Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (always you kirsty moseley .txt) 📗

his hair swept to one side with such perfection it looks styled for a film or a commercial. He extends a hand.

“Hey, Dr. Blume,” Oswald says, taking the tiny, dry, manicured hand into his grip. Oswald has laborer’s hands, calloused, rough, as strong as grappling hooks. The doctor’s hand vanishes within the muscular convolutions of Oswald’s mitt. “I came soon as I got your message.”

The doctor puffs his cheeks and blows air out in the international gesture of hesitation. “Why don’t we go into my office?”

They walk single file—Blume in the lead, Oswald trudging after him like a bodyguard—down the hallway. No words are spoken between the two men until they are safely and discreetly ensconced in the specialist’s private office with the door closed. The doctor takes a seat behind a massive, immaculate teak and rosewood desk.

Oswald settles into an armchair canted across the front of the palatial desk.

“Now, we’ve discussed the matter of hospice care for your wife,” Blume begins.

“Um... yeah.”

Blume looks at a document in a file, and then looks up at Oswald. “You’re self-employed, correct?”

Oswald scrambles to follow the thread of the conversation, his mind swimming now, questions crashing. “Um... yeah. Correct. Exactly.”

“In terms of insurance, you might want to check with your private health care provider to see whether home hospice care is covered. It can be expensive—even with co-pays—so you’ll need to make financial arrangements.”

“Wait... um... yeah.” Oswald sinks into his seat, his chest tightening with panic. “But... can I ask... um.”

“I’m sorry, go ahead.”

“Home care?”

“That’s right. I’m recommending this for your wife. I think it’s best.”

“Wait... you’re saying Matilda can go home?”

The doctor tents his hands with a practiced, furrowed expression on his face. He looks as though he’s pulling this demeanor from his Handbook of Bedside Manner, page 207 (See Diagram). “I’m sorry, I was under the impression that we had discussed this.” He clears his throat. “Oftentimes, the patient prefers to be surrounded by loved ones in the final stages.”

“So she can go home?”

“Mr. Smith—”

“She’s in remission?”

“No, Mr. Smith—”

“Call me Oswald.”

“Oswald, I’m sorry. You misunderstand. Your wife is in the late stages of her illness. At this point, it’s best if she is simply kept comfortable and allowed to be in her familiar surroundings.”

“Wait. Okay. I’m not following. She’s still dying but she can go home?”

“It’s what we recommend. We’ve already discussed it with her. She will—”

“You discussed it with her? Going home? This is what Matilda wants?”

“Yes, exactly, this is what she wants, which is why I’m recommending that you check with your insurance provider because the special equipment, the bed, the IV, the medication and whatnot, it can be extremely cost prohibitive.” He stares. “Mr. Smith? Oswald? Are you okay?”

The sound of the doctor’s voice fades into the drone of white noise in Oswald’s head. He looks down. He tries to breathe, but it’s not easy. His eyes have welled up to the point that he can hardly see, and his lips will not cooperate. They tremble now. He looks up through tears at the doctor and he says, “How long?”

“Excuse me?”

“How long does she have?”

Blume tents his hands and begins to speak. “The thing you have to keep in mind is that each and every case is different and your wife is certainly—”

For a huge, muscle-bound stoner, Oswald L. Means can move with unsettling speed, and right now his right hand shoots out across the desk and grabs the physician’s tented fingers, cutting off Blume’s monologue. Oswald’s single enormous hand covers both of Blume’s, and the grip tightens on them like a vise. “Just. Tell. Me. How. Much. Time. She. Has. Left.”

The doctor stiffens, mortified by the unexpected display from this normally docile behemoth. He speaks the words with a flat, unaffected monotone. “Two to four weeks.”

Oswald swallows and lets go of the doctor.

Across the room, a ghostly hallucination appears.

Oswald remembers the gangly accountant with the thick Coke-bottle eyeglasses. One of Oswald’s bullets shattered one of those thick lenses.. Now the phantom accountant starts to laugh at the irony of Oswald dealing with such things as hospice.

Oswald dries his tears and looks at the doctor. “It would be great if I could see her.”

In the old wedding photos, many of them hidden away now in boxes and forgotten storage units, Matilda Valkenburg radiated girl-next-door innocence—the kind of fresh-scrubbed prettiness you sometimes see behind the counter at a Dairy Queen or at a regional beauty contest. Her huge, earnest cornflower-blue eyes once gazed out at the world from beneath flaxen bangs like a character in a Li’l Abner comic strip. But as she aged and negotiated the late eighties and early nineties, she began to emulate a young Madonna—complete with the fishnets, Carnaby Street gloves, and peroxide-blonde swirl—always as plucky and strong as the Material Girl, ever outspoken and spiritual to a fault. She had always believed that every blade of grass had a soul, and that karma reached into each and every molecule of the world. Although she and Oswald never produced any offspring—none that we know of, Matilda often joked—she loved children and animals and red wine and the makeshift Buddhism of Marianne Williamson and Deepak Chopra. But most important, at least to Oswald, was the fact that Matilda remained—all through the years of their marriage—oblivious to what Oswald did for a living.

“Don’t forget my slippers,” she admonishes her husband only seconds after Oswald brushes into her hospital room, trying to paste on a fake smile for her benefit.

She instantly puts him to work getting her stuff ready to go home. Nestled in a warren of pillows and blankets, she’s a lot thinner now, the signs of age and suffering having their way with her looks. The cords in her graceful neck appear more prominent, her face a little more lined, and her once lustrous blonde hair now the color of wheat, pulled back in a tight ponytail. But that lovely small-town girl still resides in her eyes—those passionate, stubborn, spiritual, twinkling aqua-blue eyes. “I left my