Sleeping with the Enemy

As I stepped out of the car, Nancy ran up to me.

"Please, take me with you," she pleaded.

"What's the matter?" I asked, somewhat confused.

What are you doing here?" Mike asked somewhat angrily, stepping off the porch.

"Nancy called me and said to come right over," I responded, "Mike, are you alright?"

I was beginning to realize that Mike was alright, but I was involved in a scene I didn't want to admit was happening. Nancy ran over to my car and quickly got into the passenger seat with her bag. She rolled down the car window and shouted to me.

"Please Gary, let's get out of here."

"Mike, I really don't know what is going on. Nancy called me and said it was urgent," I explained.

Mike looked down and shook his fist, then walked back towards the front porch.

"Please Gary, lets go."

I hesitated for a moment, then got back into my car. As I started the car, Mike suddenly came running up shouting loudly.

"If you want her, you can have her!" He screamed.

Nancy was pleading with me to leave. As I started backing out of the driveway, Mike suddenly ran up to my windshield and punched it hard with his fist, almost shattering it completely in front of Nancy's face. He was shouting obscenities directed at the both of us. I hit the brake and thought for a moment about getting out of the car and punching his lights out.

"Please Gary, get out of here," Nancy pleaded emotionally.

I resumed backing the car out of the driveway and headed back out on the road. For a while I did not say a word, desperately trying to make some sense of the situation that just unfolded before my eyes. After a long silence, I turned to Nancy.

"Did he hurt you?" I asked softly.

Nancy just sat there in silence. I could tell she was trembling, but did not speak, her eyes gaze diverted. I drove to a local all-night diner and led Nancy inside. We found a table and took our seats. Over coffee, we sat in silence for some time.

I thought about how my situation with my boss had suddenly become adversarial. I thought about where I was going to work and how I would support myself. I thought about if I should leave town. Most of all I thought about Nancy. She looked so pretty sitting at the table across from me, yet there was a look of hurt that revealed itself upon her face. Nancy seemed so innocent and vulnerable, yet the reality at the time was that she was perhaps stronger than me.

I offered to help her in any way I could. We left the diner and I took her to a local hotel and paid for the room. She assured me she could get some money in the morning and that she would be alright. As I left her at the hotel, I told her she could call me any time day or night if she needed anything.

"Thank you," is all she replied.

When I got home that night, I could not sleep. I grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator and sat there quietly in the dark. After some time I was able to fall asleep, but a lot was on my mind.

Nancy called me the next day and we met for lunch. We talked for some time, but not about Mike. It seemed appropriate that the events of the past be left unspoken. We talked about where she might live, what both of us would do for employment, and just various likes and dislikes. I found her a delightful companion and started to really enjoy the time we shared.

Nancy and I both found employment not long afterwards. She found a small apartment she shared with another girl and I was able to keep the place I had. Interestingly, Nancy became even more beautiful once she was out on her own. Her reticence seemed to disappear and her expressions revealed a certain joy that had been missing during the time she lived with Mike.

I started to see Nancy on a regular basis and what started as a friendship soon became sexual. As much as I enjoyed Nancy's company however, I was not really ready to get serious. Perhaps I was afraid of getting hurt again, haunted by the failure of my marriage, I do not know. Plagued by fear of failures both real and unrealized, I just know I seemed incapable of loving another human being. In fact, I could not even love myself.

The fact of the matter is that I started drinking more during this time than I ever had. Where I should have been opening up to another human being, I remained a prisoner of my own self-imposed isolation, reveling in my own loneliness and isolation. I had become my own judge, jury and executioner. I knew nothing about grief or depression, yet I was dealing with unexpressed grief and I was clinically depressed. It was as if I deliberately decided to kill off a part of myself to make life bearable, to cut off the emotions that plagued my mind, never realizing I was cutting myself off from the positive emotions as well as the negative. That deal comes with a heavy price I could not afford to pay. I was secretly hoping that nobody could see the chinks in the invisible armor we all try to hide behind from time to time, and yet everyone could clearly see. Everyone except myself.

Frustrated by an enemy I couldn't get a handle on, my life began to spin out of control, slipping like so many grains of sand between my fingers. The extent of which became painfully obvious one autumn evening.

I had dinner with Nancy over her place that night. She had prepared a delicious meal of salmon and fresh asparagus. I had been in the habit of bringing my own liquor over to her place as she rarely drank, and that night was no exception.

After dinner, we sat for a bit and watched a movie together on TV. When it came time to leave I kissed Nancy in the front doorway and we said our goodbyes. She took my hand and told me to call her on the phone when I arrived home that night. She seemed genuinely concerned. I assured her that I would.

