The Man She Married Read online

  Dr. Doom and Dr. Hopeless could be my best friends. My saviors. The people who will prevent me from being stuck in a dead body, fed through a tube, for decades. Lost and alone in here, panicked and trapped, loneliness shredding me.

  They don’t know why I’m not moving, not talking, not dancing in my bed. Well, not the dancing part. I am a medical mystery, and I am a vegetable. An untasty vegetable, unless one is a cannibal and likes to gnaw on humans.

  The words moral and ethics come up as the doctors talk. Is it right to continue this? Should we let her go? What kind of life will she have even if she does wake up?

  I don’t disagree with them.

  I am being kept alive by advanced medical technology.

  I want a miracle, but I don’t want to be unreasonable or irrational. Hearing myself think like this almost makes me laugh. I am in a coma. And I am talking to myself about being unreasonable and irrational when I am in the most unreasonable and irrational place I can think of to be.

  “We need to end this,” Dr. Doom says.

  No, we don’t!

  “We need to talk to the family,” Dr. Hopeless says.

  Oh no. Don’t do that.

  “Let me do it,” Dr. Tarasawa says, “when it’s time.”

  Not yet. It’s not time.

  Dr. Doom and Dr. Hopeless agree, but they say that time is coming.

  Let’s wait this out for a while, I think. Please.

  Dr. Hopeless mutters, “Better you than me with that husband. He will never agree to letting his wife go.”

  No, Zack won’t. Not now at least. He will give me time to recover, time to fight.

  “Oh, hell no, but neither will the father or the girlfriends.”

  My dad will threaten to shoot you, that I guarantee. Chick will literally roll up her sleeves and start punching, and Justine will threaten legal action and have a scary attorney here in an hour.

  “We’re in for a fight,” Dr. Hopeless says.

  “It’s not a fight I want.” That’s Dr. Doom. “I did not become a doctor so I could pull the plugs on a woman who has everything to live for.”

  “Me either,” Dr. Hopeless says. “I want Mrs. Shelton to wake up. But I would not want to live like that, and we all know the longer she’s like this, the poorer the eventual outcome.”

  I feel them staring at me. In the silence I want to yell at Dr. Doom and Dr. Hopeless and Dr. Tarasawa, “Save me. Reach me. Haul me on out so I’m not stuck in this coma. Inject me with something. Electrocute my brain so it will wake up. Shoot me up with any kind of new ‘wake me out of my coma’ medicine ya got.”

  “Mrs. Shelton!” Dr. Doom shouts at me.

  “Natalie,” Dr. Hopeless semi-shouts at me.

  “Can you squeeze my hand?” Dr. Tarasawa says. He sighs. “We still need the golden miracle for this one.”

  I do not respond, rude thing that I am, swimming in hysteria.

  I am sure I look like a corpse.

  And that’s what I am: a nonmoving corpse.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been like this, but this is what I know: My time is coming to an end.

  Chapter 5

  I hear Zack’s footsteps coming down the hall of the hospital.

  I long to see that man’s face. Those light green eyes that stare right at me as if I am the last living being on the planet Earth. That square jaw, the lines here and there that speak of a man who spends a lot of time outside, in the sun. That smile. The special smile that is only for me.

  I can smell him. Mint. Wind. Man. Lust.

  Can you smell lust? I think I am projecting. I want to wrap my arms around his neck and pull him down, preferably naked. I love sex with Zack, and he loves sex, too. We are a match. The last thing I remember is sex in the tub and at halftime. Not a bad memory at all!

  He kisses my forehead, wrapping my face in his hands.

  “Hey, baby,” he says, so quiet. “How are you?”

  When I do not answer, he settles on the side of my bed and holds my hand. I feel him staring at my face. I wish I didn’t look dead. It’s simply not sexy.

  He sighs. I know he’s crying, because his tears drop on my hand.

  “When you’re on the Deschutes, you can believe there are billions of stars and galaxies. You used to say it made you feel tiny, Natalie, but you have never been tiny to me. You’ve always been my whole life. My whole life. You are all the stars up in the sky for me.”

  Wow.

  I mean, wow. This is my Zack. He has always been affectionate. He tells me he loves me all the time. That I’m beautiful, smart, etc., but to say, “You are all the stars up in the sky for me”? That’s poetic.

