The Empty Jar(54)

“Starving,” she says, linking her fingers behind my neck and leaning in. I kiss her again, happy for anything that might still the tremble I feel beginning in my bottom lip. It’s getting harder and harder to bury this agony that I’m drowning in.

I swallow before I speak again, clearing the bulge of emotion currently tampering with my vocal cords. I don’t want my wife to be able to pick up on my dismay. I wouldn’t have a clue how to answer any questions she might have, and I certainly don’t want to cause her any additional stress.

So I hide it.

As I’ve made a point to do all this time.

For the sake of my beautiful Lena, I hide my own pain from her and try my best to act normal. I don’t want her to know that I’m dying in a different way, the kind of dying that will leave my body alive but the rest of me a pile of dead and broken pieces that have no way of healing.

“Let me make you some eggs,” I offer.

“Eggs sound wonderful.”

Reluctantly, I pull away and walk around the island to turn on the soft light over the stove. It will give me just enough of a glow to cook by.

“How was your day?” I ask nonchalantly as I take a skillet from the cabinet, get the eggs and butter from the fridge, and set about making my ailing mate some scrambled eggs.

Lena sighs heavily. “Better now that you’re here. I have a patient that I think might be in liver failure or, worse, have liver cancer. She…she…”

Her words fade into the shadows as Lena falls silent behind me. I turn to look at her, and she has taken six apples from the fruit bowl and is in the process of lining them up on the countertop.

“She what?” I prompt.

Lena jumps, turning vacant eyes toward me. “What?”

“You were telling me about a patient you think might have something going on with her liver.”

“Hang on. I just need to get these sorted. Give me a minute.” She directs her attention once more to the apples before her. She lines them up from left to right and then lines them up top to bottom, making sure that each apple is touching the ones on either side of it.

As I scramble her eggs, I keep an eye on Lena. She never offers to move or speak again, though. She just keeps straightening and restraightening those apples, lost once more to the world in which I don’t exist.

Lost to me.

The backs of my eyeballs sting as I recall something I read about the natural occurrences that transpire during the last weeks of life, as different organs begin to fail. The article, one I’d found on a hospice site, mentioned that patients often straighten odd things as their time on Earth comes to a close. It’s a subconscious effort to get the affairs of their life in order before they die.

Before death.

I have to turn away from Lena and squeeze my eyes shut against the surge of anguish that washes through me.

I’m going to lose her.

I’m going to lose my wife. My soul mate. My partner in crime. The very air I breathe. I’m going to lose her, and there is nothing I can do about it.

For as long as we’ve known her condition is terminal, on some level I’ve refused to think that there is really no hope for her, that there is really nothing that can be done. I believed that, because she’s young and healthy, her body would last longer, fight harder and they’d be able to find a way to make her better. I didn’t purposely mislead myself, but now I recognize that’s precisely what I’ve done—deceived myself.

Somehow, I managed to convince a part of my mind, of my heart of that inaccuracy, and now the reality of the situation—that my wife’s body is failing her, that she is now steadily making her way toward the end—stabs me in the stomach like the horns of a bull, a bull that has been taunted and is now hell-bent on destruction.

That bull of truth gores me.

Through and through.

I slide the skillet off the burner and take a step back, bracing my arms against the edge of the stove and letting my head drop down between them. I stand motionless for a handful of seconds trying to collect myself.

It takes everything I have in me to control the devastation that’s wrecking my heart. It takes every bit of my concentration, and even then, it’s another minute or so before I actually achieve an acceptable degree of equilibrium. Only when I’m once more composed enough to let Lena see my face do I turn toward her again.

Then I’m shaken again. To my core, I’m shaken. The sight of her…

Jesus H. Christ!

Lena is still lining up apples, still getting her life in order. And it still feels like she’s ripping my soul out of my chest rather than organizing our fruit.

“Eggs are on,” I say as brightly as I can, smiling when Lena’s eyes flip up to me. Her brow wrinkles as though she has no idea where she is or why I’m here with her.

“Eggs?”

“Yep. You didn’t get dinner. You need to eat.”

“Oh right, right. I’m starved,” she says again, as if the previous ten minutes hadn’t just elapsed.

I plate her eggs and walk them to the island on legs that feel like a newborn colt’s—shaky and uncertain. When I set the saucer down, it clanks and rattles. My hand is anything but steady.

I grab a fork from the drawer and hand it to her. Then, quietly, reverently, I stand in front of the love of my entire existence and watch her scoop eggs into her mouth and laugh at something I can’t hear.