The Last Exhale Part 17

BRANDON.

Mr. Carter?" I turn my attention to the doctor tending to Rene. "Your wife has developed pneumonia. Her immune system is weak and being out in the rain wasn't the best idea in her condition."

"Exactly how bad is her condition?"

He looks over the chart in his hands, closes it shut. "She's pretty sick. She's more p.r.o.ne to catching infections, and when she gets them, it hits hard. We'll move her to ICU, pump her with fluids, keep her warm. Treat the infection as best we can. We'll keep an eye on her, but there's not much else we can do at this stage of her cancer."

"At this stage?"

He shifts in his stance, raises an eyebrow. Questions my questions as if I should know the answers. "I'm sure her oncologist can explain further." He quickly walks away before I can demand any more answers.

Wednesday, Rene and I were fighting in a rainstorm over the death of our son and our marriage. Here it is Friday, and she's fighting for her life. It's frustrating because there's nothing I can do. Still so much I don't even understand. Still so much she won't tell me.

My hand throbs from thinking about how much life has changed within the past couple of weeks. Reminds me how I sent it crashing through a window because life got very complicated. Nothing in life is promised. What's the point of marriage, saying vows that no one remembers after the ceremony? Just words spoken for the sake of being spoken. I swear, at the rate we're going, the world will soon have more people getting divorced than there are death certificates being issued.

Sydney crosses my mind. Feels inappropriate to think about her at a time like this. I wonder what's going on in her home since we last saw each other. I'm sure her husband knows about us now. Another set of vows gone down in flames to add to statistics.

While the nurses prepare to move Rene to an area reserved for those teetering the lines of life and death, I step outside for fresh air. The moon is so bright I almost forget it's close to midnight. Such a clear sky. With all the stars out, you'd think the Universe was happy. I want to take a gun and shoot all the stars out of the sky like a game of Duck Hunt.

I pull the card out of my pocket the ER doctor gave me. Hospice. He wants me to call a place where people give up hope for miracles. My son died without a choice. No way I'm going to choose to give my wife to the afterlife.

I rip the card into a hundred pieces, tossing it into the trash on my way back inside to stand by my wife's side.

"Take me home," Rene whispers when I make it back to her bed.

I hold her hand, rub my warm thumb back and forth against her cold skin.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

She looks up at me with water framing her bulging eyes. "Please, Brandon. I don't want to be here."

"There's nothing else we can do at this stage of her cancer." The doctor's words come back to mind. I look at Rene's frail body lying under a pound of blankets. She didn't want to come here in the first place. My ego made me send her nurse home. Thought I could love her back to health. She didn't need another man for that. Then her dry coughs became b.l.o.o.d.y. That's when things got scary. Fear left me no other option than to bring her here. I wasn't prepared for that, nor am I prepared for this.

"Get my phone," Rene instructs. "Look for William's number. Tell him I said to meet us at the house."

My voice cracks when he answers.

The house is empty. Everything that made this house a home is gone. "I can't believe somebody else will be living in here in less than a week," I say to no one in particular.

Rene slowly climbs the stairs, holding onto the rail with one hand and her nurse, William, with the other. They don't need me. Rene doesn't need me.

When William comes back down the stairs, I say, "Hey man, I-"

He interrupts my apology speech with a nod. "It's all part of the job," he says, letting bygones be bygones. "She wants you upstairs."

I push open the door to our bedroom. No furniture, no Rene. Same thing in the guestrooms. The only other room on this floor is the room our son had-which we never went in after he pa.s.sed. I open the door to find my wife lying in his twin-sized bed. "Rene?"

She lifts the cover, invites me under his sheets with her.

I slide my shoes off and join her. Instead of lying in front of her, I slip in behind and wrap my arms around her, holding her with all my might.

"Can you feel him?" she asks.

I can. His presence is so overwhelming I can't even form my lips to tell her so.

"Every night, long after you'd gone to sleep, I'd come in here and just lay."

