Shattered Perfection (26 page)

I approach Vance’s bedside across from Miriam.  He looks…awful.  His frame is practically skeletal, his cheeks so sunken in, his eyes look too large for his face.  Their once blue gleam are now dull in color, and his skin tone is sallow and pale.  His lips are dry and cracked, nothing at all like the soft, supple, plush skin I used to marvel at.  None of this matters as I take his other hand in mine and look him directly in the eyes.  “I’m here, baby.”

He gets the softest look on his face as he looks back at me.  We share a long moment, just gazing at each other and I feel our connection blaze to life.  Everyone else falls away and it is just the two of us in our protective bubble once again.  I squeeze his hand gently, not wanting to hurt him.  He looks away from me to his mom and Justin.  His voice rasps as he speaks to them.

“Can you guys give us some time alone, please?  I have a lot to say to Mimi, and I don’t want an audience.”

Justin smiles and nods.  Miriam continues to glare at me, but Justin just takes her by the elbow and steers her out of the room.

“Mimi, you don’t know how glad I am that you came.  I…”

“Before you say anything more, I want to apologize for sending you away when you came to see me in May.  I should have taken the time to listen to you.   I should have seen something was wrong, should have
known
something was wrong all along.  If I weren’t so selfish, weren’t so wrapped up in myself…,” I trail off, my throat clogging with tears.

“Mimi, what I put you through is more than anyone should have to take, and yet for months you suffered through it with love and grace and dignity.  You shouldn’t blame yourself for being hurt by the way I treated you and not being able to take it any longer.”

“But I should have known that you would never treat me that way if you could help it.  Combined with your headaches…”

“Why would that make you think it was anything more than the work stress I insisted it was?  Thousands of people, if not more, get headaches and turn into assholes when they’re under severe pressure. What would ever lead you to suspect it was cancer eating my mind?  I hid all the other, more significant signs from you as best I could, mostly by staying away from the house as much as possible.  I did a lot of sitting in my office just staring at the wall.  I didn’t want you to notice the lack of coordination, the times I couldn’t find the words I wanted to say.  Then the seizures started happening…”

“Seizures?  How could you hide seizures from me?”  I cry, the tears now flowing freely down my face.

“Do you remember the night you found me in the car?  I barely made it home that night.  I had just enough time to turn into the driveway and turn off the car.  Luckily, my seatbelt had locked up when I swung into the drive, and it kept me from injuring myself as I convulsed.  Otherwise you probably would have been more suspicious than you were, or at the very least thought I’d been in a bar fight of some kind.  After the seizure passed, I just sort of knocked out.  It’s happened after every single one since, I just kind of fall asleep for a while, and when I wake up, I’m disoriented.  It’s the reason I started sleeping in the guest bedroom.”

“Vance, why would you keep it from me?  We could have done something!  I would have gotten you help!”

“I didn’t want to face it, Mimi.  I knew something was seriously wrong.  I spent hours on the internet looking up my symptoms and had a good idea what it could be.”  Vance shakes his head in regret.  “Sure, I knew there were other potential causes, but my mind went to the worst and knew there was very little to be done, and what could be done, ultimately wouldn’t change the outcome.”

“There are treatments though, right?  Something they can do to give you a fighting chance?  If not cure you, then give you more time?”  I ask trying to cling to any shred of hope I can find.

“If I had sought treatment earlier than I did in May, maybe when the headaches started getting worse or when the other symptoms started showing up, I could have received intervention that would have given me more time.  It would have been painful though and reduced my quality of life even further.  It wouldn’t necessarily have prevented the symptoms I did have from occurring.  What little they have been able to offer me, I have declined.”

“Vance, if I had known, if you had told me, I never would have left.  We could have faced this together, like we should have.”

“What, suffering alongside me, feeling sorry for me?” he scoffs.

“No!  Loving you.  Each and every day I would have spent loving you, understanding what you were going through and putting you first instead of myself and my little hurt feelings.”