  “I will never fish again if you’re not with me, Natalie. I can’t. I will look for you on that river and it’ll kill me. The Deschutes is one river, but it’s for both of us.”

  His tears fall again on our clasped hands.

  “I was so lonely until I met you, baby. That first day, on the Deschutes, with you in your waders and your red hat with the tractor on it, I started falling in love. That river never stops flowing, and I knew my love for you would be the same way. It would never stop. It has never stopped, baby.”

  Oh. My. Goodness. This is my tough husband! The stud who looks like a gangster.

  “We’re going to fish the Deschutes again, honey. We will.”

  He takes a deep breath and holds my hand to his cheek. More tears pour down. “You’re going to be safe, Natalie. Everything’s taken care of. It’s all fixed. I swear nothing like this is going to happen to you again.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about. What is taken care of? What is fixed?

  “I am so sorry, honey. I will make this up to you for the rest of my life.” His voice lowers to a broken whisper. “I promise you, Natalie. I promise.”

  What does he mean he will “make this up” to me?

  I feel a memory drift in and out of my brain, quick as a lick. I try to catch it, but I can’t. It has something to do with me slamming my hands on our granite countertop and yelling at him. Why would I be yelling at Zack?

  * * *

  My dad tells me about the animals he owns, because he believes that I can hear him. Funny that I can. He talks about his four dogs, his two cats, the goat, the cow, the pig, the chickens.

  “Bruce Baby and Tarantula Terrier ran off together, Hummingbird. Had to get in the pickup and track them down. Soon as they saw me they waggled their furry little tails and their tongues, I swear they laughed at me, and they ran off down the road. They love when I chase them. Gina the Goat escaped again. I found her in town, right outside the tavern. Richy Morganson, that college professor who likes rocks, called me. He’d wrapped a rope around her neck. I think Richy gave her some beer. He knows she likes beer. . . .

  “Can you open your eyes for me, Hummingbird?”

  He cries when I don’t open my eyes. He sings me Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie” and Gloria Estefan’s “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You.” He sings “Hello, Dolly!” too. He has seen all the Broadway shows online.

  He starts to read me Jane Eyre. “She is my best book friend,” he tells me. “Let’s begin. Chapter one.”

  I want to hug my dad. I want to reassure him. I am so worried about him. I have never, ever seen—well, heard—him this upset, and there have been many things in his life that he had every right to be upset about.

  I can do nothing to help him.

  I lie here, in a hospital bed, not moving, bones and skin, as his big ol’ tears slide down my hand and my arm as he holds the palm of my hand to his face.

  “Please, Hummingbird,” he rasps out. “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.” I can hear him sobbing. “Please wake up.”

  * * *

  I hear two nurses talking by my bedside when my dad finally goes home to our house to sleep.

  “Have you seen her father?” one asks.

  “Oh, yes,” the other one says. “Gorgeous.”

  “It’s like staring at a mountain man. He’s
got that earthiness to him.”

  “Sexy earthiness.”

  This is not surprising. Women love my dad. To me, he’s Dad. To them, he’s Sexy Man.

  * * *

  That night I woke up inside my coma after that same, insane nightmare.

  The bald, psychopathic, cackling man was after me again. He was chasing me. He had a knife in one hand and the stabbed Barbie in the other, her twisted head flopping. I looked back, and his arms were pumping, trying to catch me. When he had me cornered, he tilted his head to the side. In my panic, I followed his gaze.

  And there, running to stand between me and the man who wanted to kill me, was Zack.

  He raised the knife over the scar on Zack’s ribs, then brought it down. The Barbie screamed, then her head fell off. Then he turned to me and I was cut in half.

  Who was the bald man in my nightmares?

  A bald man dropped off the bloodied Barbie. Was he also the driver of the van that hit me? Was he the Barbie basher?

  I wish I could remember that morning. All of it. Every second. No matter how bad it was.

  * * *

  Rosie Thornton, Jed and Chick’s mother, comes to visit. Tall, rangy, lots of makeup, red curling hair, she is a force. Rosie owns an incredibly popular nail salon in Lake Joseph. She has a small, three-bedroom home painted light green with white shutters and a white porch one street off of our Main Street. Every year she plants a magnificent garden out back. It looks like the garden of Eve, but there are no tempting, evil apples or manipulative snakes.

