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My Dearest

Or What Only My Little Black Book Can Handle

By Coco Jenae`Published 3 years ago 9 min read
2

June 9th 2020

My Dearest Little Book,

Forty-four years ago I was born and doomed for a life of heart ache, pain, and despair.

Born to a mother crippled by her love for my retched father. Born to a man so vicious to those around him they crossed to the opposite side of the street when they saw him in public. Born to a life marked with scandal; scandal that would begin at the age of four, when my father killed my mother with the heavy barrel of a shot gun when she argued with him one final time over his persistent love for the drink; the drink that would never bring out any good that might have once lingered underneath, but only the true nature of the man. The true nature of evil.

Once he realized what he had done to his beloved, he put those barrels into his own mouth, blowing up his head onto the wall like a macabre painting.

These early years I now know led me to the heart ache my life has been filled with. Led me to the moment of now, where I look at the dead face of my own beloved, and can only laugh. Only laugh like a loon. Laugh like a crazy man. Laugh like a man who can only laugh, if only to keep himself from crying.

My dearest has died today. I didn’t kill her but I might as well have. I was assigned to take care of her. Against every code of ethics that come from being a doctor and caring for someone you love, I was assigned to take care of her. On top of all of this, she knew she was sick, and I told her she was fine.

We were lying in bed, watching the local news when the news of the rapid spreading COVID 19 became a Pandemic. Carmen’s eyes widened as the news casters named off all of the known symptoms.

“Eugene…” Carmen said. “I think that’s what Momma has.”

I laughed. “Your Momma has also been smoking for fifty years, and no doubt has fifty years of built up tar phlegm in her lungs. She’s fine.

But she wasn’t.

Carmen’s mother died two weeks later.

That’s when Carmen began coughing, when she lost her taste, and lost her ability to smell.

We spoke through Facetime, Carmen’s insistence, overruling my need to see her in person, to hold her and touch her.

“I have it, Eugene.” She said, tears in her eyes. “I know I have it.”

“Have you gotten a test?” I asked.

She said nothing.

I waited for her, sure she would give a sheepish reply about how she was working herself up into a frenzy, with even taking a test. But this didn’t happen. She began to sob, and that’s when I knew, Carmen had contracted COVID 19.

This morning, I was scrubbing up, masking up to get ready for a day on the front lines. It would be my first day on the front lines since this all began. But I wasn’t worried.

Nothing stopped once I stepped into the ER. Patients needing to be turned over to relieve the pressure from their lungs, having your eye guard sprayed with blood when you forced in the tubes of the treachs needed to help the patients breathe. This was nothing for me. It was non-stop and shocking when thinking of the sheer numbers, but really nothing to me but another day at the hospital…until it wasn’t.

Near the end of my shift, not five hours ago as I write this now, another patient came in. Young, perhaps in her early twenties, this much I could see from a distance. She had an oxygen mask on her face, distorting any distinct characteristics there might have been.

God she could be Carmen’s twin, I thought as she approached. I almost laughed, until she was right in front of me on the stretcher that I noticed the small birthmark at the corner of her left eye, the one shaped like a small heart.

All of the feeling left my body and I almost lost my balance.

“Doctor Greer?” One of my colleagues asked, bringing me back to the surface.

They didn’t know who Carmen was to me. No one did. We weren’t married, and we were in the first three almost four passionate months of our love affair and hadn’t gotten to the stage of introducing each other to our friends and coworkers.

“Do everything you can to help her.” I demanded without looking away from her.

So everyone did, while I did everything I could to stay back. There was already transference here, whether I wanted to deny it or not, and I knew if she was going to be helped, I’d have to stay back. Of course this didn’t last long, especially when her oxygen levels began to plummet, and she began to flat line.

CPR began, me leading the effort. My arms screamed with the burning effort it took to try and save her. Sweat poured down my head and temples, spit soaking up my N95 mask.

When the arms came around me to remove me from Carmen’s body, the pulse of a continuous flat line singing through the room, I realized what had happened and all I could do was scream and cry. All while strange confused expressions looked at me, unsure of what they should do.

