Consolation
Summer is always a busy time at Springfield General Hospital since tourists as well as locals tend to injure themselves more when they're enjoying the great outdoors. The Emergency Room waiting area—especially on a weekend—is often standing room only. Summer is also the time when many healthcare workers go on vacation, which means those who are on duty have to work additional hours to pick up the slack.
Jess Gilroy, a senior x-ray technician at the hospital, had just pulled his fourth double shift in two weeks. The long hours did not bother him too much, however, since he and his wife recently purchased their first house, and they could certainly use the extra money. Jess hoped to at least have the furniture and major appliances paid for before his wife, Juliana, began suggesting that they think about starting a family. Since they were both nearing the age of thirty, he knew it would only be a matter of time.
Unlike her husband, Juliana worked the standard Monday-through-Friday, nine-to-five workday at an insurance company in nearby Blakeford and usually got home around five-thirty or sometimes as late as six, if traffic was heavy on Route 840. Since he had the most seniority of the radiology staff, Jess normally worked the coveted eight-to-four shift, but the previous night he had gone in at midnight and worked sixteen hours straight.
At quarter after four, Jess entered the door of his newly purchased Cape Cod house and walked directly upstairs to the master bedroom, where he turned on the air conditioner, stripped down to his boxer shorts and climbed into the four-poster bed. He was sound asleep by four-thirty.
An hour later, the exhausted young man was awakened by the persistent ringing of the telephone on the bedside night table. His half-opened eyes sought out the numbers on the digital alarm clock. Apparently, Juliana was not home from work yet. As he reached for the telephone, he made a mental note to buy an inexpensive answering machine the next time he went to Walmart.
His hand touched the base of the cordless phone, but the handset was not there.
"Damn it!" he swore, longing to go back to sleep. "Juliana always forgets to put the phone back when she's done with it."
Maybe it will stop ringing soon, he thought optimistically.
Such was not the case, however. Seven, eight, nine times the telephone rang, and the caller at the other end of the line still had not given up. Ten, eleven, twelve.
No telemarketer would be that relentless, he reasoned. It must be something important.
Barely awake, Jess got out of bed and tried to concentrate on the direction of the sound. It was not coming from anywhere in the bedroom, so he stumbled down the hall toward the upstairs bathroom—a room that, since it had no windows, was perpetually dark. He could tell from the closeness of the sound that the phone was lying right on the vanity, so he reached in without bothering to first turn on the light switch.
As his fingers encircled the phone's handset, Jess upset the drinking glass that Juliana had forgotten to put back in the cup holder. It fell to the floor and shattered.
"Damn it!" he swore again.
Why didn't they have a plastic drinking cup in the bathroom or, better yet, a dispenser with little paper Dixie cups like his mother had used when he was a boy?
"Hello," he said sleepily into the mouthpiece as he made his way down the hall, back toward the master bedroom.
He would worry about cleaning up the broken glass later, or more than likely, Juliana would clean up the mess when she got home. That was only fair, he decided, since she had been the one who forgot to put both the phone and the glass back where they belonged.
"Jess?"
It was Juliana on the line. There was a good deal of static on the connection; she was probably using her cell phone.
"Jess, is that you?"
"Of course, it's me," he said, managing a tired laugh. "Who else would it be?"
"Jess ... honey."
More static.
"I had an accident with the car."
"How bad is it?" he asked, silently praying they would not have to buy another car to replace his wife's old Subaru. "Can you drive it? Do you need me to come and get you?"
"No. You stay where you are ... and get some rest."
"Are you sure everything is all right?"
"Yes. I just wanted to let you know that I'm fine. Really. I'm ...."
She seemed to be searching for the right words, or was that just his imagination?
"Don't worry about a thing," she continued. "Everything is going to be all right."
"Okay," he said with a yawn, anxious to go back to bed. "I'm going to try to get some sleep now, sweetheart. I'll talk to you later tonight. Don't worry about dinner. I'll make myself a sandwich when I wake up."
"Jess," his wife said, as he was about to press the END button on the phone.
"What?"
More static.
"I love you."
"I love you, too," he replied perfunctorily. "I'll see you later."
He ended the call, put the handset back in the base, lay on the bed and promptly fell back to sleep.
* * *
Jess's slumber was interrupted once again, this time by the sound of the doorbell. As before, his eyes sought the red numbers of the digital alarm clock. It was nearly seven. Juliana was sure to be home and would answer. The bell rang again, followed a few moments later by the sound of a fist pounding on the door. Apparently, his wife wasn't home yet. Then he remembered the phone call. Juliana had been involved in a minor traffic accident and would probably not be home until later.
Again, Jess stumbled out of bed, and after clumsily donning his uniform pants, he walked downstairs and opened the front door. Officer Emerson Holstein from the Springfield Police Department stood on the stoop.
"Mr. Gilroy?"
"Yes. I'm Jess Gilroy."
"Mr. Gilroy," Holstein announced respectfully. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but your wife has been involved in a car accident."
"I know," Jess replied, hoping to quickly send the officer on his way so he could return to his much-needed sleep. "She phoned me a little while ago and told me."
The police officer looked uncomfortable.
"I don't see how that could be possible, sir. Your wife's car was hit head-on by a drunk driver, and neither of them survived the accident."
Jess shook his head.
"No. My wife called and told me she was fine. You guys must have made a mistake."
"There was no mistake, Mr. Gilroy. Your wife is dead."