  She is unclear who fathered Jed or who fathered Chick. When Jed asked her she told him, with Chick, Justine, and I sitting at her kitchen table eating chocolate chip cookies. Chick and Justine and I were about six years old, which made Jed thirteen.

  “Honey, Jed darling, I had a few wild years, so help me, Jesus. Amidst those wild years, I got knocked up with you. I know, babycakes, that you want to know who your father is. I would like to know who your father is, too. There are only three possibilities.” She held up three fingers. “Probably not four possibilities.”

  She flicked one more finger up, then flicked it back down. “I cannot swear to you, on my grandma’s old Bible, Jed, but it’s probably not four. First possibility. I was following a rodeo circuit around. Man named Hank, met him right here in eastern Oregon, fancy that! He was from Idaho. He had thick brown hair, exactly like yours.”

  She stopped, cleared her throat, patted her red hair. She was famous for it! That’s why she was called Rosie!

  “It could have been Hank. He won first place all the time. He could ride those broncos like he could ride . . .” She did not finish that sentence, cleared her throat again. “Hank was going on to another rodeo, and my girlfriends and I decided that we wanted to see California. We wanted to swim in that darn blue ocean, stretches out to heaven, does it not? Saint Peter and Saint Paul, I met a man out there I could not resist. A man named Mott. Dear me. When our Lord and Savior made Adonis, he made Mott. He was so tall, exactly like you. I could not resist him in his swimsuit out in those California waves. In fact, pumpkin, you could have been created right in the Pacific Ocean!”

  She stopped, cleared her throat yet again, patted her red hair. Such a blessing she had red hair and her momma had decided to name her Rosie!

  “Now the third possibility, sweet child, was a man from Mexico. I met him in Las Vegas. My girlfriends and I wanted to see the lights. He had that luscious Mexican accent, dark eyes. . . .” She squinted her eyes at Jed’s. “Exactly like your dark eyes, dearie. Anyhow, this Mexican man, Rafaga, he said his mother was American. I could not step away from him. Even Saint Catherine knows that Spanish is the sexiest language on the Earth, and when Rafaga murmured in my ears, I felt a miracle between my legs—”

  “And the fourth possibility?” Jed asked. He has always been quick.

  “I don’t think so, darling. I was already upchucking all my breakfast food by the time I met a dull man, a short man, a blond man, named Jerry from Hollywood. You don’t look a thing like him.”

  As for Chick’s father? “Only two possibilities,” Rosie said. “Probably. Mother Mary, help me. One was a firefighter, one was a police officer. I follow the law. That month I followed two members of it.”

  “We’re never going to know are we, Mom?” Chick asked, reaching for another chocolate chip cookie. Justine and I followed suit.

  “No, we aren’t, honeycomb. But in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit, she being a woman, that spirit, I have you and Jed, and I love you both to pieces. And I have the daughters of my own sweet heart, Justine and Natalie! Want me to paint your nails, girls? Jed, do you want another sandwich? I made my special homemade dressing for you.”

  Jed wanted the special sandwich, and Chick, Justine, and I wanted our nails done. We had built a fort that day and our nails were a ragged mess.

  * * *

  Rosie gives me a special “flower” manicure. The doctors and nurses all come in to admire it. I apparently have ten delicate, intricately drawn flowers on my nails. Rose. Delphinium. Daisy. Daffodil. Tulip. Blazing Star. Dahlia. Sunflower. Crocus. Magnolia.

  “I pray to the good Lord for you every day, Natalie,” Rosie says, a sob catching in her throat. “You are the daughter of my own sweet heart. I will pray for you right now, in fact, the Lord’s Prayer. Are you ready, dear? Our father who is an artist in heaven. Howell be thy name. His kingdom comes, his kingdom goes. On Earth you are to find your own heaven. Give us our daily bread and wine. Not too much wine. And lead us not in to temptation and deliver us from evil men. Amen.” She sighs. “Mary, mother of Jesus, get your feminist, woman-empowered self into this hospital and fix my Natalie, I’m tellin’ you. If you need help, grab Mother Teresa or grab a woman saint. Heck, grab all of the women saints, Mary, mother of Jesus, but do not grab my great-aunt Milly, as she was clearly the devil’s assistant here on Earth. Women unite! Thank you, Jesus.”

