At the Seams

Chapter 19: Day 9 - 5:17 pm

Chapter 19: Day 9 - 5:17 pm

When Simon wakes late the following morning, Sam’s cell is in the kitchen, but Sam’s car, wallet, and person have vanished. Simon attends to Mary, consults Ginger about the developments in Mary’s diagnosis, and sits and waits for the missing husband to appear.

After three days, Simon and Ginger share a light dinner of cheddar cheese and crackers and a sip or two of peppery bordolino in the dining room when they hear the unmistakable sound of tumblers falling into place within a lock. Ginger stops speaking midsentence—something Simon cannot recall her ever before doing—and she and Simon dash to the front hallway, tripping over tables, chairs, and each other in their mutual frenzy. By the time Sam pushes the door open, Simon and Ginger block the hallway with their bodies, arms crossed and brows wrinkled. The moment Sam meets her gaze, Ginger is on his butt like carcinoma. “Where the hell have you been?”

Sam freezes; after all, he has not heard this tone or this sentence since before his own mother died when he was a child. Sam regains himself and enters the house, closing the door quietly behind him. He faces Ginger, holding her fast with his cool, blue eyes. “I needed to clear my head,” he answers. He says it calmly, intending to offer more, but is cut off before he can draw his next breath.

“Clear your head?” Ginger asks, her voice strident and angry. “You didn’t exactly go for a walk, Sam. You disappeared for three days. I was worried sick. What the hell happened to you?”

“I stayed at our cabin in the mountains,” Sam says, his voice still calm. “Ginger, I haven’t had a chance to process any of this. I had to get away and think, get focused. I couldn’t do that here.”

“Well, that’s just wonderful, isn’t it? My daughter has exactly nineteen days and seven hours to live, and you’re off clearing your head in the mountains. You should be ashamed of yourself, Sam.”

Sam keeps his eyes on Ginger’s face. “I am, Ginger. If I were a better man, I would have known what to do from the beginning.” Ginger gives Sam a stony glare, then whips around and stomps upstairs.

Simon watches her go, shaking his head. “Thank goodness she rejected my proposal two years ago,” he says and chuckles. Sam, who has never heard that particular story, only looks baffled. “That story,” Simon says, “is for another day. For now, let’s go in the living room and talk.”

Sam nods. He wants no more to talk to Simon than he wants to kill his wife, but life requires nasty behavior. They sit on the mauve sectional, currently devoid of bedding due to Sam’s absence. Sam watches Simon as Simon watches Sam. They measure each other up, without reason, just feeling it natural to do so. Sam’s manner is easy; nothing of the anxious wreck from three nights ago remains. Simon is distant; clinicians so frequently resort to the natural power and control inherent to the clinical approach. The air in the room feels thick as soup to them both. Each simply wants to get through the next conversation, but each wishes the other to speak the first word.

Uncomfortable, his muscles crawling with the urge to fidget, Sam waits for Simon to start. Sam never relinquishes Simon’s gaze. Finally, Simon grows impatient and clears his throat loudly. “Sam,” he says, attempting to sound indifferent and not quite succeeding, “where have you been? Ginger has been worried.”

“I was at the cabin—“

“Yes, in the mountains, I know, you said. But why? It doesn’t take three days to clear your head.”

“It does when your wife is trapped in a filthy, dying body and no one can help her.”

Simon stares. He isn’t sure how to proceed. In all his years in medicine, he has never heard someone speak so of a loved one. Sam hadn’t been nasty in tone or expression—only matter-of-fact. After all, hadn’t Simon himself told Sam that doctors can do very little for patients like Mary? Does Sam fancy himself pragmatic, and not morbidly pessimistic? “Sam, that gross oversimplification of matters could cost Mary her life.”