The Fish in the Dark

There are rooms in hospitals that are less rooms than pauses in the machinery of dying. They have tough plastic chairs bolted to the floor like prison furniture and televisions murmuring weather from cities nobody here has seen. Your husband has been here for sixteen days with severe pneumonia. He is thirty-eight; you are thirty-nine. He has HIV, though his viral load has been undetectable for years, and every morning he takes his four handfuls of medication with orange juice in the blue mug his niece bought him, the one that says WORLD’S OKAYEST UNCLE. He has never liked coffee. His body has become an arrangement of straps, tubes, monitors, and strangely, stickers. A nurse calls him brave for breathing, then asks him to breathe for her. Your mother says you ought to be grateful he is alive. You are grateful, but it is still not enough.

At 2:14 a.m., a nurse enters. “He needs to be turned, and I need two people. Could you help?” You laugh. This isn’t your first rodeo. “No,” you say. The nurse doesn’t react.

At 3:47 a.m., your husband wakes. “So I had this dream,” he says. You move closer to his face, which looks impossibly pink beneath the fluorescent lights. His oxygen mask clouds with each breath. The condensation briefly resembles the face of a fish, its mouth opening and closing against the plastic. “There was this house underwater,” he says. “It was our dream house. You know, the mid-century-modern thing?” He looks confused. “Everyone was still having dinner,” he says. “And what was I doing,” you ask. “You should have seen it. You drove us out of there,” he says.

At 4:38 a.m., the nurse returns. “He should go to the facilities,” she says, and you think about the word facilities, and how you are inside one. The nurse helps your husband into the bathroom. There, sitting beside the sink, is a pristine bottle of mouthwash. You close your eyes. For a moment you hear black water rushing from the faucet. You break the seal and breathe deeply from the bottle’s mouth. Peppermint. Alcohol. Something medicinal. Something very blue. You have a feeling of something beginning.

Four days later, your husband wants to know about his plants, particularly his prized basil. It is the first houseplant he hasn’t killed, so he has propped it up with his favorite pair of chopsticks, the ones you bought on your trip to Tokyo, pink bears holding their paws above their heads. “Plants don’t die in a few days,” you say, but then your heart fills with sadness. When you get back to your townhouse, you straighten the chopsticks and touch the basil leaves. “Cheer up, old chap,” you tell it.

Four days after that, your husband wants to know where you’ve been. If you’ve just been drinking. If you’ve been going to your meetings. He watches you for a long time. “I’ve only been drinking mouthwash, darling,” you say finally. “Do you know what the fish was?” you ask. “No, but do tell. I’ve always been so into ichthyology,” he says. “It was a catfish,” you say.

The next morning, your husband asks you to take him home. He has not been discharged, so doing so would certainly be against medical advice. But he wants his own bed, his basil plant, his blue mug with orange juice in it. You need some air, even though it is winter and the air outside is colder than the hospital’s. When you come back, carrying two coffees you know he will not drink, he has fallen asleep. “Let’s go home,” you say loudly. He wakes instantly. “Wha? Huh?” “Let’s make a break for it.” He blinks at you.

At 5:01 a.m., a nurse brings a portable oxygen tank to replace the one beside his bed. Your husband watches her wheel it in. “Remember all those years I was on nitrous?” he asks. “Remember all those tanks? Remember how mad you got?” You do remember. How could you forget? How could you forget the endless cylinders in the garage, how new ones would seem to appear from nowhere? How could you forget finding him sitting on the kitchen floor, laughing at nothing? You remember saying, You idiot, you are going to die. You remember him answering, Everyone is going to die.

Your rage and loneliness, the years lost, fade into a pale muteness. Because you know where the fish is now and you know how you can catch it. It’s always been there, hunting you. The fish was swimming through the black water of your dream house, past the dining table where everyone was still eating, waiting for you to see it.

You look out the window. Snow catches on the tops of the buildings like little white wings, little tufts. You suddenly feel exhilarated, an icy wind traveling through your lungs.

For a moment you imagine opening the window and letting the whole hospital fill with snow. You imagine the beds covered, the monitors buried, the nurses walking through drifts, everyone finally quiet.

Then your husband says your name. You turn around. He is awake. The morning light has reached him, pale and blue, and his eyes are fixed on something behind you.

“What?” you ask. He doesn’t answer.

You turn toward the window. Nothing is there except the snow now. When you look back at your husband, he is smiling.

“I saw it,” he says. “Saw what?” you ask. He closes his eyes. “The fish.”

You wait for him to explain, but he doesn’t. His hand searches beneath the blanket until it finds yours. You hold it. Outside, the snow keeps falling. Beneath the low mechanical breathing of the machines, you hear something wet and slow move through the dark.