Melvin insisted she spend every night here with him. “Hell no!” he bellowed when she assured him he’d be fine if she went home and got a good night’s sleep. “You know how hospitals are. You’ve heard the stories. I could tumble out of this bed or need to take a dump, and it might be an hour before one of those sassy aides quit screwing some intern in the linen closet and came to see about me.”
In reality, an aide or a staff nurse—Marilyn was never sure which—kept popping in and out all night like a clock cuckoo, checking Melvin’s vitals or giving him a sleeping pill. Besides, he was hooked up to several monitors, and if any one of them came loose, it would set off an alarm at the nurses’ station.
At least he hadn’t insisted she snuggle up with him in that narrow hospital bed. When they first moved him from the ICU, an orderly wheeled in a dusty pink vinyl recliner for Marilyn. Once she figured out how to wrestle it down, the thing flattened out at night, sort of, but the gray sheet blanket did little to ward off the hospital chill. A nurse finally brought a tiny, papery-wrapped pillow that first night. After an entire week, Marilyn was exhausted and didn’t think she’d ever be deep-down warm in her bones again.
The dimly lit first-floor lobby was empty and quiet when she padded past a sleepy-looking young man at the front desk. He smiled but said nothing as she headed for the automatic doors. In the parking lot across the street, she heard robins chirping loudly in the bordering trees. She smiled, amused at their exuberance, then reached into her car and grasped the blue-and-white plastic shopping bag holding her cuticle cream.
An hour later, their next-door neighbor, Annie, poked her head and then her entire self into Melvin’s room. She was an ample person, to say the least—twice Marilyn’s size, yet always strikingly attractive with a short, perky hairdo, flamboyant jewelry, and flowing, eclectic clothing that looked vintage but wasn’t. She tossed her green vinyl, knee-length coat over the tray table at the end of Melvin’s bed and stood there studying him with a slight frown.
He was snoring but only in a low rumble, probably because of all the meds. At home, he snored full blast—so loud that Marilyn sometimes slipped out of bed to go sleep by herself in the upstairs guest room. If Melvin rolled over and discovered she was gone, he’d climb out of bed, trek halfway up the stairs, and shout for her to come back down. He seemed to consider it an insult to his manhood if she slept upstairs. “Just pinch my nose if I start up again.” He’d heard that suggestion on Dr. Phil, but of course, it didn’t help. Nothing did, and he refused to try a CPAP.
“Is this new?” Marilyn whispered, grasping the sleeve of the beautiful tunic Annie had on with black harem pants and silver wedge sandals. The tunic resembled a crazy quilt with bright, randomly shaped patches of emerald green, ruby red, and deep purple silk connected by gold feather-stitch embroidery.
Annie nodded and whispered back, “Don’t you just love it? I found it in an art gallery gift shop in Atlanta last weekend.” Then she asked, “How bad is the paralysis?”
Marilyn motioned towards the door. They stepped into the hallway, and she explained that it was only Melvin’s left side that couldn’t move. How much use he regained would depend on several things, including how he responded to rehab. “Uh-oh,” said Annie, “We can both guess how that will go.”
Melvin following directions from an overly cheerful young therapist was impossible to picture. He’d never really grown up beyond that headstrong “terrible threes” stage. Marilyn knew a number of men, husbands of friends, who were like that a little bit; but Melvin was totally like that. Years ago, when she delivered Melvin, Jr. after two miscarriages, he’d mellowed some at the wonder of having a son. But now, after everything, he’d completely reverted.
Annie didn’t stay long. She had to get to her PR job at the power company. Back in the room, she glanced at Melvin, engulfed Marilyn in a hug, and whispered close to her ear, “You hang in there, dear friend. Don’t let this caregiver role drain the life out of you.”
Marilyn smiled and stepped back.
“And by the way,” Annie added as she pulled on her coat, “you just shattered a myth of mine.”
Marilyn set her Styrofoam cup of bitter coffee on the nightstand. “What myth is that?”
“Oh, just that birds never do their business on expensive cars.”
“Oh no!”
“Oh yes! Your little white Mercedes has disgusting, purply blotches all over it!” Before leaving, Annie offered to get the car washed on Saturday, and Marilyn said she might take her up on that.
