In Sickness and In Health

When he jumped away from the wall sucking air hard through his teeth, I was sure he had been shocked, even though the electricity had been turned off in the room for the entirety of the project. It wasn’t until he made a strangled joke about blood splatter analysis that I saw the crimson spray, so much like the paint used an hour before. 

My inner caretaker immediately got to work — a damp rag for the wood floor, a bandage for the finger — all distracting me from the crush in my throat that so frequently precipitated a panic attack. 

It was shocking to me how much his blood smelled like mine. That two people who were so different could also be so identical in this strange way seemed absurd. If I hadn’t seen the blood right in front me, I would have thought it was caking inside my very own nose, that’s how familiar it seemed. 

Could I be the Jackie O. to his JFK? Holding his hand one day and his head the next? That wasn’t exactly what he had asked for when he got down on one knee just a September ago. In a moment as joyful as that one — with the ring and the laughter — there was no talk of “in sickness and in health.” But it was, in a way, what he was asking for, wasn’t it?

When I asked him about it later, he chuckled. “What makes you think I’m going to die first,” he joked. And then, more seriously: “you’re being very dark.”

“Serious,” I said. I preferred the term serious. And from now on, I was taking our commitment more seriously than I ever had before. For better or worse.