Glimpse into the Future

I really love my life! I rise each morning before the rest of my family, work out for about an hour in the basement gym, then wake everyone so they can start their day. While I’m showering, my wife Alice is making breakfast while encouraging Billy and Jane, our kids, to move faster so they won’t miss the bus. It really is a “Leave it to Beaver” kind of life. My job will never make me rich, but it is fulfilling and an easy commute as well. Yes, I love my life and everything about it except for one thing: the incessant, ever-present background noise.

It started as a faint white noise that could easily be ignored. As the days passed, the noise increased in volume, and I was able to make out distinct sounds: the soft beep-beep of a machine, rubber-soled shoes on a tiled floor, vague noises that sounded like distant conversations. All this appeared to be occurring in my subconscious while reality was happening all around me. There were soccer and little league games to attend, parent-teacher conferences, and those special times when the kids were visiting friends or family, and it was just Alice and me. It was one of those special times when Alice said, “I know you’ll be leaving soon. It’s a shame it has to be like this.”

What in the world was she talking about? I haven’t any plans to go anywhere.’ Then the background noise intensified to the point that I could no longer ignore it.

What I originally thought was white noise evolved into a heated discussion between a man and a woman. The woman, speaking in the most irritating voice I had ever heard, was complaining that there had been no improvement in over ten months and the bills were a constant drain on her bank account. She wanted them to “pull the plug and be done with it.” The man, while maintaining a great deal of restraint, was repeatedly telling her that there had been signs of improvement and it would be a grave mistake to stop treatment at this stage.

Finally, I had had enough and bellowed out in a scratchy voice, “Will you two tone it down and take it outside? I have a headache.”

There was a flurry of activity as medical staff rushed into the room and tended to my needs. The irritating woman went silent and slinked out of the room while no one was looking. The next day, the doctor and another man sat on chairs across from my bed. The doctor said I had taken a headfirst fall down a flight of stairs at my house, cracking my skull and becoming comatose.

“What stairs? We have a one-story house. The cracked skull was because my wife could no longer control her temper and hit me on the head with a heavy candleholder. We were arguing once again about a trip to Cabo that we couldn’t afford. As I walked away, she screamed that I was worth more dead than alive and hit me on the head.”

The unidentified man stood and left the room. I found out later that my house was his next stop. My wife was taken into custody. I was discharged from the hospital a week later. Once I was physically capable, I was called to testify at her trial. Her only comment before they took her away was, “You’ve never done anything right. You couldn’t even die right.”

More time passed. I was waiting in line at a fast-food restaurant when somehow my order was confused with the woman standing next to me. Her name was Alice.