The Thirteenth Union: Prelusion

Chapter One: The Preface to an End

We drove through a mist of spitting rain and dense clouds. The traffic was decent for a Tuesday during rush hour, but with every passing second I seemed to be melting into a puddle of anxiety and worry. A faint chatter would drone from Janette's mouth every couple of minutes-mainly small talk about the drab weather or empathic comments trying to lift my spirits. But both of us knew that there was nothing to lighten any part of us, not on a day like this, not in a time like this, not with something so life changing was hanging over our heads.

The entire trip was killing me. I ruthlessly wanted to hop into the passenger's seat and force my chauffer to drive faster. Not a second could be wasted.

It wasn't until my chauffer began to slow in front of the EMERGENCY sign, that my began to both relax and tense. I was here, so there was no reason to want to murder the driver, but I was here, and I didn't know if I was prepared to know what happened. The car hadn't even begun to stop before I flung open my door and barreled out of the vehicle. Janette let out a surprised screech and did the same. Her hard flats were even loud on the pavement. She was struggling to run and keep her purse on her shoulder.

I ran through both sets of glass doors, heart racing in my chest. There was a small waiting room, occupied by a small family minus a mother and a single man in a camo green jacket and dingy jeans. He was staring into open space until I arrived, and then at me, but so was everyone else. There was a curved desk that came up to my chest; I rushed to it, with Janette scrabbling behind me, racing to catch up.

*************

Eight hours. Sixteen cups of coffee. Twelve bathroom breaks. Four sandwiches-only one of them tuna. Two mental breakdowns in the bathroom. Three sessions of watching Janette spiral into the insanity that comes with not knowing, cries and all. And one vomit emergency, to which I received one can of Sierra Mist and a peanut butter cookie.

Janette Sweeney, my secretary, the woman catered to my every whim, Calina's "adopted" child, and every woman an old guy like me could hope for in an assistant. Her red-brown hair was pinned elegantly with black bobby pins, and ruddy curls spilled down her pastel yellow cardigan, but now it was tangled from uncomfortable sleeping. Normally eager emerald eyes, framed with dark mascara and blue-black eyeliner, were closed behind ruby red spectacles that sat askew on her nose. Her coral pencil skirt was spattered with a small coffee stain, I noticed, but I knew she didn't care.

It must have been midnight when I finally caught a few winks. It was interrupted mostly by myself falling to the left or the right and waking up abruptly, almost always smacking my head against the wall. I was offered a hospital bed pillow numerous times, but declined on the logic that someone else might need one. Janette was not as selfless. She had abandoned the chair long ago, and took to the floor for a nap that was broken up with a lot of hiccups and disoriented jolts awake.

Around one, I ended up watching the wordless news broadcast on the large television screen in the corner. It was hard to watch, with all the snow that turned current high definition into grainy black and white movies. A murder in Tacoma; a bearded, hooded sketch that flashed across the screen in warning. Bank robbery in Olympia. House fire that killed a family of six in Portland. It was nothing too frightening.

What was frightening was the fact that I might never see my wife's smiling face again.

That was the real horror. It was what haunted these last several hours. It was what was sharpening my nerves, making me jump at the slightest humanoid figure that moved in the windows of those white doors.

When the television became too boring, I began to count the tiles on the ceiling. The most interesting thing that happened was a grandmother coming in the glass doors to collect the toddlers from the sleep deprived father. He thanked her with a kiss on her papery white skin and exchanged a few updates on whoever they were waiting for. The toddlers left with their grandmother, and once they were gone the father began to sob into the crook of his elbow. It was a silent sob. I looked away, afraid to invade on such a vulnerable moment in his life. It was almost a crime to watch him, or to even listen to his whispered wails of pain.