Luka had supper waiting for her again when she got home. He asked her questions about work, talked about the news. It was very obvious to Susan that he was carefully keeping the conversation on topics of his own choosing. Then,
"Saw my lawyer today."
"For what?" Susan was startled.
"Getting some of my affairs in order." Luka smiled a little. "I believe that's the usual expression." Susan couldn't hide the pained look on her face because Luka said gently, "I know there's no rush, but I was out anyway, he had time to see me. And I'd rather get this stuff taken care of and not need it ... then to need it and not have it, right?" Susan nodded, and Luka went on, in a quiet voice; he might have been talking about the weather. "I updated my will. You know, considering that doctors are supposed to be wealthy, I own surprisingly little of any value whatsoever."
"I'm not after you for your money."
"That's good, because you'd be very disappointed. I am leaving you ... some things ... but I mostly need to see that my father is taken care of. I've been helping him all along, you know. Which is part of the reason I'm not rich."
"Have you told him?" Susan asked suddenly.
"Told him what?"
"That you're sick?" Susan had overheard several phone calls between Luka and his father in recent months, but they were all in Croatian, so she hadn't understood a word. Still nothing she had heard had sounded like Luka telling his father that he'd just been diagnosed with a terminal disease.
Luka shook his head. "He doesn't have to know. When I die ... you can tell him ... something. Pneumonia, cancer ... whatever it ends up being will probably suit the purpose just fine."
"He's going to figure something out. I trust that the man isn't stupid, Luka. You could be ... really sick for a long time before it's over. You won't be able to hide that. Even over transatlantic telephone conversations."
"Then I'll figure something out if it comes to that. He doesn't have to know. And you will not tell him."
"Given that my Croatian is currently limited to about 4 words, I'm sure how I would tell him," Susan said quietly.
"Anyway," Luka said, firmly changing the subject, and pulling some papers from his shirt pocket, "I also took care of a few other things. He unfolded the papers and handed one to Susan. "A copy for you to keep. I have one in my wallet, and faxed a copy to County. There should be no questions. Susan looked at the paper, and her stomach turned over. An advance directive.
"You know..." she said after a minute, "This is really cheerful dinner time conversation." She couldn't help noticing that Luka, for once, had been calmly eating his dinner with apparent good appetite, while she had barely been able to choke down a bite for the last few minutes. Perhaps his counseling session had gone well?
"I know it isn't something we're going to need for a while. And I hope we won't need it at all. I don't want to be anywhere near a hospital when things get to this point. Remember what I told you before, Susan? I'm going to die at home." He hesitated. "If it's ok with you?"
Susan laughed a little, to keep from crying. "I think 'ok' may be too strong a word. I don't think I will ever be 'ok' with you dying at all. But if it has to happen, it should happen where-ever it will be easiest for you."
"I'm just thinking that it will be a lot of work for you ... to take care of me. You said yourself, I'll probably be pretty sick for a while."
"Luka, we don't have to talk about this now. It's not going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or without any time to figure out a plan. We'll have lots of time to work out the details, decide what's best for both of us." Susan didn't want to think about this now. It was strange, she realized. When this all first began, Luka had been rooted so firmly in denial, while she had been trying to make him face reality. Now, he seemed to be the one calmly planning for, and discussing, his own death, while it was all Susan could do to not cover her ears and run screaming from the room.
Luka nodded, smiled. "Just one more bit of business," he said, and handed her another piece of paper. "Durable power of attorney. Again, I hope we'll never need it, and the AD should cover any issues that might come up, but if there any any questions, and I can't ... speak for myself ... I don't want anyone else deciding for me, or trying to call Tata."
Susan didn't trust herself to speak. She still didn't want to think about this. They had lots of time. Years. A lifetime. Why did Luka have to be talking about it now? She got up and went to put the papers into her wallet. When she came back to the table, Luka was still quietly eating his meal.
"Your dinner's getting cold," he said. "You'd better eat."
Susan picked up her fork. "How did your other appointment go?"
"Other appointment?" She saw his grip tighten on his fork, and he was suddenly pale.
"With Dr. McGrath."
"I ... ummm ... didn't go." He set his fork down carefully, deliberately, and Susan knew he wasn't going to eat any more. "I was a little bit early, there wasn't much traffic. I walked around the block once ... to calm myself ... and then I couldn't stop walking. I just kept walking around and around the block. Finally it was too late to go inside. I called the office ... told them I was sick and had to cancel."
"Luka, you promised you would go."
