off. The nurse put it back on me promptly and the tension in my body ebbed slightly as the pure oxygen flew down to my lungs.
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