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.
“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?”