"I tried!" Luka snapped. "Do think that it's easy? To open this stuff up again? To start all over? I want to do it, for you. I wish I could do it, Susan ... but I can't. I'm sorry. And we're doing ok ... aren't we? Things are better." He was almost pleading now. As if saying it would make it so.
"No, we're not doing ok. You're not doing ok. And you know that, you have to know that. If you were doing ok you would have been able to go to your therapy. The fact that it's so hard just proves how much you need it. You have to work through this stuff, Luka ... make some sort of peace with it ... with yourself."
"It's easy for you to say." Luka's voice was quiet. "You aren't the one who has to do it."
"Do you think it's easy for me to watch you, every day, hating yourself? You are a wonderful man, Luka, and there is nothing They could ever do to change that."
"Love is blind, Susan. That is the saying, isn't it?" Luka had automatically picked up his fork again to take another bite. She saw him look at the food on the fork, then put it down again. He put his face into his hands.
"Yeah, that's the saying. But I'm not blind. Or stupid. Are you talking about your past? I know you have a past. I know you made some mistakes, did some stupid things. That doesn't make you a bad person, it makes you a human person." Susan took a deep breath. "And there was nothing you could have ever done ... not ever ... to have made them do what they did ... and nothing you could have done to have stopped them."
"I could have made them kill me."
"How?"
Luka had gone pale, sweating. Somewhere in the back of her mind Susan thought it ironic that, after he'd eaten his first decent meal in some time, she had unwittingly started a conversation that would probably make him get sick again. But he was talking. Voluntarily. And she'd already gone too far too turn back now. "I could have fought them," Luka said after a minute.
"How? You were tied up."
"Not at first. They didn't tie us up right away. Before that, I could have fought them ..."
"Did you know what was going to happen?" Luka didn't answer, let his head sink lower into his arms. He was shaking. "Luka?" Susan prompted gently.
"I knew we were going to die," Luka finally said. "I didn't want to believe it, but I knew it. I didn't have anything to lose. But I just sat there and watched ... I just watched ... while they took Sakina away. I knew what they would do to her, but I couldn't even say anything. I was too afraid to try and say anything."
"Would it have made a difference?" Susan asked quietly. "Would they have stopped? Would they have let her go?"
"They would have killed me!"
"No, they wouldn't have. If they'd wanted to kill you, they had plenty of opportunity. And they wouldn't have had to kill you. If you'd spoken up, or tried to fight, they might have hurt you more ... hit you ... but why would they have killed you? If you were as sick with malaria as you've said, they wouldn't have had to kill you to keep you from fighting, to stop you from protecting her."
"I still could have tried ... should have tried ... been stronger ..."
"It wouldn't have made any difference. You are strong, sweetheart. The fact that you are sitting here, alive, after all that, proves that you are strong. You saved your strength for what mattered ... keeping you alive until help could come. Nothing else mattered, and nothing else would have made any difference."
"Maybe ..." Luka's voice broke. "If I could have protected her ... helped her ... even tried ... they wouldn't have ... done the same to me."
Susan's mouth was suddenly dry. She shouldn't be doing this. She couldn't bear to be hearing this stuff. Why had she started it? She should have just insisted again that he get into therapy ... take him there herself if she had to.
"Do you really believe that?"
"It makes sense, doesn't it?"
"No, it doesn't. There was nothing you could have done to have helped her, and nothing you did to make them hurt you. It was their choice."
Luka was quiet for a minute. He got up and wandered around the room for a minute, then sat down again. "When my family was killed ... I thought then that it was the worst thing that would ever happen to me. I couldn't imagine that anything could ever hurt more than that pain. Then, after a while, the pain got a little easier, and I began to realize that maybe I could go on ... pick up the pieces of my life ... start over. And sometimes I remember thinking that I was actually lucky in a way. I was only 25 years old and I'd already experienced the worst that would ever happen to me ... and I'd survived. I knew that if I could survive that, I was capable of facing anything that life might throw at me.
"And then ... in Matenda ... I learned that I was wrong. I learned that there are worse things. And I learned that I'm not ... strong at all. There are some things that I couldn't face. I fell apart ..."
"So what? Do you think anyone cares a tinker's dam that you cried? You were scared and in pain; of course you cried. But you faced it, because you did survive. They left you for dead and you spit in their eye and stayed alive. I think that says a lot."
