The Boreal Forest, Part 2

I watched the nurse working, clicking machine dials, reading a printout, fiddling with instruments in the wee hours of the morning, my baby laid up with the ultimate head wound, a hot mess. Imagine a blow to the head with a pick axe where the pick axe cracks thru eye and meat and bone and lands into the fleshy brain. Now imagine that blow delivered meticulously and slowly over the course of three months. To your wife. To your lover.
Buttercup looked up at me in a morphine haze as I dabbed the blood that has drained from the incision to her lips and neck.
Water she whispers.
Water?
Yes she whispers.
I ready the water in the thin plastic cup and fiddle a straw out of its delicate paper case, put it in and hold the end to her lips. She draws, coughs a light powerless hack, opens her eye. I look back.
You're taking care of me.
Yes.
I remain looking until the eye drops and closes with the high.
I watch until sure she's asleep and read a few pages of a novel. She'll wake with pain in an hour, maybe sooner so I position myself where she can catch me with her peak. It opens followed by a short breath and rolls back up and the lid slowly shuts. I watch the machines and look for changes, heart rate, pulse, oxygen, all of it. These remain steady until I drift off.
In the morning the man adjacent coughs a hack, breathes deep and falls into arrest. Alarms sound. A medical team scurries and we listen, Buttercup in and out of consciousness, as they cut and work to stop internal bleeding. One hours goes by, two and they call it, the man is dead. We can hear the surgeon's call.
It looks as if the cancer has grown rapidly and now has burst an artery. At this point we can remove the stomach, spleen and upper portion of the small intestine but I'm not sure. Pause. Yes. Pause. Yes, I'm sorry. Pause. Later we can hear the woman weeping in the same adjacent space.
I'll never hold him again she sobs, I'll never hold him again.
Buttercup is more swollen, visibly bloated and almost unresponsive.
Babe. BABE.
uh
You have to drink water darlin.
don't
You have to. Her eye opens briefly, her brow knits.
BABE.
huh
Fear. I hold the straw to her lips and she sips, barely making it over the accordian bend.
The pain will decrease, this is the peak day of swelling, I say.
Fuck she responds.
It won't be forever. For any of us I thought. Then I leave to find lunch, the day just as beautiful as can be, as perfect weather as can be had and I enjoy it on my trip across the packed blacktop lots to the intersection and into the bar where I order the italian house red.
1/4 liter if you have it. Fuck it, make it a half.
The barkeep works.
Should I open a tab?
Not this time. Maybe tomorrow, we'll see.
I drink up and leave taking the long way around the sturdy brick complex in the perfect northern sun, slowing my pace to take in every second, holding my face to the sun.