The afternoon before, after driving home long enough to check the mail and grab a quick shower, Marilyn had parked her car under a huge old chinaberry tree that stood next to the lot across from the hospital. She was thinking shade, not the possibility of robins nibbling fermented berries and depositing the inevitable results on her clean car.
After Annie left, Marilyn took a sip of her coffee, finding it still bitter and now cold. Melvin continued to sleep. He looked quite harmless, handsome even. Snow-white hair still thick and wavy. An aide had given him a shave the day before.
A week ago that now felt like a year ago, he’d woken her in the middle of the night, mumbling about a headache so bad he couldn’t stand to touch his forehead. When she opened her eyes and switched on the bedside lamp, she could tell immediately that something was seriously wrong. He wasn’t exactly slurring his words, but they were strung together oddly, and half his face was weird, like a reflection in one of those funhouse mirrors at the county fair.
“Qu-quit staring at me and do sumpum!” Melvin moaned. She fumbled for her cell and punched 911. Then she eased out of bed and hurried to turn on the porch light and unlock the front door. An odd calm washed over her as she slipped her arms into the sleeves of her old blue velour robe and pulled it tightly around her.
Now, with Melvin sleeping peacefully in his hospital bed, she tiptoed into the tiny bathroom, dumped the cold coffee down the drain, and tossed the cup into the pink wastebasket under the sink. She glanced at the mirror and concluded she looked as bad as she felt, especially her eyes, which were puffy, and her frizzing, brown/gray hair that had lost its shine. She turned and stared out the tiny window next to the shower. The sun was still shining, but clouds were moving in over downtown.
They’d been together since high school, back when Melvin’s boisterous behavior and salty language intrigued her, as did his thick, dark hair and broad football shoulders. Marilyn still loved Melvin, and she felt that, in his way, he still loved her, in spite of everything. She’d seen numerous articles about the high divorce rate among grieving parents, but she’d never considered leaving Melvin after their son, their only child, died in a fiery crash the week before he was to start freshman classes at Auburn. Melvin’s crude behavior got worse and worse after that, but she’d always felt that leaving him would be unfair.
Still, from time to time, it did cross her mind that if Melvin passed on before she did, maybe she’d have a different sort of life for a few years. Nothing elaborate like that widow in her water aerobics class who took up with a yacht-owning, retired state politician and sailed off with him to the Mediterranean. But maybe she’d rent herself a stilt house out on Dauphin Island for a month or two, or a real log cabin up near Gatlinburg. Maybe she’d take a trip to New York City, or at least go visit art galleries in Atlanta and buy flamboyant tunics like Annie’s.
Melvin had always been crude, but lately, he’d started taking great pleasure in shocking people by talking publicly about his farts or using those words George Carlin once joked about not being legal on TV. She couldn’t call him on any of his behavior because he’d just act worse the next time anyone was around. She’d half joked to Annie a few weeks ago that she could dress Melvin up but she couldn’t take him anywhere anymore. She never knew what he’d say, or to whom. Just a few weeks ago, when they were celebrating her mother’s birthday, he started telling off-color jokes at the top of his lungs in the middle of Collier’s restaurant. She’d cringed at the withering glances from other diners, a number of whose frowning faces were familiar, and at the kitchen staff taking turns peeking into the dining room and giggling. Her mother, who’d never had much use for Melvin, looked mortified but didn’t say a word.
“Hey! Marilyn! Where a hell are ya? This orange juice is warm, and the goddamn ice bucket’s empty.” Melvin’s usual self was suddenly awake and growling. She hurried out of the bathroom and grabbed the ice bucket, hardly glancing at him. As she padded up the hall, past the mustachioed little man busily buffing the floor, an uninvited prayer of sorts popped into her mind. “Lord, just go ahead and take him. You know he’s not going to listen to any therapist, and he’s probably going to be even more miserable and outrageous than ever without the use of his left side.”
