They both hold themselves still, like actors in a tableau. Patiently, she waits to see what he will do, but he just stares. Blindly, painfully, he stares at the multitude of colours upon the table. There is nothing here to see – his eyes are in the past.

There used to be laughter in this house. There used to be joy. There used to be tears, tears of happiness and tears of misery. Now, there is only silence, the silence that lingers like mist in the mind, numbing the pain, but never relieving it...

“Look ooouuuutttt!!”

He heard the warning a split second before she barreled into him, sending them both crashing to the floor. His lunch tray flew up and spewed his lukewarm chicken noodle soup over the both of them.

“Oh God, I-I’m so sorry. You have no idea. Oh my goodness, I can’t I believe I, oh, please forgive me,” she rambled as she picked herself up off of the cafeteria floor and scrambled to retrieve her textbooks.

Still splayed out across the floor, he gaped at her through the curtain of noodles hanging down over his eyes. What had just happened? What chain of events had led to him being run over by a beautiful girl in the student cafeteria? Shaking his head to clear it, he heard her mumbling, “Er…um, excuse me, um…could I, um…get that, er, well, uh, could you…”

“Huh?” He looked up to see her standing over him, a noodle hanging off her ear, and a sheepish smile stretched across her lips.

“Um, could I get my book?”

He frowned at her. What was she talking about?

“Er, under your hand?”

He jumped and looked down. Introduction to Neuroendocrinology stared back up at him. “Oh, sorry,” he muttered, and handed the book back to her.

“Thanks,” she said with a forced, lopsided smile. As an afterthought, she reluctantly offered her hand and helped him to his feet.

Her face still flaming with humiliation, she mumbled, “Sorry ‘bout that,” and turned away. She elbowed her way through the crowd of gawking spectators and was already out the door when his senses came back to him.

A chance like this didn’t run you over every day! The thought that he might have lost her even before he had made her his filled him with panic. Frantically, he manhandled his way through the crowd, leaving a wake of distraught students behind him.

“Wait! Wait!” he yelled, stumbling out of the cafeteria and onto the quad like an ungainly baby duck. “What’s your name?”

This last line he blurted into the student body in general before he realized his folly. A number of students ogled him strangely and there were a few lewd catcalls from the crowd. Indeed, the only person who didn’t react at all was her.

Casting an apologetic look to several of his colleagues, he charged after her. Throwing himself in front of her path, he gasped, “I’m Brian Turcott. Pleased to meet you.” He offered his hand, all the while doubled over, the last vestiges of his pneumonia making him weaze for breath.

Her enormous eyes stared at this Brian for a moment, then quickly averted and glanced nervously around at the students still watching the unusual display. Her breathing intensified and an expression of panic suffused her features right before she ducked her head and walked away.

Brian, his hand still dangling in air, had finally caught his breath. Straightening up, he gazed back at her, a mess of emotions jockeying inside of him. He was normally a quiet, easy-going guy, but you wouldn’t know that from this display. Normally, he would have run away, his face crimson with humiliation. But this wasn’t normally, this was love and love can make you do extremely uncharacteristic things.

And so it was that he approached her again, this shy young man who had only gotten drunk once in his life (and deeply regretted it afterwards), whose dream job was sitting in a cubicle all day playing with equations and who had just fallen in love for the first and only time in his life.

“Please,” he said softly this time, beseechingly. “Please, just tell me your name.”

His softness brought her up short and she frowned, whether in confusion or annoyance, he couldn’t tell. Truly looking at him for the first time, she said simply, “Why?”

Even in his state, he realized that confessing his love would only send her running for the hills. “Because I…I’d like to make up for what happened. Let me take you out to dinner.”

“It was my fault. Don’t worry about it.”

“No, I insist. I was in your way.”

“No, really, it’s OK...”

But in the end, he wore her down and she had agreed to a date, a skeptically amused smile blossoming on her face.

For the rest of that day and the next four years of his life, his feet floated on air, her name repeating like a sacred mantra in his mind:

Lina, Lina, Lina...

Now her name drives daggers into his mind. With an anguished cry – the first sound he had made in days – his hands clutch his head and he falls from his chair, body heaving with dry sobs. Snippets of conversation from the past fly through his mind like red-hot cannonballs sweeping through the thick, dense fog...

