Face Of The Monster

19 - Sword

I'm at the hospital, only I'm not. I can't be. Everything feels slanted, condensed, bearing in on me like the teeth of a dangerous monster. I need to get out, but they won't let me. Who are they? I forget.

I hear strange, animal noises that could only be coming from me. Tears block my vision and my sinuses, leaving me to snuff and snort for air. My eyes sting with them, my cheeks feeling crusty as they dry.

The people set me down somewhere, still in the hospital, I suppose. The chair feels hard under my legs. Someone's hand is laid consolingly on my arm. I can't stand it. I feel myself getting up, reasoning with the people. I leave the room, feeling for the door.

When I reach the hallway, I collapse on the floor. Breath whooshes in and out of me like water in a river. I'm breathing, but I can't feel my heart beating. Am I really alive at all?

I take out my phone and begin scrolling through my contacts, looking for someone, anyone I can talk to. I scroll past my mother, my uncle, my brother, my work friends, even Phoebe. Through the haze of my own heartbreak, I remember that she has Chloe to take care of. If I call her, she will come to me.

Instead, I press Ryan's name and listen to the ringing before he picks up a second later.

"Hey, Emma," he says. His voice sounds happy. That's right, Devon came home this morning. "What can I do you for?" It takes him a second to hear my snotty, irrepressible sobs through the phone. "Oh, honey. What's the matter?"

Without thinking too hard about it, I spit in my hand, hard. A clump of mucus is there in my palm, barely solid and yellow and unlovely. I wipe it on the carpet and now that my throat is clear, I say, "I hate the world."

"Why? What's going on?"

I barely remember anymore. I blocked it all from my mind as soon as they told me. It was the only way to remain functional. "It's Ricky," I say. My voice sounds thick and high.

Ryan is quiet for a second. Then he says, "Is it the surgery? Did something go wrong?"

I spit again. It's disgusting, sickening to see myself reduced to such a brutish sport, but it's immensely satisfying to remove from me the very evidence of my torment. Again, I wipe it on the carpet, watching it web over the fibers. "Yes," I tell Ryan. "Something went very wrong."

"Oh, Emma," he says. "I'm so sorry. Is he . . . ? Did he survive?"

I feel new sobs bubbling up in my throat. "I wish he didn't," I hear myself saying. "This is worse. Worse than dying."

"Tell me what happened. I'm on my way to the hospital right now?"

I want to tell him he should stay home and enjoy his boyfriend before he too is snatched away. I want to tell him to turn around, to go back, that I don't need him. But I do need him. I feel a burst of relief at the thought of his strong, harmless arms around me. "Thank you," I say.

"No problem. Now, what's worse than death?"

"He had a stroke. Mid-surgery."

A moment of silence passes between us, he, grappling to understand my agony, I, reacquainting myself with the horror of it.

"Was it bad?" Ryan asks.

"Yes. Awful. Horrible. They don't know if he's gonna walk again or talk again or even," I feel my voice breaking, "or even smile again. Ryan, he's . . . I don't know! He's not a person, is he?"

Ryan ponders this while I dissolve back into tears. "We're going to talk about this once I reach you, alright, Babe? Sit tight, okay?"

"Okay."

"Are you in the waiting room?"

"Near it, yeah."

"See you in a minute, then. Love you."

I tell him that I love him too, and I do. Beneath his quickness, his sarcasm, there is a sweet, pure soul, the likes of which you rarely see. There's something wonderfully innocent about him; he doesn't hurt people. He can't bear to.

Not the way I can. I can hurt and hurt and hurt, I can gouge away at a wounded heart until it bleeds out. I look at my wet, dirty hands and feel absolutely despicable. Am I a good person? Am I?

There is a little seed of guilt lodged in the corner of my heart. I know it's there and I know it's ridiculous, yet, I can't seem to shake the thought: what if I caused this? What if my remorseless infidelity somehow came around in the circle of karma to set in motion the one thing that will hurt me more than anything else?

I thought Ricky was going to die in the surgery. I was prepared for him to die. I had already imagined myself approaching his casket in my black dress, eyes puffy, leaning down to kiss his cold, dry lips. I figured I would hide, grieve alone in my room for weeks, months, even, dirty dishes piling up on the window sill. I thought I wouldn't wash my hair for weeks on end. I thought my children, my family, my friends would stop entering the room, if only to escape the putrid scent of my misery.

But that won't happen now. It can't.

The door to the waiting room opens. I look up, hoping to find Ryan, but it's only a nurse. She looks down, asks if I am okay. I tell her I am. She's busy, so she leaves without further questions.

Ryan arrives several minutes later, but it feels like a decade. I let his long arms ingest me, his body heat warming the ice at my core. He sits down in the hall beside me, not minding the snotty tears being wiped on his shirt. "I'm glad you're here," I manage to say.

He pulls a tissue out of his pocket and wipes it under my nose like I am a child with allergies. "I was worried about you. Still am. Are you alright?"

"Do I look like I'm alright?"

He sighs. Tucks the tissue back in his pocket. "Honey, it's a stroke. He's not dead."

"He's as good as dead," I find myself saying. "Doctor says it's bad. Really bad. What if he never walks again? What if I'm stuck changing his diapers for the rest of my life?" The thought of it sends me into another fit of tears. If Phoebe was here, she would tilt her head at me and say that I am thinking selfishly.

But Phoebe isn't here. Ryan looks sympathetic. "Ricky's young," he says. "There's no reason to think he won't make a full recovery."

"I'm so scared."

"I know you are."