She raised herself. Urine ran down her cheeks, onto her blouse, and into her jeans. Arms spread, faces twisted, together she and I ran out of the woods, screaming as though doused in gasoline, as though afire.
DO NOT DISTURB
My wife, the doctor, is not well. In the end she could be dead. It started suddenly, on a country weekend, a movie with friends, a pizza, and then pain. “I liked the part where he lunged at the woman with a knife,” Eric says.
“She deserved it,” Enid says.
“Excuse me,” my wife says, getting up from the table.
A few minutes later I find her doubled over on the sidewalk. “Something is ripping me from the inside out.”
“Should I get the check?” She looks at me like I am an idiot.
“My wife is not well,” I announce, returning to the table. “We have to go.”
“What do you mean—is she all right?”
Eric and Enid hurry out while I wait for the check. They drive us home. As I open the front door, my wife pushes past me and goes running for the bathroom. Eric, Enid, and I stand in the living room, waiting.
“Are you all right in there?” I call out.
“No,” she says.
“Maybe she should go to the hospital,” Enid says.
“Doctors don’t go to the hospital,” I say.
She lies on the bathroom floor, her cheek against the white tile. “I keep thinking it will pass.”
“Call us if you need us,” Eric and Enid say, leaving.
I tuck the bath mat under her head and sneak away. From the kitchen I call a doctor friend. I stand in the dark, whispering, “She’s just lying there on the floor, what do I do?”
“Don’t do anything,” the doctor says, half-insulted by the thought that there is something to do. “Observe her. Either it will go away, or something more will happen. You watch and you wait.”
Watch and wait. I am thinking about our relationship. We haven’t been getting along. The situation has become oxygenless and addictive, a suffocating annihilation, each staying to see how far it will go.
I sit on the edge of the tub, looking at her. “I’m worried.”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “And don’t just sit there staring.”
Earlier in the afternoon we were fighting, I don’t remember about what. I only know—I called her a bitch.
“I was a bitch before I met you and I’ll be a bitch long after you’re gone. Surprise me,” she said. “Tell me something new.”
I wanted to say, I’m leaving. I wanted to say, I know you think I never will and that’s why you treat me like you do. But I’m going. I wanted to get in the car, drive off, and call it a day.
The fight ended with the clock. She glanced at it. “It’s six-thirty, we’re meeting Eric and Enid at seven; put on a clean shirt.”
She is lying on the bathroom floor, the print of the bath mat making an impression on her cheek. “Are you comfortable?” I ask.
She looks surprised, as though she’s just realized she’s on the floor.
“Help me,” she says, struggling to get up.
Her lips are white and thin.
“Bring me a trash can, a plastic bag, a thermometer, some Tylenol, and a glass of water.”
“Are you going to throw up?”
“I want to be prepared,” she says.
We are always prepared. We have flare guns and fire extinguishers, walkie talkies, a rubber raft, a hundred batteries in assorted shapes and sizes, a thousand bucks in dollar bills, enough toilet paper and bottled water to get us through six months. When we travel we have smoke hoods in our carry-on bags, protein bars, water purification tablets, and a king-sized bag of M&Ms. We are ready and waiting.
She slips the digital thermometer under her tongue; the numbers move up the scale—each beep is a tenth of a degree.
“A hundred and one point four,” I announce.
“I have a fever?” she says in disbelief.
“I wish things between us weren’t so bad.”
“It’s not as bad as you think,” she says. “Expect less and you won’t be disappointed.”
We try to sleep; she is hot, she is cold, she is mumbling something about having “a surgical belly,” something about “guarding and rebound.” I don’t know if she’s talking about herself or the NBA.
“This is incredible.” She sits bolt upright and folds over again, writhing. “Something is struggling inside me. It’s like one of those alien movies, like I’m going to burst open and something’s going to spew out, like I’m erupting.” She pauses, takes a breath. “And then it stops. Who would ever have thought this would happen to me—and on a Saturday night?”