Work Text:
you are the light in the painting.
what a beautiful way to finally feel something.
if somewhere there is a heaven,
this is as close as i will get.
June 19th, 2020
Something is breathing for me.
It's an unnatural thing, my lungs rising because a machine tells them to. Over and over. A rhythm without effort, without choice.
And so badly, I want to scream.
"Hi, sweetheart." Jack is there, playing with my hair. "You're having a good day today."
Jack has always been content to be a liar. It doesn't matter whether my blood pressure has dropped or I have no hair and my kidneys aren't working properly. He always lies to me. I can't pull my hand away, but I try.
My mouth is full of plastic and my throat burns and I can say nothing.
I can't ask what happened to me.
June 21st, 2020
I've gathered some pieces of it, what happened. A bleed. Swelling. Low oxygen. A complication in surgery that shouldn't have happened. Hypoxic. Poor neurological response. Long-term ventilation.
They are words I do not understand. At my appointments, I looked to Jack to help me. He would explain every term and answer every single one of my questions without complaint. Did he fail me this time? I cannot see him now. He understands every word, the severity of it all, and he refuses to tell me what any of it means.
Doesn't he know I can hear him?
June 24th, 2020
"No," Jack says.
I think it's the afternoon. I can't keep track.
There's a woman speaking to him, her voice is quiet, but firm. "Dr. Abbot, we're concerned about the lack of neurological improvement."
"I—I know, I understand." His hand finds mine and squeezes. Please wake up.
I try, I really do. But my fingers don't move. He doesn't have to fight for me.
I want to say he's always been there, but that wouldn't be true, and I have never been a liar.
He was a runner. He ran to the army, and when his leg was blown off, I was a little relieved, because then he would stop running and we could start a family, but he ran off to med school and then finally stopped at my side when I got this stupid diagnosis.
How cruel is that?
And he kept working. We didn't need the money, so I guess I was blessed in that way. But he kept working and running. Even now, I can hear the stethoscope I got him for his birthday clinking on his shoulders.
"She's going to wake up," Jack says, his voice cracking. "She has to."
The machine breathes for me instead.
June 26th, 2020
I have a med student now.
Well, she's not mine, but she chooses my room to write her notes in. I can tell she has nice handwriting by the way her pen scratches the paper. I don't know her name, so I can only learn her by the way she breathes. She pauses outside my door every time, like there's a chance I'll wake up and tell her to leave me alone.
"I'm Samira," she says. "Good morning. Today's date is June 26th."
I like her already. She sounds tired and run-down. Jack is the same way. Ever since this horrible disease has started spreading and no one can stop it, he's been picking up more hours and texting me more apologies. Samira is younger, but moves with the same brokenness that Jack does. I want to ask what happened to her, what she lost to make her this way.
"I'm volunteering. They need people right now. There’s so many people, so much death, I can't keep up." I can hear shuffling. "I'm going to listen to your heart."
This continues, Samira telling me what she is going to do each time before she touches me.
June 27th, 2020
Samira is standing at my bedside when Jack comes in. I can recognize him by the faint smell of our laundry detergent. I swear that losing some of my senses had made others stronger.
"Hi," he says. I think he pushes her back and starts to assess me himself, his palm flat on my forehead.
"How long has she been on this ventilator?"
Jack's hand freezes over my eyes. "It doesn't matter," he snaps at her. "She's going to stay on it."
"Other people need it, more than this patient. Her neuro activity—"
"Go to a different room," he orders. There's a chair scraping, and then Jack's rough hands are on me. The student leaves.
He sighs, rubbing over my calves. "I should apologize, right? That's what you'd tell me to do."
Yes, I would.
"I'm sorry, she's some pesky med student. I'll go here, but I had a few spare minutes. Can you move your fingers, your eyelids, anything for me sweetheart?"
And I try and fail again.
June 28th, 2020
Jack got here first this time. I can tell he's in his covid gear. He's loud.
"Hi," he says to someone entering. My med student, I can tell by her familiar breathing.
If I could narrow my eyes, I would. Jack's voice is different, and it’s not because of the mask. He can charm an entire room without trying. He can walk into a party and leave with five new friends.
I wasn't like that. I was shyer, more reluctant to enter a relationship with the elusive and popular Jack Abbot, a man who had yet to be turned down; until there was me. And when I refused a date with him, he was hooked on me.
But with this girl— that's really what she was, a young thing that's more able than I am— he is softer, shyer.
"Hello sir," she says. She doesn't know his name yet. She'd mentioned that, how too many people made for too many names. "I can leave again, if you wish. I like to keep her company while I take notes."
Something changes in me. I don't think it's jealousy, I don't think it can be, but it's something strange. I know my husband. I know how he smiles when he is trying to hide something. I know how he squeezes his fingers when he is nervous.
Over my knees, under the guise of checking my reflexes, he squeezes his fingers against my skin.
"How is she today?" she asks.
"Stable." Jack's answer is quick.
"So… not improving?"
Samira is smart. She knows what he is doing, and she's caught onto it before he has grasped it. She doesn't push him this time. That's why I like her.
Later that day, Samira eats terrible hospital food with me. She's too busy to leave, but not busy enough to skip out on me.
July 1st, 2020
The hospital keeps changing around me. The pandemic is everywhere. Even cast into the dark, I know it. Robby checks me today. He's more aggressive than Jack is, which I almost prefer, a nice change of pace.
"Ventilator shortage," Robby grunts. "He won't let us take yours, not yet. And I'm not ready to let you go either. You've gotta pull off a miracle and get up."
