The Notebook (18 page)

After dinner, I become afraid despite myself. I know I should be joyous, for this reunion is the proof that love can still be ours, but I know the bell has tolled this evening. The sun has long since set and the thief is about to come, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. So I stare at her and wait and live a lifetime in these last remaining moments.

Nothing.

The clock ticks.

Nothing.

I take her in my arms and we hold each other. Nothing.

I feel her tremble and I whisper in her ear. Nothing.

I tell her for the last time this evening that I love her.

And the thief comes.

It always amazes me how quickly it happens. Even now, after all this time. For as she holds me, she begins to blink rapidly and shake her head. Then, turning toward the corner of the room, she stares for a long time, concern etched on her face.

No!
my mind screams.
Not yet! Not now ...not when we’re so close! Not tonight! Any night but tonight. . . . Please!
The words are inside me.
I can’t take it again! It isn’t fair . . . it isn’t fair....

But once again, it is to no avail.

“Those people,” she finally says, pointing, “are staring at me. Please make them stop.”

The gnomes.

A pit rises in my stomach, hard and full. My breathing stops for a moment, then starts again, this time shallower. My mouth goes dry, and I feel my heart pounding. It is over, I know, and I am right. The sundowning has come. This, the evening confusion associated with Alzheimer’s disease that affects my wife, is the hardest part of all. For when it comes, she is gone, and sometimes I wonder whether she and I will ever love again.

“There’s no one there, Allie,” I say, trying to fend off the inevitable. She doesn’t believe me.

“They’re staring at me.”

“No,” I whisper while shaking my head.

“You can’t see them?”

“No,” I say, and she thinks for a moment.

“Well, they’re right there,” she says, pushing me away, “and they’re staring at me.”

With that, she begins to talk to herself, and moments later, when I try to comfort her, she flinches with wide eyes.

“Who are you?” she cries with panic in her voice, her face becoming whiter. “What are you doing here?” There is fear growing inside her, and I hurt, for there is nothing I can do. She moves farther from me, backing away, her hands in a defensive position, and then she says the most heartbreaking words of all.

“Go away! Stay away from me!” she screams. She is pushing the gnomes away from her, terrified, now oblivious of my presence.

I stand and cross the room to her bed. I am weak now, my legs ache, and there is a strange pain in my side. I don’t know where it comes from. It is a struggle to press the button to call the nurses, for my fingers are throbbing and seem frozen together, but I finally succeed. They will be here soon now, I know, and I wait for them. While I wait, I stare at my wife.

Ten...

Twenty . . .

Thirty seconds pass, and I continue to stare, my eyes missing nothing, remembering the moments we just shared together. But in all that time she does not look back, and I am haunted by the visions of her struggling with unseen enemies.

I sit by the bedside with an aching back and start to cry as I pick up the notebook. Allie does not notice. I understand, for her mind is gone.

A couple of pages fall to the floor, and I bend over to pick them up. I am tired now, so I sit, alone and apart from my wife. And when the nurses come in they see two people they must comfort. A woman shaking in fear from demons in her mind, and the old man who loves her more deeply than life itself, crying softly in the corner, his face in his hands.

I spend the rest of the evening alone in my room. My door is partially open and I see people walk by, some strangers, some friends, and if I concentrate, I can hear them talking about families, jobs, and visits to parks. Ordinary conversations, nothing more, but I find that I envy them and the ease of their communication. Another deadly sin, I know, but sometimes I can’t help it.

Dr. Barnwell is here, too, speaking with one of the nurses, and I wonder who is ill enough to warrant such a visit at this hour. He works too much, I tell him. Spend the time with your family, I say, they won’t be around forever. But he doesn’t listen to me. He cares for his patients, he says, and must come here when called. He says he has no choice, but this makes him a man torn by contradiction. He wants to be a doctor completely devoted to his patients and a man completely devoted to his family. He cannot be both, for there aren’t enough hours, but he has yet to learn this. I wonder, as his voice fades into the background, which he will choose or whether, sadly, the choice will be made for him.

