The Weight of a Happy Marriage

Originally published in Levee Magazine.

Find your wife in the tangle of wires and resist the urge to dig her out. A coma doesn’t make her Sleeping Beauty. She doesn’t want the taste of you on her lips, anyway. Listen carefully to the machinery speaking over her, because it might be a clue about the future. The chorus of beeping makes it impossible to do anything but wonder what will happen in the end. 

But you’ve been thinking about the end for some time. 

Life isn’t a fairytale. 

“Are you the husband?” The doctor’s appearance in her room seems aggressive. 

“Yes,” You know how to answer this doctor, but nothing else. Time has stopped at just the wrong moment, leaving you stuck between two realities. Which one feels like home today? 

“I’m sure this is a great shock to you,” the doctor says. When did you let him take your hand? The doctor is still talking. He says, “In addition to her head injuries, your wife has sustained spinal fractures and herniated discs. We’re taking her into surgery and then we will run some imaging tests. You’ll be the first to know the results. There’s a lot of unknowns we’re dealing with. ” 

Tell me about it, Doc. Somehow, keep that to yourself. 

The day you met Alice you were on a date with the wrong girl. Alice even told you that, when it was over. You fumbled through the salad, the iceberg lettuce trying to climb back out of your mouth. Your date, you don’t even remember her name any more, made it clear that everything about you was wrong. She left before the waiter could offer dessert. You nursed your ego and a glass of Merlot when Alice sat down in front of you.

“You’re too nice,” Alice said, swishing your wine in her hand. “I lost a bet. I thought you were going to be the one to end that horrible date. My mom said you looked like a pushover.” Her clipped red hair spun with the flick of her wrist, but her icy blue eyes held your gaze, like a challenge. 

“A gentleman,” you’d corrected her. 

“Don’t be too much of a gentleman,” she’d said. “Or I’m going to think you’re not interested.”

So like Alice to turn eavesdropping into wanting her in the worst way. 

Footsteps. Someone from the medical staff is coming back. Duck into the bathroom, before they can corner you again. You feel like you’re trespassing. 

Later that week, the tarot card reader at your company party throws death on the table and smiles. “Death means transition,” she says, her green eyes sparkling with secrets. Lean in, to enjoy the whisper of her voice to its fullest potential. She says, “It could mean a change in your career, a key relationship or moving on in some way.” She places her hand over yours and gently traces the tan line, the ghost of your wedding ring, before inviting you home. 

You bury yourself in her. 

The next day, you have no regrets. Regrets are the burden of a happily married man, and you long for the weight of them. You’ve adjusted to your wife not being here. If Alice woke up from her coma tomorrow, she’d remember leaving, even if she had to ask the nurses where she was first. 

You miss the idea of cheating. Not that you wanted to, but that who you slept with mattered. Now, you belong to no one, so you’re free to sleep with whatever fortune teller you meet. It makes the future feel cold and dark. It unfurls out to infinity. 

How long has Alice been in her coma? Three weeks. That means she moved out around three months ago. She never even specified whether this was permanent or temporary. She’d started by saying things like, “I need space,” and ended saying nothing at all. What were you supposed to do with that? Wait for the divorce papers in the mail?

That seemed like as fine a way as any to handle it, and your confusion grew the longer you waited for legal documents that never came. At first you thought she was reconsidering. There’s a first time for everything, right? Then you got a call about a car accident involving your wife, whom it seemed had not updated her emergency contact. Another sign open to interpretation, but you try to smother the hope blooming inside you. No one ever writes down an emergency contact expecting to need it. Some things don’t hold the meaning they should.  

When you’re alone with the medical equipment, ask Alice if she’s hired lawyers. Ask if she wishes she could tell you. 

Consider the possibility that the hospital staff knows your marriage to their patient is a mere technicality. What if they can smell fraud on your coat like second-hand smoke? Slip your wedding ring back on, just in case.

The person who notices your wedding ring isn’t anyone who works at the hospital, but her mother. “I didn’t know you were here.” For one delightful moment, you realize this will answer all your questions. If she leans in for a hug, you and Alice are still married in her mind, no matter how loosely. If she keeps her distance, Alice has told her about your estrangement and probably even called it a divorce. After your mother-in-law hovers in the doorframe thirty seconds too long, it occurs to you how strange it is that she never called. That tells you that your marriage to the comatose woman has ended, in every way that matters. 

