One night, in both sickness and health —

My husband, who never gets sick, barfed and shat intermittently for hours that night and there was a turning point when I could hear only bile, a level of primordial retching wherein he became a banshee, emitting a spectral sound unrecognizable as my husband’s.

The walls of the apartment narrowed then, like a discerning eye, and the universe, the cosmos, and every bursting star became only the hallway outside our bathroom where I stood as sentinel, convinced he was going to collapse, hit his head and bleed out. (I should note here that my husband is on blood thinners due to his mechanical heart valve. His blood doesn’t clot well and he wears a silver necklace to alert medical people to this misfortune.)

Having emptied himself again of all organic matter from the last seven years, he staggered to bed and I with him, his loyal, skittering terrier. We attempted to sleep, which is to say, I watched him.

At some time in the night he had a seizure. Well, I don’t know if that’s true or if I dreamt it. The walls between asleep and awake were impossible to discern because I intended to be vigilant. A lucid dream and an obscured awake straddle the same flickering line. The walls between alive and dead, alone and together, all came to thin and embrittle like old plastic.

In my trench sleep I rehearsed the 911 call and imagined the EMT’s, understandably, bumbling up the wrong staircase. “No, no! Back here!!” I’d shout from the third floor. But I wouldn’t be able to leave my husband to fetch them as I would be tying the tourniquets (securely! But …loosely?! Or you end up amputating! …?!) to staunch the blood from the fall I was sure would come if he lost consciousness.

Awake now, I saw that he was safely asleep. And breathing.

But the humid air held a new truth: That our apartment was a precariously nested tree house. And I saw how our safety nets were paper and I watched us fall fall falling through sheets. I hungered for a return to our earlier evening, 6pm or so, with its illusion of vigor and impermeability.

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*This scene will become part of a longer story, but I woke up this morning eager to flesh out this bit, particularly the idea of thin walls between states.

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