Once More With Feeling Read Online Free PDF

surgery,’ I said instead, irritated that my voice sounded so hoarse. As if I had anything to be ashamed of here. ‘It looks like we’re in for a long night.’
    I felt foolish, suddenly, as if I were aping medical dramas I’d seen in the past. As if I were speaking the lines to some script, and I was a terrible actress. I still felt as if my body wasn’t mine, as if none of this were real, as if I were somewhere else watching it all happen. What did it say about me that some part of me wished I really was?
    But there was nothing to do but wait. And pretend that Carolyn wasn’t in the room. If my husband’s girlfriend had been anyone besides my sister, would I have allowed this? I knew I wouldn’t have. I didn’t know why I didn’t throw her out, too. But I didn’t. On some level, I was afraid that if I tried, she wouldn’t go. And worse – that my parents would back her up.
    And the truth I had to sit with – for hours – was that I was far too cowardly to test that theory.
    They told us he made it through surgery some time before dawn. And that we could see him, one at a time and for very brief periods. I was up and on my feet without thinking about it, and only noticed that Carolyn stood too as I passed her on my way out of the waiting room. I saw her hands ball into fists, but she stayed quiet.
    I’m still his wife!
I thought furiously.
You haven’t won yet!
    But then I hated myself that I could be so petty, even here. Even now.
    I followed the nurse into his small, curtained space, and had to remind myself to breathe. No matter that I’d cautioned myself to expect the worst – and no matter thatthe doctor and nurse had made a point of mentioning that he was
a little bit worse for wear
. I still wasn’t prepared.
    The last time I’d seen Tim he’d been
Tim
. That big grin and bright eyes that made you believe that whatever he saw in front of him, he loved. But tonight Tim lay on the bed, covered in bandages and connected to machines, looking pale and fragile and not anything like himself in the middle of it. It took me long, frightening, wholly disorienting moments to find the things in him I recognized beneath the tubes and the lines, the machines and the bandages. This was the beaten-up, gaunt and sick version of a man I always thought of as smiling and sparkly. I had a hard time reconciling the two.
    My breath came then, ragged and almost painful.
    ‘You can talk to him,’ the nurse encouraged me in her relentlessly cheerful voice. ‘Some people think that patients in his condition can hear everything that’s going on around them.’
    ‘Do you believe that?’ I asked, and my voice sounded wrong, too deep and too distant. I had to squint a little bit to focus on the nurse, who smiled impersonally though her expression was warm.
    ‘The human body is a pretty amazing machine,’ she said, with kindness. ‘I believe almost anything is possible.’
    That wasn’t really an answer, but I took it.
    I moved closer and settled myself gingerly into the chair next to his bed. I smiled as best as I could at the nurse, and then waited for her to leave before I turnedmy attention back to Tim. Should I take his hand? Should I leave him alone, untouched? Did he find my touch repulsive now or was it just that he preferred Carolyn’s? There were so many details we hadn’t gotten to yet in our brand-new talk of divorce. And there were so many times I hadn’t been paying attention anyway – I’d been waiting him out. How was I supposed to know what to do in a situation like this?
    I felt my breath catch in my throat, and realized with a mixture of shock and horror that I was
that close
to dissolving into sobs. The kind I’d steadfastly refused to allow myself since That Day, because giving in to the urge would be too much like surrendering, and I, by God, was not about to surrender. The kind I suspected might tear me limb from limb if I succumbed to them. I pinched the bridge of my nose, hard, and forced