Chapter 2
Lydia
I’m sitting next to Darren at the hospital. His brown eyes are closed. A mechanical ventilator is attached to his mouth. Beep, beep, beep. Over and over again, the heart monitor attached to my husband tells me he’s alive. And yet the doctor sitting next to me has just said the words “no longer with us.”
I don’t react to the doctor’s words. It’s not that I don’t understand them. I’ve got a doctoral degree in physical therapy, so I fully understand that humans need a living, functioning brain to be considered alive. But the thing is, science doesn’t know everything. What’s true for one patient might not be true for another, especially when that patient is Darren Decker. The reality is that my husband isn’t like anybody else. He’s the strongest, most determined, and most exceptional human being I know. Trust me, if anyone can bounce back from brain death, it’s him. I grasp Darren’s strong hand in mine, admiring the tapestry of his light skin intertwined with mine.
“Do you understand, Mrs. Decker?” the doctor says.
I don’t know what she’s asking me. I stopped listening the minute she said “brain-dead.” But it seems she’s waiting for a response, so I say, “Just give him some time to recover.”
The doctor looks sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Decker, but Darren isn’t going to recover. That’s what I’ve been explaining to you. Brain death is death. He’s legally and clinically dead. We’re keeping his body alive to harvest his organs, if that’s something you wish to do.”
I gaze at Darren’s face. His eyelids. I touch his cheekbone, careful not to touch the respirator. His skin is warm to the touch. Other than the bandage wrapped around his head and the respirator protruding from his mouth, he looks as blissfully asleep as he does every morning lying beside me in our bed. “I believe in miracles,” I say softly.
There’s a beat.
The doctor shifts in her chair. “Mrs. Decker, let me be clear. An essential chunk of Darren’s brain is physically gone. If I took off those bandages, you’d lose all hope of him recovering. I really don’t want you to see that, so please take my word for it.”
“Take off the bandages,” I say flatly, not taking my eyes off Darren’s sleeping face. “I want to see.”
The doctor hesitates. She tells me this will surely be highly traumatizing to me. Something I can’t un-see.
“I’m a medical professional,” I explain. “I can handle it. I want to see.”
The doctor reluctantly complies with my request... and the minute the bandages are unwound and I get a solid glimpse of the back of my husband’s cratered head, I lean over and barf all over the linoleum floor.
***
I’m calm now. Darren’s head is bandaged again and I’m holding his hand. His skin against mine is warm, just like he’s sleeping. As before, the heart monitor assures me my husband is alive and well and will be opening his chocolate-brown eyes any second now. But, of course, I’ve now accepted that the heart monitor is a fucking liar.
I’ve asked for some time alone with my dead husband before my parents and Darren’s arrive and all hell breaks loose. I’m using this time alone with the love of my life to memorize every inch of his face, every pore, so I’ll never forget. I touch his soft lips—the lips I’ve kissed since age seventeen. The only lips I’ve ever kissed. I trace his eyebrows and Roman nose and steel jaw, as best I can with the respirator sticking out of his mouth. And then I lean forward, press Darren’s muscled forearm between my two slender ones, and proceed to tell him The Story of Darren and Lydia.
I begin my story at the beginning, of course—the moment I first laid eyes on Darren in chemistry class at age seventeen. “I felt like I’d been struck by a thunderbolt,” I whisper, smiling through my tears. “It was love at first sight.”
And it was.
Darren was the mysterious new boy in school with swagger for days—the fresh meat every girl wanted to claim. And yet he went straight for me, a pastor’s daughter who’d never been kissed, like I’d ordered him from Lululemon.
“We both just knew, didn’t we?” I whisper. “One glance and that was it for both of us.”
I talk about how we went off to college together, as far away as we could get from the small minds in our small town, all the way to Seattle, even though our parents said we were too young to move so far away together. Too naive to understand words like “soulmates” and “true love” and “forever.” I remind him of the time his piece-of-shit, racist uncle pulled Darren aside at Thanksgiving to tell him he’d best reconsider “getting serious with a black girl, even a light-skinned one like Lydia who’s only half black, because, even though she’s sweet as can be and I personally like her a whole lot—I really do—a white boy hitching his plow to a black girl will wind up being far more trouble than she’s worth, I don’t care how good the pussy might be.” I grip Darren’s hand. “Thank you so much for throwing that punch, my love. No matter what I said at the time about turning the other cheek, that was just my years of Sunday school talking. The truth is, I was elated you broke that bastard’s jaw. It was then that I knew you were my knight in shining armor and always would be. It was then that I knew you’d always protect me.” I barely choke out my next words. “And you always did.” I lay my head on his arm and speak through my sobs. “You’ve been the best husband and father and protector a man could ever be, Darren Decker.”
I can’t talk anymore. I’m crying too hard.
With my forehead still pressed against my husband’s arm, I let the memories of our life together flood me. Darren the boyfriend. Husband. Father. Third time father-to-be. Crying, I stand and place Darren’s limp hand on my flat belly. “I wish I’d gotten the chance to tell you about our third baby. I took the test after you left for work this morning and didn’t call because I wanted to see your face when I...” I simply can’t continue. With a whimper, I throw myself across Darren’s muscled chest and lose myself to violent, wracking sobs.