Beware of water, Joe
I was almost finished with my lunch when Sharon’s text arrived.
Beware of water, Joe.
She told me she’d had a dream. She couldn’t remember much of the details though but awoke with this strong premonition about something dangerous involving water.
I smiled as I pressed the starter on my Kawasaki dirt bike and pulled out onto the busy highway. I tried to take my wife’s visions, her metaphysics, seriously, but I was a born skeptic.
I’d learned not to tease her though, and instead, feigned interest in the details. “Did the ghost feel cold or hot? Did it follow you?”
She could see through me though and would get annoyed. “You don’t believe me.”
It began to rain hard, the first in weeks. I pulled the visor down on my helmet and wished I’d worn my rain gear.
The water fell and wet the oil and grease baked on the asphalt. Despite my skepticism about her visions I rode more slowly — forty-five instead of sixty.
And that in the end is what saved me — saved me from dying, though sometimes I wish it hadn’t. Less speed means less impact.
Strangely, I felt no fear when the bike shimmied violently before laying down on the highway and sliding, grinding forty feet into the concrete median. The cliche is right: it seems like a dream.
After a week in intensive care, six more in the hospital, and two failed operations, there was only the inevitable to face. The doc gave us the news in that grave, kindly voice they use for these occasions. There was nothing more to do or try. The little candle inside me, deprived of the last bit of hope, went out.
Sharon was staring in front of her, lost in her own thoughts. I’d never seen her look so bleak. It wasn’t till a full minute later that she turned to me.
She tried hard for a while, I’ll give her that. But a couple of months of 24/7 care — the feedings, the cleanings, the equipment setup — exhausted her. We’d been struggling before the accident and so the rope that binds was already frayed anyways. And so, after yet another bout of diarrhea that lasted days, she gave up.
She needed to live with herself though and so told me, as she was leaving: “I did warn you.” Of all things. Like it was my fault. Like that made it Ok. Like that let her off the hook. Goodbye, my now ex-wife.
I could see the cars and motorbikes whiz by on the highway below. I’d watch for hours, it was a kind of meditation. That and TV.
I leaned my head to one side and craned my neck and took a sip of my whiskey. That bag was getting low.
Time to get inside. I tipped the joystick controller, wheeled around, and rolled back into my apartment. It was raining again.
