SICK: Psychological Thriller Series Novella 1 (2 page)

“Go to him,” Greta said. “I made soup at the main house. I’ll go to the kitchen and bring you some.”

“I can’t remember the last time I had real food,” I said. The mainstay of my diet was mini Nestle Crunch bars I bought by the five-pound bag at the discount store.

John called again.
“Suze! What are you doing down there?”

“You better go,” Greta said. “I’ll leave it on the stove for you.”

“Thanks,” I said. I turned and forced my legs up the stairs. I entered the dark cell of our bedroom, a messy den where we were forced to share our matrimonial bed with illness and pain.

What the paramedics must have thought of us. The bed was unmade, wrinkled, stained. A pile of bedding, the last pair of soiled sheets I’d changed, lay in the corner. Dirty, rumpled clothing was tossed here and there. Orange prescription bottles and candy wrappers cluttered the nightstand. There, the dusty lampshade leaned sideways as I had knocked it weeks—maybe months—ago. Debris was tossed over the ornate antique furniture of John’s late mother, the wealth buried beneath the rubble of ever-present sickliness. Pale, anemic light forced its way through the mucky windows, and a crust of bacteria incubated in a sour glass of milk on the dresser. I was afraid to look under the bed to see what might be lurking there.

“Suze,” he said, reaching an arm into the air.

“What’s wrong?” I walked over and grabbed his hand. “You need something?”

“I just wondered where you were,” he said weakly, putting on his cute face.

“Aw. You missed me already?” I knew it was time to go along with the infantile role-play we resorted to so often–one of the absurd habits we fell into after years of marriage, a superficial communication used to avoid talking about the desperate state we were in. I began tucking the loosened sheets back under his mattress. “I need to change these,” I said.

“Sheets can wait,” he said. “Please, come and lay with me. It makes me feel better.” He patted the bed; his neck was held stiff and straight; he could only move his eyeballs. It was comical, but I didn’t have the energy to laugh.

I gently sat beside him, my bones sinking into the heavy comfort of our over-worn mattress. The bedding had absorbed the dank smell of our bodies, and I was contented to be enveloped in our residue, away from the blinding sterility of the hospital. I lay my head back against the headboard. John took my hand, and in the short moment I closed my eyes, I began to twitch in the entrance of sleep.

“Suze?”

I was sucked in by drowsiness and struggled to answer. “What, sweetie?”

“Read to me,” he said.

“I’m, well … I’m honestly so tired right now,” I said.

“But it will distract me from the pain.”

“I’ll turn on the TV.”

“It’s not the same.”

I blinked my eyes open and looked up at him stuck upright and immobilized. It looked like torture, yet he still wore a pleasant, expectant expression. He was being such a good boy. I propped myself up on my elbows, shook off the sleepiness, and asked, “What will it be today?”

“
Treasure Island
,” he said.

“Okay.” I lugged my body from the comfort of the bed, took the old book from the top of a pile of junk that balanced on one of the chairs, and sat gently beside him. I began reading in the theatrical way he liked, complete with voices and accents. We were working our way through Robert Louis Stevenson, beginning with
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
. This ritual began one night when John told me his mother never read to him when he was little. I thought it was tragic, and I started reading all his old books to him. Every evening, after I took his dinner tray away and gave him his medications, I lay next to him propped up on pillows. Once his cocktail of painkillers and muscle relaxers took effect, he would turn his head toward my shoulder and nestle into me with eyes closed and a sweet smile. I’d read until I thought he was asleep, and then I would close the book, anticipating a long, hot shower and mindless TV, but he always woke up. “Don’t stop,” he’d whisper. “Please, don’t stop.” And I would continue reading till my throat became hoarse.

I paused when I heard John’s breathing slow down, and I looked up from the book. His head leaned forward into the brace.
Poor John.
He couldn’t sleep on my shoulder like he usually did. The brace prevented him from getting comfortable at all. I quietly closed the book and contemplated my husband, stuck there in his collar like a man fitted in bondage gear or a medieval torture device. He struggled to snore with his little mouth smooshed against the rim of the brace. So many scars crisscrossed his body; with his head immobilized, he looked like the living monster from
Frankenstein
, except he rarely lived at all anymore.

I heard some noise down below. Greta, with the soup. I slipped out from the bed and held my breath, tiptoeing down the stairs, praying that none of the old boards would creak. At the bottom, I took a silent gulp of air and entered the kitchen. “Greta?” I called softly.

“Are you ready to eat? It’s still hot.” She pointed to the stove and then continued stacking plates carefully and efficiently in the dish rack.

“Thank you so much.” I ladled the soup into a shallow bowl and slumped into the chair at the table.

“I have to get back,” she said, wiping her hands with a dingy dish towel. “We’re serving dinner.”

“Please, go. I’m fine,” I said.

“How is he?”

“You know …” I said. She nodded knowingly and quietly left the kitchen. I heard the rush of the wind for a moment as she opened and shut the door.
Finally, alone.

I poured a glass of red wine, the cheap kind that doesn’t designate what kind of grape it’s made from. The house was too quiet, and I didn’t want to hear myself eating. I turned on the TV for some background noise and to have a place to rest my eyes. I hunched over my soup, a briny plasma full of potatoes, cabbage, and Portuguese chorizo. The first taste triggered a ravenous hunger. I drank it up as quickly as I could. I had been ignoring my body for so long to take care of John’s. I gulped the wine, and a euphoric warmth spread beneath my rib cage. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a minute to myself, and I tried to acknowledge it, to make sure I remembered what it felt like for those times when I thought I would never rest again.

