She's in the Clock

NOTE: This story includes mental health issues, and the loss of a baby.

Dolen listens to the rhythm of his wife’s breath. It is steady and even, almost exactly in tune with the tic-toc of the ancient cuckoo clock in the hallway. He contemplates closing his eyes and the thought of actually getting rest makes him smile softly.

He has jinxed himself, having had hope of rest. Within minutes, his wife’s body is twitching and she yelps. She sits up and instantly throws herself back onto the mattress, her large solid belly flopping uncomfortably. He rolls over in bed, reaches around her shoulders and holds her snug. She gasps and kicks.

“Sahara, you’re having a nightmare again.” Dolen lets go before getting hit in the face by her flailing arm. He already has a nasty bruise from last night, the night before, and the night before that. When he lets go, her convulsions subside slowly. He gives her time to re-coup and space on the bed.

Sahara swipes the sweat-drenched hair out of her face and then gently grasps Dolen’s arm. “Amara?”

Dolen sighs out, “No, Sahara, it’s me,” and then slips out of bed, into his house shoes. “I’ll make you a tea.” He walks to the kitchen, fills the kettle. He wonders if he could sneak a few hours of sleep in the guest bedroom, but he’s too worried about his wife.

When the whistle blows, he pours the water, and he notices Sahara standing at the kitchen entrance. He starts at the sight of her. She has a puffy face and swollen feet.

“Oh hon, this is looking really bad. Let me call the doctor.” He leads her to the kitchen table, helps her into a chair, propping her feet into another chair. He gets her an ice pack for her ankles, then goes to his office to get his phone.

Her reactions are delayed. She has just heard him mention the doctor. “No.”

Walking back into the kitchen he says, “I can schedule a visit for tomorrow, he doesn’t have to come tonight, but I think you need to be seen.”

Dolen can hear trilling on the line when Sahara says, “She’s in the clock.”

Dolen isn’t sure what he’s just heard. He hangs up the call. “What, sweetie?” He pulls out a chair and sits down.

Sahara is slowly scanning the room. She seems to see something he doesn’t. Despite the bright light above, when her gaze floats towards Dolen, he sees that Saraha’s pupils are widening.

********

I am laying down. I look to my left and see my husband sitting next to me. He is holding my hand, to which an IV is attached and a strap bound at the wrist. There are a series of straps on each arm and wrist, a sheet hanging in front of me, across my chest area. I can’t feel anything below the waistline.

The room is fuzzy, the lights blaringly bright, and I feel something being pulled from my abdomen. I don’t feel pain, just pressure, and then nothing. I look to Dolen, who is looking toward the people on the other side of the sheet. His mouth is open, his chin pulled back, shoulders hunched, his thick caterpillar eyebrows pinched in. He closes his eyes hard, a tear bursts forth, and runs down his cheek.

“Amara?” I ask.

He shakes his head. He can’t even open his eyes. He holds my hand in both of his, and leans his forehead onto it. He is shaking, weeping.

I exhale and turn to look up at the ceiling tiles. I count the perforations, dots like stars in the sky. A nurse appears at my right side. He is talking to me, but I stare ahead, watching the little black holes begin to swirl. I hear a tic-toc rhythm in the hospital machinery. Then I hear a vacuum. Then I smell burnt flesh.

I see a clock counting down, but I’m not sure where. I search the room, and see it everywhere. The clock's hands are in fact my own arms, bruised, empty. They swim. They fall backwards. They extend, trying to catch a baby.

I ask no one in particular, “Amara?”

********

Dolen dozes in a chair in the corner of the hospital room. He hates the smell of hospitals, the smell that clings to everyone in it. He hates that he will smell like iodine and death when he leaves, when his wife is finally released.

Sahara is more swollen than before. She has tubes coming out of her, machines beeping, nurses checking in more often than he figures is necessary. Sahara is neither asleep nor awake, hanging in between death and a dream state. If she stirs, she calls for Amara, she flails and kicks and her sutures bleed.

They have her strapped down, and it breaks Dolen’s heart. But his heart was already broken. He dozes off, and the nurses enter the room again. They say he should take a walk to the cafeteria while they administer medicines and clean wounds.

He steps into the fresh air outside and wanders the grounds. It’s dusk. Or dawn. He doesn’t really care enough to even look at his phone for the time. He enters a small garden with yew trees and hibiscus flowers, amid which stand statues of saints. They all look busy - reaching Heavenward, stooping to meet an invisible child, or their eyes are closed, hands folded in prayer. He rounds a small bend to a fountain. There stands the Shepherd with a lamb at his bare feet, looking at Dolen, arms open wide.

********

“She’s in the clock, getting smaller,” I say. Out of the several men standing in this room staring at me, apparently none of them can hear me. I try to say it more forcefully. Maybe no one here speaks English. I repeat it in Arabic. I say it in French. No one responds.

********

They warn Dolen that the first few days after she wakes up, she will be disoriented.

The first few days after Sahara wakes up, she is violent.

The next few days, she is given sedatives and pain killers, and is forced to walk the hallways. Dolen helps the nurse get Sahara out of bed, showered and dressed. The phrase in his mind, on repeat: in sickness and in health.

She is dismissed from the hospital. Sahara rarely looks at Dolen, and only asks for Amara. The doctors say to give her time. Dolen holds her hand and stays by her side. In the wee hours, he listens to the tic-toc of the old cuckoo clock, and wonders when his wife will come back to him.