Decapitated Angel

I had to force him to go to the hospital.  Hindsight being 20/20 …never mind.  Once we get there and I’m truly, absolutely concerned for him.  He's lying there and he’s crying …not like sobbing but silent tears squeezing out and trailing down into his ears. He’s refusing any treatment until the doctors have cleared it with me.  He’s telling them we may not be married on paper but I’m his wife and he needs me with him.  What I should have been thinking was, Not such a big tough dickhead now are you fucknuts? What actually happened was it wiped away any memory I had of our fighting, his treatment of my son, the money worries, the constant running like a crazy person to meet his and his children’s needs.  I was Superwoman.  I was needed.  He needed me and he was ill and I had to take care of him because that’s what I do. 

They stabilized and transported him to a larger city with a cardiac center in the hospital and I hurried home to pack a bag and make sure the kids were all looked after.  I raced to the city 2 hours away and rushed to his side.  They put him in ICU and said that he’d need a stint.  Not exactly nothing, but fairly mundane.  He threw a fit until they let me stay with him overnight in ICU.  His oldest daughter came the next day to wait with me and we kissed him good-bye and reassured him he was going in for a routine procedure and we’d be right there when he got out.

The cardiologist came into the waiting room and called us both back into a separate room about 2 hours later.  He held up a scan that showed us Tucker’s arteries, his severely blocked arteries. He would need a triple if not quadruple bypass.  We asked a lot of questions which all amounted to his remaining admitted until they scheduled his bypass surgery and we should be concerned but more concerned if he didn’t have it done.  Tuckerette and I went out into the hall in a daze. We sort of held hands and wandered into a corner and then clung to each other and cried; sobbed our eyes out is more like it.  After about five minutes, we both straightened up and instinctively knew without saying so that we couldn’t see Tucker looking like this or we’d scare him to death.

After everything, we saw him, we told him, he came to terms with it… he remained sweet, compliant, ingratiating, deferring to me for every decision.  I felt so powerful. It was insane that he was able to work things back around to his advantage even from a hospital bed.  He knew I was fed up with him…he had sensed it before the crisis and had turned me right back around on my road out of there.  How you say? Well, he put me in charge.  I had spent over a year at his beck and call and doing his bidding and abruptly, just like that, it was me calling the shots.  What I failed to realize is that the puppet master was in overdrive from his sick bed having me make phone calls, collect money from people and had me running between the big city and work 2 hours away.  I spent a day at work, a day at the hospital, a day at work, a day at the hospital. 

 By the time he had what turned out to be quadruple bypass surgery and came out of it with flying colors, he was moved to a room and as it turns out was a massively huge asshole when taking vicodin on a regular basis.  I also figured out what a huge pantywaist he was at this point.  I’m not saying I think having your chest cracked open is a small matter.  I don’t but he was a raving lunatic and complained about everything.  The nurses cringed when it was a night that I would be leaving so that I could work the next day.  He was demanding and cruel.  I bought him one of those Willow Tree Angels...the love one. (I know vomit inducing.) 

I had placed it on his bedside table and one of his nurses came in to check his vitals one evening and knocked it off. The thing went flying under the bed and its head flew off.   She was very upset but I just picked up the body and the head and put them back and told her it was fine. Two days later another nurse was in taking his vitals as I sat in the chair by his bed.  She inclined her head toward the angel still sitting, decapitated, on the bedside table and said, “He rip the head off that thing?”

I laughed and said, “No, but good guess.”

This is how ugly he had been to absolutely everyone as a result of the vicodin supposedly.  I remember going out to the parking garage crying my eyes out because he was just like so much emotional acid every time he opened his mouth.  I called one of his oldest friends who told me that it was the medicine, hang in there; it’d be fine when he was off the meds.  I hucked and cried and hucked some more and thought, What if I just put the car in reverse, drive out of here and pack all his shit in that fucking motorhome and go park it at your house then?.  But of course, I didn’t…I went back in.  I went back in and got ready to take the asshole home. 

I still have the decapitated angel.  Hell, I feel like a decapitated angel.