Unsaid: A Novel (8 page)

Prince meows and rolls on his huge back on the reception desk. Joshua obliges him with a belly scratch for a few moments, but then something by the door catches Joshua’s attention. His hand freezes in midair. There it is, staring right at him, illuminated by one last, small light—the office name plate.

Joshua walks over to it and, with a slow shake of his head, slides the wooden slat engraved with my name from its spot.

With my name under his arm, Joshua turns off the remaining light and quickly walks out into the heavy shadows of a November evening.

Prince meows loudly after him.

Still dressed from the day that ended many hours earlier, David sits on the edge of our bed with the dogs and several of my cats asleep nearby. Although he grips a photograph of the two of us walking on the beach, he stares at the television, which is tuned to a station that has long since signed off.

Our bed was a good place for us. Of course there was sex, but almost more than that, it held so many moments of non-physical intimacy because I was often already in bed by the time David got home. It was also the place where David was the least serious and defensive, and where his work life was the farthest from his mind.

So bed was where we had late-night conversations about nothing more significant than which flavor of ice cream is the most difficult to make and which melts the slowest, shared laughter at a TiVoed sitcom, or debated which one of us would get up in the
middle of the night to let a cat in through the bedroom window and then, only minutes later, back out again.

These are all the small interactions that fill the many, many hollows of married life.

But David is not thinking about these memories tonight. I can tell that he’s not because there’s not even a hint of happiness recalled around his eyes. Perhaps he is thinking of a different bed—my hospital bed. There are no great—or even good—memories of that bed.

By the time I was back in the hospital for the final time, I was mostly unconscious, hooked up to monitors that precisely measured the life leaving my body. We didn’t really need the machines to tell us what was happening. My pallor and sunken features spoke clearly that the time for hope had long since passed.

David, pale and exhausted from lack of sleep, sat beside me hour after hour. He was supposed to share this vigil with Liza, my college roommate, closest friend, and champion, but more often than not he asked to be alone with me.

Throughout our marriage, Liza’s contradictions had always irritated David. She smokes cigarettes before and after her yoga class, drinks wheatgrass juice with lunch and cosmopolitans with dinner, and can quote extensively from the Old or New Testament (she was a religious studies major before she became a psychologist), but would have a hard time identifying the governor of New York. And when it came to romantic entanglements, of which there were many, Liza had all the self-restraint of squirrel in a bag of peanuts. Still, she was fiercely devoted to me—and by association, my husband. Despite her idiosyncrasies, whatever comfort David found toward the end, he found in her.

On my last day, Liza summoned David into the hallway outside
my hospital room. David was on the brink of tears. “She’s still hanging on,” he told her. “This is torture.”

“But that’s what you’ve been asking of her,” Liza said gently. “It’s all been about the fight to stay here with you. She won’t abandon you.”

“That’s over now.”

“Is it? Is it over for you?”

“Do I have another choice?”

“I think before she goes, she needs to know that you’ll be okay. Give her your permission to stop the fight and let go.”

“Come on, she’s not even conscious. Don’t start with the new-age crap. I can’t do the
Touched by an Angel
thing right now.”

Liza put her hands on David’s shoulders. “You need to say good-bye and release her.”

David’s eyes flashed. “But it’s a lie! It’s all a damn lie!”

“I know, honey. But sometimes lies are the only truth you’ve got.” David backed away from Liza, and her hands dropped uselessly to her sides. “I’m going to smoke. You need to go say the words and take care of business.” Liza kissed David on the cheek and walked away.

I passed in silence four hours later.

I was hoping that our good-bye would be an instrument of the understanding that had eluded me, that something would pass between us in those final moments. I was praying for the epiphany of closure—that we could be each other’s last, best teacher. Instead, as David sat next to me, I could almost hear his internal dialogue of doubt, fear, and self-deprecation—all the
I should have
s and
I can’t
s. I was unable to redirect him and so having him there with me, especially toward the end, was nothing short of agony. I became just another hard and futile ending.