"Just that God wanted to be sure that I didn't die until I'd suffered as much as I deserved. I didn't want to be alive, Susan. I didn't try to stay alive." He shook his head. "And now ... I don't want to die anymore ... I have a reason to be here ... a reason to live ... and I'm going to die. How fucked up is that?"
"Very fucked up," Susan agreed. "But you're still not dead yet. You have time ... we have time. If you can talk about this stuff to me, I know you can talk about it to someone who can really help you. I can't. I don't know how. But I know that you need help. You can't go on like this." Susan wiped at her eyes. "You know what scares me, Luka? The other night, I was watching you sleep, watching your nightmares. I wanted, so badly, to hold you, to be able to tell you that everything was all right. And I realized then that you were going to die ... and maybe the first time I would ever get to hold you ... to put my arms around you ... would be after you were dead. I don't want it to be that way. Not for either of us."
"I'll try again," Luka whispered. "It's just ... you can't know how hard it is."
"I know it will be hard. But it will be worth the effort. I know it will."
"When I came back here, I just wanted to leave it all behind. I was going to forget everything that happened. I was going to pick up my life again ... go on. I told you a while ago that I wouldn't let them amputate my leg. I didn't want that, because I knew that it would leave me with a permanent reminder, something I'd have to see every day of my life ... of what had happened to me there. So I nearly died from sepsis for the chance to keep my leg. And I won that fight. I survived, and I still have my leg. I came back home, I fought ... I learned to walk again, I struggled through all the therapy, I did everything I was supposed to do. And things were getting better. I think I could have finished getting through the emotional stuff ... eventually, without more counseling. I just needed to be able to put it all behind me, and I was starting to be able to do that.
"Then I got this damn disease. And I'm back to square one again. Every day I'm reminded, I have to remember what happened to me. Every time I take a pill, or look in the mirror ... or look at you and realize how little time we have. It's never going to go away. As long as I'm alive, I'm going to remember, and when I die, it will be because of what they did to me. And counseling isn't going to change that. I can't forget it, Susan."
"Counseling isn't about making you forget. You won't ever forget. It's about helping you learn to live with the memories. It's about learning to not blame yourself anymore for things you couldn't control. It's about letting go of the pain so it doesn't keep eating you alive. You have got to learn to let all this go."
"I'll call again in the morning, make another appointment," Luka said, his voice dull.
"Making it doesn't do any good if you don't keep it."
"I'll keep it."
"Saw my lawyer today."
"For what?" Susan was startled.
"Getting some of my affairs in order." Luka smiled a little. "I believe that's the usual expression." Susan couldn't hide the pained look on her face because Luka said gently, "I know there's no rush, but I was out anyway, he had time to see me. And I'd rather get this stuff taken care of and not need it ... then to need it and not have it, right?" Susan nodded, and Luka went on, in a quiet voice; he might have been talking about the weather. "I updated my will. You know, considering that doctors are supposed to be wealthy, I own surprisingly little of any value whatsoever."
"I'm not after you for your money."
"That's good, because you'd be very disappointed. I am leaving you ... some things ... but I mostly need to see that my father is taken care of. I've been helping him all along, you know. Which is part of the reason I'm not rich."
"Have you told him?" Susan asked suddenly.
"Told him what?"
"That you're sick?" Susan had overheard several phone calls between Luka and his father in recent months, but they were all in Croatian, so she hadn't understood a word. Still nothing she had heard had sounded like Luka telling his father that he'd just been diagnosed with a terminal disease.
Luka shook his head. "He doesn't have to know. When I die ... you can tell him ... something. Pneumonia, cancer ... whatever it ends up being will probably suit the purpose just fine."
"He's going to figure something out. I trust that the man isn't stupid, Luka. You could be ... really sick for a long time before it's over. You won't be able to hide that. Even over transatlantic telephone conversations."
"Then I'll figure something out if it comes to that. He doesn't have to know. And you will not tell him."
"Given that my Croatian is currently limited to about 4 words, I'm sure how I would tell him," Susan said quietly.
"Anyway," Luka said, firmly changing the subject, and pulling some papers from his shirt pocket, "I also took care of a few other things. He unfolded the papers and handed one to Susan. "A copy for you to keep. I have one in my wallet, and faxed a copy to County. There should be no questions. Susan looked at the paper, and her stomach turned over. An advance directive.
"You know..." she said after a minute, "This is really cheerful dinner time conversation." She couldn't help noticing that Luka, for once, had been calmly eating his dinner with apparent good appetite, while she had barely been able to choke down a bite for the last few minutes. Perhaps his counseling session had gone well?