On their first date, she asked him with a quirky smile, “So, why did you really ask me out?”

“Because I just fell in love with your eyes,” he blurted out truthfully.

And her emerald green eyes had danced while she laughed at his cheesy line...

Another day, a few weeks later he had asked her, “So, you’re planning to go to med. school?”

Her gaze locked with his and she answered seriously, “That was the plan, but I’m open to other suggestions.”

There had been conversations about their childhoods, when he had admitted, “I’m the only child, but despite what people think, it’s a pain. There’s this tremendous pressure to succeed. Sometimes it feels like my parents have pinned all their hopes and dreams on me.”

She nodded, a rueful smile on her face. “Yeah, I know pressure. I mean, the MCATs are coming up and I’m so tired of studying, but I’ve gotta do it. Everyone’s expecting me to get in. But, you know, I just think that I’d like to drop it all sometimes. I come from a large family and I’ve always wanted to have a large family of my own.”

“How many kids?” he’d asked, smiling but completely serious in his secret heart.

“Three, at least,” she’d replied, equally flippant, but with thoughtful eyes.

A month later, he had asked her to marry him.

“Yes,” she had whispered simply.

He thinks about that moment now and he feels short of breath. It’s funny, how he can remember bits of inconsequential conversations, but he can’t picture her face at the moment he had proposed. For the life of him, he can’t remember.

The mist encloses his mind again and he lies on the kitchen floor, curled and quiescent. Still, watching him, she remains silent. There was nothing she can say and nothing he would hear.

What is he thinking? She doesn’t know. Maybe he isn’t thinking at all.

But he is. Wandering through the mist, he’s trying to remember – he has to remember. He would scream in frustration, had he had the energy, but suddenly, something is emerging. It isn’t what he is looking for though...

“Does this dress make me look fat?”

Sheer panic caught Brian in its vise-like grip as he sat on their bed. This was the question every man dreaded. How could you answer? You were screwed either way. “Uh...of course! I mean, I mean not. Of course not! No, no, you definitely don’t look fat. No –“

She pursed her lips to keep from laughing. Placing a finger to his lips, she assured, “Don’t worry, honey. I know I look good,” and raised her brows as if to say, “You know what I mean?”

A giggle of pure relief tumbled from Brian’s lips. It had been two years to the day since their marriage, but this was the first time he had been handed that deadly question. Thank goodness she had been joking!

Their laughter soon subsided, however, as their thoughts wandered back to the thin piece of plastic lying in the bathroom sink. If simple, unrelenting hope could make that indicator turn blue, they would have had a child a year ago. As it was, their simple, unrelenting hope was the only thing they had.

All this passed through their respective minds as they stood together in silence. Then, the scene begins to lose its clarity and the current Brian finds himself wandering, floating again. The indicator had been negative that day, he remembers and seems to shrink deeper into himself as he does.

She notices this as she watches him and finally decides to do something. He’ll catch his death, lying on the cold floor. Standing, she walks over to him and bends down beside him. She doesn’t touch him, but hovers above him.

And she waits.

At last, he shivers and, like a man moving through thick molasses, uncurls himself. His eyes unseeing, he reaches for the table, feeling for its ledge and pulling himself back onto his chair. For a moment, he had thought she was there in the room with him, but how can that be?

No, it isn’t possible. She can’t be in the kitchen with him; to think that she might be means that he has to hope and hope is too painful an emotion. Instead, he focuses on what he knows. For instance, he knows that after three and a half years of trying, she had become pregnant.

He had awakened that day to a scream and immediately thought that the new hair dye she’d tried the night before hadn’t turned out very well. With a groan, he left the bed and padded to the washroom in disaster-control mode. However, he didn’t see a green-haired, teary-eyed Lina. What he saw was his wife dancing about in her pink lingerie, hips gyrating madly as she warbled I’m a Believer.

“Huh?” he grunted, sleep still clouding his mind.

Seeing him in the doorway, she took his hand and, jumping up and down, waved a thin white stick before his eyes.

He would have thought it was a tampon, had it not had a tiny streak of blue on it. Eyes widening, a huge stupid grin cracked his lips and he joined her dancing.

