Coda (Songs of Submission #9) by CD Reiss Read Free Book Online Page B

it to myself in a drum-tight skin of gratitude.

chapter 9.
    MONICA
    I  usually had a dream. I was in Sequoia, but it wasn’t Sequoia. The hallways were narrower, the lights dimmer or blindingly bright—endlessly white and long. Doors everywhere, some locked and some ajar. In my right hand beat a throbbing, pulsing heart, dropping blood on the bleached linoleum. I only had as much time as the blood in the heart, and I needed to get to Jonathan’s room with it or he would die. Sometimes the hospital was empty, and I couldn’t find the room. Sometimes it was populated with people who didn’t know what the hell I was talking about or where I should go. Once, I dreamed the halls were lined with chicken coops, and Dr. Brad sent me in the wrong direction on purpose.
    Jonathan always died. I always woke up in a state of grief and misery, and he was either next to me or I was in an empty bed, looking for a way to call him without worrying him.
    The night after he reclaimed me in the studio, with every inch of my body stinging and alive, I expected to have that same dream, as surprising and terrifying as it always was. But it didn’t come. And not the night after, when he made me wait twelve minutes before touching me. Nor over the next week as he broke me, pushed me, hurt me until I was a puddle of emotional satisfaction. I never had that dream again, as if my subconscious was suddenly okay with the whole arrangement of my life and my conscious brain was the only troublemaker.
    He hurt me, but he didn’t bind me. When I asked him to, he spanked me for questioning him, but he still didn’t tie me up.
    I mistrusted this in quiet moments, but I let it go. He was too good, the same man he had been. Still wise and kind, still generous and funny, but with an added helping of scorching cruelty in bed. He’d scared the dreams away, and I was safe at night, but in the day, I still carried my anxieties. Even when I forgot to worry, I reminded myself that I hated grey and pale pink, that copper and blood had the same smell, and that the heart machine in the hospital made the same beep as the timer in the coffee shop. My brain did its due diligence, creating panic as insurance against death.
    Jonathan had been more productive. Six weeks after he returned from the hospital, he started forgetting his anti-rejection meds because of the complexities of dosing, and his immune system started slipping because he wasn’t getting enough nutrients. Shortly after Valentine’s Day, he found out I’d been staying home to watch him. He’d sliced the air with his hand and said simply, “No.”
    He hired help.
    Laurelin was a nurse, which I normally wouldn’t hold against her. But I wasn’t behaving normally. She came to the house to interview in the afternoon, after a long line of women and men who’d spoken to Jonathan about what he expected, what he needed, and what they could do. They’d all smelled sanitized. I couldn’t sit in the interviews, because the hospital stink caused me so much anxiety I wanted to throw up. I told Jonathan I had to practice, but I peeked in on every interview, and every time he said one of them was no good, I felt relieved.
    But Laurelin didn’t smell like a hospital. Nothing about her reminded me of Sequoia. Her hair was the color of scrambled eggs, and her belly was rounded with the beginnings of her second trimester. She’d worked in the infectious diseases unit at Hollywood Methodist but couldn’t continue while pregnant. She smiled a lot, which they all did, but she seemed to be made of sunshine and she smelled of rosewater. When I met her, I felt as if a blanket had been thrown over me on a cold night, and I couldn’t imagine she would let anything happen to my husband.
    “Her,” I’d said. “You need to hire her.”
    “Really? Why is that?”
    “She’s pregnant. She’s going to take good care of you. I can feel it.”
    “What does taking care of me feel like?”
    “It feels like the only