You never know who will turn out to be your greatest teacher until it all ends. In belated retrospect, I now realize that the most important lesson I’d ever learned about saying good-bye actually came from a six-year-old girl.

A yellow Lab, humorously misnamed Brutus, had been brought to my office with a fractured pelvis—the consequences of his run-in with a Volvo SUV. I advised the dog’s family—a pleasant single mom and her young daughter, Samantha—that I probably would be able to repair the fracture but that there was a chance of serious post-operative neurological damage. I also told the mother that, in light of the cost of the surgery, the dog’s age, and the prospect that the dog might not fully recover, euthanasia also was an understandable option.

The mother explained that Samantha had witnessed the accident that nearly killed the dog and that her husband had died two years earlier in a head-on car collision.

“If there’s any way that Samantha’s last memory of Brutus can be something other than the accident,” she told me, “then I want to try to do that for her.”

The orthopedic part of the surgery went well. Samantha and her mother came to visit Brutus at the hospital every day for at least a few hours. I can’t tell you precisely what the dog was feeling during these visits, but anyone who observed the dog when Samantha lifted his head and put it in her lap well understood that the visits were neither unappreciated nor unimportant. Anyone who says otherwise is either cruel or stupid.

Unfortunately, my initial diagnostic hunch of nerve damage was spot-on. Brutus had no control over his back legs. Worse than that, he also couldn’t pass body waste on his own. This meant emptying his bladder with a catheter every three hours and subjecting
him to an enema every twenty-four hours. For a large dog who has lived an independent life, the inability to pass waste on his own is something I can only describe as humiliating. You can see it in the downcast eyes, the ears that refuse to perk up, and eventually, in some cases, the refusal to eat or drink.

On the fifth day post-surgery, Brutus stopped eating. On the sixth day, he stopped drinking.

When Samantha and her mom came to visit on the seventh day post-surgery, I took the mother into an empty exam room to discuss options while Samantha stayed with Brutus in the holding area.

“Yes, I can keep him alive with IV fluids,” I answered the mother’s question. “But you’ve got to start asking yourself toward what end.”

The mother started to cry. “It’s not so much about Brutus. I just can’t tell Samantha that she’s going to lose something else that she loves. She’s been through—”

We were interrupted by a knock on the door. It was Samantha. Her eyes were wet, but her voice was clear. “I think Brutus wants to die,” she said. “I think he wants to die so he can go to heaven and run again.” Samantha then turned on her heel and left the room, leaving her mother and me staring at each other.

Samantha’s mother decided that her daughter didn’t need to see or know about the act of euthanasia. We ran through a short script of what I would tell Samantha later that day after I had ended Brutus’s life. Before Samantha and her mother left, that little girl hugged her dog as if she knew it would be for the last time.

When I called a few hours later, Samantha answered the phone. I told her, “The angels came and took Brutus to heaven.”

There was a pause of a few seconds. When Samantha spoke, there was a tremor in her voice. “You think he’s running again?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, holding back my own tears. “Like a puppy.”

Samantha began to cry. “Then that’s good. That’s real good.”

After that day, whenever I picked up the file for a terminal case, I prayed for better angels, for the truth, wisdom, and mercy that Samantha had found in opening the gates of heaven for Brutus. I guess during those last days with me in the hospital, David’s fear of being alone again forced him to pray for something else entirely.

Four hours. Two hundred and forty minutes. Fourteen thousand four hundred seconds. I waited for David as long as I could. I suppose perhaps I still am.

In our bedroom now, David drops the photo on the bed and reaches for the phone. I assume that, like me, he’s looking for contact, for sound, anything to stop the white noise that rings in his ears. He dials a number he now knows by heart. It rings a few times before Liza’s sleepy voice comes on the line.

“David?” Liza yawns into the phone. “You okay? Never mind, don’t answer that.”

“I’m really sorry to be calling so late.”

“Don’t even. What’s keeping you up?”

“I never told her it was okay, you know? I never said good-bye.”