Vance’s eyes fill with tears, as he grips my hand as tightly as he can manage.  “Mimi…I always wanted you to be first.  You and your happiness are, and have always been everything to me.  When I think of the way I hurt you… especially that last night…,” his voice chokes up, “it’s my one real regret.  From the moment I met you, all I ever wanted was to make you smile that beautiful smile at me.  At the end, I was incapable of doing that.  When I felt like myself, I would mourn everything I was losing with you.  I wanted so desperately to feel our connection, to show you all the love that I have inside me for you, but it always seemed like I was less and less that person when we were together.  So, when you finally left, I was relieved.  I was crushed that I had finally driven you away and I wanted to die right then and there, but I was relieved that I couldn’t hurt you anymore.”

I am touched by the things he is saying, and I understand what he means, but I’m angry too.  I feel like I’ve been robbed.  I spent time being angry with him, hating him even, time I could have spent giving him all of my love and devotion.  It dawns on me then that I am doing the same thing right now, robbing myself of more time by being angry with him for his choices, when I could be loving him instead.

I take his hand between both of mine and bring it to my lips.  “Now that I know, will you let me go back to loving you?  I just can’t walk away again.  I don’t care if you are not yourself sometimes.  I want to be with you, for however long that is, a month, a year, whatever.  We promised each other the rest of our lives, Vance.  Please keep that promise and give me yours.”

Vance sobs and reaches over with his other hand, wrapping it around our joined fists.  We stay like that for a while, both of us crying quietly.  I have been mourning the loss of our love for a long time.  Now, I realize it was never really gone, but it seems like the cruelest of jokes to know that I am going to lose him for real very soon. 

Wiping my tears away, I whisper to him, “I need to be close to you, Vance.  Would it hurt you if I moved some of your tubes and wires around and crawled up there with you?”

He smiles at me and I see a bit of that twinkle that always used to pull me in.  “I’d pull them all out if it meant I could hold you in my arms again.”

I laugh despite the fresh tears that have made their way onto my face.  “I don’t think we need to go those extremes.  With a little creativity, I think we can manage it.”

After a maneuvering his IV line and few of the wires monitoring his vitals, I crawl into the bed next to him and snuggle up to his side.  I lay my head on his chest as he wraps his arm around my shoulders.  I can feel how thin he has become through the flimsy cotton gown, but one thing hasn’t changed about him.  He still feels like home.  

We lay there like that for hours, talking softly.  We talk about everything and nothing, just like we used to do.  We pretend he’s not sick and dream about places we’ll go, things we’ll do together, until he eventually drifts off to sleep.  I snuggle closer into his side and fall asleep against him too, feeling more at peace than I have in the last five months.

I wake sometime later, when the nurse comes in with his dinner tray.  She looks at me somewhat disapprovingly as I get up from the bed and stretch.  She informs me that visiting hours have ended, but I politely explain that I’m his wife, and won’t be going anywhere.  She doesn’t believe me, so I have to show her ID.  I get another disapproving look from her and I assume it’s because he’s been here a while and this is the first time she’s seen me here.  I don’t feel the need to explain.

She does all the regular nurse-like things, checking his machines, his vitals, etc.  He wakes up in the process and she’s all sunshine and light toward him, raising his bed into a sitting position as she chats away.  I decide she’s not so bad, even though she wasn’t particularly pleasant with me.  What these people think of me is of no concern, as long as they give Vance the best care they can.  As she is leaving, she lets us know the doctor will be back in the morning when he does his usual rounds.  I am eager to meet him and talk about our options going forward.  I may not have been here before now, but I am going to be an active participant in Vance’s medical care from this point forward.

Vance just stares at the tray of what I imagine is bland hospital food.  I try to encourage him to eat, but he just looks at me blankly.