  * * *

  When I get upset, which isn’t more than once or twice, maybe three times a day, I cry inside. It’s this wracking, hopeless, shattered crying. Grief and fear and loneliness and devastation all mixed up.

  What do I miss the most with the obvious exception of simply being able to walk on my own and see and talk and be a normal human without a catheter and a diaper?

  I miss weekend mornings lying in bed with Zack. I miss talking to my dad and watching him work in his shop, turning plain metal into something special. I miss Justine and Chick and Jed. I miss coffee. I miss driving out to eastern Oregon in my truck with the wind blowing my hair around, the city gone, the fields rolling, the sunsets soft. I miss fishing on the Deschutes with Zack.

  I miss sunny days and pouring rain. I miss the snow in the mountains. I miss the picnic spot Zack and I have with a view of the coast range, and I miss laughing.

  I miss the beach.

  I miss love and hugs and deep conversations with the people I adore.

  I miss dancing with Zack in the kitchen and talking about the dream home we’ll build. One day.

  Love is free. True friendship is free. Laughter and singing and fishing are free.

  I miss all of it. You don’t know how desperately you will miss the ordinary, simple joys of life until they are gone altogether.

  * * *

  Today I can see pricks of light inside my head. When I was first laid flat like a pale zombie, I couldn’t see any flashes. Zippo. Now those lights are about the size of half a penny. They go off and on. Is my brain healing? Is it fighting its last fight before it shuts down? Is it anything at all?

  Maybe, maybe not.

  But I choose to see the lights as hope, and I need all the hope I can get.

  When one is stuck in a coma, you’ll take anything. I mean, it’s Desperation City in here. It’s “throw me a life ring a hundred yards out in stormy seas and I’ll try to swim over and grab it.” It’s Save My Butt time. If it doesn’t look like I’ll ever get out of this Coma Coffin in a few mont
hs, I’ll want to go to the clouds in the sky, but for now, I’ll take the lights.

  I’ll take hope. I’ll take the golden miracle.

  * * *

  People come and see me in my Coma Coffin . . . girlfriends from here in Portland, Zack’s best friends from college, his pickup basketball buddies, our neighbors. But most of my visitors are from Lake Joseph.

  Justine’s parents, Chief Knight and Annabelle, come and see me along with six of her seven siblings. One of the brothers doesn’t come to see me because he is living with monks in Tibet, or something like that.

  I am close to all of them. I’ve known the twins since they were three and everyone else since they were babies. I rocked them to sleep, put the girls’ hair in braids, and held a few of them right after they were born in a pool in their living room, their mother cursing out their father in her white lacy birthing dress for causing her pain again. That’s bonding that can’t be erased.

  The chief and Annabelle call me “the daughter of their heart” and tell me they love me. The chief jokes, through tears, that he’s looking forward to arresting me again when I’m “up and at ’em.”

  Some of the people who visit are elderly, one is in a wheelchair, another walks with a cane. A bunch of them are healthy and strong, but still. They have jobs and families and here they are, hours away from Lake Joseph.

  They cry, they pray over me, they hold my hand and tell me to wake up.

  The minister, Henry Tanner, puts his hand on my forehead and begs for divine intervention. “Jesus, we’ve got a problem down here,” he starts, “and we need your help—”

  Gelda Star pushes him away and says I need a dose of “magical healing.” Everyone says she’s a modern day witch. We do wonder. She puts her hands on my shoulders and chants, “Mighty stars, awaken thee,” then claps three times. “Moonshine, sunshine, you are the key.” Three more claps. She sprays lavender into my room. Then vanilla. “I implore the powers that be, heal my friend Natalie!”

  Gretchen Cho, the pharmacist, reads poems to me in Chinese about healing, then tapes them to the walls. Dr. Angela Steinem talks to me about her latest geological research, and Dr. Jamie Oh talks to me about her latest medical paper titled “Medical Care in Rural America.”