I don't know how to take that, so I say nothing. I just let her talk.

"For the longest, I could still smell him." A light chuckle makes her thin body shake against mine. "Remember how he loved to puff out half the container of baby powder and smear it on his chest?"

I smile in the darkness. "I remember."

"You started it when he was just a baby. It always got a giggle out of him."

"I wonder if he'd still do it now."

For a while, neither of us can muster up any more words. We lay and hold each other in the memory of our son in his bed.

A tender knock at the door breaks our silence. William walks in, asks Rene, "How are you feeling?"

"I'm still breathing."

"Not for long if you don't keep this in." He lifts a tube from the pillow, placing it around her head and up her nostrils. He checks her temp and pulse. Holds a cup of water with a straw in it up to her mouth. "Take these. They'll help you sleep better."

Before heading out of the room, he asks if I need anything.

I want to ask if he has something to help me sleep better. "I'm good," I say instead.

My wife rubs her hand back and forth against mine. "I'm glad you're here."

I take my hand from hers, turn her face toward mine. It's hard to look at her frailness so close, but I tell her what my heart has been feeling since the day we met. "There's no place I'd rather be."

A tear rolls from her eye and saturates her hairline. Then another. And another.

I kiss her tears. Kiss her eyes. Kiss her lips. I love this woman.

In between kisses and tears, I feel her voice. "I never should've pushed you away."

"Why did you?" I whisper back.

"Because I didn't want this."

I didn't want this either.

Rene says, "You remember a few years back, when I had a little meltdown after we made love?"

How could I forget? That was the night everything changed between us. "Yeah."

"I had found out that day about the cancer."

It all makes sense now.

"After Reggie left us, life didn't make sense anymore. Didn't seem like anything would last. Had watched my grandmother struggle with her cancer; my aunt, too. Then burying Mama and Daddy. I lost hope."

I kiss her shoulder. "Wish you had talked to me about it, told me something. Shutting down confused me."

"I know," she says, then lays her head on my chest, buries herself in my embrace.

I hold her and pray time stands still.

31.

BRANDON.

A cool draft pulls me out of the warmth of my dreams. My chest feels light. "Rene?"

No response.

I call out again.

It takes my eyes a little longer than normal to adjust to the darkness. Once they do, I see my wife balled up in the corner of our son's closet, trembling. I pull the covers off the bed, wrap them around her. "What are you doing in there?"

In her eyes is so much fear, so much regret. "I killed him. I killed Reggie."

"What did William give you?" I reach for the door to call the nurse up here.

Rene grabs my hand, stops me. "I fed him bad milk." She touches her chest. "From here."

Nothing's making sense. I want to pick her up from the floor and shake sense into her lips.

She stands up, holds my hands in hers. "I'm not crazy." She leads me over to the bed. We sit together. She picks up Reggie's favorite bear from the floor. Its nose is worn from years of Eskimo kisses. She rubs her finger across the spot where the nose should be before rubbing her own nose back and forth against it.

I touch her hand, touch the bear. Feel memories travel through my fingertips.

"About a week after we brought him home from the hospital, I couldn't get him to stop crying. I gave him a bottle, rocked him, walked him all through the house. Nothing would calm him down. My b.r.e.a.s.t.s began tingling, so I thought maybe I should try to breastfeed him. He latched on immediately. It hurt me at first, but since it calmed him down, I let him continue sucking. The same thing happened the next night. The more he did it, the more we both seemed to look forward to it. It seemed to be what both of us needed. We bonded." Her cheeks spread and she gives Bear another nose kiss.

"When he was around six months, we were having another bonding session. He had his hand on my breast. I put my hand on top of his, then gave him a kiss on his forehead. That made him stop sucking to give me a quick smile, then he went back to business. I held his hand in mine for a minute, rubbing his soft skin with the pad of my thumb. I put his hand back on my breast and watched him drift to sleep. That was when I felt it. The lump. I slowly slid my nipple from his mouth and patted him over my shoulder until I heard a burp. I lay him in his crib and practically ran to the hall bathroom. I touched my breast again to see if I had really felt a lump. It was still there. The next night, I fed him from my breast again. What kind of mother does that?"

