Abscond

Eyes on the road: asphalt races under me at ninety miles an hour. Empty lanes on either side rise and fall with the rolling hills. Beyond the mountains the indigo sky lightens; a yellow haze barely emanating announces the morning. Cool night air whistles past, and the wind buffets the truck as we go through the pass. Desert expands in either direction. The openness and the emptiness embolden me. I press the gas pedal a little harder.

No. 133

A.A.A. #4

The morning of the second day, W. had regressed. Or, rather, the procedures in order to alleviate the initial arterial rupture had led to further complications: fluid in his lungs, acute kidney failure that required a dialysis machine, a gastrointestinal bleed the doctors could not locate. It seemed to the nurses like systematic organ failure.

M., his wife, couldn’t bear to wait around for him to die. When she walked in that morning, she was excited to tell him about the stock market—it had gone up one thousand points the day before. Through his oxygen mask, he offered her a smile at this news. Seeing him there, hooked up to machines, feeling pity and a queasy sickness in her stomach she couldn’t locate or name, she turned away from him and toward her eldest daughter. “Take me home,” she told her. “Let him rest.”

Really, she anticipated the satisfaction lighting a fresh cigarette would bring her. As the smoke tickled her throat, she imagined the queasy feeling in her would dissipate, and the world would feel calm again for at least a moment.

No. 016