The sounds of subdued beeps and very small motors that worked the hospital equipment echoed in my ears as I held the warm small hand of the woman that had given me the strength to get out of bed each day since I graduated high school. Typically distinctive hospital smells pervaded the air as I gripped her fragile fingers, as tightly as I dared, not wanting her to go.
I hadn't slept for three days and nights, not since the accident.
She was unconscious now, too exhausted to even try to stay awake. I knew she wasn't in pain, as morphine was pumped into her at the maximum rate that she could take and still live.
The doctors told me that it wouldn't take long, but it was up to her and God now. They had done everything they could.
Knowing that she was about to pass, caused me to re-live the last conversation I had with her.
~~~
"Are you in pain?"
"Yes, but my pain is for you. Honey, please, there are thousands of women that will give you what I can't. Don't sell yourself short. I don't want to leave you without an offspring."
"Please, dear. I need you to pull through. I don't want to live without you. You're the woman that has made it possible to get over my childhood."
She shook her head saying, "No, it is your good nature that made that possible. You never let it control your decisions. And all I had to do was love you. And you made that so easy for me to do."
I couldn't ever imagine myself with another woman, but I appeased her by saying, "Honey, I will do as you asked. But if you pull through, we can still adopt."
Reassured by my promise that I would move on, as she wanted, my wife shut her eyes, and I knew it was for the last time.
~~~
The hospital equipment made the only sounds in the room for the next few hours.
They let me stay with her in the intensive care unit, even though the rules stated that two hours had to elapse between each ten-minute visit. The nurses had noticed that all I did was stay beside her, holding her hand, and providing her comfort with my touch. They had also noticed that when I was there, she didn't thrash around nearly as much and generally slept soundly.
So, I was allowed to stay. And I did. For hours. Never letting go of her hand.
I didn't drink anything, though they offered. But I didn't want to need to use the bathroom. I didn't eat either, as I would have had to go to the cafeteria. And that would have taken precious seconds away from the only woman I had ever loved.
All the while I held her hand, I could feel her very weak pulse throbbing, letting me know she was still with us. But I could tell that it was getting progressively weaker.
Finally, I laid my head against her arm and drifted off into a nightmarish slumber.
~~~
I woke with an alarm going off in the room and could no longer feel her pulse. Panicked, I sat up and let go of her hand, seemingly for the first time in days. It was then that I saw the heart monitor had nothing but a straight line across it.
"Code Blue in ICU. Code Blue in ICU," sounded over the pager. Nurses rushed into the room telling me that I had to leave. But I knew they weren't going to do anything. Anything at all. Cheryl had made me sign a 'Do not resuscitate order,' not wanting to be kept alive with machines.
I went to the ICU waiting room where several other people sat. People who were in a similar situation to me. I had met some of them before beginning my lengthy vigil in Cheryl's room and, as I finally emerged, they all looked at me with compassion.
"Was that Cheryl?" asked a woman who had obviously overheard the Code Blue page.
I nodded 'yes' and several people stood to provide assistance. But no one was able to catch me, as I fell straight to the floor, landing face down.
~~~
It has now been eighteen months since I felt my wife's life slip through my fingers. I went through the stages of grief. Or so I thought. Denial, Bargaining, Depression, and then finally, Acceptance.
But I forgot about. Anger, Rage, Fury. Call it what you will, they are just other names for the same thing.
I wasn't allowed to be angry growing up. Every time I was, my stepdad would beat it out of me. It was his approach to almost everything.
"You just try it ... and I will beat it right out of you", he would say. People thought he was joking. But trust me, he wasn't.
After the grieving process, I went back to work. I didn't really have to work at all, since the two-million-dollar payout from Cheryl's life insurance policy (that she insisted we have), and the $850,000 settlement from the trucking company whose driver had killed her, was more than enough to sustain me. But I needed to do something. Even if it was just work. So, I threw myself into my job, working at least seventy hours a week.
CHAPTER TWO:
Hailee Black drove up to her house after work. She was a little early. Normally she would get off work at five, but due to a pipe that had burst in the building she worked in, the 'powers that be' sent everyone home.
She smiled when she saw Sadie's car in the driveway. Hailee had always loved her older sister. They had been really close throughout their lives, even though Sadie made better grades and went on to college. Sadie earned her degree, found a good job and had made a promising start to her life. Meanwhile, Hailee had started life by a different path,
Hailee's husband, Allen Black, was almost four years older than she was. He had graduated college with financial support from his wife, who not only worked hard to keep her husband in college, but also managed to save enough money for the medical expenses that were coming with the birth of their first child.
