Ad Nauseam - By C. W. LaSart Page 0,58

and how she refused to look at any other places, begging Michael until he bid on this one. How she made him raise the amount twice when they learned others had shown serious interest. It was still beautiful. It was still everything she had ever wanted in a home, but lately it felt like just a house.

Walking in through the front door, she averted her eyes from the couch by the picture window, but still saw it in her mind. The cop on his knees, retrieving Michael’s Epi-pen from underneath the sofa, not in the breast pocket of his jacket where it belonged. Stella hadn’t sat on that couch for over a year now. Every time she tried, she saw the sad look on the cop’s face, the apologetic shake of his head. His soft words to the grieving widow.

“It wasn’t your fault, ma’am. It must’ve fallen out and rolled under.”

Stella walked through the dining room to the fridge, retrieving a chilled bottle of Moscato and a wine glass from the cupboard. A sweet wine with a dry and bitter aftertaste, like a marriage could be.

Leaning against the counter, she stared at the empty dinette table where they had eaten their last meal, trying hard not to see the panic on his face as he realized some incompetent cook had allowed a single piece of shrimp to contaminate his take-out chicken stir-fry. After a few seconds she closed her eyes, letting the images come, knowing they would prick at her senses until she gave in.

She saw his handsome face turning red, his smooth voice gasping for her to retrieve the rescue syringe, hands digging at the outside of his throat as if this could somehow stop the swelling within. Those hands reaching for her from where he had fallen to the floor when she returned empty handed, his face purple, his eyes bulging and begging for help. She heard her own tearful plea for help from the operator, and the whine of the ambulance in the driveway.

The whoosh of breath from the paramedic performing CPR as he dropped his weight on her husband’s chest, his clenched hands breaking Michael’s ribs. The soft beeping sound of the machines in the hospital, slowing then stopping as they unplugged the life support and let him go. The sound of Andrea wailing that they couldn’t be sure, he might not be brain dead!

Stella wiped her tears with the back of her hand and finished her wine in one long gulp, before refilling the glass once again. She toasted the empty chair at the head of the table.

“I miss you, Michael. I never knew I could miss you this much.”

The two glasses of Moscato on top of the martinis she drank at lunch, along with the recent onslaught of melancholic memories began to conspire against her. Stella placed her glass gently in the sink before stumbling to the bedroom. Collapsing upon the bed she and Michael had shared for five years, she gave in to the sobs and cried herself to sleep.

***

Stella woke from a nightmare so awful her stomach churned, sending her scrambling to the bathroom in just enough time to see the day’s meal and alcohol reappear into the toilet. When her retching had subsided, she turned the shower on as hot as she could stand it, and stood beneath the scalding stream, the remnants of the dream fading slowly. She knew that in it Michael had been alive again. She could hear the fading echoes of his voice calling her vain. Calling her a whore.

Standing before the full length mirror she ran her hands gently across her bare body, stopping to caress the concave smoothness of her belly before trailing her fingertips over the small tattoo on her right hip. Michael had hated it, saying it looked trashy and marred her otherwise perfect body, but Stella loved that tiny rosebud with its delicate, encircling thorny vine. Leaning her forehead against the cool mirror, she let her hand wander back to her stomach with a heavy sigh and thought about what was really behind the nightmare. The fight. That stupid, wretched fight.

In five years of marriage, Michael and Stella had their share of quarrels like any other couple, but that last one had been different. There had been such a hardness in Michael when he said he would leave her. She’d known he meant it. She couldn’t even blame him for it. Not really. Hadn’t she been the one to lead him on