The Empty Jar(53)

“Elevated ammonia levels,” she mutters before tucking the nonexistent papers against her chest and resuming her walk down the hall.

I trail her into the kitchen where Lena pulls out a stool at the island and sits on the edge like I’ve seen her do at work so many times. It seems a habit that many medical personnel adopt—to perch right on the edge of those black vinyl stools that can be found in every emergency room in the country. The ones that roll. Maybe it’s so they can get up quickly. Or maybe it’s because the stools themselves aren’t very stable. I don’t know the why of it; I only know I’ve seen many of them do it.

Lena sets her unseen papers on the granite in front of her and flips through the pages again. She examines them for a couple of minutes, flipping back and forth as though she’s looking for something specific. Finally, she reaches out into space and grabs at the air. She grasps with her fingers, appearing to take something from several invisible slots and adding them to her pile. I assume she’s compiling the orders she said she was going after, probably getting them from the tower of black cubbies I’ve seen stacked on one corner of her desk, the kind that keep stacks of papers organized.

She has no idea that she’s in our kitchen or that I’m standing behind her. She’s present in a world that only she can see and hear and touch.

A lump forms in my throat. It feels roughly the size of my first car, an old Buick that had a rusted fender and mismatched tires. I swallow several times, but it doesn’t lessen the ball of grief lodged there. It’s painful to watch, seeing my wife in such a weakened, fragile state, but watch her I will.

I won’t leave her. Not now. Not ever.

So I lean against the wall in the kitchen and keep an eye on my Lena as she fills out papers that only exist in her imagination. She works diligently on them for five or six minutes, writing with a pen only she can feel, before she picks up a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter and holds it to her ear as if it were a phone.

“I need you to put in orders for the patient in room six. Ultrasound of the liver, a liver function panel, and I’d like a repeat CBC done as well. I think it might be a good idea to get a PT/INR, too. As soon as possible, please. Thank you.”

Before she hangs up the banana phone, she holds it out and stares at it. She laughs softly and lays it aside, but makes no comment. I wonder if she finally realized that it isn’t a phone at all.

Lena resumes her “work,” stacking her papers over and over and over before laying them neatly on the counter and folding her hands over them. I wait to see what she will do, but she seems content to just sit where she is, in the dark, in the quiet, lost in another world. Eventually, she begins to murmur, to work out the details of her patient’s case in the muddled halls of her mind.

“Right upper quadrant pain, loss of appetite, increased fatigue, confusion” she ticks off as though she’s putting puzzle pieces into place. “I bet it’s the liver.”

I know little about medicine, but between spending nearly half of my life living with a nurse and attending numerous appointments with Lena over the past months, I’ve picked up enough to know what some of this means. She’s treating someone with some sort of liver dysfunction, and I can’t help wondering if her own fears, fears of how the cancer has progressed in her liver, are playing out in her mind. Is it possible that some part of her is cataloging her symptoms and working out her own condition?

Suddenly, Lena’s murmuring ceases. When she remains quiet for several minutes, I give up my position against the wall and speak softly as I cross to her. “Hey, babe. Wha’cha doin’?”

Lena turns toward me, a breathtaking smile spreading across her face. It makes me pause. I feel like I’ve been hit with a gale-force gust of wind. It rocks me all the way down to the bottom of my soul, that smile. I’ve seen it hundreds of times throughout our years together. It’s the smile I fell in love with, the smile that says she’s happy to see me, the smile that says she’s happy period.

It’s the smile I haven’t seen in a while.

Since the diagnosis, all she’s been able to do is pretend at perfect happiness, but it’s just that—pretend. I can see it now, plain as day, when I compare this smile to the ones I’ve seen since she was declared terminal. She’s done her best to hide her heartache from me, but I know.

And down deep, she’s withering.

“What a nice surprise!” she exclaims, tilting her face up to mine for a kiss. I oblige her. Gladly.

These days, I feel like I can’t touch her enough, can’t get close enough, can’t stay close enough. Like if I blink, I’ll open my eyes and she’ll be gone, having disappeared without a trace. I’m afraid of missing something. Anything.

This is all we have left.

I brush the back of my index finger down her satiny cheek as I think of something to say. I’m momentarily dumbstruck. Her beauty, her goodness, a goodness that shines through the pores of her porcelain skin, is staggering. It always has been. I’ve often wondered throughout the years how I got so lucky.

Now I know.

I’m only going to get to keep her for half of my life, not nearly long enough. The price of loving her is that I will lose her. That I will love her forever, even after she’s gone and I remain.

“You hungry?” I ask.

I don’t know what else to say that might play into whatever is going on inside her head. I’ve always heard it isn’t wise to orient someone to the present if they are somewhere else mentally. I have no idea if that applies to Lena, but I’m not willing to risk it, so I just go along with her delusion.