Not that she was dead. She was comatose, had been so for the past nine months, but she was still alive, and the doctor said there was a slim chance she could come out of it one of these times.
Although the possibility of that occurring grew slighter every day.
She had been hit on a Friday afternoon while walking home from work, a drunk driver ignoring a stop sign and not seeing her as she crossed a corner. He'd plowed into her from behind, and she had bounced over the hood before cracking her head on the asphalt, the blood staining one of the white crosswalk lines so badly that it had to be painted over.
She was lucky she hadn't died.
Ironically, after the trial, after the man had been sentenced to fifteen years without the possibility of parole, Mel had turned to drink himself, and though he made sure he never drove drunk, he had often been intoxicated while visiting his wife in the hospital.
He wondered if she knew that.
Lately, he had switched from whisky to wine, and while this should have been an improvement, should have sharply reduced his intake of alcohol, for some reason he'd also begun drinking more. A lot more. He now found himself drinking wine not only after work and after dinner, but during dinner, for lunch, and, even more recently, for breakfast. He just couldn't seem to get enough of the stuff.
- This morning he'd even poured a dash of it into his pancake batter.
He had thought about that all day. Part of his mind rationalized this latest act, told himself that it was no different than the cooking sherry Julia Child seemed to pour over everything, but another part of him warned that this was not ordinary behavior. This was obsessive behavior, addictive behavior.
But he felt no compunction to stop.
Amazingly enough, none of this had affected his performance at work, although even if it had, he was pretty well insulated from possible repercussions. He had less than a year to go until retirement, and the review and dismissal process would take at least that long--if it even got off the ground, which was a long shot for someone with his seniority and his well-publicized problems.
At home, Mel took a shower, combed his hair, and put on his suit. He drove to the hospital, waved to the doctors and nurses in his wife's wing, and went into her room.
Her status was unchanged. As always, he felt a second's flash of disappointment He'd known she would be unmoving, in exactly the same position on the bed, with exactly the same expression on her face, but part of him always hoped that there would be some response as he opened the door, that she would be sitting up groggily as he entered and ask where she was and what had happened, that she would be waiting for him with open arms.
She was lying prone, however, tubes and sensors in place, machines and oxygen tanks flanking her bed.
He patted his coat pocket. This past week he had taken to bringing a bottle with him to visit Barbara, a flask. He knew it was pathetic, the act of a pitiful, desperate man, but he needed the support. The nurses and doctors had objected when they'd found out, warning him about hospital regulations, but their protestations were perfunctory. They knew how much he cared about Barbara, they could see the toll this was taking on him, and they understood, even if they did not condone.
He was under a lot of pressure.
His hand found the flask and he pulled it out. He made sure no one was in the hallway outside the door and quickly downed the entire contents.
He sat down on his chair next to the bed and closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the wine do its work. When he opened his eyes again, Barbara looked changed. The hospital surroundings and medical paraphernalia now seemed extraneous, fake, and she appeared to him to be merely sleeping.
'Barbara?' he called softly.
She did not answer.
He swallowed back the tears he could feel approaching. She was not merely sleeping. She was in a coma. A deep coma. And she might never come out of it.
'Barbara?' he said again. He touched her cheek, felt warmth there but no life. He looked at the wall, tried to think of what he would have for dinner, tried to think of the assignments he had to complete at work tomorrow, tried to think of anything that would keep the tears at bay.
He wished he'd brought another bottle.
A lone tear escaped from underneath his eyelid and rolled halfway down his craggy cheek before he wiped it away. He sat there, unmoving. A
moment later, the mood passed.
Grateful, he held Barbara's hand and, as always, told her of his day. He described to her the minutiae which made up his life and shared with her the thoughts and feelings he would have shared had she been at home with him and cooking dinner. His mind filled in what would have been her responses, and it was almost like having a real conversation.
He stroked her hand as he talked. He continued stroking her hand even after he had run out of things to say.
He thought of all the times that hand had stroked him.
He smiled. They had not done it all that much the last few years. They'd still loved each other, perhaps more than they ever had, but the sex thing seemed to have died down for both of them. They'd done it only infrequently in the past decade, and even then it had not always worked.
But he'd discovered recently how much he missed that part of their relationship. In bed alone, he remembered their early years together, when they had done it almost every night--and when she had continued to please him even when it was her time of the month.
He'd masturbated a lot lately.
He held Barbara's hand and looked at her face. Her slightly parted lips looked wet, full. Inviting.
He closed his eyes. What was he thinking? What the hell was wrong with him? He let go of her hand. It was the wine. He'd had too much of it today. It was starting to get to him.
He opened his eyes, looked again at Barbara's moist lips, and felt a stirring in his groin.
He stood up and, as if underwater, walked across the room and closed the door. He turned back toward the bed. The tubes were in her nostrils, he thought. She would still be able to breathe.
And of course she would want him to be happy.
No. This was crazy.
He stood for a moment next to the bed, staring at her familiar face. He could feel his erection growing. He was hard, painfully so.
He pulled down his pants, crawled on top of her.
He heard the door to the room open behind him. He heard the nurse's gasp. 'Mr., Scott!' she yelled.
But his penis was already in her mouth, and he was thrusting.
Penelope was standing alone in the main hallway of the school. Only the school was empty, abandoned, the bare floor covered with the dust of age. It was night, and only a thin sliver of moonlight shone through the boarded windows, but it was enough to-show Dion that Penelope was naked.
And that she was robbing herself.
As he watched from the shadows, there came a growing, insistent flapping, like the sound of birds taking off or a helicopter landing.
The sound grew, intensified, and from the blackness behind Penelope he saw a shifting shape emerge, descending downward through the color spectrum, growing lighter, grayer, white, a huge fluttering, whirlingly ill- defined creature that he identified to his horror as a monstrous swan. Even in the dark he could see pliant lips on an orange, ungiving bill, calculating human eyes within the tangle of feathers above. As if on cue, Penelope stopped fingering herself and dropped to her hands and knees, waiting on all fours.
Behind her, Dion could see the swan's massive penis.
Penelope arched her back, baring her buttocks for the swan, which mounted her from behind. She screamed once, loudly, a horrible cry of agonized pain, and then the feathers were flying, the swan disintegrating in a rain of white which floated down on Penelope as a baby gruesomely pushed its way out of her exposed forehead, the skin below her hairline ripping, breaking open in a wash of blood that rolled cleanly off the emerging infant.
The baby smiled at him, pulling the remainder of its body from Penelope's head as she fell onto her side.
