Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [112]
I extended my hand, Ruddy hugged me, kissed Abbie and walked out. He had fought hard, too. They all had.
Given the movement, the familiar nausea returned. Abbie rested her head on her hand and closed her eyes. With her other hand, she rubbed her legs, begging for blood flow. She sat in the chair and I pushed her across the room. She whispered over her shoulder to Georgie, “You deserve someone better than me. Someone who can appreciate your commitment to your work.”
The afternoon sun breaking through the window was harsh and direct. Squinting, I rolled her to the closet where she stood and stared inside. Her gown, untied in the back, flapped under the flow of the oscillating fan on the floor. I offered to tie it but she waved me off. “I don’t care. Not much left to see anyway.” She let it slide to the floor and stood there in her birthday suit—which was baggy and two sizes too big. She pointed and I pulled down a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She leaned on me as I helped her slide into a pair of panties. They too sagged, hanging loosely off her hips. She looked over her shoulder and realized her butt was pointed toward the hall where two male nursing assistants stood staring in. She whispered, “Free advertising.” She leaned against me while I helped her guide one foot into her jeans. “I used to work so hard to sell that space. Now I can’t give it away.” I buttoned her jeans and pulled the T-shirt over her arms. She didn’t need a bra. She slid on a baseball cap, and I slid her flip-flops onto her toes. One last time, I pushed her up against the windowsill where she let her eye follow the marsh from the Intracoastal Waterway to the ocean, shimmering in the distance. Shrimp boats dotted the horizon along with one gray aircraft carrier headed north to Mayport where Navy wives waited for their Davys with handheld flags and babies dressed in blue.
Getting dressed had taxed her equilibrium. The nausea climbed up her legs, shook her knees, gained strength in her stomach, launched into her throat and exited out her mouth like a rocket blast. I held her over the sink and wiped her mouth as the sound of footsteps grew closer. A young man stood in the hall. We’d met him several times—he was the acne-faced teenaged grandson of a patient next door. He stood some four inches shorter than me. Abbie opened her eyes. “Yes?” she managed.
He looked away, tried to say something, but couldn’t quite get it out, so he pointed next door and walked away without looking back—something few men would have done two years ago. But we’d grown accustomed to that, too.
We rode the elevator down—Abbie vomiting again between the sixth and fourth floors. We crossed the parking lot, I laid her in the front seat and then started the car. Four hours later, we were home.
We’d come full circle.
42
JUNE 9, AFTERNOON
After our flight lesson, we returned to the cabin. While Abbie napped, I ran through the rain to Bob’s to ask for some coffee. When I got there, he pointed at the TV. “Looks like your buddies caught on.” He turned up the volume. On the screen, a reporter stood in a hospital room and held the microphone in front of a man with raccoon eyes, whose face was black-and-blue and whose nose had been taped up. His voice was nasal and he sounded as though he had a bad cold. It was Verl, the broad-shouldered, thick-legged troll that I hit in the face with the revolver. Next to him stood Coal Miner, or “Buf.” He was the first guy to walk in and stand over Abbie. I remember his face being shiny and he was wearing glasses. They hung on his face now, bent and held together with tape. Last time I saw him he was running out of the room with Rocket attached to his crotch. His voice at the time had been rather high-pitched. Currently, all he could muster was a cracked whisper. “Yeah, he come out of nowhere. Like a tiger or something. I never seen nothing like it. He was swinging shi—I mean stuff, and he was like a crazed