Till Death Do Us Part

The first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes was that I couldn’t feel my legs – those tools for travel that I’d taken for granted my entire life. When I would need to get something, or go somewhere, they would obey me without delay, carrying me faithfully to and from. The useless, twisted logs beneath the starchy hospital sheet may as well have been severed. It may have been easier to handle if they were.
I turned my gaze from the pair of traitors below my waist to the tearful face of my wife, Judy.
At first, I was confused. My dazed, drug-addled mind couldn’t function much beyond acknowledging where I was and the condition I was in. It never even ventured into the realm of how I came to be in such a state. It didn’t take long for it to come back to me though. The car, the accident, Holly.
“Holly. Is…is she…”
 “She’s gone, Dave. You’ve taken her away from us – our little girl.”
 She comes to the bedside and holds my hand. There’s a loud, metallic sound and I realize for the first time that my wrists are handcuffed to the stainless steel railings of the hospital bed. “What the…”
 “You were drunk,” Judy says. “You veered off of the road and hit that tree. I tried to grab the wheel, but you were lying against it.”
 “I’ve never drove drunk in my life! I wouldn’t’ve put Holly in that kind of danger.”
 She lets go of my hand, stands and wipes her tears from her face with the sleeve of her baby-blue sweater. She sucks in a deep breath of air and I can see a change in her. A dark, pitiless expression comes over her face that could only be worn by a mother whose child has been put in danger.
“You were drinking, Dave. If I’d known, I would’ve never let you drive.”
 The memory comes back. I helped my brother Richard change the break-pads on his car. Holly helped out for a while, handing us tools, but grew bored as any seven year old would and opted to play in the yard.
“We had a couple of beers, that’s all.”
 “Oh sure,” she scoffs. “Everyone passes out after a couple of beers! I should’ve known. Why didn’t I see it?”
 She sits back down on the chair beside my bed, fetches a pair of nail clippers from the bedside table and grabs my hand.
 “What are you doing?”
 “I’m taking care of my man.”
 She grabs the forefinger of my right hand, slides the cold, sharp lips of the clippers under and over the nail and squeezes them shut, taking the top of the nail and a large piece of flesh with it. I scream from the pain and try to pull my hand away from her, but she is too strong, my wrist too bound by the handcuffs. She holds my hand up for inspection. Trails of fresh blood ooze from the top of my finger and drizzle down the sides like a fountain.
“Nice, but that thumb nail is much too long.” She grabs my thumb in her vice-like grip. I beg her to stop – tell her I’m sorry, but she takes the tip of my thumb as well. If I wasn’t paralyzed from the waist down, I would’ve come up off of the bed. Instead, I screamed, louder and louder, hoping that someone would hear me and come in. She lets my hand flop loose and stands again, frowning down at me.
“You’re not acting very appreciative, Dave. I’ve been here, taking care of you, even though you took my baby from me.”
“Please baby,” I beg. “Please, I’m so sorry about Holly.” The tears that had formed in my eyes from the pain that she was inflicting were instantly refreshed by the pain that I had inflicted on us both. “I’m so sorry,” I cry. I could feel the warm, wet trickle of liquid pain flowing down my face, stinging my eyes.
“I know,” she says, running her fingers through my hair. “You’re always sorry. Shall I brush your teeth?” She picks up something else from the bedside table. My eyes grow wide when I see what’s in her hand. It looks like a toothbrush, but instead of the customary soft bristles, the bristles were hard metal. She brings it close to my mouth, but I tighten my lips. “Open wide!” She says. I shake my head no like a stubborn child.
“Okay,” she says. “Have it your way. Here comes the train. Choo-choo!” She puts the business end of the bristles against the soft flesh of my lips and presses inward. It feels as if a thousand hypodermic needles and inserted into my lips at once. Then, she begins to brush back and forth. It only took two strokes before I opened my mouth to scream, but by then, my lips were destroyed. As she scoured away the soft tissue of my gums, I rotated screaming with unconsciousness. In the end, the darkness prevailed.
When I awoke, she was sitting at my side again. I tried to speak, but couldn’t. Not because of the damage that she’d done to my lips and gums, but because my mouth was sewed shut. A shadow, off to the side caught my attention, but by the time I looked toward the hospital-room door, it was gone. Another shadow passed in front of the fogged out window in the center of the door. “mmm…mmm!” I tried to hum as loud as I could. Two more passed. “mmm…mmm!”
“Hum as loud as you want to,” Judy says. “Even if they do hear you, they won’t care. You took my baby from us and they know that. No, I’m afraid that you’re stuck with me.” She stands again and pulls down the sheet, exposing my belly. “But, since I won’t be busy taking her to school, drying her tears, watching her get married, or spending time with my grandchildren, I guess I will just have to spend time with you.” She reaches somewhere beyond my vision and produces a scalpel. She places the blade of the scalpel against the flesh of my belly, but I don’t feel it. “Let’s see if maybe you’re hiding a new baby in there – whatcha think, hunny?” She dips the tip of the scalpel into the soft flesh of my belly and opens me up. By the time she zips the blade from my left side to my right, my midsection looks like a large, grotesque smile. My eyes stare in horror as she dips her hands inside me and begins to pull out long, blood-soaked strands of my innards. I couldn’t feel any of it, but the sight made me want to scream louder than I ever had – if only I could. She smashed the innards into her mouth and began to devour them. The bile rose up from inside me, but I couldn’t expel it. I began to choke on it, feeling the acid eat into the delicate lining of my throat.
Suddenly, she stopped, spit out what remained of my insides and began to cry again. “This is your hell,” she said. “You get to spend eternity watching me tear you apart, piece by piece.” She leans forward and slides her hand into the wound in my belly and digs upward until only her elbow is showing. I can see her arm twisting and working toward something inside me. “My hell,” she says, still wiggling her arm, “is that I will have to know that somebody else will get to raise my baby girl…” she pulls her arm out from inside me and holds up my beating heart for me to see. “And, that I will never be able to kill you.”
As I stare at my bloody, still- beating heart with wide-eyed horror, the world around me at first fades slowly, then disappears. I come to, sometime later and realize that I am put back together again as if nothing had happened. Judy is sitting at the foot of the bed, crying.