Page 27 of The Cabin
If you just want to float away, he says. I’m sure I’d know what it is, but my eyes are too blurry with tears to read, and it doesn’t matter. He won’t take it.
Not yet, anyway.I read to him, now.Tess shows up. Adrian does his dead-level best to get me to go out with her, just for an hour, just to breathe. Begs me, pleads, tries ordering, demanding.
I won’t.
I can’t.
I fucking can’t.
So Tess brings a spread of food from our favorite restaurants in town. And every day after that, every single day, Tess brings us food. Carryout Chinese, Thai, Indian, Mexican, homemade casseroles and pots of Spaghetti bolognese and lasagna and platters of hot grilled PB&J and boats of tomato soup with triangles of grilled cheese.
One day, she brings over a bag of marijuana and a pipe, and we get Adrian stoned out of his head. Where she got it, hell if I know, but it helps him in some ways more than even the narcotics. So she keeps bringing it.
I’ve stopped drinking almost entirely. I want to be lucid, to remember.
The pain is too much to bear, and I know no amount of alcohol will help.
I smoke with him sometimes, but mostly just so he doesn’t feel alone in it. “I hate partying alone,” he says, with a tired smile.
Tess, god, what would I do without her? Adrian falls asleep around three in the morning most days, and when I let it slip to her, she starts sneaking in at 3 a.m. every fucking day with a bottle of Josh and her iPad Pro and a big bag of Skinny Pop, and she makes me sit outside with her on our back deck covered in a huge, thick blanket she got on Etsy, and we drink wine from the bottle and watch mindless comedy and action flicks and cheesy romances. So much for not drinking, right? But it’s the only way I manage to find space to breathe.
Every other moment of my day is consumed with…It.
We don’t use the word. We don’t talk about death.
Tess never asks how I am. She’s just there.We’re a few days shy of three months from when he told me.
He’s been in bed more often than not, and I just sit with him and we keep the TV on, or I read to him until I start to lose my voice.
We’re halfway through Casablanca.
Play it, Sam. Play it like you did for her.
Adrian turns it off, and his head swivels slowly, heavily over to me. “Nadia.”
I swallow hard. “Yeah, baby?”
“I need you to help me move to the guest room.”
“What? Why?” I sit up. “This is our bed.”
He closes his eyes. Even that seems hard for him. “I’m not going to die in our bed. I won’t do that to you.”
“Adrian, goddammit. No. I’m not, I won’t. This is our bed.”
“Nadia—”
“No. Not a fucking chance.”
“I will not haunt this room for you. This bed. I won’t do that.”
I blink, but the tears win. “Adrian, you big dork. You’re going to anyway. You think you’re just…written into my life on this bed? You’re in everything. Every room in this house, Adrian.”
“We have christened just about every horizontal surface there is, and quite a few of the vertical ones, too.” He smirks, and for a second he’s the old Adrian, wry and provocative, and horny all—the—damn—time.
I laugh through the tears. “Exactly. You being in the guest bed isn’t going to make a difference.”
“Yes, it will.”
“You promised me we’d do this my way. This is my way. Here. Together. Our room, our bed.”
He grimaces, and after a few minutes, whatever it is, it passes.
He squeezes my hand, and that’s all there is to say.I’m glossing over the details of taking care of him, especially as he gets too sick to do certain things for himself. Or loses control over things. He wants to hire a hospice nurse, but I tell him I’m professionally insulted by the suggestion. I’m a nurse, dammit. It’s what I do.
No, he’s not my patient, he’s my husband.
I’m going to take care of him my damn self. No matter what it requires.The last days are slow.
An hour passes like taffy being stretched out.
Sometimes it begins to feel like I’ve always been here, like this, with him. Sitting in our room, on the bed next to him, holding his slack, cool, dry hand. Pretending to read a book and really just listening to him breathe.
It’s slow, his breathing. Rattling.
I call the doctor, and he comes, and his face confirms it.
There’s no one to call, no one to tell.
When we first met, in college, we bonded over the fact that both of our parents died young, and we were only children. The Lonely Club, we jokingly called it. Orphan humor—you wouldn’t get it, unless you get it.
