Chapter 5
“Rick? Are you there?” Spense’s voice was like an annoying buzz in my ear as my brain tried to process what it was seeing, trying to calculate whether it was supposed to be panicking.
“Um. Hold on a sec. Honey, are you rehearsing for some kind of role?”
Marilyn just blinked at me before crunching through the stringy part of a bloody raw chicken wing. She continued to munch. She didn’t look down, but I couldn’t stop staring at the knife handle sticking out of my wife’s belly. At least it LOOKED like a knife handle. In fact, it was a dead ringer for the seven-inch sushi knife that Marilyn’s Aunt Constance had given us as a wedding present, even though we hadn’t registered for one, because who doesn’t need a sushi knife? But sushi knives don’t just stick out from underneath your wife’s running bra. Right?
“Not usually.” Spence answered me so I must have been talking out loud.
It looked so real. I gingerly approached Marilyn and poked at the knife, hoping that it was one of those plastic stage props that she occasionally left lying around the house. It jiggled a little back and forth as I prodded, and then about an inch of wicked Japanese tempered steel slid out of my wife. Along with a tiny dob of congealed blood. There should be more than a dob of blood coming out of a knife wound to the belly. Right?
“What the hell is going on?” Spense yelled in my ear, which finally snapped me out of my trance.
“OH MY GOD.” I screeched into the phone. Panic, definitely panic. “There is a sushi knife sticking out of Marilyn’s stomach!”
“Then why are you still talking to me?” Spense shouted back. “Hang up! Call 911!”
I did, and it was like the dispatcher was right there giving me instructions—a calm, efficient voice telling me to apply pressure, that help was on the way, and that “whatever you do, don’t pull out the knife.” Which was good advice, because that was exactly what I would have done. I left Marilyn for a moment, the phone tucked between my shoulder and chin, to get towels out of the hall linen closet.
“Rick,” Marilyn said in a quavering voice behind me. I turned back to look at her and she was gazing down at her stomach like she had only just noticed she was hurt. Before I realized what she was doing, she grasped the knife handle and pulled.
“No, Marilyn,” I shouted, rushing back towards her. But the knife was already out. She held it up to me like a question.
I snatched it out of her hand and dropped the phone so I could press the towels against her stomach. But blood still didn’t seem to be gushing out. Or even trickling out. I lifted the towel and saw a slight ooze. Like day old gravy.
My hands shook as I pressed the towel back against her stomach. “It’s going to be okay, Marilyn. Everything’s going to be okay.” I wrapped one of my arms around her shoulders and kissed her hair. I kept murmuring soft and nonsensical things that I hoped would soothe her. Because they certainly weren’t helping me.
My legs were getting shaky so I guided us both to the floor, careful to keep the towels pressed against her stomach, if only to pretend that this was a normal wound. Just a guy taking care of his wife after a routine, everyday, run-of-the-mill household sushi knife accident. Yep, nothing out of the ordinary going on here. I took a deep breath, reaching for the courage to look at Marilyn’s stomach again when the doorbell rang.
Oh thank god.
A shadow of a thought: that was fast.
Never mind, you idiot. Just be grateful that they’re here
“Come in,” I shouted not wanting to leave Marilyn.
But the doorbell just rang again. And again. In that annoying double staccato of someone in a hurry.
Well, why the hell didn’t they just come in? Was the door locked? I cursed as I struggled to lift Marilyn to her feet. I folded her hands over the towel. “Press down, baby.” She was still conscious, her eyes unfocused and not looking terribly worried. She moaned softly as I walked us down the hall, “Riiick. Riick. Riick.”
I threw open the—ahem, unlocked door—trying to hold Marilyn and the towels at the same time. But it wasn’t the paramedics. It was that doctor.
And I still had Marilyn’s knife in my hand.