The Woman In The Hole

A bit of the time she was aware of existing, in a sense. There was no identity, no pressing needs. No vision. No senses. Sometimes she’d feel like she occupied a small white space, a portion of which she might wonder about, but no answers were forthcoming and that was okay. Most of the time she wasn’t really anything.

She hadn’t opened her eyes in like three days. She just lay there, with the monitoring equipment emitting their ceaseless beeps and clicks, like some joke ass low budget sci-fi movie. Except that now this was real life. Whatever “real” meant. Actually, he knew exactly what real meant. It meant she would either keep on being with him or… she wouldn’t.

Maybe she was never going to wake up. Maybe this was it. No, fuck you, fuck that, he told himself. Do not think that way. Give back nothing in the way of despair. Accept no acceptance, this was not the way things were going to go down. They would fight and they would win. It was just going to take time. They’d figure it out. They’d do whatever it took. What had to be done?

But that left a lot of waiting around time. Sure, he could leave, go to the office, do errands, “kill” time, as if that wasn’t irony pure and simple. For now, he could read to her or talk to her, touch her, caress her. They’d spoken about, felt the special bond they shared. And it was that bond that he believed in, that gave him solace, that he searched for now. But nothing seemed to make a bit of difference, the monitors never wavered. Still, he chose to believe that somehow, even if the effect was undetectable, she knew. She could feel he was there. And if she knew that, things would work out. That’s what he was going with.

But after still more days of her continuing to lie motionless, his resolve began to crumble. With the doctors’ glum evasions and her continued non-presence, the negative thoughts began to creep in more frequently. He would still do his best to shake them off, to attempt to deny their existence, but like trapped air bubbles intermittently freed they continued to rise to the surface. He hated himself for even having the thoughts, but that didn’t stop them from coming. A nurse had mentioned a chapel. Where was that?

It turned out to be a small, windowless room on the second floor. Two pressboard pews. Piped in, what was that, recorded…

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