Читать книгу The Cabin at the End of Herrick Road - Derek Wachter - Страница 9

Chapter 4

Ms. Charolette Jenkins

When the elevator reached the surgical recovery floor of the hospital, the doors squeaked open to a dimly lit, quiet third floor of the hospital, with a nurses’ station centrally located by the elevator and nurses all around the hallways of the floor. The nurses however weren’t communicating with one another and quietly going about their business. Christina stepped out of the elevator and looked for signs pointing her to room 309. Christina looked by the nurses’ station and found a placard that read rooms 301 to 315 were to her left, with an arrow pointing to her left. Christina took a left and walked down a long hallway, counting off the room numbers as she walked by until she reached room 309. Christina took a deep breath and slowly opened the door and walked into the room. The room was dark, the only light coming from the light of the hospital hallway. Christina slowly walked in, shutting the door behind her, and noticed two beds in the room. The first bed, closest to the bathroom and the hallway door, was empty. A sheet divider was pulled, separating both the beds in the middle of the room. Her husband, Matt, was on the other side of the divider. Christina could hear the sounds of a machine beeping, monitoring Matt’s heart rate by the side of his bed. Christina drew close to the divider, lifted her hand, and pulled the sheet to the side. Matt was there, lying in bed, asleep on his back. An oxygen machine was hooked to his face supplying a steady supply of oxygen. Christina walked up to the bed and walked around the side of the bed, closest to the window, and up toward Matt’s head of the bed. She bent over, caressed Matt’s face with her hand, and gave him a kiss on the forehead. Matt laid still, motionless and asleep from the effects of the anesthesia from the surgery. Christina stood up and began to start crying again when the room door opened, spilling hallway light into the room. A nurse came into the room a few moments later—an African American woman in her late fifties. She was short and pudgy, but she appeared to know her work very well and carried a smile on her face.

“Oh, hello. I’m sorry, I didn’t know there were any visitors here on the floor anymore. Visiting hours end in five minutes at 9:00 p.m. tonight, suga’,” said the nurse out loud.

“This is my husband, if it’s possible I would like to stay the night with him,” whispered Christina.

“We can’t have that, ma’am,” replied the nurse. “Visiting hour rules are very strict. Especially in the evenin’ hours.”

“Can you please just ask your supervisor? At least try. This has been an absolute day from hell. My husband is paralyzed, and I really just want to be here with him. He just got out of surgery a little while ago.”

The nurse took a step back and said, “All right, I will go ask the head nurse on NOC shift. Stay right here for now.”

The nurse turned and left the room for a moment. Christina set her purse down on the bed stand next to Matt’s bed. Then she leaned over and grabbed his hand and held onto it; with her other hand she stroked his hair back from his forehead, giving him a kiss on the forehead again. Christina was in fear of how life was going to be like now when Matt would eventually wake up. How was he going to respond to the news of being paralyzed from the waist down? What was she going to say to him? Does he already know? Christina had a thought come into her mind too; could she stay married to Matt now, or not? Would she be willing to sacrifice her life and her dreams of raising a family if Matt wasn’t able to have children now? The hard work involved of caring for someone who was paralyzed now—could she do it on her own? Without even the slightest hesitation in her mind she knew that she was going to stay married to Matt. She wasn’t going to leave him now. That’s not what a marriage is all about to Christina. Just when times get difficult, to run away? Never.

The room door opened, spilling light into the hospital room again, and the nurse came back into the room.

“Ma’am, I spoke with my head NOC on the third floor, and she gave permission for you to stay the night this evening. I’m going to grab you a couple blankets, and you can sleep here in this bed if you’d like,” said the nurse.

Christina smiled back and said, “Thank you so much for asking.”

The nurse smiled and turned around and walked out of the room, on her way to go get extra blankets for Christina. Even after taking a nap in the afternoon, Christina was exhausted. Her emotions drained her of energy. Seeing Matt asleep she couldn’t figure out what else she could do for him now other than be there for him when he woke up. Christina walked around the foot of her husband’s bed and toward the other bed on the other side of the curtain. Christina pulled the curtain back to keep an eye on Matt as he slept in the adjacent bed. The nurse returned to the room with extra blankets for her while she was sitting on the edge of her bed.

“Here you are. By the way, my name is Charolette. Charolette Jenkins,” said the nurse.

“Charolette. That’s a unique name, but I like it. I’m Christina Carter, Matt’s wife. Like I said before, I guess,” replied Christina.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. Is there anything more that I can do for you? I will be performing cares for your husband tonight; this side of the hall is mine for the night NOC shift.”

“All right, and no, I’m fine…thank you. I’m probably going to lay down and sleep soon.”

“That’s fine. Just let me know if you need anything more.”

The nurse turned to walk out of the room when she heard a faint voice behind her say “Wait a minute.”

The nurse turned back around. “Yes, suga’?”

“Can I ask you a question?” said Christina.

The nurse walked back into the room and sat down on the bed, next to Christina.

“Charolette, I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“My husband is going to be paralyzed from the waist down. How can we survive this? Our marriage. Our lives. This is so much so soon.”

“Why are you even questioning it, baby?” asked Charolette.

“I don’t know why. I’m scared. I guess I rely on him so much, and now that he’s vulnerable, I’m going to be the one that he relies on.”

“Well, let me ask you this then, suga’. How come you here?”

“What?”

“I said, how come you here right now then? Seems to me if you weren’t serious about your marriage or your relationship to this man, you’d be back home now and I wouldn’t have had to go ask my shift supervisor if y’all could have stayed the night or not. So how come you here right now then, if y’all really havin’ some doubts about your marriage?”

“Well, I guess it’s not having doubts, per say. Maybe it’s because I plan on spending the rest of my life with this man and I wasn’t expecting something like this to happen.”

“Suga’, marriage is filled with the unexpected all the time.” Charolette laughed and smiled. “That’s how my baby boy Montel was born twenty-three years ago, suga’.”

Christina cracked a smile and halfhearted chuckle.

“Suga’, my husband worked in a factory for nearly thirty years of his life. About ten years ago, he lost his hand in a freak accident that involved cutting two-by-fours with a ban saw in the shop he works at. Even something like losing a hand drastically changed our relationship, but you know what?”

“What?”

“It changed it for the better.”

“For the better?” asked Christina.

“Hmm. Losing his hand made him realize how important our relationship was and how important I was to him, and it made me realize how important he was to me too. You know what I mean. When you get that random phone call in the afternoon saying your husband’s been taken to the local hospital, it really pushed me to step up my game as a wife to him. To be there and support him any way I could. Baby, when you’re in a marriage, you rely on one another. Sometimes you get away from relying on one another as a team and focus on yourself and the things that you want—things like your careers, your friends—and you just expect your marriage to just be there when you get home. For your marriage to fall in place with your own personal wants and desires. And that’s when God does something to bring it all back into perspective. Even through the bad times, God has a reason for what he does. He had a reason for my husband losing his hand, and he has a reason for your husband bein’ paralyzed. Maybe this is an opportunity to reestablish your partnership with him as a team.”

“I guess I have been putting my career first sometimes. But I always come back home, I never go out partying with friends like I did back in school.”

“Just sometimes? Suga’, you don’t need to go out partyin’ with friends to lose track of what is important in your life. Obviously, your husband is, or else you wouldn’t have married the man. I want you to look at it this way. This is an opportunity for you and your husband to be just you two again. Strive toward a goal in your relationship that includes no one else but you as a couple and as a family. Work together, not apart.”

Christina smiled and gave the nurse a hug.

“You are gonna be okay, baby, just remember what I said and remember what is the most important thing in your life,” said the nurse.

“I will, thank you,” said Christina.

“If you need somethin’ else, just holla, suga’. I’ll be around”

“Actually, do you have toothbrush and toothpaste I can have for the night?”

Charolette smiled. “Yes, I do. I’ll be right back with it.”

Charolette left the room and walked out into the hospital hallway to get Christina a toothbrush and toothpaste. Christina wiped her face with her hands, stood up from the bed, and walked over to the sink. Turning the water faucet on, she tested the water coming from the faucet until it was warm to touch. She then took both hands and cupped them together. Bending over the sink, she splashed her face with warm water. She repeated splashing her face with water two more times when the nurse walked back into the room. Charolette handed Christina a package with a travel toothbrush and a small tube of travel toothpaste in it. Christina thanked Charolette as the nurse smiled, turned, and walked back out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Christina proceeded to brush her teeth. Once she finished, she dried her face with a small white hand towel next to the sink and walked back to the second bed in the room. She took the blankets that the nurse had brought her and spread them out on top of the bed. Kicking her shoes off, she laid down on the bed and rolled over to her side, facing Matt. The silhouette of Matt’s body lay in the bed by the window. The light of a full moon shining through the window in the room on Matt’s side was the only light in the room. Christina laid there in the darkness. She wondered what life would be like now that everything has changed. Could she do it? Could she be the wife of a paralyzed husband from the waist down? Yes. Yes, she could. Charolette’s words rang true in her mind that no matter how difficult things would get in their marriage, maybe this was something that was meant to happen to her. To them both. Maybe this is a wake-up call for Matt, for her, for their marriage. Christina watched her husband’s chest inflate and deflate with each breath he took from the oxygen mask in the moonlight. Slowly her eyes grew heavy watching Matt, until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer and fell asleep.

As soon as Christina shut her eyes, she opened them again. This time she woke to see her husband now sitting up in the bed with the head rest of the bed elevated up. He was looking out the window of the room at something outside. He sat silently in the bed, nostalgic really, as the moonlight exposed his bright blue eyes uncovered from his eyelids.

“Matt?” said Christina.

Matt slowly turned his head toward the extra bed in the bedroom.

“Chris?” replied Matt.

Christina leaned up on her arm. “Yes, Matt. I’m here,” replied Christina.

“I can’t feel my legs,” said Matt.

Christina’s heart began to pound in her chest. What was she to say now? Christina got out of the bed she was sleeping in and walked over to Matt’s bed.

“Why can’t I feel my legs?” asked Matt. “Where are we? I can’t even move them.”

Christina walked around the edge of the bed. She grabbed Matt’s hand and held it tight as she sat down next to him. “Matt, I need to tell you something that is serious. Right now, we’re in the hospital. You had a car accident yesterday on your lunch break. Do you remember that?”

“Yeah, but everything went dark after the car hit me. I thought I was dead. I looked over to my left while I was turning onto the street, I can’t even remember the name of it, but it’s the street I take to get back to work. But when I was turning, I looked over and saw a car had ran the red light. I heard a loud bang and then everything went dark. But then I woke up and here I am in this hospital bed at night, and I can’t feel my legs. I can’t move them.”

“Matt, they had to do an emergency surgery for you yesterday afternoon. You had a lot of internal bleeding that wasn’t stopping, and they had to go in and fix some problems. While they were in there, they noticed that the accident had damaged some nerves in your lower spine that—”

“That what?”

Christina took a deep breath and collected herself and said, “That paralyzed you from the waist down.”

“What?”

“The accident paralyzed you from the waist down, Matt.”

“No, that’s not right. Where’s the doctor?”

“The doctor isn’t here.”

“Where’s the doctor?” yelled Matt. “I am not paralyzed! I can walk! Do you hear me? I can walk!” Matt trailed off in tears as he tried to stand up and walk but simply could not find the capability to do so. Christina grabbed Matt around the shoulders and hugged him while Matt cried into her shoulder.

“It’s going to be okay, Matt,” said Christina.

Christina held Matt for what seemed like an eternity as he sobbed into her shoulder.

“Did the doctor say it was for life?” asked Matt through the tears.

“He did.”

“Great. Well, you’re married to a god damn vegetable now.”

“Matt, please don’t be like that. It’s really is going to be okay. I’m not going anywhere. We’re going to get through this. Together.”

“I don’t know why, Chris. If I am paralyzed for life, then how are we going to raise a family together someday like you wanted?”

“Matt, we can adopt.”

“How can I be a dad? How can I teach my kid or kids to play sports? What if we have a daughter? How will I take her to father-daughter dances?”

“You’re thinking too much about this right now, Matt. Let’s just take this one day at a time.”

“Am I thinking too much into it?”

“Look, Matt, this is difficult for me too!” said Christina. “Honestly, I don’t know how things will change, but all I know is that I still love you and nothing is going to change that. You are my husband from the day we got married to the end of my life. Regardless of what all happens in between.”

Matt sat motionless in his bed, wiping tears from his eyes and face with his hands. Matt was confused and still emotionally upset.

“I love you, Chris.”

“I love you too, Matt.”

There was an awkward silence that followed. Another thought had run through Christina’s mind, and she couldn’t believe what she was thinking about.

“Matt, I’m going to go get a bottle of water from the hallway vending machine. Do you want me to get the nurse for anything? Do you want a water?”

Matt sat in silence in the dark. “No, I’m fine. I just need to sit here and think for a minute.”

Christina let go of Matt’s hand, gave him a kiss, and walked out of the room—her mind in deep thought. She walked toward the nurses’ station where the elevator was. Around the corner of the room was a small hole in the wall where a soda vending machine and a snack machine was. Christina put two dollars into the machine and purchased a bottle of water. The machine spit out the bottle, and Christina opened it and took a drink. Her mind was now working on overdrive. She couldn’t believe what she was about to say to Matt. She couldn’t believe what she was about to recommend. All she knew was that she wanted to make Matt happy and support him any way that she could, and this was the best way that she could do it.

Maybe Matt was right all along.

Christina put the cap back on the bottle of water and walked back down the hall back to room 309. When she got there, she opened the door and walked in and saw Matt sitting on the edge of the bed still staring out the window, the silhouette of his body outlined by the light of the moon pouring through the window. His back to the door in the room. Christina walked in and around the corner of Matt’s bed.

“Chris, it was nearly impossible to even sit on the edge of the bed like this. I had to move the head of the bed up and almost lean my body over in order to even sit up like this,” said Matt.

“Would you like some water?” asked Christina.

“Yeah.” Matt took the bottle and took a drink of water from it.

“The bottled water tastes a hell lot better than the hospital water from the sink. I swear to god I think they pump water into this hospital from Capital Lake.”

Christina smiled. “Yeah, it does, huh? Matt, I was thinking about something.”

“What is that?”

“Matt, I want you to know that I’m fully committed to you, and I want to show you that I still am fully committed to you for life.”

“Okay.”

“I think we should find that cabin in the mountains.”

“What?”

“The cabin you want, up in the mountains. Let’s go for it. I will help take care of you.”

“Are you serious? We can’t do that now, Chris. How in the hell am I supposed to get around in the mountains with two legs that don’t work?”

“We’ll make it work together.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know how right now. But I don’t think we’re supposed to know how it will work. I think it’s up to us to go for it, make it work, and enjoy life.”

“What about our jobs?”

“We’ll live off the grid. I’m an accountant too. I can find work individually. I’m licensed with the state. I don’t need an agency to work in. And didn’t you talk about wanting to try and be a writer?”

“I talked about that over six years ago, and I’m pretty sure I was hammered on jack and coke when I said that.”

“Well, you can give that a try. Like you said, we can hook up solar panels for power and that’s all that we need. Just us.”

“I don’t know anymore, Chris. I mean, this is going to be really hard now.”

“So is life, Matt. But I know as long as we stick together, there’s nothing that we can’t do. So why not go for it?”

Matt sat in silence, gave it some thought, staring out the window of the hospital room. Chris stared out the window, watching the car lights drive by on State Avenue. City lights were flickering out the window and the waterway called the Budd Inlet was barely visible in the night. Both Matt and Christina sat in silence for a moment. There were sounds of humming lights from electricity from the parking lot lights and the sounds of nurses walking up and down the hallway of the hospital at night, their shadows casting dark silhouettes under the crack of the room door. There were beeping noises from the machines in the hospital.

“All right. Let’s do it,” Matt said.

Matt put his arm around the shoulder of Christina. Christina wrapped her arms around his torso. The two embraced in a kiss, then turned and stared out the hospital window together and watched the hectic city life passing them by at midnight.

It was this night that both of their lives would change forever.