This surprised her more than him. She worried about the comment for months, convinced she sounded like her mother, ending her career as a haberdashery manager with a farewell dinner where she - temporarily - enjoyed being pregnant since most of the females said they envied her, even if they were mostly referring to being able to throw her job in.
A few months later, the birth was caesarean. Her husband worried about her when she returned home, researching what this was on the inter-net, announcing to him Julius Caesar was the first recorded caesarean birth, so they'd better watch over their son or he, too, might turn out to have empirical ideas. He nodded, wondering if she was suffering post-natal depression, and perhaps he should put the butcher knives away from the kitchen bench.
As the years went by, whilst she loved her son, she began to think he took health from her body, even if she was ageing. Her husband mutely accepted her illnesses, partly due to not listening to her in the first place. On two occasions, he drove her to a shopping center instead of Emergency and Outpatients of the local hospital as she had requested. Another time, he dropped her at her oldest sister's place, not the medical center.
After that, unless she was beyond all concentration, she drove herself to where she wished to go to have her body checked out, or drove to one of her sister's for a morning tea.
Doctors tended to think it was her mind that needed checking out. One suggested she see a psychiatrist, causing her to have such inner doubt she was depressed for a week, convinced that male doctors were sexist in their patronizing treatment of female patients. Her sisters agreed with her, giving their own gaunt stories, cheering her up, then depressing her further as they appeared not to be listening to her for very long.
Apparently, they thought she was healthier than they were.
By this time, her son had grown up, leaving home to join the travel industry, and 'see the world' as he put it. She told her son he should travel, yet felt disappointed when he did so, given her sporadic attempts to return to work over the years never lasted long, forcing her to retire when she went by fifty-five.
Chronic fatigue was the illness her husband resented the most, since he was expected to do the shopping, cooking and cleaning when he got home from work, as she lay with a blanket around her in the lounge-room, instructing him on what needed to be done. This was from a list she had spent the afternoon working on.
Initially, he suggested she was making this up. She got worse, unable to get up in the morning, so he didn't say it again, even if he was relieved when she didn't come to the shops, given her tendency to clutch the trolley as if it was only a matter of time before she ended up in it, and he would have to carry the groceries.
'How are you today?' she would be asked at the counter.
'Fine,' she would whisper.
Even when she replied, 'terrible,' she was still told, 'that's good.'
One girl wanted to lose her job, refusing to ask her anything, as the company demanded of their assistants at the cash register. She was relieved, thanking the girl for her indifference to human suffering. 'That's alright,' said the girl who was wondering if she had left the heater on when she left for work that morning, and whether her boyfriend saw her as a heater since he kept repeating, ' jeez, you warm me up.'
The husband took up lawn bowls, grateful the children from his first marriage had long given up on him, as he had on them, when his first wife remarried. He was left alone, becoming an enthusiastic bowler, nodding when other men complained about their wives. 'We've all got to get away,' he said when they looked at him for a sympathetic response, which didn't work so he added, 'I imagine the bowl is my wife's head as I send it down the green.'
'So that's why you often end in the ditch?'
'I understand,' sighed another man, giving his arm a savage under action. 'I'd like to knock mine over, except she's got a powerful fist and would deck me first.
'Do you promise to love, honour and bowl,' the husband said, shaking his head when they maintained their approval stare.
Laughter.
From this point onwards, they never minded when he drank his cup of coffee, looking out the clubhouse window as the others concentrated on bowling out their wives, briefly going silent and looking suspiciously at approaching female bowlers who they felt might be taping them for incriminating evidence, divorced on the grounds of excessive bowling.
A few times, though, he hoped his wife would have an illness that lessened her ability to tell him all about the latest one, such as bronchial problems, except these never arrived. One of her sister's regularly visited her, and the pair of them listed ailments like a shopping list, which saw him head out to the bowling club to roll balls into the ditch again.
'You're healthy,' his wife would say when she caught him glancing at his watch on a working day. 'What do you know?'
'Not much.'
'Stop agreeing with me.'
'Yes dear,'
She smiled. 'You are funny, I'll give you that.'
'Babies scream when they're born due to shock at the sight of blood and faces going 'coo coo' and so forth.'
'What?'
A car tooted its horn. He kissed her on the cheek, saying, 'I'll be back by tea.'
On this day, she finished her early morning cup of tea, got up from bed, dressed and backed the car out of the driveway, returning by 10 o'clock. The pharmacist was a cheerful man, always sympathetic to her, his loyal customer, having remarked her vocal tone resembled his raspy car engine when the battery went flat last month.
Her husband rang her from work, near the end of his shift, to find out how she was feeling, also commenting on her vocal tone, in his case resembling a frog croaking.
'Yes, she said. ' Frogs lose their batteries.'
'You're my battery,' he said. “Even if you need recharging.'
'I shouldn't talk for long.'
He agreed with this analysis, and said goodbye, sighing as he replaced the phone, trying to think back to a period of time she wasn't ill.
When he reached home, early evening, he was surprised to find no lights on, yet their car was still there. He unlocked the door, turning the hallway lights on, walking through the house to the main bedroom. Empty. Then he noticed a bit of paper by the phone with a hospital's name on it, and the word EMERGENCY. Must be serious, he thought, noting that it wasn't his wife's handwriting. Picking up an apple, he went to the car, backed out of the driveway, and drove to the hospital.
An hour later he walked towards the small enclave where she was temporarily waiting as the hospital worked out where to put her for a heart by-pass operation. 'Just as well she rang the emergency number and an ambulance got to her in time,' he was cheerfully told. 'Another half an hour, and who knows what might have happened. Your wife is a smart woman.'
He agreed, still shocked from what he had just been told by a young doctor, how she was being put on a specialist heart surgeon's roster over the next week. Everything was whirling around him. He heard the odd person scream from what seemed to be a long way away, and he wondered if this was his wife calling out to him.
'The end bed,' he had been told.
She lay with her head against pillows. He could see the bed had been raised up so she didn't have to move her body much. A pulse machine was attached, as well as a plastic line into her arm. Her bright eyes reached him, and didn't leave.
'How are you?' he asked, and felt inane.
'Not so good,' she whispered.
'So I hear.'
They paused, still regarding each other.
She had told herself to avoid saying, 'I told you it wasn't hypochondria,' but she was unable to stop herself.
He couldn't help but be chagrined by her tone. 'I never said it was.'
'You didn't have to.'
What really surprised him was a faint smile on her face, almost as if she was pleased, her eyes then crossing over to the machine reflecting her surging heart rate.
The couple stared at the machine, both now unable to look at each other.
