I Spent Two Weeks in the Hospital, and My Husband Never Visited Me Once – When I Finally Came Home and Opened the Front Door, I Stood There Staring in Disbelief
The date was three days after my surgery.
The truth, I was beginning to understand, was almost the opposite of that.
The anger I'd been carrying for two weeks began to loosen in a way I wasn't entirely prepared for. I set the bear down carefully on the workbench, smoothed its bow, and stood there for a moment.
On the back door was one final note.
"Come outside. I'm sorry it took me this long to be ready."
The truth was almost the opposite of that.
***
The garden had been cleared and replanted. The broken gate had been rehung. The stone path we'd planned since the second summer ran from the back door to a small glass-and-cedar structure I had never seen before.
The sunroom.
The one he'd been promising since the year we got married. Every time I described what I wanted, he'd listen and say it was going to be beautiful and that we'd build it one day. On the doorframe, at eye level, was one more card.
"You described exactly this when we were thirty-one. I remembered everything."
He'd listen and say it was going to be beautiful.
***
I stood there for a moment before I pushed the door open.
He was inside it. Asleep in a folding chair, his head tipped back, his arms still in a shirt covered in dried paint. Around him on the floor were blueprints and receipts, and the general wreckage of someone who had been working without stopping.
I touched his shoulder.
He was inside it.
He startled awake and saw me, and the relief on his face lasted about one second before he registered mine.
"Bev?"
"Two weeks," I said. "Rowan. Two weeks."
***
He stood slowly. I stepped back because I wasn't ready to be reached for.
"I know," he added.
He startled awake.
"You promised me you'd be there when I woke up. You promised on your life."
He didn't try to explain it away. He sat back down, leaned his forearms on his knees, and told me the truth.
He came to the hospital the morning after the surgery. The nurse at the desk told him there had been complications. Then he found my room, stood in the doorway, saw the machines, the tubes, my face, and told me he had never been that afraid of anything in twenty years.
He went back to the elevator. He sat in the parking garage for two hours. He drove home and couldn't go inside, so he slept in the truck in the driveway.
He had never been that afraid of anything.
The next morning he drove back. Made it to the lobby. Sat in a chair near the entrance for forty minutes and then walked back to his car.