It was a fleeting thought that hardly registered as she carried the full ice bucket back to the room, but when she tugged open the heavy hospital door, there was Melvin, sprawled on the floor in his gray hospital gown except for one foot still hooked somehow up on the bed. She froze, then gradually became aware of a loud beeping noise and a flashing red light on the wall above the bed. A nurse she hadn’t seen before rushed past her. Marilyn gently lowered Melvin’s foot to the floor and knelt to smooth his hospital gown. She sensed, even before she saw the look of pity on the nurse’s face, that he was gone.
“Can’t you do something?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
The nurse shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “His chart says ‘Do not resuscitate.’ You did know, didn’t you?” Did she? She couldn’t remember right then.
“I’m sorry,” the nurse said again, then turned and left Marilyn standing in the middle of the room. She knelt once more on the cold tile floor and pressed her cheek to Melvin’s. “Oh, honey,” she muttered. She couldn’t think what else to say. He’d be in a better place now—at least she hoped he would—maybe even reunited with Melvin, Jr., though she wasn’t at all sure what she believed about that.
As she grabbed the metal rail on the side of the bed and began to pull herself up, she wondered if the hospital staff would think it odd that she wasn’t sobbing or screaming. She just stood there, staring down at Melvin. His eyes were closed, and she was thankful he couldn’t stare back. Then she remembered that little prayer that had been in her head as she carried the ice bucket, and a feeling of guilt swept through her. Had she actually formed those words in her mind? Lord, just go ahead and take him. She’d never been sure what she believed about answered prayer, but surely this wasn’t it.
Half an hour later, she’d barely moved when two orderlies arrived, lifted Melvin onto a gurney, and covered him with a white sheet. It occurred to Marilyn that this was probably the last time she’d see Melvin unless she didn’t have him cremated, which she now remembered they’d both agreed on a few months earlier when they redid their wills and that hospital directive about no resuscitation. “When I go,” Melvin said that evening, “I’ll get to see my boy again. I don’t believe God is gonna send anyone, even me, to hell.”
“Could you leave us alone for just another minute or two?” she asked.
The two men in white nodded and stepped into the hallway.
Marilyn pulled the sheet back gently to Melvin’s waist and grasped both his hands in both of hers while she whispered apologies over and over—for that unwitting prayer and for all her thoughts about Dauphin Island and Gatlinburg and New York City. Then she positioned his hands together on his chest, smoothed back his hair, and kissed him on the forehead. It was the best she could think to do, and she hoped it was enough.
She left the sheet folded back, reached for the small bag with the cuticle cream on the windowsill, slipped it into her handbag, and went to open the door. Motioning the two men back in, she walked numbly to the nurses’ station and said she needed to leave for a few minutes. “I’ll be right back.”
“Is there someone we can call for you?”
Marilyn shook her head and turned to the bank of elevators, feeling deep in her bones that she needed some fresh air at least for a few minutes. On the way down to the lobby, as she again massaged her neck with both hands, she remembered Annie’s awful description of purply blotches all over her car. She guessed she’d take Annie up on that offer to get it washed on Saturday. It would need to be clean.
When she reached the sidewalk, the sky was a mix of weakening sunshine and scudding clouds. There might have been a rumble of distant thunder, and she stood for a moment just breathing and listening. Then she stepped across to the parking lot. It wouldn’t rain for a while yet, and even then, it probably wouldn’t be enough. Her mind made up, she climbed into her car and headed up the street to the Suds ‘n Scrub Auto Spa. It would do her good, she thought, to deal with that bird mess now before she dealt with anything else.
This little giftbook has become a timeless classic. Like a visual meditation, with few words and soft watercolors, these pages offer caring and comfort to all who travel the journey of grief. Available from Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite independent bookseller.
Born in Ohio, Ruth Beaumont Cook has lived in Alabama since 1970. She is the author of three books of narrative (nonfiction) history as well as numerous articles on history and the arts for regional and national publications. Currently, her interest has turned to short fiction.
Jenny Thornburg reports that she has been eco-printing for 3 years; it incorporates her life-long interest in plants with design and craftsmanship. It involves printing directly from plants, and, therefore is "part science,” she writes, and "part MAGIC!” Eco-printing is a complex process that takes two days, first a day preparing the fabric with a mordant, then printing the next day.