LITMIR.BIZ

      A kiss? What would Josiah see in Karin’s eyes if he tried? The idea lay crosswise in his throat, a fish bone of uncertainty. Too many unanswered questions.

      The second hand on the emergency room wall clock ticked in spasms. The minute and hour hands seemed not to move at all. Twenty-four hour days. Double dark forty-eight hour nights. The math didn’t work, but the truth of an unmoving clock overrides math.

      Josiah cocked his head from side to side, stretching the tight cords in his neck. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. His hands hung useless. Some protector he turned out to be.

      Words. He’d focused his life on teasing words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs. While he did, had another man whispered something in Karin’s ear? Something she believed? Josiah wasn’t a jealous man, or suspicious, but that one word choice—person—had sent him somewhere he’d never been. Not a good place.

      “Mr. Chamberlain?”

      Josiah bolted to his feet and faced the source of the voice. “Yes, that’s me.”

      “I’m Lane Stephens.” The gaunt man tugged at the v-neck of his shadow-blue scrubs. The fabric at that spot bore a permanent crease, as if Dr. Stephens often pinched his scrub top when about to dispense bad news. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

      Josiah’s response dug its claws into the muscles around his vocal cords and refused to move.

      “Mr. Chamberlain, your wife sustained serious injuries in the accident. We’ve addressed the most life-threatening as best we can for the time being. I’ll need you to sign this consent. She’s not stable but we really have no choice. She’s on her way to surgery now. We have to get the bleeding in her brain under control or—”

      No. No, no, no, no—Josiah took the tablet and stared at the digital electronic consent form’s swimming words.

      “—there will be even less hope than there is now. I’m sorry. I wish I could have brought you more encouraging news.”

      A cloud of overworked deodorant followed Dr. Stephens down the hall. The man was sweating. Not a good sign.

      What had he said after “Wish I could have brought you more encouraging news”? Did he tell Josiah to wait somewhere else? Was he supposed to follow? No. He said surgery. How soon? How long? How did a thing like this happen?

      Horror-movie fog started at the top of his head and crept downward, engulfing every cell in its path. He stood where the doctor had left him, one more stone pillar around which the emergency room traffic flowed as if it had no eye for architectural detail. He heard sounds. But like all pillars worth their salt, he was not fazed by them.

      His inattention or some other unnamed sin pushed Karin into the path of an oncoming car. Correction. Oncoming tree.

      Somewhere behind a door or curtain Josiah’s broken wife awaited rescue. And he couldn’t do a thing to save her.

      Broken wife. Broken life.

      “Mr. Chamberlain, I’ll show you where to wait.”

      A spot of warmth on his shoulder. A woman’s hand.

      “I’ll show you where you can wait for your wife while she’s in surgery. You may want to take time now though to get something to eat. Would you like me to direct you to the cafeteria?”

      What meal falls at half past disbelief? “No, thank you. Are you a nurse?” He took in her John Deere–green uniform top stretched over a belly so distended that her navel stood out like a conceited grape. “Can you tell me what happened to her?”

      “I’m a unit clerk. You have more questions than we have answers right now. These initial hours are always distressing. Through here.” She slapped the flat, plate-sized disk on the wall and a door opened before them. “Take the elevator to the second floor. Once there, you’ll see signs directing you to the surgery waiting room.”

      He must have hesitated a nanosecond too long. She reached to depress the Up button for him. Then, with a pat on his arm and a standard-issue “Don’t worry,” she was gone.

      He should have asked her name. And thanked her. And said, “You told me where to wait. Now can you tell me how?”

      The surgery waiting room embraced him coolly, like a cursory hug from an estranged relative. It tried. He had to give it that. Tasteful couches and love seats. Low coffee tables built sturdy to support tired feet and tired magazines. An espresso machine. Nice touch. As if fancy coffee could erase pain better than plain.

      Four hours into the wait, Josiah repented of letting all that coffee bean acid slosh around his stomach unaccompanied by real food to neutralize it. He found a vending machine and punched B-12 for the least offensive-looking sandwich. Turkey something on used whole wheat sponges. He remembered removing the cellophane and sticking it in his pocket for lack of a conveniently located wastebasket. He remembered because a faint, bordering-on-noxious onion odor accompanied him like a cloud of bad cologne as he paced. He didn’t recall eating the sandwich, but his tongue worked to free a limp sliver of lettuce from between his teeth.

      How sad was it that the stark aloneness he felt in the waiting room in the middle of the night appealed more than having to make conversation, even with a friend? He kept trying Leah’s number. No response.

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