"Rene, look at me. You didn't kill him, if that's what you're trying to say."

"But I had a lump in my breast and every night I fed my child from it like it was normal. I didn't even get it checked out."

A mixture of emotions flood through my veins. Anger being the main one. "How could you not go to the doctor, Rene?"

"I was scared."

"Well, why didn't you tell me?"

"I was scared."

Her fear didn't change the outcome, didn't change the lump in her breast. I tell her just that. "And we're still here."

"You're right, we still are."

32.

SYDNEY.

The truth is Eric broke my heart a long time ago. Long before I had even thought about walking away from our marriage. It was months after we began dating seriously. We'd already had s.e.x. Had already met both sides of the family. We were moving in the direction where a future together is undeniable. The first time I'd said those infamous three words, we had just finished a late night run. Adrenaline was pumping, pheromones were riding the night's sky. In the middle of stretching, the words slipped out. I'd actually felt good saying them. It felt right. He didn't say anything back. He was bent over in a deep hamstring stretch. When he looked up and our eyes connected, I searched his face for any indication that he heard me. He blinked, asked if I was ready to head home. Outside of the radio, the car was in complete silence. He didn't say anything about me putting my feelings out there. Didn't say he felt the same way back. I knew he heard me.

Almost a year later, he finally said those three words back. It was well past the other side of midnight when a call from him woke me out of a crazy dream. Though p.i.s.sed at the late call, I was relieved to be back to reality. His voice was just as breathy as mine, sounded desperate. I quickly gave him my full attention. He needed me to come to the hospital. He'd been shot. Twice. His shoulder blade and gun hand. He was on his way home after pulling a double shift when he was almost hit by a car speeding through a red light. It was late at night with barely any traffic, made it obvious a maniac was on the road. Eric flipped his patrol car around and hightailed after Speedracer. The car pulled over almost immediately after seeing flashing blue lights in his rearview. Eric didn't call it in, didn't run the plates. Just got out his car and marched up to a tinted-out window. When the driver refused to roll down his window, Eric gripped his gun a little tighter. The driver swung open his door, fired at Eric's hand on his gun and ran to the front of the car, fired another shot before running off into the night. He didn't want to kill Eric, he just didn't want Eric to kill him. The shooter was a bipolar ex-cop off his meds. Was having a manic episode. Thought the Force was after him and needed to protect his sanity, not realizing he'd already crossed the line of insanity. He'd made a bad decision, thinking he could handle his mental illness on his own.

Being shot made Eric realize that when it all boiled down to it, I was the only one he knew would be there. He'd called me in the midnight hour to be by his side before going into surgery. He needed me. He wanted me there. It took close to two years and two bullets for him to utter the words, "I love you." He changed my life in a moment of desperation. Another moment when my presence in his life was convenient for him. He couldn't say it back when I said it, couldn't say it at any other time. Had to clear his conscience before going into surgery, after his life flashed before his eyes.

It's times like that that force you to make an honest confession to yourself. I had spent the bulk of my relationship with Eric trying to prove to him that I was worthy of his attention, his love, his future. I was competing with myself, the me I would be if he decided someone else was worth his time instead of me. I was competing with his options by making sure I was his only option, the only one he'd want to be with. I wanted him to forget about the woman before me. If giving him what was between my legs was the key, I was going to give him the best s.e.x he'd ever had. I cooked him some of his best meals. I bought him the best gifts. Whenever he wanted me around, I was there. I tried to sell myself to his family, knowing good and well I'd never win over his mother. But I tried. Sometimes it felt like his heart was just as cold toward me as his mother's. Still, I decided I was going to put my best offer on the table, hoping one day he'd sign on the dotted line. I, too, acted out of desperation when I looked in the mirror and saw the possibility of my life resembling the same lonely life as my mother's.