Bill Is Dead.
Yesterday morning, I woke up and got ready for softball.
I heard a fan making its soft whooshing sound down the hall, which was unusual. Bill has a fan in his bedroom, but that fan is usually off by 8 a.m. (We sleep in separate rooms so as not to kill one another.)
In fact, usually by the time I’m ready for softball, Shane is at school and Bill is at work. So I figured the fan was left on accidentally – until I saw the darkness in Bill’s room.
And the fan was still on. What the … ?
It was way too late for Bill to be sleeping. He never missed work. Bill is rarely sick, and even when he is, he goes to work. If he’d had some kind of appointment, he’d surely have told me.
So why is his room still dark?
In our dating days, Bill often forgot to open the curtains. Tentatively, I looked inside. I expected him to be gone. I peered into the darkness, aiming my gaze at his bed.
Lumps.
I saw lumps in his bed – pillows, blankets, maybe a human form. Yes, definitely a human form. This could mean only one thing.
Bill is dead.
I walked into the room, unsure what to do. He had to be breathing. He simply had to be breathing. He wasn’t even sick last night.
His heart. Bill has a small arrhythmia.
I stared down at the lump that was a human form, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
Bill was lying on his side, the top of his head barely visible above the covers.
He wasn’t snoring. He wasn’t even moving. I expected his body to slowly lift and fall, but there was no movement, and no sound.
I stared and listened for a long time.
Nothing.
Finally I put my hand just below his shoulder on his back, where I thought I might be able to detect lung action. I expected him to leap up at my touch if he was alive, but … still nothing.
I left my hand there. I waited. I felt no movement, no breath. I started to panic.
What should I do? He’s really not breathing. What do I do if he’s dead?
I considered calling someone. I watched enough TV to know that you’re supposed to call someone.
Who? I thought. Who am I supposed to call? An ambulance? A mortuary? A priest?
I couldn’t remember.
I just stood there in the dark, my hand resting on his back, still waiting for breath.
That’s when Bill casually rolled over and said “what’s up?” without a hint of concern for his own life.
“You’re not dead,” I said. I wanted to cry with joy! Instead, I suddenly realized – with all the force of a Mack truck – that it was a federal holiday. I’d just awakened Bill on the one day he could have slept in.
I removed my hand and stepped away from the bed. “I forgot that it was a holiday!” I called as I left. “Go back to sleep!”
I shuffled out way faster than I came in, relieved but sorry that I’d woken him, trying not to think about a day when I might actually find him there not breathing.
For the first time since I’d walked into his room, I realized I could breathe, too.
I love him so much.
Ten hours later, having forgotten all about Bill’s brush with death, I griped endlessly that he hadn’t correctly cooked my gluten-free tuna casserole.
You’d think a scare like that would last a little longer.