"I know it isn't something we're going to need for a while. And I hope we won't need it at all. I don't want to be anywhere near a hospital when things get to this point. Remember what I told you before, Susan? I'm going to die at home." He hesitated. "If it's ok with you?"
Susan laughed a little, to keep from crying. "I think 'ok' may be too strong a word. I don't think I will ever be 'ok' with you dying at all. But if it has to happen, it should happen where-ever it will be easiest for you."
"I'm just thinking that it will be a lot of work for you ... to take care of me. You said yourself, I'll probably be pretty sick for a while."
"Luka, we don't have to talk about this now. It's not going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or without any time to figure out a plan. We'll have lots of time to work out the details, decide what's best for both of us." Susan didn't want to think about this now. It was strange, she realized. When this all first began, Luka had been rooted so firmly in denial, while she had been trying to make him face reality. Now, he seemed to be the one calmly planning for, and discussing, his own death, while it was all Susan could do to not cover her ears and run screaming from the room.
Luka nodded, smiled. "Just one more bit of business," he said, and handed her another piece of paper. "Durable power of attorney. Again, I hope we'll never need it, and the AD should cover any issues that might come up, but if there any any questions, and I can't ... speak for myself ... I don't want anyone else deciding for me, or trying to call Tata."
Susan didn't trust herself to speak. She still didn't want to think about this. They had lots of time. Years. A lifetime. Why did Luka have to be talking about it now? She got up and went to put the papers into her wallet. When she came back to the table, Luka was still quietly eating his meal.
"Your dinner's getting cold," he said. "You'd better eat."
Susan picked up her fork. "How did your other appointment go?"
"Other appointment?" She saw his grip tighten on his fork, and he was suddenly pale.
"With Dr. McGrath."
"I ... ummm ... didn't go." He set his fork down carefully, deliberately, and Susan knew he wasn't going to eat any more. "I was a little bit early, there wasn't much traffic. I walked around the block once ... to calm myself ... and then I couldn't stop walking. I just kept walking around and around the block. Finally it was too late to go inside. I called the office ... told them I was sick and had to cancel."
"Luka, you promised you would go."
"I tried!" Luka snapped. "Do think that it's easy? To open this stuff up again? To start all over? I want to do it, for you. I wish I could do it, Susan ... but I can't. I'm sorry. And we're doing ok ... aren't we? Things are better." He was almost pleading now. As if saying it would make it so.
"No, we're not doing ok. You're not doing ok. And you know that, you have to know that. If you were doing ok you would have been able to go to your therapy. The fact that it's so hard just proves how much you need it. You have to work through this stuff, Luka ... make some sort of peace with it ... with yourself."
"It's easy for you to say." Luka's voice was quiet. "You aren't the one who has to do it."
"Do you think it's easy for me to watch you, every day, hating yourself? You are a wonderful man, Luka, and there is nothing They could ever do to change that."
"Love is blind, Susan. That is the saying, isn't it?" Luka had automatically picked up his fork again to take another bite. She saw him look at the food on the fork, then put it down again. He put his face into his hands.
"Yeah, that's the saying. But I'm not blind. Or stupid. Are you talking about your past? I know you have a past. I know you made some mistakes, did some stupid things. That doesn't make you a bad person, it makes you a human person." Susan took a deep breath. "And there was nothing you could have ever done ... not ever ... to have made them do what they did ... and nothing you could have done to have stopped them."
"I could have made them kill me."
"How?"
Luka had gone pale, sweating. Somewhere in the back of her mind Susan thought it ironic that, after he'd eaten his first decent meal in some time, she had unwittingly started a conversation that would probably make him get sick again. But he was talking. Voluntarily. And she'd already gone too far too turn back now. "I could have fought them," Luka said after a minute.
"How? You were tied up."
"Not at first. They didn't tie us up right away. Before that, I could have fought them ..."
"Did you know what was going to happen?" Luka didn't answer, let his head sink lower into his arms. He was shaking. "Luka?" Susan prompted gently.
"I knew we were going to die," Luka finally said. "I didn't want to believe it, but I knew it. I didn't have anything to lose. But I just sat there and watched ... I just watched ... while they took Sakina away. I knew what they would do to her, but I couldn't even say anything. I was too afraid to try and say anything."
"Would it have made a difference?" Susan asked quietly. "Would they have stopped? Would they have let her go?"
"They would have killed me!"
