In the Waiting

They never had the conversation. It would have been an important one. They would have shared their thoughts, fears, and expectations about the horrible news they had just received. Maybe if they had, the end would have been different. 

He never broached the subject, perhaps because he thought it was hers to initiate. She interpreted his reticence as negligence. In reality it could have been that he was nervous or upset. His actions and words in those days were ones of irritation and inconvenience, however, and he never spoke kindness on the subject after that. She felt confident that he simply did not care. 

The years had set them up this way. Oh, there had been moments of understanding and shared laughter. Those moments were spaced out far between stretches of stress poorly handled. Terse words and yelled accusations filled her memory. It may have been an unbalanced reckoning, the way the negative stood out bolder and brighter than anything else. 

In the end she was simply tired. She was not perfect, and she was well aware of it. He would never let her forget that. Perhaps such an environment was what led to the ambivalence with which he met the word “cancer”. Her diagnosis could have brought them closer. Rather, the apathy that accompanied it on his part showed her where she stood in his life. It wasn’t at the front of the line. She was somewhere in the back, a nameless, faceless worker bee who kept the machinery hidden so he didn’t have to think about the logistics of the ride. 

When the time to part ways arrived, she knew he would feign shock. Anger would show up and speak its mind louder than anyone else in the room, the way it always had before. 

She only hoped it would be manageable and that things would not take a turn down an even darker road. How it would end had yet to be determined. It was as if the author of this story was almost done, but left the keyboard behind to go have coffee and a snack. The characters on the page waited with annoyance, hung in the balance, waiting for their destinies to be revealed. 

She pleaded silently for the author to eat quickly and return. She could not not live endlessly in the waiting.