She paused, clenching her eyes tight. “No…” She shook the confusion from her head. “No, you can't...accept your fate either,” she realized or remembered. “You think this is all your decision? You think we don’t get a say, that your head is-is just yours, your body is just yours?” she demanded, gesturing at him. “No, we are one, this family, you, me, Charlie, we’re a unit, a single team,” she said to him, reminded him. “And we don’t make big decisions alone, Ben, you know that,” she said, suddenly pointing an accusing finger at him. “That is a rule, a family rule. And you made it.”
“Shhhhhh,” he said softly, making her realize she was getting louder.
“That's a rule," she strained quieter, shaking like a leaf. “You don't get to say no by yourself.” She suddenly realized it and pain hit her as she stared in disbelief at him. “I mean…you'd rather die? Is...is our life that...little to you that you're not willing to do whatever it takes, whatever you can to be with us?” Shock and pain had her head shaking, unable to imagine such a thing. She was back to pacing, eyeing him and him eyeing her while fear bubbled like a vat of acid in her being. “Is this punishment, Ben? Are you disgusted with me, punishing me for not being a good wife?”
“Cheryl, what are you talking about?” he whispered. Finally, she got a reading on him. Confusion. Good. And hurt. That was good too. At least they were on the same page. “Why would I punish you, what do you mean disgusted with you? I love you more than my own life,” he strained, his own head barely shaking now. “What kind of a husband have I been that you don't know this?” he wondered, like he'd failed at doing the one thing he'd worked his hardest at.
His words caused a hurricane of desperation in her. She flew to him and lay her head in his lap, sobbing, “I know you love me, I know you do. I'm sorry, I'm sorry Ben. I should have loved you better, I should've never stopped having sex with you,” she confessed. “I was angry, I was stupid, I thought you didn't desire me!”
“What?” he whispered. His hand paused mid-stroke on her head with that shocked question. “Didn't desire you? I thought you were going through female issues. I vowed to never make you feel like sex was important to me, more than you were, that's why I never touched you.”
She raised her head, tears streaming. “Ben...I needed you to touch me!” she gasped. “I was dying because I thought you didn't want me or desire me! You never made the first move, I always did, so I thought…”
“Do you remember what you told me when we dated, Cheryl? That you hated men who misread every little kindness for an invitation for sex? Believe it or not, from the moment you told me that, I swore to never be that man, to make damn sure to desire you when I knew without a doubt that's what you wanted from me. I wanted you to love me, Cheryl, not hate me. That's why I let you lead in sex.”
Cheryl was sure her eyes couldn't get any wider with his confession. If what he was saying was true, and she was very sure it was, that meant... “What...did you think when I didn't...when I quit...”
“I thought what I told you. That you were having female issues.”
She covered her mouth with a hand, but the sobs escaped still. She could only shake her head. “It... wasn’t female issues,” she barely wailed, putting her head back in his lap. “Oh God, Ben, I'm sorry, please forgive me. I'm so sorry.”
He shhhhh'd her, back to stroking her head. “I love you...clearly more than you've ever imagined. And... I won't lie and say I didn't love when you initiated sex. Or that...maybe I was relieved that I didn't have to. That I didn't have enough confidence to even try. Hell...” he whispered, sounding winded. “I guess I can admit that...taking the lead or even the idea of it was...terrifying. I never wanted to do something that...might be wrong. Wow,” he said, as though realizing. “Seems I've been a coward, hiding behind other excuses.”
This couldn't be happening. She couldn't be hearing all this, not now. “You can't die,” she cried, gripping his jogging pants in her fists. “You can't leave me, not now.” She shot up and pressed her mouth carefully to his, kissing him. “Please, Ben, please,” she wept, holding his face carefully, adoring him with her lips the way he deserved. “Please do this, for us. Please.”
Family Vote
They’d vote on it. That was the only right and fair thing to do after the emotionally charged diatribe Ben just had with his wife. But oddly, his rapt attention wasn’t on the topic of a head-transplant but on everything he’d gotten wrong about his wife all these years. Learning that his sacrificing to show how much he loved her was actually killing her was maybe as soul crushing as being ripped prematurely from his family. It made him desperate to rectify the problem but how could he when lava razors sliced and diced his skull at one wrong move?
Cheryl had been correct about the voting. He’d not forgotten about the family rule to jointly decide all weighty decisions, but he’d not deemed his death voteable. In logical fairness, at the time Ben had decided to accept his death, there had been no other alternatives.
Now… there was the optional head transplant.
The smell of Cheryl cooking his favorite meal reached him right as his thoughts turned to comparing deaths. One by his current bad head, and death by head transplant gone wrong. Both held morbid variables. The bad head death had a long list of possible scenarios, many of which Ben didn’t even want to imagine. He guessed a similar list existed—maybe worse—for the head transplant gone wrong.
His options were simple but sinister. Jump from cliff A and die while not certain how exactly, when, or how quickly. The second option--jump from cliff B and possibly survive. Or die by scientific experimentation mishap which could potentially be more horrifying than any other scenario he’d imagined.
The logical answer was cliff B. The cliff that had a possible favorable outcome.
Ben had researched from his laptop in the hospital all about his current disease, learning what range of damage to expect as it progressed. He was currently awaiting the loss of motor-skills as his cerebellum sustained damage. It would likely also affect his ability to pay attention and speak. The occipital part of the brain was after, which meant he could lose vision, perception and short-term memory. But depending on the direction the disease travelled, it could bore to the inner brain and reach the pons. If that happened, he could lose the ability to control his breathing, and that meant lights out shortly thereafter. The main concern with that was it could be intermittent. Which meant having random bouts of uncontrollable suffocation.
It’s the thing that spurred him to make one of the biggest decisions he’d ever made in his life. One he would not allow his wife or son to partake in. Yes, it went against his religion but his directive to protect the innocent—his family in this case—took precedence over killing himself. Which is exactly what he’d planned to do before it got to that.
Only now, his carefully laid plans were scattered with a new set of circumstances. But really, cliff B was close enough to cliff A. Should the situation warrant it, he could still employ the emergency self-check-out protocol.