Print still alive, I’d tell George to stop in Lynchburg on our way back home just to show off what a great marriage we have, and how wrong she was. Boy, I wish he’d told me earlier about his secret. I never wanted him to hide things from me. I wish he’d known that I would’ve supported him through anything. But it’s out now, and he looked like he felt a little better about it,

 

A loud rapping on the window shook Eleanore from her thoughts, though the warmth of a life-time of love remained in her fleshy chest. The knock came again. A young man with dark, messed hair and a face-full of stubble from a few days worth of missed shaving, stood at the side of the truck, motioning for her to roll down the window.

 

“Hey, you wanna come check on your husband,” he said. “He’s been in the bathroom for a long time.”

 

She followed him inside and waited while he unlocked the bathroom door. He stepped back and looked at her. She’d been hoping he’d open it; she had a bad feeling about what was behind that door. He just stared at her, waiting until, finally, she gathered enough courage to push open the thin wooden door. It was bad, just as bad as she’d feared. A pair of boots, worn, tan boots, George’s worn, tan boots, were protruding from the stall, twisted on their sides in an unnatural way.

 

“Oh no. No, George? George! