Deal Breakers

Sometimes it's better to break promises

Stan curled in what passed for a recliner in the hospital room. He found a comfortable position with his feet on the edge of the window sill. Push too hard and he pushed away from the wall, his feet dropping to the floor. His sketch pad lay across his lap. He started on a scene without much thought but the horizontal lines became a meadow and the meadow became a neighbor’s field from his childhood. Adding in the round hay bales in the distance he tried to summon more details from memory.

The rhythmic electronic beep of Amy’s heart monitor and the whooshing of the ventilator had drifted to the background. He scarcely noticed them anymore. He could not block out the nurses’ conversations in the hall or especially those that came in and out every few hours. He had long since surrendered any hopes of sleeping. Propped up in the windowsill, his feet would fall asleep and he would stand and pace in what little space he around the bed, the visitors’ chairs, the “Christmas tree” holding the monitoring equipment, the ventilator and Amy’s bed. Once he could feel his feet again, Stan resumed drawing.

An image of Amy appeared. He could see the apparition from his periphery. She stood in front of him, hands on hips, in the oversized sweatshirt she found so comfortable old jeans and no makeup.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this”. Her voice so sharp he winced, imagining being poked with a screwdriver.

“I know”. He didn’t look up at her, but instead focused on drawing the old barn. There was an antique tractor in that barn. He wondered what happened to it. It probably ended up in either a junkyard or had the metal scrapped out. Too bad. That old tractor would probably be worth something today.

“Stan, you promised”. She had gone from jabbing to pleading.

“I did”. There was an old moonshine still in that barn. He tried to recall exactly what it looked like.

“Stan”.

The heart monitor kept up its steady clock-like beat. If the conversation were real, he knew her heart would be pounding like a dog on a racetrack. When she was mad at him, she wanted him to be mad back. He knew how much more it irked her for him to appear unscathed by her wrath.

“Stan, how long are you going to keep me here like this?”

“As long as it takes”.

The apparition sat on the edge of the bed. She leaned forward, forearms on knees. She jutted her chin slightly and blew, forcing unruly bangs away from her face. “We had a deal, remember. I said no machines. No artificial life support”. Her voice was soothing and had a pleading quality.

“We also had a deal you would fight this to the end. When you took those pills, you broke your end of the bargain. Now why should I keep mine?” It was the first time he looked up at the apparition. It was pure Amy.

She wore heavy sweatshirts mostly because she was self-conscious of her weight. Regular shirts clung too close around her bosom and she didn’t like the way they made her look. He long auburn hair bounced as she moved and when she huffed at him in annoyance, he could smell the cinnamon Tic Tacs on her breath.

“It’s always so black and white with you, isn’t it”. That wasn’t a question.

“I just expect people to keep their word. That’s all. Remember your dad’s contractor friend. When he kept stalling, I hired someone else”.

“Oh, don’t bring that up again”.

“It’s just the way I am”.

“You have your share of broken promises too”.

“I never said I didn’t. But, what’s that thing you say? ‘Actions have consequences’”.

“Stan, I need you to understand, I just couldn’t do it anymore. The end was coming and I needed to take control. This�"this is exactly what I didn’t want to put you through”.

“But, you robbed me”.  For the first time, his face contorted, hot grief rising like molten metal. He fought back for his composure, but now he was pleading. “You robbed me of my time with you. I knew what was ahead. I had my eyes wide open”.

He looked the imaginary Amy in the eye and his breath escaped in a choppy rhythm.  “I had time to prepare. To ease into the idea of you being gone. But this is like a kick in the stomach”.

Amy looked at the monitor that connected to her lifeless body. For the first time thinking about the beeping heart monitor.

“I don’t have long,” she said.

“I’ve made arrangements with your grandma to have your body taken to the old cemetery”.

“No”. She was angry and there was no hiding it. “You know I want my ashes scattered over the lake”.

“You broke your end of the bargain, so you don’t get to have things your way”.

“Stanley”.

Their conversation was cut off by the heart monitor. Instead of the rhythmic beep, it let out an uninterrupted shrill cry. The apparition turned her head, toward the sound, surprised it came this quick. A woman’s frantic voice came over the intercom. “Code blue, room 602. Code blue, room 602”. The room had a thin odor of chlorine and disease again.

A squad of white coats and scrubs charged into the room with a crash cart. One of the nurses said, “Mr. Johnson, you have to leave�"now”.  Stan was struck at how unapologetic she was in her demand. Someone herded him out of the room into the hallway. But, he could hear the doctor ordering adrenaline and he heard someone call out “Clear”.  Amy’s body jumped and contorted like the girl in the Exorcist movie. The doctors and nurses stopped CPR and wheeled her bed out of the room, past Stanley and down the hall.

Deflated, he dropped into one of the chairs outside the room. He dry-scrubbed his face, took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed.

“Yeah, they just took her. I don’t think she’s gonna make it much longer”.

*  *  *

The next morning, a freshly showered Stan came into his wife’s hospital room carrying coffee in a tall Styrofoam cup. Amy lay with the hospital bed nearly upright. Her heart monitor beeped stronger, her blood pressure was normal. A plastic tube ran over her upper lip with two small “teats” feeding oxygen to her nostrils.

Amy was awake. She blinked reflexively as Stan leaned over and kissed her forehead.

“They said you had me on life support for almost a week,” she said.  She sounded like she had sand in her throat.

“Yeah,” Stan said.

“We had a deal, remember. I didn’t want any life support”.

“Yeah,  about that. . .”

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Creepy Swine Guy]

This is STUNNING. You know people so well. It is obvious reading this that you watch people, pay attention and listen to them. This REALLY wants to keep going. I have VERY little to suggest here. Perhaps a missing comma and I might extract one occurrence of the word "had" otherwise, this is just superb. I can write story a little, but I hope one day to be able to write people like you.