Rosalinda's Eyes Ch. 03

Things got real quiet around the house after that. Like Rosalinda had seen the page turn once again, and a new, not quite unexpected chapter was about to unfold. I think most wives know this chapter is coming, and this is the one they really don't want to read.

This is the chapter where their husbands get sick, then die.

This part of the story begins with the husband feeling a little too tired, then he experiences a fullness in his lower left gut. He's no longer interested in eating, too, and she gets really scared then.

She makes an appointment, because he is, of course, too stubborn to admit anything's wrong. The appointment is with 'someone she knows' -- and not his daughter, who is otherwise more than competent to tell him he is experiencing indigestion. She takes him to the appointment because she is sure he will otherwise slip off to a movie and come home four hours later, telling her nothing's the matter.

Said doctor, a man with tiny hands and sharp, ferret-like eyes, palpates the man's belly and orders blood work and an MRI. Two hours later they rejoin the doctor in his office, a quiet, windowless room with cozy warm lamps all aglow, and the ferret faced man says something that goes a little like this:

"Welcome to the final chapter of your life. You have pancreatic cancer and you're going to die real soon. There's not a goddamn thing we can do about it, so why don't you go home and figure out how you want to do this."

I mean, really, I could tell you how he spent the next half hour telling me this, but what's the point? I'd have appreciated the short and quick over all that florid nonsense any day, but the thing is -- Rosalinda was in the room too, and she wasn't taking this news too well.

She was the one who asked if there was nothing that could be done. No chemo, no immunotherapy?

"Not when it's this advanced."

"Advanced?"

"It's metastasized. Liver, lungs, throughout the gut."

Then there was the dreaded: "How long has my husband got?"

"Best guess, six weeks, two months, tops. Maybe less."

I checked out after that, just sort of shut down and drifted away. If there'd been a window in the room I'd have gone over and stared at all those colliding galaxies, but really, at a moment like that what's the point?

We walked over to Terry's office after that, without an appointment I guess you'd say, and we told her the news. Well, Rosalinda told her. I just sort of stood there in a foul, mute humor while the words flowed between them, thinking about how I wanted to 'do this.'

What the fuck did that jack-ass mean? How did I want to do this? I didn't want anything to do with this. Leave me alone. Go Away!!!

Go out in a blaze of glory, perhaps? Is that what he meant? Or in a haze of morphine? Alone, in hospice, or at home, surrounded by family and friends? Or maybe flee, run into the arms of desperate measures, waiting con-men and other assorted jackals ready to offer comforting do-nothing measures, for a price? My guess was the poor guy had seen it all, had grown bored with charlatans and quacks. He had science to sell, not peace everlasting, and as I presented a no-win scenario he had little to pass along than science's absolute benediction: "nothing we can do." Let the chorus sing it to the angels: "there's nothing we can do."

Rosalinda called the girls that night, and we took Terry and Maddie out to dinner after. I, of course, asked for soup and took two spoonfuls, and that put a damper on things so I tried to eat more.

And that becomes the metaphor you live with those last few weeks and months of your life. You try to do things so the people you love won't be too upset by the prolonged ordeal of your passing. You try to slip away, slip out of sight when the ugly things happen.

Rosalinda, on the other hand, cooked.

People, both friends and family, were a constant flood, and Rosalinda fed them all. My death was not going to be a lonely affair, not if she had anything to say about the matter, and things proceeded along nicely, that is to say I went from bad to worse much sooner than anticipated. In fact, I barely made it three weeks.

Maddie was there, of course, to ground me in the past, and Bettina too, holding me fast to a once and certain future, my last dichotomy. Terry stood back, terrified, and Rosalinda held her close, and the last thing I recall was standing out on an airport runway, watching Bettina come in for that first landing of hers. How I watched her turn onto final and settle in the groove, and how she turned on that landing light. How proud I was of her. I watched that light as it grew closer and closer, until there was nothing left but the light...

And then I was in this dark place, maybe in a rowboat on a lake in the middle of the night. Stars overhead, vast fields of stars. I saw an island ahead and started to row that way, then I saw my mother and father there, and my sisters, too, all of them waving at me, then stars colliding up there in the night, playing such strange music, their shattered light washing over me as I smiled.

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© 2017 Adrian Leverkühn | abw | fiction, nothing but fiction...nothing but smoke and mirrors, folks...so move along, move along.