"No, they wouldn't have. If they'd wanted to kill you, they had plenty of opportunity. And they wouldn't have had to kill you. If you'd spoken up, or tried to fight, they might have hurt you more ... hit you ... but why would they have killed you? If you were as sick with malaria as you've said, they wouldn't have had to kill you to keep you from fighting, to stop you from protecting her."
"I still could have tried ... should have tried ... been stronger ..."
"It wouldn't have made any difference. You are strong, sweetheart. The fact that you are sitting here, alive, after all that, proves that you are strong. You saved your strength for what mattered ... keeping you alive until help could come. Nothing else mattered, and nothing else would have made any difference."
"Maybe ..." Luka's voice broke. "If I could have protected her ... helped her ... even tried ... they wouldn't have ... done the same to me."
Susan's mouth was suddenly dry. She shouldn't be doing this. She couldn't bear to be hearing this stuff. Why had she started it? She should have just insisted again that he get into therapy ... take him there herself if she had to.
"Do you really believe that?"
"It makes sense, doesn't it?"
"No, it doesn't. There was nothing you could have done to have helped her, and nothing you did to make them hurt you. It was their choice."
Luka was quiet for a minute. He got up and wandered around the room for a minute, then sat down again. "When my family was killed ... I thought then that it was the worst thing that would ever happen to me. I couldn't imagine that anything could ever hurt more than that pain. Then, after a while, the pain got a little easier, and I began to realize that maybe I could go on ... pick up the pieces of my life ... start over. And sometimes I remember thinking that I was actually lucky in a way. I was only 25 years old and I'd already experienced the worst that would ever happen to me ... and I'd survived. I knew that if I could survive that, I was capable of facing anything that life might throw at me.
"And then ... in Matenda ... I learned that I was wrong. I learned that there are worse things. And I learned that I'm not ... strong at all. There are some things that I couldn't face. I fell apart ..."
"So what? Do you think anyone cares a tinker's dam that you cried? You were scared and in pain; of course you cried. But you faced it, because you did survive. They left you for dead and you spit in their eye and stayed alive. I think that says a lot."
"Just that God wanted to be sure that I didn't die until I'd suffered as much as I deserved. I didn't want to be alive, Susan. I didn't try to stay alive." He shook his head. "And now ... I don't want to die anymore ... I have a reason to be here ... a reason to live ... and I'm going to die. How fucked up is that?"
"Very fucked up," Susan agreed. "But you're still not dead yet. You have time ... we have time. If you can talk about this stuff to me, I know you can talk about it to someone who can really help you. I can't. I don't know how. But I know that you need help. You can't go on like this." Susan wiped at her eyes. "You know what scares me, Luka? The other night, I was watching you sleep, watching your nightmares. I wanted, so badly, to hold you, to be able to tell you that everything was all right. And I realized then that you were going to die ... and maybe the first time I would ever get to hold you ... to put my arms around you ... would be after you were dead. I don't want it to be that way. Not for either of us."
"I'll try again," Luka whispered. "It's just ... you can't know how hard it is."
"I know it will be hard. But it will be worth the effort. I know it will."
"When I came back here, I just wanted to leave it all behind. I was going to forget everything that happened. I was going to pick up my life again ... go on. I told you a while ago that I wouldn't let them amputate my leg. I didn't want that, because I knew that it would leave me with a permanent reminder, something I'd have to see every day of my life ... of what had happened to me there. So I nearly died from sepsis for the chance to keep my leg. And I won that fight. I survived, and I still have my leg. I came back home, I fought ... I learned to walk again, I struggled through all the therapy, I did everything I was supposed to do. And things were getting better. I think I could have finished getting through the emotional stuff ... eventually, without more counseling. I just needed to be able to put it all behind me, and I was starting to be able to do that.
"Then I got this damn disease. And I'm back to square one again. Every day I'm reminded, I have to remember what happened to me. Every time I take a pill, or look in the mirror ... or look at you and realize how little time we have. It's never going to go away. As long as I'm alive, I'm going to remember, and when I die, it will be because of what they did to me. And counseling isn't going to change that. I can't forget it, Susan."
"Counseling isn't about making you forget. You won't ever forget. It's about helping you learn to live with the memories. It's about learning to not blame yourself anymore for things you couldn't control. It's about letting go of the pain so it doesn't keep eating you alive. You have got to learn to let all this go."
"I'll call again in the morning, make another appointment," Luka said, his voice dull.
"Making it doesn't do any good if you don't keep it."
"I'll keep it."
