Fisher's Light(14)







Chapter 5




Lucy

April 8, 2014 – 1:45 PM


“Fisher, please, don’t do this!” I beg through my tears as I stand in the doorway of our bedroom with my arms wrapped around my waist and watch him stalk around the room.

He yanks my clothes from the hangers in the closet and rips them out of the drawers of my dresser, shoving everything into the two open suitcases he has lying on top of the bed.

For two months he’s barely said more than a few words to me and now he’s done a complete one-eighty, saying more than I ever wanted to hear.

“We’re done. This is over. I’m packing your shit and you’re leaving!” he barks, grabbing my books and reading glasses off the nightstand and tossing them on top of the clothes.

I race across the room and grab onto his arm, determined to make him see reason, but he jerks out of my grasp and goes back to the closet, snatching up my shoes and piling them in his arms.

“Will you stop and just talk to me?” I yell, coming up behind him and reaching for the shoes in his hand.

He side-steps me, never even glancing in my direction.

“There’s nothing to talk about. It’s perfectly clear what’s going on here. Everything is f*cked up, don’t you get that? It’s ruined, all of it is ruined and you need to f*cking leave!” he yells as he slams the armful of shoes into the suitcase.

My body shakes with fear and the sobs that I’m trying so hard to contain. I’ve done everything I could. I’ve tried talking, I’ve tried ignoring things, I’ve tried reading books and speaking to other wives whose husbands have been deployed and nothing has worked. No suggestion was good enough and nothing I’ve done has broken through whatever walls Fisher has put up in his mind to keep me out. I made the mistake of casually suggesting over breakfast that maybe it was time for him to talk to a counselor and that’s when my world came to a screeching halt.

“It’s not ruined, Fisher, it’s just a little broken,” I whisper through my tears. “After all these years, after everything we’ve been through together, you can’t just shut me out. I only want to help you, I want to see you smile and laugh again, I want to make you happy.”

He laughs cynically, finally turning to face me. He crosses his arms over his chest and stares at me. The look in his eyes makes my skin crawl. I don’t recognize this man scowling at me with so much animosity and hatred.

“You can’t help me and honestly, I think it’s pretty pathetic that you keep trying. Jesus, you really need to get a life. You’ve spent how many years now, sitting on this shitty island just waiting around for me? All your life, just sitting here like a good little girl, waiting and waiting while life passed you by.”

My lip trembles with the tears I’m trying to hold back. I want to scream and argue with him, but a part of me knows that he’s right. I have just sat around here, waiting for Fisher. My life has been spent waiting for this man to come back to me. I know I should just walk away and give him time to calm down. He’s been drinking and I know on top of the nightmares and the memories that always haunt him, the alcohol is only making things worse. I should step back and let him decompress, but I can’t. I’ve never been able to walk away from him, and there’s no way I can do it now when he’s broken and hurting. Regardless of what he says, I know he needs me. He’s always told me I’m the only one who can take it all away when he’s at his lowest. He’s lower than low right now and I refuse to leave him, even though he’s doing everything in his power to make that happen.

“You don’t mean that,” I mumble, worrying at the hard look in his eyes that maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this time he really does mean all the nasty things he’s saying.

He laughs cruelly, dropping his arms to his sides and stalking across the room towards me. I back away from him, stopping only when I feel the bedroom wall behind me. I’m not afraid of Fisher, I could never be afraid of Fisher, but this isn’t Fisher right now. This is a stranger, a man intent on breaking my heart in the worst possible way.

“I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe and experienced things you couldn’t even imagine while you were rotting away on this Godforsaken island, wasting your time writing me all those f*cking letters, week after week. All those sad, pathetic letters about how you missed me, you needed me, you loved me.”

He laughs again and shakes his head like he pities me. I hate him for bringing up those letters. Years and years worth of letters that I never stopped writing and sending to him, even when the internet and email would have made things easier. I took the time to write him real letters so he could get a piece of home to touch and hold onto when he was so far away. Week after week, year after year, I poured my heart and soul into those letters. When I asked him why he never wrote me back, he told me that he didn’t have time, but that I shouldn’t stop writing them because they gave him the strength to do his job and come home to me.

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