I sit by the window in an easy chair and I think about today. It was happy and sad, wonderful and heart-wrenching. My conflicting emotions keep me silent for many hours. I did not read to anyone this evening; I could not, for poetic introspection would bring me to tears. In time, the hallways become quiet except for the footfalls of evening soldiers. At eleven o’clock I hear the familiar sounds that for some reason I expected. The footsteps I know so well.

Dr. Barnwell peeks in.

“I noticed your light was on. Do you mind if I come in?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head.

He comes in and looks around the room before taking a seat a few feet from me.

“I hear,” he says, “you had a good day with Allie.” He smiles. He is intrigued by us and the relationship we have. I do not know if his interest is entirely professional.

“I suppose so.”

He cocks his head at my answer and looks at me. “You okay, Noah? You look a little down.”

“I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

“How was Allie today?”

“She was okay. We talked for almost four hours.” “Four hours? Noah, that’s . . . incredible.”

I can only nod. He goes on, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it, or even heard about it. I guess that’s what love is all about. You two were meant for each other. She must love you very much. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know,” I say, but I can’t say anything more. “What’s really bothering you, Noah? Did Allie say or do something that hurt your feelings?”

“No. She was wonderful, actually. It’s just that right now I feel . . . alone.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Nobody’s alone.”

“I’m alone,” I say as I look at my watch and think of his family sleeping in a quiet house, the place he should be, “and so are you.”

The next few days passed without significance. Allie was unable to recognize me at any time, and I admit my attention waned now and then, for most of my thoughts were of the day we had just spent. Though the end always comes too soon, there was nothing lost that day, only gained, and I was happy to have received this blessing once again.

By the following week, my life had pretty much returned to normal. Or at least as normal as my life can be. Reading to Allie, reading to others, wandering the halls. Lying awake at night and sitting by my heater in the morning. I find a strange comfort in the predictability of my life.

On a cool, foggy morning eight days after she and I had spent our day together, I woke early, as is my custom, and puttered around my desk, alternately looking at photographs and reading letters written many years before. At least I tried to. I couldn’t concentrate too well because I had a headache, so I put them aside and went to sit in my chair by the window to watch the sun come up. Allie would be awake in a couple of hours, I knew, and I wanted to be refreshed, for reading all day would only make my head hurt more.

I closed my eyes for a few minutes while my head alternately pounded and subsided. Then, opening them, I watched my old friend, the creek, roll by my window. Unlike Allie, I had been given a room where I could see it, and it has never failed to inspire me. It is a contradiction—this creek—a hundred thousand years old but renewed with each rainfall. I talked to it that morning, whispered so it could hear, “You are blessed, my friend, and I am blessed, and together we meet the coming days.” The ripples and waves circled and twisted in agreement, the pale glow of morning light reflecting the world we share. The creek and I. Flowing, ebbing, receding. It is life, I think, to watch the water. A man can learn so many things.

It happened as I sat in the chair, just as the sun first peeked over the horizon. My hand, I noticed, started to tingle, something it had never done before. I started to lift it, but I was forced to stop when my head pounded again, this time hard, almost as if I had been hit in the head with a hammer. I closed my eyes, then squeezed my lids tight. My hand stopped tingling and began to go numb, quickly, as if my nerves were suddenly severed somewhere on my lower arm. My wrist locked as a shooting pain rocked my head and seemed to flow down my neck and into every cell of my body, like a tidal wave, crushing and wasting everything in its path.

I lost my sight, and I heard what sounded like a train roaring inches from my head, and I knew that I was having a stroke. The pain coursed through my body like a lightning bolt, and in my last remaining moments of consciousness, I pictured Allie, lying in her bed, waiting for the story I would never read, lost and confused, completely and totally unable to help herself. Just like me.

And as my eyes closed for the final time, I thought to myself, Oh God, what have I done?

I was unconscious on and off for days, and in those moments when I was awake, I found myself hooked to machines, tubes up my nose and down my throat and two bags of fluid hanging near the bed. I could hear the faint hum of machines, droning on and off, sometimes making sounds I could not recognize. One machine, beeping with my heart rate, was strangely soothing, and I found myself lulled to never-land time and time again.