"We can't keep her on it indefinitely." Dana, I think. I always liked her. She didn't take anyone's bullshit.
Robby doesn't respond.
I don't understand how a machine could belong to me. It belongs to the hospital. Someone needs it more. Someone with a better chance of surviving. That someone is not me, and the longer I keep it, the more people die.
These people, are the people who can go home. Who can walk free, who can be free.
Jack refuses to discuss it. "She's not a covid patient. It's not the same."
"I know, Abbot."
There's a shuffling, and I think they're hugging. Jack cries and cries. He's an ugly crier, all red and snotty and shaking, like a little boy instead of a man in his forties.
"She's my wife." He sounds broken, and I cannot scream. I cannot comfort him.
The machine breathes for me.
July 3rd, 2020
"Mohan."
Jack says her name carefully, like he's been practicing. He pronounces it wrong and she does not correct him. "Can you tell me what you think?"
It's silent for a moment.
"A—About the patient?"
"Yes."
Samira sits in the chair beside me. Jack takes the one on the other side.
"I think she's sick. Really sick. And as much as I like her, I don't think we should keep telling ourselves that she is going to wake up tomorrow. Does she have a medical directive? Someone to call?"
She doesn't know he's my husband?
"So you think," he says slowly, "that we need to prepare for the possibility that she won't last much longer?"
Samira reaches over me and grabs his hand. I know it's not romantic, but it makes me want to yell anyway. But I know him, and he must look as though he wants to break because he lets her fingers close around his without complaint.
I am suddenly, so grateful for this med student. Somebody can hold my husband while I cannot.
July 6th, 2020
In my dreams, I sit at our kitchen table while Jack makes us coffee. There's a baby in my lap. We could never conceive while I was healthy and it tears me apart.
I have to wonder, could this med student make him a father one day?
When I stop dreaming, I can feel his lips on my forehead, dry and thin and cracking. I am not there to remind him to apply chapstick.
The machine keeps breathing.
I measure time by Jack. He comes by twice a day. He tries to sleep in the chair next to me until someone indiscernible tells him he can't. His scruff is longer. I've always hated it.
He still tells me I'm having a good day, like a liar. He doesn't have to keep doing this, and he can't hear me.
July 7th, 2020
"I'm sorry," Jack whispers into my air. "I don't know how to do this without you."
July 8th, 2020
"Dr. Abbot."
The med student interrupts us. And she brought coffee, the real kind, not the burnt stuff the hospital provides in the breakrooms.
She pulls up a chair next to me. She doesn't ask him for permission to be there with me. I appreciate it. It breaks up his day. He worries about me, he works, and now he has this med student to talk to.
"I brought you one." I have to assume she's talking about her coffee. "I figured you'd want it."
"Do I not look well-rested?
He laughs. Light and quiet and real. A laugh that I can get out of him, but it's been a while since I've heard it.
They sit in silence for another twenty minutes.
July 9th, 2020
Samira is here again. So is Jack. It's becoming a pattern.
"You know, you don't have to be here," he says quietly. "Are you attached to this patient? You have to be careful with that."
"I just like her. She keeps fighting."
Jack goes quiet. I can hear his breathing, labored and shaky. His nose whistles. "Tell me about yourself," he asks.
It surprises me. He was so reserved, so guarded. I can tell he's smiling, just from his inflection.
"Where are you going to school? How are you handling this, mentally?"
"What about you?" She fires back. "She's your wife and you're still working. You're here or you're working. Is that healthy?"
It's good for him, to have someone that will call him out on his bullshit.
July 10th, 2020
Jack laughs around her now.
She's still volunteering but technically isn't assigned to this hospital anymore, but they'll take any help they can get.
I listen to them talk. I can't even fucking see but I can tell in his voice and guilt-ridden words alone that he looks at her the same way he used to look at me. And she looks at him like she is trying not to. This poor girl doesn't know that Jack is persistent. She doesn't know that once he cares about someone, he finds reasons to stay. She doesn't know that he's already finding reasons.
It's not an affair, not explicitly, but I should be angry, right?
I am tired, too tired to be angry.
I know him. I know he needs someone to make him laugh. Someone who makes him nervous. He needs someone to balance his idealism, someone as kind as he is.
I want that for him. I want him to live. He needs a reason to live, stronger than me, stronger than his will alone.
July 11th, 2020
They're both crying. Robby has told him that there's nothing left of me. I want him to believe it.
I think of the last real conversation we had. He was reading in bed, glasses perched over his nose. I was watching him.
"Do you ever think about what happens if one of us dies?"
He'd looked up. "Only when it's me first, honey."
"I'd want you to remarry, if that makes you happy." I'd blurted it out. He didn't say anything, only pulling me closer and kissing my head. I pulled at his face and kissed him properly. "Say you'll keep living."
He shakes his head, rolling over me, kissing me, trying to get me quiet again.
And I know what I have to do now.
I let go of everything. The first time Jack and I met, literally barreling into each other in the hallway and then getting forcibly paired together for a project in English class. Our first kiss over a shared banana split. Every stupid morning we wasted tangled up in each other. The arguments, the birthdays, the days, and the nights.
The ventilator keeps breathing. I am no longer there.
I can imagine, distantly, that Jack would grab me close to his chest. I would be cold. He will be devastated. And I will do that to him. Samira will swallow down the comments and place a hand on his shoulder.
He will survive. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But eventually, he will wake up and find someone beside him who makes him laugh, and he will feel guilty for it, and she will tell him not to. He will think he betrayed me. He will think that loving her means that he loves me less. But I am certain now, that my husband will survive. That is my last wish.
Finally, I am not breathing at all.