The Imperfect Marriage novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Pre-Op

Rochester was three hundred miles south, and we made it in four and a half hours.

My father rode in the back seat of Ross's truck with a pillow and his oxygen, complaining the whole way about the music.

"What is this? Jazz?"

"It's the Dave Brubeck Quartet, sir."

"It sounds like a man falling down stairs."

"Dad," I said.

"I'm dying, Dag, let me have my opinions."

"You're not dying. You're getting a pump."

"Same thing, with paperwork."

Ross, to my astonishment, laughed out loud.

By nine we had checked Arne into the cardiac floor.

A nurse put him in a gown that did not close.

He told her it was the best view she'd get all week.

At ten, Ross and I stood in a hotel lobby across the street with one room key between us.

"They only had a king left," said the clerk. "The medical convention."

"We'll take it," Ross said.

Neither of us looked at the other.

The room was nine floors up, with a window full of the clinic's lit towers.

I stood at the glass.

Behind me I heard him set down our bag and take off his coat.

"He's going to be fine," Ross said.

"You don't know that."

"No. But I want to say it for you, so you can hear it."

I laughed, and the laugh broke.

I turned around.

He crossed the carpet and held me while I cried into his shirt.

I cried for my mother, and for the apartment, and for the eleven weeks I'd missed.

When I stopped, he gave me the handkerchief again.

"You carry a spare?" I said.

"My grandmother used to say a man without a handkerchief is a man waiting to disappoint a woman."

"Did she say a lot of things?"

"All the time. Everything was a rule. Don't lend money to anyone you wouldn't hug. Don't marry for a clause."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Imperfect Marriage from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.