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A Glimpse

The biopsy was on Friday, but results would not be in until Monday. Wendell waited while she went back with a nurse. Others came, seven in all, with friends or partners that sat with him in the lobby, skimming magazines as the patients signed in and disappeared into the back. Each time, after about thirty minutes, they returned smiling and left with their mates. It was almost eleven before she came back and she wasn't smiling. There was more bleeding than expected, and it had not stopped yet.

She iced the incision when they got home and settled into the recliner. Wendell got her a blanket from the closet, then left to get lunch. He didn't eat, but she had a little and then went back into the bedroom to rest. He gathered up some laundry, but sat down in the recliner with the basket at his feet. Twice he put his hands on the arms, leaned forward to get up, but only sighed through his nostrils and fell back, paralyzed with worry. His imagination spiraled in on itself like a dog wrapping its chain around a tether pole, chasing after and running from a half dozen scenarios in an ever-tightening circle.

Later that evening Wendell lay down in the guestroom, chilled and empty, amid remnants of their daughter's teenage years. Things left behind when she moved off to college lay abandoned on shelves: a teddy bear with a spot rubbed bald by a sleeping preschooler's fingers, an Aztec sun face shaped by second grade hands, running trophies from the middle and high school years. Outside, a northwest wind lay siege to the house, trying the eaves, windows and gables. Some day, he knew it would break through the walls to savage their ancient passions, then scatter them out among the barren trees. Faint echoes left ringing in the walls - soft chats over coffee, clinking of party glasses, adolescent slammed doors - dust devils would chase these memories out and leave them to die in frozen creek beds. Zephyrs would amass the lingering scents of wood fires and pumpkin pies, sweep the vaporous plume out and across empty fields, then carry it whistling through iron gates and around granite markers where everyone who had ever spoken their names now lay in old graves.

Calls from her other satellites came in all day Saturday, full of unspoken questions and silent disquiet. Sensing trouble, they drew in their orbits to stabilize the center. Her sister brought dinner and her own family over that evening. The food and drink, clamor and banter banished the unknown darkness back to the shadows.

They awoke Sunday and shared morning routines in unspoken dialogue. Neither could define it that day, but both felt a growing detachment from routine worries and plans. They gave themselves to experiences and ignored outcomes, saw their young son anew - stripped of the costume of a parent's dreams. They caught fleeting glimpses of freedom, escaped the mundane, and together transcended the fog of their ambitions. Benign news came on Monday, news that let them resume the blindfolded dance, but with a new vision of the eternal now.

Learn more about this author, Jim Mcinvale.
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