"No, she's not," Jess said stubbornly. "I spoke to Juliana around five-thirty. She phoned about an hour after I got home from work. I went upstairs to the bedroom and ...."
Jess had been sound asleep when the phone rang. Could it be that the conversation with Juliana had been nothing but a dream?
"The rescue team brought your wife to Springfield General after the accident," Holstein informed him. "I'm sorry, but they'd like you to go down to the hospital morgue and identify the remains. Do you need directions?"
"No," Jess said with a sad smile. "I know where the hospital is. I work there."
"I'm very sorry, sir," the officer mumbled once again before he turned and walked back to his patrol car.
Jess was in a daze, not knowing what to believe, what to think, how to feel. It had to be a mistake, and although he was exhausted, he would go down to the hospital and straighten it out.
He walked upstairs to the bedroom closet and exchanged his uniform pants for a pair of jeans. Then he put on a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of shoes and went back downstairs to the kitchen.
Before attempting to drive, he needed a dose of caffeine to wake him up. He didn't have time to make coffee, but a can of Coke, iced tea or Mt. Dew would work just as well.
As Jess reached for the refrigerator door, he saw Juliana's cell phone lying on the counter, plugged into the kitchen outlet. She must have put it there the night before to recharge it and forgotten to put it back in her purse.
So, it was a dream! Jess realized.
Juliana could not have called him if she didn't even have her cell phone with her. That meant the Emerson Holstein was correct. It meant that his wife had been killed by a drunk driver on her way home from work.
Jess forgot all about the soda, as he sat down at the kitchen table and wept.
* * *
"I'm sorry, Jess," Dr. Rosetta Elsner said as the grieving technician drew the sheet back over Juliana's face.
"I can't believe she's gone," Jess cried as the emergency room doctor led him out of the morgue. "Even after seeing her ...."
He couldn't bring himself to use the word body or, even worse, corpse.
Rosetta put a comforting hand on the technician's back.
"If it's any consolation to you, I want to assure you that she didn't have time to suffer. In fact, she probably never even knew what hit her."
Consolation.
The word echoed through Jess's mind. Was there any consolation to be had when a healthy, young woman died in a senseless traffic accident? Would the knowledge that her death had been relatively quick and painless console him through all the lonely years ahead? He seriously doubted it.
The tears flowed freely on the ride home. When Jess pulled into the Cape Cod's driveway, the awful finality of the situation hit him. Juliana would never come home again. All the wonderful plans they had made for the future would never come to fruition. There would never be a swing set in the backyard or a nursery where the spare bedroom was now located. They would never have the chance to grow old together.
Jess stayed in the car for another twenty minutes, suddenly averse to going into the empty house, knowing its emptiness was permanent. Finally, he forced himself to get out of the car and walk up the stairs and through the front door. He tried not to look at Juliana's teal London Fog raincoat hanging on the coat rack and to ignore the wedding photograph that hung above the fireplace mantel between two brass candlesticks.
He walked back upstairs where he removed his clothes and stretched across the bed. Yet tired as he was, he couldn't sleep. Not on the bed he had shared with Juliana. Not with her clothes still hanging in the closet, her slippers waiting beneath the bed and her perfume and makeup sitting on top of the dresser.
His tear-filled eyes went to a Taylor Caldwell novel on the night table with a bookmark holding Juliana's place.
She'll never finish that book, he thought with a renewed onslaught of weeping.
After a while, Jess's head began to throb. He wanted to sleep, not just because he was physically and mentally exhausted but also because he wanted to block out the heartbreaking events of the day. He closed his eyes, but sleep insisted on eluding him.
Perhaps there's a bottle of melatonin or nighttime pain reliever in the medicine cabinet.
He walked down the hall, reached in through the bathroom door, turned on the light and opened the medicine cabinet door.
"Bingo," he said when spied the bottle of Excedrin PM.
He shook two tablets into his palm and reached for the glass. It wasn't there. Juliana was always forgetting to put it back into the cup holder. It wasn't on the vanity either. Jess took two steps toward the shower stall; that was when he saw the broken glass on the bathroom floor.
I forgot to clean it up, he thought as he bent over and started to pick up the larger fragments.
His brain had been so befuddled by the tragedy that it took several moments for him to realize the significance of the shattered glass.
"If the glass is broken," he said with awe, falling back on his heels, "then that means I did come in here earlier to get the phone. I wasn't dreaming!"
Juliana's words echoed in his mind.
"I just wanted to let you know that I'm fine," she had said. "Really. Don't worry about a thing. Everything is going to be all right."
He had been so eager to go back to sleep that he almost hung up on her before she could tell him one last time that she loved him. Now Jess wished more than anything he could hear her voice again. But he instinctively knew that there would be no more phone calls, no more messages from beyond the grave.
Still, there had been that one; he was sure of it. The broken glass was all the proof he needed. Juliana had managed to get a message to him through the phone line, a message meant to assure him that death was not the end, that even though she'd been killed, her spirit still existed, and she still loved him.
Tears of joy and love now mixed with those of grief on his damp cheeks. He would get through the lonely years ahead. Perhaps he might even fall in love again someday, and new dreams would take the place of those that had been shattered by a drunk driver on Route 840. Perhaps; perhaps not. Whatever the future held, though, Jess would be able to face it bravely because the mysterious telephone call from his wife would prove to be a wellspring of consolation.
Bet you can't guess whose cell phone this is.