She had lucked into a great job at Middendorf's, one of the nicer restaurants in the country, where she made good tips, and was able to support both her and her husband quite well, while Allen continued his college education.
But only a few weeks after Allen graduated college, disaster struck. On her way to work Hailee's car was struck by a truck when the driver negligently changed lanes, nearly pushing her off the Manchac Bridge. The driver didn't stop, but was caught sometime later, at a D O T inspection station in Mississippi.
It had been almost a year since the disaster, and she had only recently been able to get back to being herself, coming out of the depression caused by losing her child.
Today, when the pipes broke, everyone went home to their families. Knowing Allen was off that day, Hailee had hopes that they might be able to recapture some of the intimacy that had been missing since the accident and resulting miscarriage.
Though she was glad to see her sister's car in the driveway, Hailee started to think of how she could get her to leave, hoping to spend some quality time with Allen on the sofa and then in the bedroom.
Hailee parked on the curb, making sure not to block her sister's car from leaving. She locked her own car then went on into the house. She could hear music playing and guessed that her sister had the stereo blaring as always. It annoyed Hailee that her sister would treat the house as if she owned it, despite making none of the payments. Hailee had paid off her house with part of the settlement from the trucking company, but she still had other expenses like insurance and utilities.
Hailee made her way upstairs to the marital bedroom, to take a shower and change into some more comfortable clothes, when she heard voices coming from the room.
Trying to brighten her smile to greet her sister, and possibly her husband, Hailee walked into the bedroom and saw the two most important people in her life in the bed together, naked as the day they were born. Her sister was on top of her husband riding him cowgirl style. Allen's hands where groping Sadie's breasts as she ground down on him to the blaring music, trying to get each other off.
It took only a second for Hailee's temper to flare. She picked up a medium size lead crystal candy dish full of small polished decorative stones, then hurled it across the room with all her might. The dish crashed into the wall above their heads terrifying both the occupants. They turned in horror to face the woman at the door.
Hailee screamed incoherently and then growled at the shocked couple for a moment before she realized that she had to get out of the house IMMEDIATELY, or someone would get seriously hurt. So, she ran out of the house and back to her car.
After driving around in a daze, Hailee found herself at her mother's house. In her state of shock, Hailee tried to convey what she had just witnessed, hoping for some compassion and comfort. If she thought that her mother would be on her side, then Hailee was very much mistaken. With a cold heart, her mother told Hailee that she only had herself to blame, that she'd never had an actual marriage, working all the time and ignoring her husband and family responsibilities.
Hailee was in shock, but held back the tears, as her cold and callous mother degraded her and all her efforts helping her husband to get through college. With nowhere else to go, Hailee had to just sit at the kitchen table and take her mother's abuse.
After a time, her sister showed up. Hailee was still in shock, devastated by not only what had happened, but also the fact that her very own mother didn't seem to care, when Sadie made the situation even worse by announcing that Allen was going to file for divorce the following day. Then she twisted the knife further by proudly stating that she and Allen were going to be married as soon as the divorce was final.
With a last twist of the knife, and showing that she had completely lost the plot, she then asked Hailee if she would be maid of honor at the wedding!
That was the last straw. Hailee slapped Sadie across the cheek just as hard as she could. It was the first time that they had ever fought violently. Their stunned mother immediately ordered Hailee out of the house and concentrated all her attention on treating the reddening handprint on Sadie's cheek.
Hailee left the house and, not knowing what else to do, she decided to wait a while before returning to her home, so she checked into a motel for the night.
After a fitful night of sleep, she returned home the next day to find the house as empty as her marriage had been and as lonely as her heart felt. She went into her room and packed a suitcase with clothes from her bedroom closet and dresser.
She thought about writing a note to her husband but decided that the cheating bastard didn't deserve any more of her time.
Hailee left the house without looking back. She stopped by the bank and withdrew a good part of her savings, but not nearly all of it, as it was too large of an amount to carry around. She knew that her settlement was safe from her husband as she had taken a friend's advice and kept it in a separate account that no one else knew about.
She had further protected the funds by never revealing to Allen just how much she had received in the settlement with the trucking company. He believed that, after paying off their home, she had very little left, as she didn't buy a new car, or any other extravagance.