“Why are you here?” Her voice is gentle, but she makes no move to sit next to you, to place you both on the same team, on Team Alice. She pities you. She’s staring at your left hand. 

“We’re married.” An interesting take on things. Still, lean into it. Stick your chin out. Own it. It’s the truth you deserve. 

The compassion in her face grows into something harder. She pulls out a folder. “This is power-of-attorney paperwork,” she says. “It’s not completely filled out, but my lawyers tell me that we can demonstrate that it’s her handwriting. I also have emails outlining her reasons for wanting to end the marriage that will show intent.” 

Your heart lunges at that folder. Part of you wants those emails, so you can understand yourself, so you can see this “intent,” spelled out. Broken down so even you can understand. Another part of you is insisting that people can change their mind, even people like Alice who never have before. It takes you a minute to catch up to the matter at hand. 

“Why do you have a lawyer?” 

“If you’d been talking to the medical team, you’d know.” As if on cue, as if he’s been waiting for his chance to get back at you for hiding from him and making the worst part of his job even harder, the doctor appears and addresses you together. 

“As we discussed,” he glances at you, “the damage to her brain stem meets the medical requirements to diagnose her as clinically vegetative. She can breathe, but only because of the ventilator. I’m terribly sorry to give you this news. If you want to discuss the medical details with me, I’m willing to take as much time as you need to feel satisfied with this diagnosis.” 

He keeps going, now, making eye contact with everything in the room but you. He says, “I’ve spoken with the legal team extensively. Without a notarized signature on her power-of-attorney documents, we cannot recognize it, regardless of any other documentation about the alleged state of her marriage. Unless there’s a living will, what we do next is up to her husband.”

The word “alleged,” makes you feel like a criminal. 

“She would have wanted to move on,” her mother insists, and a funeral home brochure flutters down. The kind where the director sits by your side as you pick out flowers, lighting, and watered down music. The kind of place that will design a service Alice surely would have hated. 

“But people wake up from comas, don’t they? I mean we can’t really know she won’t wake up, right?” You feel like a child in Sunday School asking the dumb question.

“You see?!” your mother-in-law accuses you of something to the doctor. “He didn’t even care enough to learn the facts. He just sat here, sulking and hiding and now he’s going to keep her here indefinitely.” 

Admit it. You can’t help but like the sound of that. You suppose you should be ashamed, but the idea of Alice has surrounded you like a warm breeze. Enjoy it, while you can.

Excuse yourself. Go find air. Climb into bed. Cry all night. Start to grieve. 

It’s time to go back to the hospital. You find Alice’s mom by her bed. She looks ready for battle. You don’t know how, but you’re ready, too. Say, “You can listen or you can leave.” Give her a moment. She sits down. 

Go for it. “I don’t know why Alice was unhappy. She never gave me the courtesy of an explanation. But I also don’t know why she didn’t divorce me, and neither do you. The only one who knows is Alice, and she’s not telling. You need to think about someone besides yourself. I’m losing her for the second time and I will need time to process. I will speak with the doctors and gather all the information. I will consult my own attorney and then if it comes to that, I will plan the funeral befitting the woman I loved. I hope you can be polite when you attend.” 

Don’t break eye contact first. Don’t break eye contact first. Don’t...Okay you won. Now go to the bathroom so she doesn’t see you throw up. Go back in and hug the woman who lost her daughter. 

Leave the word “widower” in your mouth. It’s there to stay. But it won’t always be sour. To countless women, it will be a relief. Not long after you first meet them, they ask, “Still single or divorced?” Both answers are wrong. But when you say, “widower,” apologetically, like it’s somehow your fault, you earn some unwinnable prize. They look at you like they’ve tasted blood in the water. 

Every night for a year, you’ll say “Goodbye, Alice,” before falling asleep. Sometimes you mean the coma, sometimes you mean your marriage. Other times you don’t really know, but the words just feel right against your cheek.