He was staring at the home medical encyclopedia I’d found on the shelf above the kitchen desk. Now he raised his eyes to mine and said thickly: “Did you look up our symptoms in there?”
“No, not yet…”
He reached again for the book, but another wave of pain drove him down into a sitting position, forehead against my knees.
“Can’t do it,” he said. “My eyes…”
The admission seemed to rob him of his last strength. Ray had always taken charge, always, in every situation.
A sharp spasm wrenched my stomach. When it eased, I put my hand on the back of his head and said: “I can.”
It was a huge volume, and for a moment I couldn’t focus on how to use it. Then I realized the first part was a reverse dictionary of symptoms; you looked yours up, and it referred you to the causes described in the second section. I started with the section on nausea and vomiting.
“This doesn’t help,” I muttered after scanning the entry. Vomiting…Characteristic of nearly all infectious diseases, none of which it was likely we’d both come down with…Wait, here was vomiting coupled with headache…
Ray grabbed onto my calves now, his fingers spasming along with his body. More cramps, worse than what I was experiencing. I gripped his shoulder reassuringly and read on.
Brain tumors, migraine headache, acute glaucoma…
Oh, God, this was no good! I felt the beginnings of panic, took a deep breath, and continued skimming the entry. It told me nothing.
Ray moaned, his face contorted.
I flipped to the front of the book, looking for a table of contents. An encyclopedia of symptoms-wouldn’t they expect that a user might be in pain, want answers in a hurry? Why wasn’t there…?
Severe pain in the abdomen, nausea, cramps, vomiting. Acute gastritis…Staphylococcus…Botulism…“I’ve narrowed it down. Hold on.”
“What…?”
A strong spasm stiffened me before I could focus clearly on the next page. The chills that followed were intense enough to make my teeth chatter.
“Melissa?”
“I’ll be all right in a minute. Are your eyes any better?”
“…A little.”
I fumbled the book toward him. “Look at page three fifty-two, darling. Three fifty-two…”
Ray
Darling. Had I heard that right? She hadn’t called me darling, dear, honey, any of the endearments in a long while, even on the rare occasions the past few years when we’d made love…
Another twinge of pain made me grit my teeth, focus on the open book. Page 352. Infected Food, Gastroenteritis. Usually due to eating food that is infected by salmonella bacteria.
Food poisoning. What fools we’d been, each imagining that the other had resorted to arsenic, strychnine, some damned thing. And all along…
“Salmonella,” I said. “But how did we get it? We haven’t eaten anywhere but here the past couple of days.”
“The kitchen! You remember how filthy it was when we arrived? I thought I cleaned everything thoroughly, but I must’ve missed something…That damn’ plastic cutting board. Bacteria breeds in plastic like that, and I diced the raw chicken on it for our pasta.”
Rarely fatal, the book said. But nevertheless a medical alert. Severe cases develop dehydration, kidney failure with urinary suppression, shock. Call physician immediately.
“Nine-eleven,” I said. “Can’t waste any more time.” I tried to push up onto my feet, but I seemed to have no strength in my arms or legs. The entire lower half of my body felt heavy, almost numb from the vomiting and cramping.
“You’re too weak.”
“No. I’ve got to make the call…”
“You ate more than I did,” Melissa said, “your case is more severe. I feel better now…I’ll do it.” She touched my face. “I’m the strong one right now, darling. Let me be the strong one for once.”
I looked up at her through the wetness and the pain. The same Melissa, the same woman I’d married and had children with and lived with for a quarter of a century. And yet she seemed different somehow. Or maybe I was seeing her differently. The little-girl-lost quality was gone; for the first time I saw strength in my wife. Hazily I wondered if it was something new, a courage born of this crisis, or if it had been there all along, hidden or suppressed or just not visible to me for what it was.
I clung to the chair, weak, and watched Melissa stand up, strong, and make her way toward the open doors. And a voice that didn’t sound like mine, that almost whimpered like a hurt child’s, called after her: “Hurry, baby, hurry…”
Ray had collapsed against the chair when I came back. “They’re sending a medevac helicopter,” I told him. “We’re going to be OK.” Then I sank down beside him, pulling an Afghan over both of us. He grasped my hand the way the children used to when I’d comfort them after bad nightmares.
A nightmare, that’s what today was.
“Melissa,” he said after a moment, “why did you think I poisoned you?”
“It isn’t important now.” We’d have to talk about it, of course, but later, when we were both stronger. I’d finally have to confront him about Jake. After that…
“No, please, I need to know.”
“…After Jake…died…”
“Jake? What does his death have to do with this?”
“I was there, Ray. I saw the two of you struggling in midair.”
His lips twisted and he let go of my hand. “The son of a bitch tried to kill me.”
“Jake, kill you? He was your friend. You meant a lot to him.”
“He was your lover.”
“No, my friend, too. All we ever did when we were alone together was talk about you and why our marriage was dying.”
A spasm overcame him, and he made a choking sound. When he recovered, he didn’t speak. I felt a coldness in him-anger, too, directed at me. And suddenly I understood.
“Oh, no!” I said. “You think Jake tried to kill you because of me. You think we conspired to get rid of you!”
His pain-dull eyes watched me for a moment. “You didn’t plan to kill me? And you weren’t sleeping with him?”
“I told you I wasn’t. I’ve slept with exactly two men other than you in my life…the last over five years ago. And even if I had been having an affair with Jake, I would never have plotted to hurt you.” The tears I’d been controlling started again.
Ray put a shaky hand to my cheek, tried to brush them away. “What’ve I been thinking? Accusing you over and over. And today…I thought you’d decided you couldn’t go on without Jake and were going to…Christ, what a hideous, twisted imagination I’ve got!”
“No more than mine. I thought you killed Jake and were faking your illness so I wouldn’t realize you’d poisoned me.”
He shook his head, grimacing. “You know, this would be funny if it wasn’t so…”