“You’re pregnant! You’re pregnant! Oh my God, we’re pregnant!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Oh my God, we have to tell our parents!” With that, he ran back into the bedroom, dialed his parents’ number and screamed, “Mom! Dad! I’m pregnant!”

“Brian?” his mother mumbled, still groggy with sleep. “Brian, honey, how can you be pregnant?”

He had laughed at his folly as Lina explained what had just transpired...

Why had things degenerated after that ecstatic moment? The doctor had confirmed the home pregnancy test and congratulated them. Their friends had thrown the baby shower – somewhat early, but considering their three and a half years of trying, appropriate. And Lina’s pregnancy had been developing so well.

It all began to go sour, he supposed, when his parents had died suddenly. There was no reason to their deaths, just chance. It had been chance that the thieves had chosen their home to rob. It had been chance that his parents had been home that day, instead of out visiting John and Iris Marsh as they did every other Friday night. As the thieves would later insist, it had also been chance that the gun had fired that night, killing Anne Turcott instantaneously. After that, it had been chance that James Turcott suffered cardiac arrest and was left to die as the thieves fled in terror.

He had been crushed at the news, numb with disbelief. In one sudden instant, he had crumbled, much like his father must have crumbled and Lina had become the strong one. Right when she needed him most, he had fallen in on himself and she had to care for him and their unborn child.

She didn’t complain, her disposition being kind and understanding. However, her patience was not infinite. After four months of supporting his silence, she had finally grown exasperated.

“Brian, I’m going to Maria’s for a few hours,” she had said as soon as he got home from a long day of work. Her coat was already on and she was digging in her purse for the car keys.

Incomprehension distorted his features. “What? But Lina, I...why tonight?”

She sighed deeply and turned her gaze towards him. “Why not tonight, Brian? Why not tonight? Do you have something special planned? Have you finally decided to stop moping?” she demanded, more sharply then she had intended.

He stood frozen, like a helpless puppy that has been struck. “Moping?” he repeated stupidly.

“Yes, Brian, moping. Look, honey, I understand that this is hard for you and I’ve tried to be there for you. But nothing I do seems to help. So, I thought I’d just leave you alone for a while, maybe that’ll help. Besides, I really need some time to myself right now.”

“But, but I need you.”

“You can do without me for a few hours, Brian.”

“N-no, Lina, I need you.”

“You don’t need me to be chained to you every night, okay? Just, I need some space right now, Brian. I haven’t spent a night without you in four months.”

“You don’t want to spend time with me?”

“I’ve spent every moment that you’re not at work with you, Brian! And I’m sorry, but I need to just have a whole day to myself.” She shook her head and her brow furrowed as she tried to explain. “You know, I’ve been thinking lately that I’d like to go back to school. Not immediately, but in a few years, after the baby’s grown a little. Spending all this time cooped up in the house has made me realize that I need to do my own thing. I can’t just support you anymore, Brian.”

His look of bewilderment began to darken. “What are you talking about, Lina? It was your choice, dropping out of university. And you can’t go back in a few years. You’ll have to look after the children.”

“What!” she screamed, finally moved to uncontrollable anger. “What do you mean, I’ll have to look after the children? What about you? Are you just going to work all day and come back, expecting everything to be perfect? What era are you living in, Brian? You’ve taken me for granted for way too long!” She shoved him aside and stormed out the door.

“Lina! Lina, you come back here!” he shouted, running after her. “You’re not going anywhere! You are mine, Lina!” he declared, taking hold of her arm.

Wrenching herself free, she had glared up at him for a moment, then spat out, “Grow up, Brian,” before climbing into the car and tearing out of the driveway. She had never come back.

And now he is here, sitting alone in the cold, dark kitchen. His laugh is a bitter bark as he remembers his last words to her: “You are mine, Lina!”

How wrong he had been. She had never been his, he understands that now. No one is ever anyone else’s property. But he can’t tell her that, he can never tell her that.

It’s funny how chance works. It had been total chance that she, the love of his life, had run him down in the student cafeteria and it had been total chance that the drunk driver had run her down that night.

For a moment, he had had everything. And then he had blinked and the dream had faded.

What does one do when they lose their world? He doesn’t know. He simply sits there, staring at the multitude of colours lying on the kitchen table. Those colours are certainly one choice, certainly an easier choice than moving on, living without her.

*************

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