Forgot what it meant (continued)

by Sean Jackson

“What happened?” Prudence called into the phone, waking a heavy, blanket-lathered Nolan. Mimi raced at the door again and ricocheted backwards, her legs scrambling in all directions.

“She needs to go out,” Nolan croaked. Prudence waved him off. Evelyn came back, breathless, in a whisper.

“My front door blew out,” she hissed. “It’s gone.”

Prudence started rocking on the bed, gently. Nolan got up, wobbly, and went to let Mimi out. Prudence saw him in the mirror, just behind his real self. They both looked so tired, so worn out, so old.

“Evelyn?”

The Lopps’ nearest neighbor was howling, but sounding more faraway. She must be moving around, Prudence thought.

“Evelyn, go back where you were. Go into a bathroom. Stay away from the door.”

She could hear the widower sobbing, talking to herself, trying to utter acceptable prayers.

“Prudence?”

“Yes, dear?”

“How are you and Nolan?”

“Oh, we’re fine, honey. You don’t mind us right now. You go to the bathroom. Are you going to the bathroom?”

Nolan unlatched the door and pulled it open. It slammed back into his chest and sent him down hard. Mimi darted out, leaning sideways against the wind that shrieked into the room, almost instantly drenched by a squall. Prudence had no idea which trauma to address first. Mimi had disappeared into the rain like she’d walked into a carwash, Nolan was moaning on the floor, and Evelyn, poor dear Evelyn, was facing her doom.

“Prudence, oh, Prudence,” Evelyn sobbed. “I love you Prudence. I love you so much. I’ve loved you all this time. I wish you hadn’t moved away like you did, but I’m so glad you came back. I do love you. I’ve always loved you …”

Prudence’s line went dead with a crack. No power. Nolan had risen to his knees, and he was trying to catch his breath.

“My sugar …” he rattled, groping for the wall so he could stand up. The metal door kept slapping against his ankle, swinging from the wall to his leg. Water was gushing in through the opening, soaking him.

Prudence got over and helped him up. He was crying. She sat him down on Mimi’s bed, then shoved against the door until she got it closed. She locked it, the rasp of the latch causing her stomach to pinch. Mimi was out there.

“Where is she? Did she come back in?”

Prudence told him she hadn’t. But she’d be OK. She’d find someplace to huddle, maybe in a breezeway behind a vending machine. Mimi had good sense.

“Oh lord, what else can happen?” Nolan was quivering, in no shape to be so upset.

“Prudence?”

She curled her arm gently around Nolan’s head, kissing him softly on his bald spot.

“I’m having a heart attack,” he announced, falling into her with a heavy breath.

I can’t call 911, she screamed to herself, jerking away so that he fell back on the bed, his legs dangling off the foot end. She clapped her hands for a second to help her think. All she could hear was the wind.

Nolan was still breathing, but his hands had balled into fists. His eyes were open, staring absently at the ceiling. His lips had darkened. She ran to the sink and filled a tiny plastic cup with water. She rushed back and dabbed it with her fingers onto his mouth. It dribbled down his cheeks into his ears. She didn’t notice. She did it again. And again his ears filled with tap water before draining slowly into the tufts of hair at the base of his skull.

…..

There was a quiet humming in the room with Prudence. A soft, orange-glowing hum like the purr of a cat. The white tiles, curtains, and ceiling had all gone dark except for the faint, flecked-sunrise blush from the tiny lights on the machines.

Inside Nolan’s hospital room, there was no sound from the storm, either. Prudence couldn’t get the raging winds out of her head. She was watching the rise and fall of her husband’s chest, thanking the lord. It had been all she could do to get an ambulance to finally come to the motel. She’d feared he’d already given up the ghost by the time the paramedics stormed their room, slamming around in a controlled panic, talking in a language she could not understand.

Is he taking any medicine? Does he have a history of heart problems? Has he been drinking or doing any drugs? Oh, how she lit into the one shorter fella when he asked that. Drugs? Like what kind of drugs? Does it look like they’d been in the room smoking drugs? Yeah, oh yessir, that’s what they’d been doing all right. They’d come to Greenville, pushed along by that beast Matilda, just so they could settle down in an Econo Lodge room (which was dirty, by the way) and smoke their drugs.

She was glad Nolan hadn’t been conscious to hear that. He woulda blown his stack. If he hadn’t suffered a heart attack yet, that would have sent him into certain arrhythmia. (Her first husband’s favorite golfing buddy had been a cardiologist. But he was a drunk just like the rest of them, including Dan.)

“I’m going,” she kept saying when Nolan was finally strapped into a gurney, tubes blowing gentle air up his nose. She hadn’t even blinked an eye when they’d ripped open his shirt and slapped tape and wires around his nipples. (Nolan was embarrassed by the thickness and grayness of his profuse chest hair.)

