Chapter Four
When I got to the hospital, I parked haphazardly and ran across the parking lot, carrying my jacket and a pillow shaped like the planet Earth that was CowBelle's favorite. I clutched the pillow by a fistful of cotton as the automatic doors to the emergency room parted and I rushed, breathless, my sneakers squeaking on the tile floor. I felt like I was going to vomit. My chest hit the receptionists' desk, my fingers clutching the counter, and I burst out, "I'm here to see CowBelle. I mean Bellatrix Watson -- that's her name, my fiance," I choked.
The receptionist very calmly typed Belle's name into the computer, waited while results for her search were collected, read them, then looked up at me, lowering her reading glasses so she could see me. "It looks like she's currently in our intensive care unit," she said in a sticky-sweet-girlish voice. "Would you like me to have someone escort you to the ICU waiting area?"
"Yes, yes," I gasped.
A few moments later a frazzled looking nurse with short grey hair and pale green scrubs led me to an elevator, through several long twisting hallways, through a cardiac wing where a crew of doctors pushed by us with a cart of those paddles and stuff, around an atrium, and finally into a wing labelled Intensive Care Unit where everything smelled sterilized and I was made to wash my hands no less than three times. The nurse finally showed me into a small waiting area where everyone was ashen-faced except two little kids that were blissfully mindless when it came to emergencies. "Wait here and I'll let the family know you're here," she said, and she disappeared.
I looked around the room for an empty seat and finally picked my way through the toys the two little kids had scattered around the room, and lowered myself into the empty chair, running sweating palms across my knees.
When Ralph - CowBelle's father - came into the room, I knew immediately it was terrible news. The lines in his face couldn't have been more shadowed, his eyes sad, his shirt frumpled. He stood in the doorway, nose flared with emotion. Several people glanced around, nervous for everyone else in the room, worried who he belonged to, who was getting the news that he had to share. I got up as Ralph's voice shook, "Nick," and he motioned for me to go with him. Looks of relief fell over faces now that he'd declared who was getting the news as I stepped over the kids' toys again.
In the hallway, Ralph leaned against the wall, his bald spot touching the plaster. He closed his eyes, ran his hands over his face, let out a stream of a sigh into his palms. "Oh Jesus, Mary and Joe," he groaned into his hands. "I never thought I'd see the day."
"Is she okay?" I asked because frankly that was all I wanted to know. That is all that I cared about. Hearing that yes, she was okay.
But Ralph shook his head.
"Is she gonna be okay?" I tried, desperate for an answer I wanted to hear.
Ralph's fingers dragged across his face and he peered at me from behind them, "No," he choked, "She isn't."
I stood, petrified, unable to process what he'd just said to me.
"She's gone, Nick," he muttered. "She's as good as gone already."
I stared at him. I could feel tears forming in my eyes, the burning, prickling sensation of them coming on. My throat swelled up twice or maybe three times its size.
"Her car flipped three times they're guessing," Ralph's voice floated around the air between us, "Went down nearly thirty feet over that ledge almost straight down. It's a miracle her heart was beating when they found her at the bottom. They did everything, but it's her brain, see, her mind. It's gone. She's gone." Ralph shook his head. "She's just gone... Just like that. Just like that." He clicked his fingers, staring blankly at the wall beyond me.
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
"You're welcome to come in to say goodbye, before they turn off the ventilator." Ralph looked up at me.
I nodded numbly.
Ralph led me through the hallways, through a maze of rooms and desks and gurneys and chests of warm blankets. We washed our hands twice more before we reached her room where Anita, her mother, sat in a chair, holding her hand. I saw CowBelle's engagement ring sparkling under the fluorescent lights. A tissue was clutched in Anita's free hand. Ralph stepped up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders.
CowBelle lay motionless in the bed, her eyes were open, but she was staring into the corner of the ceiling, her mouth open around a thick tube that wrapped around the side of her face, drool starting to form at the corners of her mouth. A bandage was wrapped around her head, and another around her chest. Her hair was gone, her skin pale. Monitors beeped and some machine made a loud Darth-Vadar-breathing sound.
I reached up and wiped the drool from her mouth, but her eyes didn't shift even a little at my touch.
"We'll leave you alone," Ralph whispered, and Anita reluctantly laid Belle's hand on the bed and got up and the two of them left the room.
I listened as the door closed behind them and I moved to the side of the bed that Anita had been on. From this angle, it was almost possible to believe Belle was looking at me instead of past me. I grabbed her hand, my fingers spinning the engagement ring. I stared down at it. I didn't know what to say or if she could even hear me. So I didn't speak. I just sat. And I hoped my feelings would transmit through our skin cells, that she'd feel me and her eyes would focus and we'd laugh this off and she'd come out to tell Ralph and Anita the good news with me.
But she didn't move.
I pressed her hand to my forehead, leaning forward until my face was almost against the bed, my stomach twisting into a nasty ball of helplessness.
"You said the Mayans were wrong," I whispered. "You said they were wrong."
I didn't stay to see them remove the ventilators. Instead when Ralph and Anita returned fifteen minutes later, I got up and left, unable to take anymore. I went home and I lay in the dark staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars that CowBelle had put across our bedroom ceiling, meticulously keeping with the details of the universe as best she could with plastic stars. When my phone rang I knew it was probably Ralph calling to tell me it was over and I didn't answer because I didn't want to hear it.
Instead I closed my eyes and tried to convince myself that she was beside me in the dark.
Whitenoise by Pengi