The doctors were worried. I could see the concern in their faces through squinted eyes as they scanned the charts and adjusted the machines. They whispered their thoughts, thinking I couldn’t hear. “Strokes could be serious,” they’d say, “especially for someone his age, and the consequences could be severe.” Grim faces would prelude their predictions—“loss of speech, loss of movement, paralysis.” Another chart notation, another beep of a strange machine, and they’d leave, never knowing I heard every word. I tried not to think of these things afterward but instead concentrated on Allie, bringing a picture of her to my mind whenever I could. I did my best to bring her life into mine, to make us one again. I tried to feel her touch, hear her voice, see her face, and when I did tears would fill my eyes because I didn’t know if I would be able to hold her again, to whisper to her, to spend the day with her talking and reading and walking. This was not how I’d imagined, or hoped, it would end. I’d always assumed I would go last. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

I drifted in and out of consciousness for days until another foggy morning when my promise to Allie spurred my body once again. I opened my eyes and saw a room full of flowers, and their scent motivated me further. I looked for the buzzer, struggled to press it, and a nurse arrived thirty seconds later, followed closely by Dr. Barnwell, who smiled almost immediately.

“I’m thirsty,” I said with a raspy voice, and Dr. Barnwell smiled broadly.

“Welcome back,” he said, “I knew you’d make it.”

Two weeks later I am able to leave the hospital, though I am only half a man now. If I were a Cadillac, I would drive in circles, one wheel turning, for the right side of my body is weaker than the left. This, they tell me, is good news, for the paralysis could have been total. Sometimes, it seems, I am surrounded by optimists.

The bad news is that my hands prevent me from using either cane or wheelchair, so I must now march to my own unique cadence to keep upright. Not left-right-left as was common in my youth, or even the shuffle-shuffle of late, but rather slow-shuffle, slide-the-right, slow-shuffle. I am an epic adventure now when I travel the halls. It is slow going even for me, this coming from a man who could barely outpace a turtle two weeks ago.

It is late when I return, and when I reach my room, I know I will not sleep. I breathe deeply and smell the springtime fragrances that filter through my room. The window has been left open, and there is a slight chill in the air. I find that I am invigorated by the change in temperature. Evelyn, one of the many nurses here who is one-third my age, helps me to the chair that sits by the window and begins to close it. I stop her, and though her eyebrows rise, she accepts my decision. I hear a drawer open, and a moment later a sweater is draped over my shoulders. She adjusts it as if I were a child, and when she is finished, she puts her hand on my shoulder and pats it gently. She says nothing as she does this, and by her silence I know that she is staring out the window. She does not move for a long time, and I wonder what she is thinking, but I do not ask. Eventually I hear her sigh. She turns to leave, and as she does, she stops, leans forward, and then kisses me on the cheek, tenderly, the way my granddaughter does. I am surprised by this, and she says quietly, “It’s good to have you back. Allie’s missed you and so have the rest of us. We were all praying for you because it’s just not the same around here when you’re gone.” She smiles at me and touches my face before she leaves. I say nothing. Later I hear her walk by again, pushing a cart, talking to another nurse, their voices hushed.

The stars are out tonight, and the world is glowing an eerie blue. The crickets are singing, and their sound drowns out everything else. As I sit, I wonder if anyone outside can see me, this prisoner of flesh. I search the trees, the courtyard, the benches near the geese, looking for signs of life, but there is nothing. Even the creek is still. In the darkness it looks like empty space, and I find that I’m drawn to its mystery. I watch for hours, and as I do, I see the reflection of clouds as they begin to bounce off the water. A storm is coming, and in time the sky will turn silver, like dusk again.

Lightning cuts the wild sky, and I feel my mind drift back. Who are we, Allie and I? Are we ancient ivy on a cypress tree, tendrils and branches intertwined so closely that we would both die if we were forced apart? I don’t know. Another bolt and the table beside me is lit enough to see a picture of Allie, the best one I have. I had it framed years ago in the hope that the glass would make it last forever. I reach for it and hold it inches from my face. I stare at it for a long time, I can’t help it. She was forty-one when it was taken, and she had never been more beautiful. There are so many things I want to ask her, but I know the picture won’t answer, so I put it aside.