The Choice

  He finished with her toes and moved to her ankles; when that was done, he flexed her knees, bending them both to her chest and then straightening them. Sometimes, while lying on the couch and glancing through magazines, Gabby would absently stretch her leg in exactly the same way. It was something a dancer would do, and she made it look just as graceful.

  “Does that feel good, sweetheart?”

  That feels wonderful. Thanks. I was feeling a little stiff.

  He knew he’d imagined her answer, that Gabby hadn’t stirred. But her voice seemed to arise from nowhere whenever he worked with her like this. Sometimes he wondered whether he was going crazy. “How are you doing?”

  Bored out of my head, if you want to know the truth. Thanks for the flowers, by the way. They’re lovely. Did you get them from Frick’s?

  “Where else?”

  How are the girls? Tell me the truth this time.

  Travis moved to the other knee. “They’re okay. They miss you, though, and it’s hard on them. Sometimes I don’t know what to do.”

  You’re doing the best you can, right? Isn’t that what we always tell each other?

  “You’re right.”

  Then that’s all I expect. And they’ll be okay. They’re tougher than they look.

  “I know. They take after you.”

  Travis imagined her looking him over, her expression wary.

  You look skinny. Too skinny.

  “I haven’t been eating much.”

  I’m worried about you. You’ve got to take care of yourself. For the girls. For me.

  “I’ll always be here for you.”

  I know. I’m afraid of that, too. Do you remember Kenneth and Eleanor Baker?

  Travis stopped flexing. “Yes.”

  Then you know what I’m talking about.

  He sighed and started again. “Yes.”

  In his mind, her tone softened. Do you remember when you made us all go camping in the mountains last year? How you promised that the girls and I would love it?

  He began working on her fingers and arms. “What brought that up?”

  I think about a lot of things here. What else can I do? Anyway, do you remember that when we first got there, we didn’t even bother to set up camp—just kind of unloaded the truck—even though we heard thunder in the distance, because you wanted to show us the lake? And how we had to walk half a mile to get there, and right when we reached the shore, the sky opened up and it just . . . poured? Water gushing out of the sky like we were standing under a hose. And by the time we got back to camp, everything was soaked through. I was pretty mad at you and made you take us all to a hotel instead.

  “I remember.”

  I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have gotten so mad. Even though it was your fault.

  “Why is it always my fault?”

  He imagined her winking at him as he gently rolled her neck from side to side.

  Because you’re such a good sport when I say it.

  He bent over and kissed her on the forehead.

  “I miss you so much.”

  I miss you, too.

  His throat clenched a little as he finished the exercise routine, knowing Gabby’s voice would begin to fade away again. He moved his face closer to hers. “You know you’ve got to wake up, right? The girls need you. I need you.”

  I know. I’m trying.

  “You’ve got to hurry.”

  She said nothing, and Travis knew he’d pressed too hard.

  “I love you, Gabby.”

  I love you, too.

  “Can I do anything? Close the blinds? Bring you something from home?”

  Will you sit with me a while longer? I’m very tired.

  “Of course.”

  And hold my hand?

  He nodded, covering her body with the sheet once more. He sat in the chair by the bed and took her hand, his thumb tracing it slightly. Outside, the pigeon had come back, and beyond it, heavy clouds shifted in the sky, transforming into images from other worlds. He loved his wife but hated what life with her had become, cursing himself for even thinking this way. He kissed her fingertips one by one and brought her hand to his cheek. He held it against him, feeling her warmth and wishing for even the tiniest of movements, but when nothing happened, he moved it away and didn’t even realize that the pigeon seemed to be staring at him.

  Eleanor Baker was a thirty-eight-year-old housewife with two boys she adored. Eight years ago, she’d come into the emergency room vomiting and complaining about a blinding pain in the back of her head. Gabby, who was covering a friend’s shift, happened to be working that day, though she didn’t treat Eleanor. Eleanor was admitted to the hospital, and Gabby knew nothing about her until the following Monday, when she realized that Eleanor had been placed in the intensive care unit when she didn’t wake up on Sunday morning. “Essentially,” one of the nurses said, “she went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”

  Her coma was caused by a severe case of viral meningitis.

  Her husband, Kenneth, a history teacher at East Carteret High School who by all accounts was a gregarious, friendly guy, spent his days at the hospital. Over time, Gabby got to know him; at first it was only a few niceties here and there, but as time wore on, their conversations grew longer. He adored his wife and children, and always wore a neat sweater and pressed Dockers when he visited the hospital, and he drank Mountain Dew by the liter. He was a devout Catholic, and Gabby often found him praying the rosary by his wife’s bedside. Their kids were named Matthew and Mark.

  Travis knew all this because Gabby spoke about him after work. Not in the beginning, but later, after they’d become something like friends. Their conversations were always the same in that Gabby wondered how he could continue to come in each and every day, what he might be thinking as he sat in silence beside his wife.

  “He seems so sad all the time,” Gabby said.

  “That’s because he is sad. His wife is in a coma.”

  “But he’s there all the time. What about his kids?”

