Untitled Short Story

Aug 13, 2008 - 17:29 PM PST

Here's the beginning of a short story:

As she sat quietly next to him she didn’t know what else to do but nuzzle him and try and disappear into the crook of his arm. He didn’t brush her off, as he was wont to do, because he could sense her quiet vulnerability. Her only way of dealing with people now that the pain had completely taken over was to act like an injured animal and cower in his arms. At first her reaction to the pain disarmed him. She had always walked through life with a fierce bravado. Everything about her appearance and attitude begged for the world to just dare and stop her. Her clothes were always too tight and a few inches too short, hugging her curves in an innocently sexy way. Her hair was either styled to within an inch of its life or left to carelessly bop around in defiance of gravity and a comb. The odd thing about her was she didn’t present herself as if she thought she was extreme or going against the grain, she merely was who she felt she needed to be in that moment. When they met they were pulled together in a lawless way that neither could explain. It didn’t seem like attraction or fate or anything beyond them. It just seemed like it was their time to be together.

Now as they were sitting and waiting for the doctor to enter the cramped exam room, he felt like nothing could contain him in that space for much longer. He found his eyes almost independently scanning the room in search of something to grab his attention so that she wouldn’t sense his need to escape. He shouldn’t have worried, because she couldn’t have noticed anything outside of herself in that moment. He had assumed when the pain first struck her in the form of nauseating headaches and spells of relentless vertigo that her personality would arm her against the pain. But as soon as the pain struck her she folded and he had to take charge. She entered into each doctor’s office with little awareness. It was as if she didn’t care if the pain left her or not. He took to guiding her through the maze of the hospital holding onto the inside of her arm as if to create motion in an immovable object. The first doctor they saw was an old-timer on the last legs of his career. He approached them with a kindly manner even though he didn’t seem to know how to cure her or even how to properly diagnose her. Rex was frustrated as soon as he set eyes on this doctor. He knew immediately that this guy was living in the dark ages and thousands of diseases and cures had been discovered since this old-timer was in med school. Alice didn’t seem to mind the doctor and was oddly comforted by his old fashioned charms. With Rex’s insistence Dr. Old-timer referred them to a younger doctor who seemed to be on the cusp of everything. This new doctor was cocky and brisk. He sensed Alice’s exhaustion and overall ambivalence and immediately thought surgery was their only option. Neither Alice nor Rex was sure what the doctor’s final diagnoses was, something to do with a pinched nerve, however his sense of urgency had brushed off on them and they soon believed surgery was the only way. After the surgery the pain seemed to dissipate for a while. The surgeon confidently acted as if she was cured and he had been the savior. She wasn’t quite herself, but she was more herself than she had been in ages and Rex happily lapped up the jagged edges of her personality once again. She no longer cowered in the nook of his arm and he loved that.

Alice on the other hand walked through her days with a mild sense of panic. It was as if the pain was chasing her around corners and soon it would catch up to her again and envelope her in its madness indefinitely. Rex wanted their lives to go back to what he considered normal, but Alice wasn’t able to do so. The pain had changed her from a person who took charge to a person who waited for life to push her into her next move. Rex became a little frustrated with her, however she became more frustrated with herself than anything. “Please release me from this state of pause,” she thought to herself. Before the onset of pain she had moved as if her finger was pressed firmly on the fast forward button. Move quickly, move fast and don’t ever stop. Now she was in a stop and start pattern. Moving quickly sometimes and pausing every other moment to check to make sure she wasn't about to be overrun with pain. Rex decided maybe it was him. Maybe he was asking too much of her. Obviously she had changed without his consent. He had started to feel more possessive of her after her recent bout with pain. After several moments of self-analysis, Rex still wasn’t sure what had changed in their relationship except to know that they each operated with apprehension in their interactions with each other when that had never occurred before.

