“Low oxygen levels . . . that means, what, brain damage?”
“It’s too early to say.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
The panic had been building up from deep inside me, volcano-like, for a while by that point. And I was now battling with everything I had to keep it down where it belonged.
“Until he wakes up and we can assess his functioning—or until we can safely sedate him and give him an MRI—we’re pretty much in the dark.”
“An MRI? And what . . . what would be the purpose of that?”
“We could determine if there had been any structural damage to his brain or if there might be something else going on.”
“Something else like what?”
He bowed his head a little bit and mumbled something indistinct.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” I demanded.
The panic was now getting dangerously close to spurting out. It took all my resolve to keep the lid on it.
Dr. Reiner looked up like it pained him to have to repeat himself.
“It might be a tumor.”
“A tumor,” I echoed.
“If it’s not a stroke, and it’s not a heart attack, a tumor is a strong possibility, yes.”
My body began shaking. I felt myself swaying from side to side.
“Mrs. Bronik, I don’t want to scare you, but right now we’re just glad your husband is alive,” Reiner said. “Until we have a chance to run more tests, anything else I might say would be speculation. We’re just going to have to wait and see.”
Once I realized he had nothing else useful to tell me, and I could stop concentrating so damn hard on just having to hear him, the eruption came. I was suddenly on my knees, doubled over, sobbing.
The fall knocked out one of my hearing aids, but I could still hear the pathetic series of primal moans emanating from my diaphragm and forcing their way out of my throat.
Matt was the smartest person I had ever met. And second place wasn’t close. I could barely process the notion that there might be something wrong with his extraordinary, beautiful brain.
My thoughts immediately turned to Morgan. How would he turn out with a deaf mother and a brain-damaged, tumor-ridden father—or, dear lord, no father at all? What would that do to him? Didn’t he need at least one fully functioning parent?
All spouses develop roles. In our marriage, Matt was the vibrant one, a basketball nut who could play two hours of pickup hoops and still have the energy to roughhouse with Morgan. I was the broken one, the medical ne’er-do-well who went to the audiologist with hope and came home with heartbreak.
But even though I had never said this out loud, I had always felt like there was a larger purpose to my suffering. I was the repository for our family’s entire share of crappy luck. I had taken the whole load of it so Matt and Morgan could go forth into the world happy, strong, and healthy.
That was why this shouldn’t have been happening.
All our crappy luck was supposed to have been used up already.
Dr. Reiner was gone by the time I pulled myself together. I only managed to do so out of some sense that I needed to stay clearheaded for Matt.
And Morgan. He would be getting off the bus from school soon. I texted my sister, Aimee, who lived in nearby Quechee, Vermont. Three years older than me, she was divorced, self-employed, and childless—in other words, the perfect aunt. She texted back that she would drop everything to help, like she always did.
Around three o’clock, I was finally permitted to enter Matt’s room. He had a tube running into him just below his collarbone. A variety of medical devices—monitors and whatnot—surrounded him, and even my lousy ears could make out the steady beep that represented his heart rate. There was a ventilator, but the mask was hanging on the hook, not strapped to Matt’s face.
He was breathing on his own, his chest rising and sinking rhythmically.
His eyes were closed.
In some ways, he looked like he normally did. Matt kept what little hair he had shaved to a stubble, a concession to his male-pattern baldness. His graying beard was neatly tended, as usual.
It was around the eyes where his appearance was shocking. They were sunken, like he had abruptly aged from thirty-nine to sixty-nine.
A nurse who was holding a computer tablet looked up at me and said something. I was so fixated on Matt I wasn’t really looking at her until the end. I thought the last word she said was moment.
I’ll just be a moment.
Would you like a moment?
Something like that.
“Thank you,” I said, hoping it was the right response.
She spent a few more seconds consulting her tablet, then nodded at me, making room for me to approach the bedside.
Matt was wearing this mesh vest that wrapped around his body twice and was strapped to the bed rails in several spots—to restrain him, I supposed. One of his arms was by his side. The other was folded on top of him. It looked so sinewy strong it seemed hard to believe the person attached couldn’t make it move if he wanted to.
His legs were covered by a thin white hospital blanket. His ankles were bound by these two fuzzy cuffs that had also been attached to the bed rails.
There was no chair by the bed, so I just stood at his side.
“Matty, it’s me, baby,” I said.
The only answer was the metronomic beeping.
I grabbed his hand, the one that was down at his side. I had been expecting maybe it would feel stiff or cold, but it was pliant, alive, and very warm—warmer than mine.
“I love you, Matty. We’re going to get through this. You’re going to be fine. Just fine. And I’m going to be with you every step of the way, okay?”
The nurse had walked away, perhaps not wanting to be a part of this private exchange.
“We’re going to figure out what’s going on. And it’s going to be . . .”
I stopped, not knowing how to finish the sentence. I didn’t know what the hell it was going to be.
“The main thing is I love you. And Morgan loves you. And . . .”
I was faltering, but I forced myself to keep going.
“A triangle is the strongest shape in nature. You always say that. You, me, and Morgan. We’re the triangle, and we’re—”
Suddenly Matt was trying to sit up. His teeth were clamped against his lower lip. Spit sputtered out of his mouth. As soon as he encountered the vest and the straps that were restraining him, he began moaning in frustration and straining against them, turning a terrifying shade of crimson.
He was having another seizure.
“Matty, Matt honey, you’ve got to relax,” I said. “It’s me. We’re in the hospital. You’re—”
A guttural noise—something that sounded like “Iwann-iwann-iwann-iwann”—came pouring out of him. His efforts to overcome the straps only intensified. The veins on both sides of his neck popped like tiny snakes. I seriously thought he was going to rupture something. Matt had this penchant for doing sit-ups, push-ups, and burpees when he felt like getting his blood moving, and they had created a powerful body that did not tolerate being tied down.
An alarm bell started clanging. The nurse had returned.
“What’s happening?” I asked, dimly aware the question had come out as a shriek.
I couldn’t hear her reply, but I said, “Can’t you do something?”