  Weeks turned into months, and Eleanor Baker was eventually moved to a nursing home. Months eventually passed into a year, then another. Thoughts of Eleanor Baker may have eventually slipped away, if not for the fact that Kenneth Baker shopped at the same grocery store as Gabby. They would occasionally bump into each other, and always the conversation would turn to how Eleanor was doing. There was never any change.

  But over the years, as they continued to run into each other, Gabby noticed that Kenneth had changed. “She’s still going,” was the way he began to casually describe her condition. Where there had once been a light in his eyes when he spoke about Eleanor, there was now only blankness; where once there was love, now there seemed to be only apathy. His black hair had turned gray within a couple of years, and he’d become so thin that his clothes hung off him.

  In the cereal aisle or frozen food section, Gabby couldn’t seem to avoid him, and he became something of a confidant. He seemed to need her, to tell her what was happening, and in those moments they met, Kenneth mentioned one horrible event after another: that he’d lost his job, lost his house, that he couldn’t wait to get all the kids out of the house, that the older one had dropped out of high school and the younger one had been arrested again for dealing drugs. Again. That was the word Gabby emphasized when she told Travis about it later. She also said she was pretty sure he’d been drunk when she’d run into him.

  “I just feel so bad for him,” Gabby said.

  “I know you do,” Travis said.

  She grew quiet then. “Sometimes I think it might have been easier if his wife had died instead.”

  Staring out the window, Travis thought about Kenneth and Eleanor Baker. He had no idea whether Eleanor was still in the nursing home or whether she was still alive. Since the accident, he’d replayed those conversations in his head nearly every day, remembering the things Gabby had told him. He wondered whether somehow Eleanor and Kenneth Baker had been brought into their lives for a rea
son. How many people, after all, knew anyone who’d been in a coma? It seemed so . . . fantastic, no more likely than visiting an island filled with dinosaurs or watching an alien spaceship blowing up the Empire State Building.

  But Gabby worked in a hospital, and if there was some sort of reason for the Bakers to have come into their lives, what was it? To warn him that he was doomed? That his daughters would lose their way? Those thoughts terrified him, and it was the reason he made sure he was waiting when his daughters came home from school. It was the reason he would be taking them to Busch Gardens as soon as school let out, and it was the reason he let Christine spend the night at her friend’s house. He woke every morning with the thought that even if they were struggling, which was normal, he still insisted they behave at home and in school, and it was the reason that when they misbehaved, both of them were sent to their rooms for the night as punishment. Because those were the things Gabby would have done.

  His in-laws sometimes thought he was being too hard on the girls. That wasn’t surprising. His mother-in-law, in particular, had always been judgmental. While Gabby and her dad could chat on the phone for an hour, conversations with her mother were always clipped. In the beginning, Travis and Gabby spent the mandatory holidays in Savannah and Gabby always came home stressed; once their daughters were born, Gabby finally told her parents she wanted to start her own holiday traditions and that while she would love to see them, her parents would have to come to Beaufort. They never did.

  After the accident, however, her parents checked into a hotel in Morehead City to be close to their daughter, and for the first month, the three of them were often in Gabby’s room together. While they never said they blamed him for the accident, Travis could feel it in the way they seemed to keep their distance. When they spent time with Christine and Lisa, it was always away from the house—outings for ice cream or pizza—and they seldom spent more than a couple of minutes inside.

  In time, they had to go back, and now they sometimes came up on weekends. When they did, Travis tried to stay away from the hospital. He told himself that it was because they needed time alone with their daughter, and that was partly true. What he didn’t like to admit was that he also stayed away because they continually, if unintentionally, reminded him that he was responsible for Gabby being in the hospital in the first place.

  His friends had reacted as he’d expected. Allison, Megan, and Liz prepared dinners in shifts for the first six weeks. Over the years, they’d grown close to Gabby, and sometimes it seemed as if Travis had to support them. They would show up with red eyes and forced smiles, holding Tupperware containers filled to the brim with lasagna or casseroles, side dishes, and desserts of every kind. They always made a special point to mention that chicken was always used in place of red meat, to ensure that Travis would eat it.

  They were particularly good with the girls. In the beginning, they often held the girls as they cried, and Christine grew especially fond of Liz. Liz braided her hair, helped her make beaded bracelets, and usually spent at least half an hour with Christine, kicking the soccer ball back and forth. Once inside, they would begin to whisper as soon as Travis left the room. He wondered what they said to each other. Knowing Liz, he was certain that if she felt it was something important, she’d tell him, but usually she’d simply say that Christine wanted to talk. Over time, he found himself simultaneously thankful for her presence and envious of her relationship with Christine.

  Lisa, on the other hand, was closer to Megan. They would color at the kitchen table or sit beside each other watching television; sometimes Travis would watch Lisa curl her body against Megan’s in the same way she did with Gabby. In moments like those, they almost looked like mother and daughter, and for the briefest of moments, Travis would feel as if the family were reunited again.