“I’m following you right in,” she said, toe to heel with the paramedic shoving Nolan into the ambulance. They’d formed a makeshift rain shield by ripping open trash bags plucked from the Lopps’ room. She got bumped in, almost right on top of Nolan, and they’d screeched off, rain beating at them, wind slinging them along an unsteady path.

Then there’d been two hours in the ER, and the Yankee doctor who’d read the X-rays. How could a man with glasses that thick read an X-ray? The nurses on their floor had been real nice. One of them, a Nancy with chopped, dyed-blond hair, said she’d grown up near Creswell.

“I know yall’s house,” Nancy said, patting at the sweat on Nolan’s forehead just before cutting the lights off so Prudence could rest along with her husband. “My daddy showed me that house after he’d been out there for a fire or something.”

“Oh yes,” Prudence sighed, “there was a terrible fire about twenty years ago. About burnt everything up. But it’s all better now. We’ve fixed everything up, me and Nolan.”

The nurse smiled and left her prayers with Prudence. Nolan wasn’t making any noise whatsoever. If it wasn’t for the movement of his chest, you’d have thought he was dead.

“Oh my!” Prudence gasped quietly in her throat, “Nolan dear, you almost left me.”

She had tears in her eyes before she knew it. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, so the nurses wouldn’t hear. He had coronary artery disease, and it had almost killed him. Doctor thick-glasses said they’d know after he woke whether there’d be any lasting ill-effects.

She slept for about twenty minutes, waking up with an awful pain in her neck. It was jabbing down into her right shoulder, and she started swinging her arm to get rid of it. While doing this, she saw Nolan’s eyelashes flutter. Then he let out a groggy moan. Something beeped.

“Nancy! Nancy!”

And there she was, with two more people in tow. They hovered around Nolan for a minute, talking to him like he was a baby. Do you know where you’re at? What’s your birthday? All kinds of nonsense. He knew his birthday, but he thought he was still at the Econo Lodge. Room something-or-other.

Prudence dropped her face over the young doctor’s shoulder and grinned at her husband. He looked like death had chewed him up and spit him out, but the corners of his lips wrinkled. The remaining strands of his hair were plastered wildly to his head. She nudged around and stroked them neatly, gathered them down where they needed to be.

“Honey,” she whispered. “It’s good to see you, honey.”

A nurse (not Nancy, whose shift was ending) stayed behind once everyone had done and seen what they needed to do and see. Prudence hovered all around the bed. First on one side, then the other. Nolan’s eyes popped open for the umpteenth time, only this time he had a worried look on his face. Between pauses he asked about Mimi.

“My sugar?” he asked, gurgling a bit.

Heavens! Prudence didn’t know what to tell him. But she made sure her face didn’t betray her cluelessness. Nossir. Nolan had to stay calm and unbothered.

“She’s in the van in her seat,” she said. (Nolan had handpicked Mimi’s car seat out himself, online. They could strap her in and everything, only it was so much of a real strapping-in as it was tucking her into a cushioned, box-shaped contraption.)

He nodded slightly and closed his eyes.

“I love my sugar,” he cooed.

It was at that very second that Prudence realized she was jealous of Mimi. Jealous of a darned dog!

“She loves you, too, honey. And so do I.”

When Nolan smiled it was how Prudence imagined he’d looked when he was a boy. He looked so content she had to bend down and peck his cheek.

“I haven’t shaved,” he complained.

The nurse said something about being back in two minutes, and Prudence waved her along. They were going to be all right. Well, there was still the finding Mimi thing, but she knew that would come out fine, too. It had to. There was no way it could not. She even thought about the Barn, the earthenware and the gravy boat, the wavy lead mirrors, those fine, expensive rugs. They’d be right there waiting for her and Nolan, just like Mimi’d be at the motel, keeping the bucktoothed concierge company until they got there. Evelyn Askew would make out good, too.

Prudence could feel all those hours, days, months, a good ten years, of worrying about the Barn, just bunching up against her. It was breathing down her neck, all that time spent concerned about this and that, things and more things, pomp and circumstance, and here was Nolan, her husband, pushed back into one of the backroom closets of her life. He’d been stuck in there so long she’d forgotten about what he meant to her. She chided herself secretly, trying to keep a happy face so when he woke up he wouldn’t see her all sullen.

She made a note to take the next good chance, the very next time he drifted into real sleep, to step out and call that concierge. Because when they went to retrieve Nolan’s sugar, she wanted Mimi to be dried out good and not all wet and ratty like she could get when she snuck out and played in the rain.

            THE END