As I drove home that night it began to rain lightly. I watched the light from my headlights as it reflected upon the falling droplets. Instinctively I turned on my wipers, as the wiper blades passed back and forth before my eyes in a steady rhythm. I watched as the wipers pushed aside the rain drops as they cascaded down the edge of the windshield pillars and pooled at the base of the windshield. I leaned over and turned on the radio to break the monotony of the slow sweep of the wipers, hardly aware the alcohol was obscuring my own clarity of thought like drifting clouds blocking the sun.

The next sequence of events happened in a split second. Whether the roadway was just too slick or it was some human error on my part, I'll never know.

My car left the roadway in a high velocity drift, and momentarily became airborne. As the vehicle made contact with a tree, metal was shorn away opening the side of the car like the lid of a sardine can. The sounds of shattering glass crescendoed in my ears as the vehicle flipped and rolled into a ditch. When it finally came to a rest, the smell of anti-freeze wafted through the car and along with the scent of burnt rubber invaded my nostrils. The hiss of the ruptured radiator played in the background. The steam caused the heat of the cabin to rise, sweat forming on my brow filling my eyes along with the blood from my cut forehead where I hit the windshield. Broken glass littered the highway in every direction surrounding the wreckage that temporarily imprisoned my own damaged body. I was vaguely aware of the taste of my own blood in my mouth.

That is exactly how the accident occurred, except for one detail. I don't remember a thing. Not one bit of it.

I only regained conscious several hours later. First only vaguely aware of light, slowly and incrementally I became aware of my surroundings, like a newborn discovering the world for the first time. The first thing I became aware of was an IV line attached to my left hand, and a faint beeping sound every minute or so. There was an undercurrent of pain which seemed to hammer at every nerve unmercifully, every breath, every little movement revealing new damage I was not previously aware of. After a while, I was able to open my eyes, or rather my eye, as my left was bandaged as the result of a significant cut. As the anesthesia wore off, my field of vision began to increase. As the darkness of the room slowly gave way to light, I became aware of someone else in the room. It was Nancy.

My initial reaction was that I did not want her to see me like this, all broken and bloodied. I was ashamed of what I had done to myself. I suddenly tried to move, as if to get up, but the sudden pain held me in check, the grimace on my face no doubt revealing my suffering.

Nancy called the nurse and she came in with a shot of morphine to kill the pain. The shot held the pain in check and I drifted back to sleep. When I awoke, I was vaguely aware of Nancy holding my hand. The sunlight filtering through the windows played upon her hair and diamond earrings, reminding me of the first time I saw her. Her touch felt good, so very healing. I regarded her for a long moment, her eyes seemed so filled with compassion.

"Thank you," was all I could say, as I closed my eyes again.

I tired easily and laid there drifting lazily in and out of consciousness, while Nancy held my hand. She stayed with me and nursed me back to health every day of my long recuperation. It was a time that changed my life.

During this period Nancy and I had got to know each other well. We talked for hours. We laughed. We cried. But, it was the quiet moments together that seemed to mean the most. The way she held my hand like she held my heart. As we sat in silence, there seemed to be a profound communion between us. We shared a bond mere words could never convey. A bond understood only by two people whose hearts bore witness to unspeakable pain. Her quiet gaze revealing a sense of hope that was somehow missing in my life.

It was during this time we became kindred spirits. Like an angel who came into my life bearing precious gifts, she asked nothing in return, not even thanks. Yet the gift she bore was as precious as any human being could bestow upon another. The gift of a second chance, for which I am forever grateful. She showed me love at a time when I needed it most in my life. For me to not love her in return would almost seem a sin against nature.

Nancy and I were married less than three months later in a small civil ceremony surrounded by a couple of close friends and family. Nancy did more for me than anyone else in my life ever had. I vowed to myself that I would do anything I could for her.

I realized I had become so blinded by my own mental anguish, that I could not fathom the hurt she was going through. I never did really know the extent of what she went through with Mike. I never really asked, my feelings always being that it was her right to tell me if she wanted, and I would always be there to listen. The closest I ever came to understanding happened many years later. We were in a theater, watching the movie "Sleeping With The Enemy" with Julia Roberts. Suddenly she held my hand tightly. She turned to me slowly and with tears forming in her eyes, she whispered.

"It was like that. It was just like that."

Our lives together seemed filled with hope, a chance to turn to each other rather than our own grief. It seemed as if all the broken promises and false hopes were forever behind us. Never again would there be fear of failure. It just wasn't an option.

08-03-10a.