“On the best day, I can’t imagine this food being even remotely palatable.”  He says to me.  “Unfortunately, my sense of taste has been affected by the tumor.  Absolutely everything tastes like shit.”

“Well,” I respond, “I suppose there’s always the option of a feeding tube.”

He shakes his head.  “No, I’ve already signed papers indicating that I don’t want any measures being taken to prolong my life unnecessarily.”

I gasp.  “What?  Vance, you can’t mean that.”

“Mimi, I’m going to die, and I’m going to do it sooner rather than later.  My condition will deteriorate day by day.  There is no point to trying to fight the inevitable.  Forcing nourishment on my body is like trying to hold back the tide with a net.”

“Okay, so we don’t force it on you.  But please, for me, try to eat while you’re still strong enough to do so?  We don’t have to try to reach for more days than you might otherwise have, but we also don’t have to try to reduce the time you could have either, do we?  I don’t want to be selfish, but I’m not in a hurry to let you go.”

Vance lets out a sigh and pulls the tray toward him.  “Only because I’m not in a hurry to leave you either Mimi, will I consume this vile tray of what can only loosely be described as food.  I can’t assure you that it will not actually hasten my demise, however.”

“Oh just eat it, you big baby,” I say removing the napkin from the tray and tossing it at him.

His hands shake as he attempts to take the lid off the bowl of soup they have given him.  I come around the side of the bed opposite the tray table and sit down next to him.  “Let me,” I say, covering his hand with my own and helping him pop off the top.   He relaxes back into the pillows as I dip a spoon into the bowl and come up with a hearty mouthful.  He opens his mouth with an amused look in his eyes as I bring it to his lips and tell him “Blow.  It may be too hot to put in your mouth.” 

“Shouldn’t I be the one saying that?”

I groan.  “Even now, you’re still a pervert and a dork.”

“And I’m still just your type.”  He smirks at me.

I smile and nod, because there’s no arguing with that statement.  Vance has always been the one.  Everything about him has been just right for me.  If it weren’t for this god-awful disease eating his mind, destroying him bit by bit, we would have nothing but beautiful memories of love and togetherness.  I’m not naïve enough to think our lives would have been perfect, it’s not like we never bickered or argued that first year together, but it was infrequent and there was always that undertone of love softening those moments.  Even when things were not so pleasant, they weren’t terrible.  There was still beauty in every moment we shared.

I feed Vance every morsel of his dinner.  He grimaces through some of the bites, and sometimes I think he wants to gag, but he’s a trooper and finishes it all.  It’s one of the best gifts he’s ever given me, because I know that’s exactly what it is.  Something he has done entirely for my benefit, something just to make me happy.

I lean over and give him a soft kiss on the lips, the first since I set foot in this room, I realize.  I pull back and look at him, our eyes connecting and I feel the desire flame in both of us.  Despite the circumstances, the inappropriateness of the location, and the sheer physical impossibility of it due to Vance’s health, we still want each other with the same passion we have always had.  My heart feels simultaneously full at the notion that nothing has changed that way, but so very sad that we will never share another intimate moment of that kind again.  If I had known those days I had insisted he take off work to rest after I found him passed out in his car would be the last we spent like that, I would have tied him to the bed and never let him out.

Vance smiles at me wistfully and I know he is thinking similar thoughts.  I push the tray table away, and crawl in bed with him again.  We may not be able to make love anymore, but I can still have loving, intimate moments with him and I will take every opportunity I can.  I don’t care if we are in a lousy hospital with nurses and doctors coming in at all hours.  He’s mine, and I’m not wasting a single second of the time we have left.

Vance’s arms come around me to lay loosely around my waist.  I rest my head on his shoulder, and kiss his neck.  He smells faintly like antiseptic, but his own lightly spicy, musky scent is there under it.  I inhale deeply, trying to pull as much of it into my lungs as I can.

Resting my hand on his chest, I can feel his heart, still beating strong under my palm.