John D. MacDonald
A Matter of Trust
The week at his bedside was the immediate and necessary and unavoidable nightmare. Sometimes his hand would tighten on hers, just for a moment, and Jane Ann would know that no matter what they said, somewhere inside him, where that faint and desperate spark of life still survived, there was an awareness of her, of her closeness.
At the hospital there was neither night nor day, or even names for the days of the week — only the suspension of all time as she held his hand and watched him breathe, watched the bruised stillness of his face and tried to make her own vitality flow into him.
Husband. Strange, dear word, a love-rhyme word, somehow, matching the homely things — scent of shaving lotion, old hat he wouldn’t throw away, look of his hand lifting the morning coffee cup, and his smile upside down when things were awry. Widow. A hollow word, like some dried thing struck and echoing only emptiness, or the winter-wind sound around the eaves of a lonely house.
She willed her life force into that dear, lanky, smashed body, past all the tubes and dressings, past the waxy and motionless flesh down to the small flicker of life. Live! she demanded. Live because you are me and you are all there is for me forevermore. Live, Johnny! Cling to life!
In the nightmare week she was glad that her sister had been able to come and stay, to look after the house and the three children. Irene was her only unmarried sister, a teacher in a nearby city. The school year had just ended. But all the business of house and children and routine was out of focus for Jane Ann. Everything was concentrated in that hospital room in a fierce and silent battle.
On the sixth day he had a few momentary returns to semiconsciousness. His mouth moved. His eyelids fluttered. Once he made a small, lost, heartbreaking sound.
On the seventh day, in the gold-and-blue dusk of a day in late June, she was with him when he opened his eyes, which were utterly blank. She moved closer. The gray eyes looked toward her and focused on her with a slow awareness. And then there was a puzzled look. He moistened cracked lips. She had to lean close to hear him.
“What happened?” he whispered.
Joy twisted her heart. The quick welling of tears blurred her vision. She kissed his dry mouth lightly.
“Everything is all right, darling. Everything is fine.”
“But... where...”
“The hospital, darling. You had an accident with the car. You’re going to be all right.”
“Accident?”
“Rest now, darling. There’s no need to worry about anything. Just get well so you can come home.”
He drifted into sleep. She stood up then and went to the window and looked out at the June evening, and it was like her first look at the world. She stretched her body and knew how exhausted she was. But now the tiredness was good. She waited, and when the doctor made evening rounds she reported the awareness and the conversation.
The doctor was obviously pleased. He was young enough to enjoy the taste of the technical phrases on his tongue, the emergency surgery at three in the morning when Johnny had been brought in — opening the skull, relieving the pressure of massive clot and hemorrhage, and then, when it seemed Johnny had survived that, at least temporarily, turning his attention to the other injuries.
Astonishingly, at least to the young doctor, it now seemed that John Foley, husband of Jane Ann, would make a complete recovery. Remarkable powers of recuperation. Severe shock. Touch and go. She smiled at the young surgeon and nodded at his every word.
When she went out to the hospital parking lot and got into Irene’s car to drive home there was a sudden reaction she had not expected. She clenched the wheel so tightly her hands and shoulders ached. The tears spilled. It was like the momentary shadow of what could have been. After a long time she was able to drive slowly home.
And then, with the greatest disaster avoided so narrowly, she could begin to face this second one, product of the same accident — the disaster of shame and scandal, which could smash all their plans and all their hopes.
Jane Ann made one more visit to the hospital that night. Johnny had awakened again, to enough discomfort to warrant additional sedation, so there had been no further chance to talk. When she returned home at ten thirty her sister told her that the two older children had been hard to control, and that she had got them to bed only after great difficulty.
Jane Ann knew the cause of that. Aged four, seven and nine, the children had been unable to comprehend truly what the death of their father would mean. But they had been all too aware of the torment and tension of this past week, of the hint of disaster. They were attuned to her own emotional state, and now when they sensed that the blackness was gone and their mother was more nearly herself, they responded in wild and manic ways, straining the patience of their Aunt Irene. It was the naughtiness of celebration, of thanksgiving.
Now that she knew Johnny would live, the house had a different flavor for Jane Ann. During all the days of uncertainty, the house had become strange to her. The places he sat, his empty bed, his clothing in the closet, a book he had been reading, his hairbrush — all these things had had a strange flavor, ominous and brooding and forlorn, the terrible flavor of what-if-he-never-comes-home.
A thousand things to break her heart, over and over.
In the black week she had tried never to think of such a possibility, but she had been unable to keep all the ordinary things from becoming strange and somber. She had suspected that perhaps it was a mechanism of defense, to have the look of things change slowly rather than all at once — a small and dreadful preparation for the heart.
But now on this night the shadows had lifted from familiar things, and once again they were dear and ordinary. She wanted to run laughing through the house and touch everything, hold everything, look at everything. Johnny would sit in the chair, sleep in the bed, wear the clothes. The ground was solid again.
One day something would happen to one of them, she knew, and for the other this change of all the ordinary things would occur. But not this way. Not so soon. Not when no one was ready in any sense.
How can you ever know in advance, she thought, how intense and how true and how total a marriage can be?
It amazed her to remember that when she first met John Foley she had thought him stuffy and stubborn and ludicrously idealistic. It had been a student-government thing. She was a very popular girl — pretty, vital, friendly, energetic. She had been going with a boy as well known on the campus as she was. The boy was turned in for an infraction of the honor system, and the case was turned over to the student council for appropriate discipline. Both she and John Foley were on the nine-member council. She had not been particularly aware of him. He never said very much in the meetings. She was certain that she could swing the meeting and get Mitch off with a minor reprimand, and she told him so.
But the meeting had not gone the way she expected. For once, John Foley spoke up, unexpectedly persuasive and articulate. When she realized he was winning, she swung her waning influence toward a motion to table the matter for one week, knowing she could talk to John Foley privately and get him to take it easier on Mitch.
They had coffee together, and she ran into a determination she had not anticipated. He listened mildly and politely to her defense of Mitch, the extenuating circumstances, all of it.
And then he said, “This is not a personal vendetta against your friend Mitch. And I am not a prude or a fanatic, Jane Ann. But you know and I know that if this were Joe Nowhere instead of Big Mitch, we would have handled it in five minutes and Joe would be packing his bags and taking a one-semester suspension.”