DYING TO LIVE

I had grown accustomed to the quiet midnight taps whose purpose was to rouse me awake — except, I wasn’t really sleeping on most nights. For five years, I hadn’t been able to drift to the faraway land of sleep without jolting awake covered in sweat from another macabre dream. Tonight was one of those nights, and I couldn’t blink my way back to sleep. I knew why Ikenna was tapping me. He didn’t need to say anything. Not that we said much to each other in the first place.

The last time we spoke to each other in elaborate sentences was five years ago.

I’ll never forget the process of decay that a singular incident set in motion. How our world crumbled and we crumbled along with it. How — slowly, excruciatingly, helplessly — we watched even what was left of our union evaporate, slipping right from our fragile grasp.

I will tell you what happened five years ago.

It all began with a sharp pain and a piercing scream. My eyes flew open just as my throat let out a guttural screech from the sudden pang that had lounged beneath my abdomen.

I sat up writhing and twisting and panting.

“Ada… Ada…” Ike whispered as he scrambled for the light switch. Finally, the lights came on and at once, I wished it hadn’t because the look on Ike’s face told me everything I needed to know. His face had turned ashen, and his already oversized eyes widened in horror as he looked down at the white bedsheet. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to follow his eyes but without thinking, my eyes dropped to my legs and my heart stopped.

Blood.

A lot of blood.

My pink nightgown was now a wet crimson and the pool of soaking red around me elicited a shriek I had no idea I was capable of. Like a banshee. Like a terrorized banshee.

I held my bulging belly unsure which to pay attention to — the death-like pain beneath my abdomen or the loss of movement in my tummy. He wasn’t moving. My precious Tochi wasn’t moving. I want to say that my heart broke but that is not what really happened. My heart didn’t break. It convulsed, lost its colour and shriveled up in the limp way that a lifeless corpse does. My heart didn’t break. My heart died.

Ike hesitated for a moment before hurrying to the wardrobe to pick up a shirt and trousers.

I writhed and wept, terror flooding my entire being while Ikenna trembled, knocking his phone over, and stumbling on the wastebasket. It often happened when his cognition was shutting down. Finally, we were on our way to the hospital to hear the news we already knew in our hearts. At the hospital, and in the days that followed, I did not weep. I did not utter a word and I hadn’t noticed, but Ikenna didn’t either. Over the weeks, the silence continued to swell. Like cancer, it was eating away at the one thing we still had. The one thing that hadn’t died. We had dreamed of the day we’d welcome our sweet boy to his new home, dote on him, lavish him with kisses and wrap around him with hugs. A dream that was so cruelly snatched from us.

Now we hardly said more than five words to each other every day. At night, we spoke but not with our words. Just like tonight. I turned to Ike when he tapped me and began to undress. He was pulling his boxers too.

The act lasted a long, grueling five minutes and then it was just… over. Quietly, Ike rolled off covered in sweat and turned his back to me without as much as a glance.

I stared at the ceiling and wondered if it was better to just stop breathing. Emptiness had taken the place of our child, not just in my womb, but in our marriage too. The same emptiness that was now choking the life out of me. Perhaps it was time to snuff my life out before the emptiness beat me to it. Death didn’t seem fancier than it did in this moment.

That’s when it happened – the muffled sound that became our salvation. At first, I thought it was from outside. But then it came again, and I realized…

It was Ike. It came again. Did he cough?

The light stealing through the curtains from the outside let me see his quivering shoulders. Then the sounds got louder and his shoulders shook with a violence I had never seen. What started as a muffled sound grew into a loud and wild wail. Ikenna was wailing.

I blinked. At first, I didn’t know what to do. Was I supposed to say something? Did I have the capacity to say something to him? For years, rage had burned so deep within me because this man had crumbled when he should’ve been my strength.

But in an instant, as I watched his shoulders quiver, I knew what I should do.

Slowly, I covered the space between us and placed my hand on his shoulder.

“Ike…”  I whispered.

He turned, eyes flooded with tears, snot falling from his nose. I searched his face and for the first time, I noticed he had aged beyond his years. Even his hair was greying.

He didn’t stop wailing. Instead, he took me in his arms. Those steady arms that I had fallen in love with. He held me in them, rocking back and forth as the warmth of his body seeped onto mine.

He sniffled and uttered the longest train of words he’d ever spoken in five years.

“How could I fill you up when I’ve felt so empty since… since…”

In that moment, the tightening that had taken up space in my chest began to melt away. For the first time in five years, we were talking about what had happened and how we were faring. We would never get our Tochi back but we could get our marriage back. That night, we sat up and we talked, and sobbed, and held each other and wailed. Something else was coming back to life – My dead soggy heart. It filled up with warmth as I looked at my Ike. It was feeling again. It was filling again. After all this time, it works.