The Waiting Room
It's been nearly three months and I'm still trapped in that damn room. I can feel the
fluorescent lights as they glint off every non porous surface and stab into the back
of my eyes. The glare illuminates the hundred and ninety two tiles that cover the
floor. I can still see the festering chip in tile number eighty two and the Rorschach
stain on the tile near my left foot. Which one was that? Oh yeah, that was number
one hundred and fifteen. I can even smell the acrid disinfectant they use when they
mop the floor. It's a special blend I'm sure, made just for us visitors to mask the smell
of death. When did they mop the floor? I never saw them actually mop it, but I knew
they did. They cleaned up the coffee I spilled. I hadn't realized how badly my hands
were shaking that day until Alexis handed me that cup. It made her cry. I haven't
touched a cup since.
I haven't done much of anything since Kate said those three little words to me. They
weren't the three words I'd been hoping to hear from her since the moment I found
out she'd live. "I'll call you." She said. I walked out of her hospital room and found
myself back in the waiting room. Sure, I got into my car and drove home. But when
I opened my front door, there I was in another waiting room.
Everything I drink tastes like the sterile water I sipped from Styrofoam cups. Everything
I eat tastes like the bland protein bars I lived on from the vending machines, sustenance
for sustenance sake. I thought I could at least escape into my bedroom, but my bed now
feels like the small chair that folded out into an even impossibly smaller bed. I toss and
turn and wake up in a knot. It's not entirely caused by the imaginary bed, but more by
the dream that I've had every night since the day she nearly died in my arms.
It's the day of the funeral again, all bright and green and beautiful, too beautiful for a
funeral. Funerals are supposed to be somber, and somber means a cold grey sky and
the biting mist of rain that chills down to the bone. Not this. The sun is laughing at us in
our black sackcloths and I feel a trickle of sweat as it runs down my spine. The eulogy
is beginning, but I find myself distracted, something is different. The words sacrifice,
partner and friend bring me back to the moment and I wonder why Esposito is giving
the eulogy. Kate is supposed to be giving the eulogy, that's what's different. I try to
look for her but I can't now because I'm being ushered to the podium. I'm not prepared.
I'm not supposed to speak. My suit is sweltering as I find myself reciting a poem. The
words come out of their own accord, and it isn't until the last refrain that I realize
I'm reciting Oscar Wilde's Requiescat.
Peace, peace; she cannot hear
Lyric or sonnet;
All my life's buried here
Heap earth upon it.
Why had I chosen that? Why not Housman, or Sir Walter Scott? People were staring
and I seemed to be crying, uncontrollably. Something was still wrong, but I didn't know
what, not until I turned away from the podium and saw the massive granite headstone
and the name carved into it. It wakes me every time.
A least it's eight o'clock and not four o'clock in the morning as I sit here on my couch again
in this "waiting room of a world" and try to glean some meaning from what she said that
day. One phrase always seems to repeat itself over and over in my head.
"I just need a little bit of time."
Time for what? Time to recover? To get her hair done? Time for a little less of me and a little
more of Josh? My own mother called me a cuckold the other day. She said it was my "fetish".
When had the word cuckold abandoned Shakespeare to become a fetish? She embarrassed
me and left me at a loss for words. I had no reply. She was right. Here I was waiting for a
woman who was off living her life and having sex with some other guy while I patiently watched
and waited from the wings. What else did that make me? A fool? That word doesn't do this
justice. A stalker? That's going overboard. Cuckold. The new definition seemed to be a perfect
fit. When and how did I let my self become this…this, this thing? My waiting room suddenly felt
like a prison and I knew that it was time. I grabbed my cell phone and called the only person I
knew who could help me escape.
"Gina, about that book signing you wanted me to do…"