A marriage made in medicine, John’s and mine. He was the victim, and I, the slave to his diseases. Medications to give, wounds to clean, bed pans to empty, and food to serve. I wondered how long we could endure like this. Surely, it couldn’t go on forever. One day, things would have to change.

I
jumped at a knock at the door. It wasn’t Greta. She would’ve just walked in. I launched from the table before the knocking could wake John.

I yanked open the door. Behind it was the slumped old man, bristly and gray. Age had carved deep lines into his face, and his mouth was turned down into a permanent frown. Old Pete.

Pete was John’s late father’s oldest employee, and had the keys to every door and gate on the property. The Arabs didn’t seem to mind this, as they were accustomed to having help in the house, but I found it unnerving. I never trusted Pete. There was something secretive in his hunched posture and in the heaviness of his bushy, gray eyebrows. Once when we were at the hospital—an emergency room visit for John’s broken foot—I came home and caught Pete on the top of the stairs in front of our open bedroom. He claimed to have been inspecting the walls and ceiling for signs of mold damage after some was discovered in the basement of the mother house, but later that day, I had discovered my dresser drawer was left open and my things looked like they had been rifled through. I was alarmed and had been uneasy about Old Pete ever since.

The man was more than eighty, and I thought perhaps dementia was making him strange. He always seemed distracted and suspicious, and although he been there since John was a boy, he avoided John and only paused to speak to me when I was alone to ask me absurd questions. Where were his vice grips? Why was the hydrochloric acid missing? He bought a new box of rat poison. Did I take it?

I had no involvement with the running of the house and its grounds, but for some reason he always suspected me whenever he lost something. Just because John and I were broke didn’t mean we’d resort to stealing.

“What is it, Mr. Peter?” I asked.

“I have a question for ya.” His jaw kept working in shaky circles even after he finished talking.

“John is sleeping right now. We must not disturb him for the next few days.” I spoke quietly to try to hint to him to do the same. “You realize he just had his neck fused together.”

“Well, I can’t find my …” then he squinted at me sideways. “Wait, how did he hurt his neck?”

“He fell down the stairs.”

He shook his head and then said, “You notice that boy falls down the stairs an awful lot.”

“Are you suggesting I don’t take proper care of him?”

He drew back, surprised. His jaw gyrated a few more times. “No ma’am. That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

“Then what are you saying, Peter?”

He stood there with a blank look on his face.

“Look, we preserved your job. Now go bother your new boss and leave John and me alone. He needs to rest.”

I was unjustifiably annoyed. Pete’s decrepit and bemused face irritated me to no end. I restrained myself from slamming the door. What was happening to me?
Just tired. I’m just tired,
I told myself, but something in the old man’s eyes made suppressed thoughts clamber to the surface of my consciousness; I sensed them pounding against an invisible barrier.

“
Suze?
” John was awake again.

“Be right there!” My soup was cold, but my appetite had disappeared anyway. I put the bowl of soup in the fridge. Funny, I always wanted to be skinny. I thought if I lost my chubby thighs and wide backside, that it would be the key to my happiness. Now I was thin, and life wasn’t happy after all.

*

The
days passed, and John seemed to be healing well for a change. A physical therapist came a few times a week, and John was cooperative, as usual. Of course, the extra movement made him stiff and sore, and I had to increase his medication.

His doctor sent him home with oral painkillers. They weren’t strong enough. So for occasions when John was inconsolable, I injected him with Demerol from a vial I stole from work. John would be comfortable, itchy, and drowsy; and I, for once, would sleep peacefully through the night. I knew I could lose my license if I was caught, but at this point, it was worth the risk. The sleep deprivation was to the point where I felt I might lose my mind.

A week after our return from the hospital, the weather had flipped and become sickeningly warm and balmy, a temperature that maintains the body at that irritating point just before sweating. The sun had set, but the heat of the day was still trapped inside the house.

I went downstairs to put on a record, squeezing through the towers of junk. John requested Judy Garland, his mother’s favorite. The album John liked was a live recording made near the end of the singer’s life. Her voice was textured and colored with a pain, contrasting with the happy horns and violins. Her vocal chords vibrated like wobbly plates spinning on sticks, and she annunciated with jaw-clenching desperation. I didn’t mind the older recordings when she was young and untroubled, but this version made me feel nervous and depressed, as if someone was clutching onto me as they were sinking into a pit of despair.

We tried to save money by turning off the air conditioner at night. I made sure all the windows were open before I went back upstairs. I checked John’s temperature. He was wet and sticky, and his undershirt and boxer shorts were glued to his body.

“Sweetie, let’s get you into the shower,” I said.

“I don’t think I’m up to it, Suze.”

“You need to bathe.” I offered him my hands to pull him up.

“Can’t you sponge bathe me?” he asked.

I knew he could stand and walk. Sometimes I wondered if he was testing me, or punishing me for something. “I have work tomorrow,” I said. “I want you all washed up before I go.”

“You’re going back? But what will I do without you?”

“I’ll ask Greta to come check on you.”

He pouted for a second. I didn’t understand why he was so worried about being alone. The past week I’d spent with him at home, he had been doing better than ever. No new bruising. No fractures or other injuries. He was gaining weight and muscle. He looked so much better that I even contemplated making love to him. I never asked for sex as a rule. I didn’t want to make him feel inadequate if he couldn’t perform, but I was sure we could try. I noticed his erections when I woke up in the morning. Maybe he was taking a turn for the better. “Let’s go to the bathroom, sweetie,” I said. “We should do this now. Then we can start the week fresh and clean.”

“No, I don’t want to. The staples.”

“John, the staples are on your neck and are covered by the brace. I can easily bathe the rest of your body without getting them wet.”

He lay there like a fussy toddler.