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The Woman in the Snapshot part 2 Four days later Mary is discharged. Her taped ribs hurt if she moves too fast or breathes too deep, but she compensates with shallow, rapid breathing that makes her "twitchy-faced." Her left knee is pinned and cast and she walks with a crutch. Large doses of codeine abstract her pain and take her back to a once familiar place. Twelve days later, Mrs. Co, her skin healing and her kidneys beginning to function again, is transferred to stage two. Mary, who has been calling every day, rushes to see her. Mrs. Co is unconscious, sealed in a Plexiglas respirator, her arms and hands and neck and face in bandages, with holes cut out for her eyes and nose and mouth. Her legs, cast and weighted by traction, are hidden beneath a sheet. Two IVs run under her bandages and into her arms. One, a nurse explains, replaces the fluid and salt and sugar Mrs. Co is losing through her burned skin; the other delivers antibiotics to help control surface infection. An oxygen tube runs up Mrs. Co’s nose, and wires, attached to her chest, snake from a port and drive displays of her EKG and pulse on a screen above her head. A catheter drains violet fluid from her bladder into a clear plastic bag. Mrs. Co’s husband, a small Asian man in conservative dress, stares silently as Mary explains her presence, the rage in his eyes precluding the embrace that Mary hungers to give him. They sit on either side of the respirator all of that first day, unable to look at each other; the one for fear of his anger, the other for the weight of her guilt. They both are soon mesmerized by the respirator's raspy breathing, in and out, in and out, in and out, twelve times a minute. On the third day, Mrs. Co begins to shake violently, like a person entering hypothermia. Mr. Co calls a nurse who says, "She’s shaking because her burned nerve endings are sending false signals to her brain, telling her her skin is cold. I’ll tell her doctor, but I don’t think there’s much that he can do. It may stop by itself." "Does she feel the cold?" Mary asks. "I don’t know," the nurse replies, there’s no way to know in cases like these." Later that day Mr. Co, speaking in a voice that seems to come from far behind him, turns to Mary, his eyes wide open, as if confronting a demon, and says, "I kill you soon. Today or tomorrow or after. And if you have children, I kill them too." Mary, in a voice revisiting the terrors of her childhood, whispers, "Yes. Kill me if it helps. I have no children at all." Mr. Co, immobile, continues to stare, unblinking, until Mary, unable to further bear his despair, leaves for home. Only then does Mr. Co open the respirator and kiss his wife's toes -- the only part of her left unbandaged. He closes the respirator and collapses over it, shaking it with his sobs. Three days later, with Mary and Mr. Co at her sides, Mrs. Co opens her eyes for the first time. Mr. Co calls the nurse, who fetches a resident who shines a flashlight in Mrs. Co’s eyes: on and off, on and off. He says, “Negative pupillary reflex.” The nurse records the finding on a clipboarded form. The resident passes a constant beam across Mrs. Co’s eyes: left to right, and right to left; up and down, and down and up, and says, "Negative following reflex." He claps his hands next to Mrs. Co’s left ear. She blinks her eyes. He repeats the clap by her other ear. She blinks her eyes again. He says, "Bilateral positive auditory startle reflex." That evening Mary goes to a Chinese record store where, on the owner's advice, she purchases eight CDs. "All classical Chinese music," the owner says, "tasteful and calming, most suitable for the ill." Mary then goes to Howard's Custom Stereo and buys a CD player equipped with a signal splitter and two sets of headphones. Arriving early at Mrs. Co's room, Mary puts on one set of headphones, places the other set over where Mrs. Co's ears must be, and begins to play a ballad at very low volume. Mr. Co arrives and looks at Mary with alarm. She offers him her headphones, which he reluctantly puts on. He smiles a fleeting smile, so quick and tentative that Mary is unsure if it happened, and hands her back the headphones. They sit in silence for the rest of the morning, but Mary twice catches Mr. Co studying her with an expression less fierce than before. The next day, Mr. Co takes a snapshot from his wallet and hands it to Mary. Two beautiful, laughing boys, maybe three and five years of age, dressed like warriors, sit atop a papier maché dragon challenging the viewer with swords. A lovely young woman beams at them from behind. "Our sons at Chinese New Year," Mr. Co says, "and Mrs. Co." He turns from Mary for the rest of the day, though his sobs are sometimes in chorus with hers. Two days later, Mr. Co hands Mary a CD with the comment, "Her favorite song." They watch Mrs. Co as the CD plays, and at one point, Mr. Co says, "She smiles. I see in her eyes." Mary, though desperately wishing it to be true, sees only hazy orbs drifting in the shadows of bandage holes, just black, confounded by black. A sympathetic nurse arranges for a cot to be placed next to Mrs. Co's respirator and as days turn to weeks, Mary and Mrs. Co lie like Siamese twins, daily listening to Chinese music. The music, which at first seems strange and dissonant to Mary, becomes familiar, even soothing, with time, and sometimes Mary, entranced, wakes uncertain if she is herself or if she is Mrs. Co. Near the end of Mrs. Co's third week in stage two, Mr. Co takes both of Mary's hands in his and searches her eyes. Mary stares back, trying to show her open heart. At length, Mr. Co hands Mary a card bearing his name and that of another; two telephone numbers, and two addresses. He says, "I must go to China to take the boys to my mother. I can not care for them here. I do not know when I return. The number in China is mine. The other is my brother in Los Angeles. You care for Mrs. Co until I return?" "Yes." Mary responds, her voice choked with gratitude, "Oh, yes!" Returning home from Santa Fe after a week spent defending a client, Paul, wondering why the drapes are drawn at two in the afternoon, opens his door to chaos. Clothes are where they've been dropped, plants stand wilting in their pots. Hershey wrappers and empty Pepsis are scattered everywhere. It is a scene from the past, from the days when opium and sweets were the main of Mary's diet. He calls out: "Hey Babe, where yuh at?" "Here, Paul, here," a childlike voice responds. He cannot localize the voice, can barely recognize it. |
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Copyright© 2000, 2008 by George Simone or Monte Fowler All rights reserved. |
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