It was the end of my shift, but I stayed, watched, waited.

We had the refrigerated trucks. This was New York, and we were quickly running out of space. I saw Carmen’s small body being carried out. I had seen which bag she has been put into before I was told to go home. My heart jumped when I saw her being carried into the truck.

She will NOT stay there. I said to myself. I won’t allow it.

It was three in the morning. One security guard so absorbed in his phone it would have angered me if my thoughts weren’t elsewhere.

I approached the guard, as causal as I could. The guard looked at me, smiled, and had no time to say anything before I hit him with my stun gun (in New York you did well to have one at all times) and the clubbed him over the head with a rock I found in a nearby flowerbed, no doubt the flowerbed of an old lady living in a below ground apartment.

I took the guard’s keys, opened the double door to the truck then walked through the narrow hall of white covered bodies. No smell thankfully for the cold temperature. But I didn’t think much about it. I thought of Carmen, my dearest, my beloved, and the second I saw her at the top of the stack of bodies to my right I almost cried out. I didn’t though. I picked her up and carried her from the truck. I had moved the car so it would be only a few yards from this truck. I glanced down at the guard on my way of the truck. He was still out. I took in the rest of my surroundings. With no one around, I kept walking. My heart was in my throat when I finally hauled Carmen into the back of my Tahoe. I closed the back door, took one last look around, then got in the car and drove home.

I’ve only just gotten out of the shower since getting home. Carmen’s lying in the master bedroom, now out of that awful white body bag. She’s fine where she is now. She can rest up, just like I will rest up here on the couch. When I wake, I will make this home appropriate for her, as I should have done when she was talking.

She doesn’t want to talk now. That’s all it is, or all I’m going to tell myself it is.

June 29th 2020

More has happened in nine days than I could have thought; things that have worked in my favor in more ways than one, in favor for the both of us I should say.

The morning after I brought Carmen home, I stripped off her clothes to wash them, then took her carefully to the bathtub to bath her beautiful pale body. Her skin made even more beautiful in death, I have to admit. I washed her hair, her body, moving her with gentle hands as if with a newborn baby.

I dressed her in one of my pajama sets and laid her back down.

While going through her clothes I found an envelope in the pocket of her jeans. My breath caught. Inside was twenty thousand dollars and a letter from Carmen.

Eugene,

This virus is getting worse. I know it’s going to kill me and I don’t want you to go without once I’ve gone. This is everything I’ve been saving for the last year. It’s not much, but it’s something. Use it to make yourself forget me, or forget how much pain you’re in after losing me. I know if the idea of me dying and leaving you scares me, it’s hell for you. So please, don’t let my death destroy you. Take this money, and do what you want. Whatever helps you move on; I love you, Carmen.

Twenty-two years old, I thought, yet she had the soul of a woman beyond my forty-four years. Twenty thousand dollars, it’s just what I need to help me take care of my dearest Carmen; quiet and stationary, but still here.

Air conditioning units to cool the apartment, all the perfumes and herbs to keep her beautiful smell; she would last here, and she would remain beautiful.

Nine we’ve lived like nothing has changed at all. I know we can make this work. I’ve taken another leave of absence to take the time for myself, and for my dearest.

We watch TV together. She sits at the dining room table with me for breakfast and dinner.

Then there’s my favorite part, the part that will come tonight after I finish writing this entry.

The moment I press my body against her beautiful, pale, cold body; where I kiss her cold mouth, stare into her distant eyes, and then push myself into her. The ecstasy of her chilled body is like nothing I’ve ever felt before, nor do I know how I’ve ever lived without it.

It’s about that time; that great, favorite time of the day with my dearest.

Until next time, my dear little black book,

Eugene Greer

The End

fiction
2

About the Creator

Coco Jenae`

Fiction Writer

Drag Artist

Reader

Film Lover

A Lover

A Pursuer of Wellness

Nomyo ho renge kyo

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