In attempts to help Alice sort through her changed personality and her exhausted state, Rex suggested she have her parents come stay with them for a while. Rex appreciated that her parents could console her in ways that he couldn’t and knew that if he wanted to continue to keep his finger on the pulse of the situation he needed to admit when he couldn’t fix everything. Alice bristled at first at the mention of an extended stay from her parents. He let her alone for a while as he waited for her to come to her own conclusions. This was another thing that had changed in her. Normally she would snap to a decision with effortless ease, now there was always an extended period of self-debate that puzzled Rex. A few weeks passed and she told Rex that her parents were indeed coming for a stay. Relief and apprehension swelled over Rex’s shoulders at the same time. Maybe her parents would push her into her next move and hopefully that next move would still involve him.

Alice’s parents were sweet with midwestern charms and they always treated Rex with polite appreciation. Before Rex, Alice had been a bit of a lone wolf and Alice had always mentioned that her mother was secretly worried her daughter would never settle down and give her grandchildren. Alice still hadn’t settled, but her romance with Rex was the most promising thing in her life (according to her parents) so the quiet yet persistent parental pressure had eased up a bit. Before, during and after Alice’s surgery her parents had swooped in to tend to her wounds like the proper Mama bear and Papa bear that they were. Whenever Alice’s mother saw her child in pain she had the immediate instinct to grab Alice and protect her from the big bad world. Alice’s pain always seemed to ease a bit with the aid and charms of her parents’ protective nurturing. Their love was like a natural form of narcotic that soothed her in ways no Vicodin could. In preparation for her parents’ visit Alice was buzzing around their apartment trying to do months worth of organizing and cleaning in the span of a few hours. Rex and Alice were both hopeless procrastinators with heavy guilt complexes. They would talk themselves in to procrastination with the simplest of ease, and then when things really needed to get done they snapped to attention with a steady sense of guilt weighing them down.

After the initial buzz of excitement and settling in, Alice’s parents silently sat back and observed the changes in their daughter. Alice’s mother had always approached her relationship with Alice more like they were best friends than mother and daughter. Alice still regarded her mother as the ultimate nurturing mother while Alice’s mother viewed her daughter as the best friend she never had. This created an interesting dichotomy in the household. Alice’s mother Robin sometimes acted like a sorority girl reuniting with a long-lost sorority sister when she was with Alice. She loved gossiping with her daughter even though Alice seemed to approach her mother’s incessant need for chit chat as a bit of an annoyance she still always appreciated that her mother didn’t have anyone else in her life that she could gossip with. Robin also tended to criticize her husband with the utmost of joy when Alice was around. Pointing out his chewing habits, snoring and loud sneezes as the ultimate offenses of an uncouth man. Alice’s father Albert would respond to his wife’s copious amounts of criticism by retreating back into his shell like a quiet little turtle shielding itself from the elements. Rex excitedly observed the behavior of Alice and her parents like an anthropologist collecting evidence for his study on the suburban family dichotomy. His parents were much more highbrow, urban and jaded than Alice’s family so he was always fascinated and charmed by the quiet and passive bickering of the Halloway family. His family was always surrounded by so much derision and angst that the innocent bickering of the Halloways fascinated him.

Alice’s parents had been staying with them for about a week when they all piled into the car to go to Alice’s latest medical appointment. This time they were going to see an acupuncturist upon the recommendation of Alice’s holistic doctor. Alice had her own little entourage of support as she walked into the clinic. Rex still thought she approached her medical appointments with carelessness but her parents didn't seem to pick up on that. Albert sat out in the waiting room while Rex and Robin followed Alice and the acupuncturist into the tiny room. Alice told her medical history to the acupuncturist in a forced and automatic way. Rex always wondered what these medical professionals thought of Alice's personality, because in those hours that they saw Alice she clearly was not the Alice he knew and loved. All of her charm and warmth seemed to seep out of her in these situations, pooling up on the floor in a puddle of exhaustion. Despite the fact that Rex thought she was a bit blank during these visits each doctor seemed charmed by Alice.

Each exam and session was like it was an episode of a bad television show put on repeat. At first Rex had approached each appointment with hope. He was thinking that since the surgery had kind of worked, possibly each additional treatment would work too. In Rex's case his optimism was fading fast.