Konrath, Joe - Dirty Martini
“He had developed pneumonia, his lungs awash with pus and fluid. He was mercifully unconscious for a horrific procedure called a lung tap. The doctors and nurses used big words like empyema and nosocomial and rhonchi and pleural effusion, but none would give me the straight facts on what his chances were.
He looked terrible. His entire face seemed to hang loosely, as if it no longer was attached to the bone. His color was sickly pale, his red hair slicked to his head, his hand clammy and hot.
I played the fate game for a little while, thinking about my telling him to eat without me, realizing that if I hadn’t we would have eaten together and I’d be in the bed next to him. No one wins thinking those thoughts, but I punished myself with them just the same.
I slept a little, on and off, Latham’s mechanical ventilator oddly soothing. But I always awoke with a startle shortly after sleep began, panicked that the man I loved had died without me being there for him.
At a little after seven in... the morning, I again startled myself awake, and looked into Latham’s eyes and saw that his droopy eyelids were halfway open.MoreLess
He looked terrible. His entire face seemed to hang loosely, as if it no longer was attached to the bone. His color was sickly pale, his red hair slicked to his head, his hand clammy and hot.
I played the fate game for a little while, thinking about my telling him to eat without me, realizing that if I hadn’t we would have eaten together and I’d be in the bed next to him. No one wins thinking those thoughts, but I punished myself with them just the same.
I slept a little, on and off, Latham’s mechanical ventilator oddly soothing. But I always awoke with a startle shortly after sleep began, panicked that the man I loved had died without me being there for him.
At a little after seven in... the morning, I again startled myself awake, and looked into Latham’s eyes and saw that his droopy eyelids were halfway open.MoreLess
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