  Allison, on the other hand, was the one who made sure the girls understood that even if they were sad and upset, they still had responsibilities. She reminded them to pick up their rooms, helped them with their homework, and always prompted them to bring their dishes to the sink. She was gentle about it, but firm as well, and while his daughters sometimes avoided their chores on the nights Allison didn’t come, it happened less frequently than Travis would have guessed. On a subconscious level, they seemed to realize they craved structure in their lives, and Allison was exactly what they’d needed.

  Between them and his mother—who was there every afternoon and most weekends—Travis was seldom alone with his daughters in the aftermath of the accident, and they were able to function as parents in a way that he simply couldn’t. He’d needed them to do that for him. It was all he could do to get out of bed in the morning, and most of the time, he felt on the verge of crying. His guilt hung heavy, and not simply because of the accident. He didn’t know what to do or where he was supposed to be. When he was at the hospital, he wished he were at home with his daughters; when he was at home with his daughters, he wished he were visiting Gabby. Nothing was ever right.

  But after six weeks of dumping excess food in the garbage cans, Travis finally told his friends that while they were welcome to continue visiting, he no longer needed his dinners prepared. Nor did he want them coming by every day. By that point, with visions of Kenneth Baker playing in his mind, he knew that he had to take control over what was left of his life. He had to become the father he once had been, the father Gabby wanted him to be, and little by little, he did. It wasn’t easy, and while there were still times when Christine and Lisa seemed to miss the attention from the others, it was more than offset by the attention Travis began to show again. It wasn’t as if everything had reverted to normal, but now, at the three-month mark, their lives were as normal as could be expected. In taking responsibility for the care of his daughters, Travis sometimes thought he’d saved himself.

  On the downside, since the accident, he’d left little time for Joe, Matt, and Laird. While they still dropped by occasionally for a beer after the girls had gone to bed, their conversations were stilted. Half the time, everything they said seemed to be . . . wrong, somehow. When they asked about Gabby, he wasn’t in the mood to talk about her. When they tried to talk about something else, Travis wondered why they seemed to be avoiding talking about Gabby. He knew he wasn’t being fair, but while spending time with them, he was always struck by the differences between their lives and his. Despite their kindness and patience, despite their sympathy, he would find himself thinking that in a little while, Joe would head home to Megan and they’d talk quietly while curled up in bed; when Matt put his hand on his shoulder, he would wonder whether Liz was glad that Matt had gone over or whether she’d needed him to do something at home. His relationship with Laird was exactly the same, and despite himself, he was often unaccountably angry in their presence. While he was forced to live constantly with the unthinkable, their concern could be switched on and off, and for the life of him, he couldn’t escape his rage at the unfairness of it all. He wanted what they had and knew they would never understand his loss, no matter how hard they tried. He hated himself for thinking these things and tried to hide his fury, but he got the sense that his friends realized that things had changed, even if they were uncertain what was really going on. Gradually, their visits became shorter and more infrequent. He hated himself for that, too, for the wedge he was creating between them, but he didn’t know how to repair it.

  In quiet moments, he wondered about his anger toward his friends, while he felt only gratitude toward their wives. He would sit on the deck pondering it all, and last week he’d found himself gazing at the crescent moon, finally accepting what he’d known all along. The difference, he knew, had to do with the fact that Megan, Allison, and Liz focused their support on his daughters, while Joe, Matt, and Laird focused their support on him. His daughters deserved that.

  He, however, deserved to be punished.

  Twenty

  Sitting with Gabby, Travis glanced at his watch. It was coming up on half-past two, and normally he would be getting re
ady to say good-bye to Gabby so he could be home when the girls came back from school. Today, however, Christine was visiting a friend’s house, and Lisa was going to a birthday party at the aquarium in Pine Knoll Shores, so neither would be home until just before dinner. The fact that his daughters had plans for today was fortunate, since he needed to stay longer anyway. Later, he had to meet with the neurologist and the hospital administrator.

  He knew what the meeting was about, and he had no doubt they’d be in full-sympathy mode, complete with moderate, reassuring tones. The neurologist would tell him that because there was nothing more the hospital could do for Gabby, she would have to be transferred to a nursing home. He would be assured that since her condition was stable, the risk would be minimal and that a physician would check in on her weekly. Additionally, he would probably be told that the staff who worked in nursing homes were fully capable of providing the care she would need daily. If Travis protested, the administrator would probably step in and note that unless Gabby was in the intensive care unit, their insurance covered only a three-month stay in the hospital. He might also shrug and mention that since the hospital was meant to serve the local community, there wasn’t room to keep her long-term, even if she had once been an employee. There was really nothing else he could do. Essentially, by teaming up, they wanted to make sure they got their way.

  What neither of them realized was that the decision wasn’t quite that simple. Beneath the surface lurked the reality that while Gabby was in the hospital, it was assumed that she would wake up soon, for this was where temporary coma patients always stayed. Patients in temporary comas needed physicians and nurses nearby to quickly monitor changes that would signify the improvement they’d known was coming all along. In a nursing home, it would be assumed that Gabby would never wake up. Travis wasn’t ready to accept that, but it seemed as if he weren’t going to be given a choice.