beeping her heartbeat—for all the world to hear—would have registered some reaction to that. Your husband’s here, beep-beep-beepbeepbeepbeep. Code blue.
Nothing.
The ventilator sounded as if it had asthma. Wheeze in, two, three, four. Wheeze out, two, three, four. With a little hitch at the top and bottom of the rotation.
The rhythms. The seamless, flawless, inhuman, rhythmic patterns. No wonder Karin’s pulse rate didn’t subconsciously register a reaction to him. It wasn’t her heartbeat but the machine’s. Technology had no trouble remaining steady. It hadn’t betrayed him.
“Mr. Chamberlain, would you step over here, please?”
Josiah turned his attention to one of an army of nurses in the room.
“You can get closer to her on this side. Fewer machines and stands and cords to tangle your feet.”
Closer. That’s what husbands do. He stepped farther into the glass-walled room, the cubed bubble. “Where?”
The high-chested Latina indicated a lone twelve-inch square of floor space not occupied by something that truly mattered. He stepped onto the tile as if finding his mark on a stage. “Can I—?”
“Touch her? Certainly. Just be careful not to jostle or startle her, and watch that IV line. She doesn’t have the best veins.”
Like a drawbridge slowly cranked into position, Josiah reached his hand toward Karin’s as it lay unmoving and pale against the white sheet. The hand closest to him. Her left. Her rings were gone. She’d probably flung them out the car window just before the crash.
He slipped his hand under hers as if not wanting to disturb its sleep. With his thumb, he traced the indentation from her missing-in-action wedding ring set. The thin divot wrapped around her fourth finger like a scar, not a memory.
“If you’re wondering about her rings,” a nurse said, punctuating the public nature of the private moment, “we had to cut them off. Swollen fingers. Someone at the nurses’ station can get them for you later. Standard practice. She won’t need them here.”
Karin insisted the set was perfect when they found it sitting among far more opulent engagement rings in the jewelry store display window at the mall. Perfect. She didn’t need anything more than that plus Josiah’s undying love, she’d said.
They were young then. What did they know?
When he slipped it on her finger a month later, a week before his graduation from college and her junior finals, she’d breathed that word again, “Perfect.” Then she’d insisted on driving the two and a half hours from Madison to her folks’ house to show them. Karin’s mother spent a disposable camera on pictures of Karin’s hand and the two lovebirds locking lips.
Karin’s mom and dad. He hadn’t called them back. Couldn’t right now. What kind of slug would cheat a ten-minute visit by leaving at the eight-minute mark?
The nurse on the other side of the bed pulled back the thin sheet covering Karin’s bloated, bruised, and, for all intents and purposes, naked body. A modest woman like Karin would be mortified if she were conscious. Leaning in, the nurse laid a stethoscope below the line of Karin’s ribs. Listening for breath sounds? Pneumonia? Josiah knew that much about medicine—that pneumonia is always a risk. The nurse flipped her thick braid over her shoulder with her free hand and moved the stethoscope to a spot a few inches lower than the line of dark bruises arching across Karin’s abdomen. Probably from the seatbelt. She repositioned three or four times, then removed the earpieces and held them out to Josiah. “Would you like to hear your baby’s heartbeat?”
Three years ago, yes. When we’d been trying. Before we discovered most of my swimmers chose the sink option in sink-or-swim. Yes, I would have liked to hear my baby’s heartbeat. I refuse to listen to his child’s, the man who stole Karin from me.
That had to have been it. She wouldn’t have left Josiah willingly. Sure, Josiah had been a little disengaged, distant. Okay, maybe Karin’s word for it fit: self-absorbed. That’s no reason to bail on a marriage. Or start a family with someone else.
Josiah palmed the lower half of his face like a seven-footer might palm a basketball. No, the shake of his head begged. No, please no. I can’t listen to that beating heart.
He couldn’t read the message the nurse’s eyes communicated. Empathy, most likely. The poor, traumatized father. Overcome with grief. Afraid that while listening to his son’s or daughter’s heartbeat, the strange pulsing thumps would stop. Forever. Poor man.
Let her think that.
A child. Oh, Karin! What have you done? And where is the louse who did it with you? Had he walked away from the accident? The sheriff’s department told him nothing. Was the guy in a room down the hall? Josiah leaned his elbows on the bed and propped his forehead on his fingertips.
How was it possible he could hear his blood cells clunking against one another in their rush? They banged against the interior walls of his veins and arteries, played bumper car, leaking oxygen with every collision. If he remembered correctly, breathing was supposed to be involuntary. Somewhere deep in the folds of his brain, the switch had been flipped. Off. You’re on your own, man. Breathing takes such effort. Too much effort.
“We don’t have her complete medical records yet. What were you given as a due date?” the woman’s matter-of-fact voice asked. “I guessed late August. Am I right? Thin thing like your wife, you’d think she’d be showing more. Ultrasound had her measuring at twelve weeks. But there’s always leeway there. With my second baby, I measured forty-four weeks by the time that child was born. Forty-four weeks, if you can imagine. I expected my son would make the Guinness Book of World Records. What would you think, fourteen or fifteen pounds? He surprised us all. Eight pounds. Eight pounds! Just goes to show you.”
Josiah coughed. And again. “I need a drink of water. Excuse me.” The hall—antiseptic and clinical—welcomed him into its conversationless haven. He leaned against the wall outside Karin’s glassy cell. A young woman looked up from the center nurses’ station around which the ICU rooms circled like sterile covered wagons.
“It never seems enough, does it?” she asked him.
Enough?
“The ten minutes. A measly ten minutes every hour. Have you found the family waiting room yet? Someone left a plate of homemade cinnamon rolls in there. Make sure you try one before they’re gone.”
There are others like me? Other people with no clue what happened to ordinary life?
Josiah entertained a mental picture of all the king’s horsemen on their knees, pawing through rubble, using giant tweezers to pick up pieces of eggshell and attempting to reassemble the bits. With duct tape and superglue.
Some people should not sit on walls. Period.
He told his legs to carry him out the building to his car. Home. Instead he found himself walking through the open door of a room marked Intensive Care Family Waiting. A foreigner, he crossed the border into unknown territory. The familiar scent of cinnamon grounded him, oddly enough, like finding a sign written in English in the heart of Darfur. Or Kosovo. Or some other desolate, ravaged place.
He picked