Liza takes her time before answering. “I know, honey.”

“Maybe I should’ve listened to you.”

“I said it for you, not for Helena.”

“Still…”

“Have you slept at all tonight?”

“It’s too quiet.”

“I’ll get someone to phone in a scrip for something in the morning to help you sleep.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think I really want to sleep.”

“Bad dreams?”

“No. It’s just that every time I wake up, it starts all over again… the newness of her being gone… Does that make any sense?”

“I think so. But if you don’t start sleeping, you’ll start circling the drain. Trust me. There’s a reason why sleep deprivation is a method of torture.”

“I’ll let you know. What I really want—” David stops himself.

“What?”

“I just want to be able to cry until there’s nothing left—until I can’t feel a damn thing anymore. It’s like if I could stick my finger down my throat and make myself vomit, it would all come out and I wouldn’t be sick anymore. But I can’t get there. I haven’t cried since the funeral, but I feel everything. I know it sounds stupid.”

“Not stupid. It just sounds like you’re wound pretty tight right now. I think if you can just get some sleep—”

“—I heard you the first time, dear.”

Liza knows that it’s time to get off the subject. “How’s the housekeeper search going? Did you find someone?”

David laughs. “You don’t want to know.”

“C’mon. Tell me.”

“I wouldn’t trust any of them to wash Collette’s fruit, let alone take care of Skippy.”

“Skippy can take care of himself. It’s you I worry about, doll. You’re going to need to choose someone.”

“This I know.” David hesitates. “When do you think…” His voice trails off.

“When do I think what?”

“Nothing. I should let you get back to sleep.”

“You want to know when I think it gets to be okay?”

“Smart girl.”

“Do you want me to answer you as your friend or as a shrink?”

“Which answer will I like better?”

“I’ll give you both and you can decide.”

“Good. I like the illusion of having a choice.”

“As a shrink I’d tell you that it takes time to heal, and that over time you’ll be able to learn to objectify the loss you’ve experienced. Objectification is the first step; it will provide the context that will allow you to deal with the loss.”

“I hope your answer as a friend is more helpful.”

“Not so much. Look, I still reach for the phone to call her two or three times a day and then I remember she’s not there. I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re feeling. So I think ‘okay’ is still a ways off. If five years from now you’re waking me up in the middle of the night and we’re still having this same conversation, I would say that you probably have a problem. Anything short of that, I just don’t know. There are no rules for it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. That actually was pretty helpful,” David says.

“That helped? Then you really are bad off.” They both laugh at that. “You let me know if you want that scrip, okay? Better living through chemistry.”

“Thanks for listening.”

“Anytime.”

“Same here, okay?”

My friend and my husband exchange their good nights and hang up their phones. David turns off the TV, gets undressed, and climbs beneath the covers. I lie down next to him.

We both stare at the ceiling of our bedroom until the alarm clock goes off in the morning.

I
n the cold darkness of a mid-November dawn, David rises from our bed and carefully removes a suit, dress shirt, and tie—his work uniform—from the closet. He places these items on the unused side of our bed as the dogs watch with interest. He throws on a pair of jeans, work boots, and a sweatshirt and heads out of the bedroom with the dogs a short step behind.

I follow David as he does the morning chores. He feeds the dogs and all the cats quickly and without incident. I feel some of his tension ease as he enters the flow of a routine with growing confidence.

Then he walks outside to face the pig and the horses.

If you haven’t lived with a pig, forget everything you think you know about them. They are not slow in thought or movement unless they choose to be. Neither are they subtle once they decide what they want or don’t want.

David approaches Collette’s pen warily, a bucket of food in his hand. Collette, covered in hay and straw, appears to be sleeping in
her house, which is a good three feet from the gated entrance of the pen.

David tries to slide the thick metal bolt on the gate into the open position, but the bolt sticks about halfway. That’s a bad start to things. Collette stirs in her house, but David, focused on moving the bolt, doesn’t seem to notice.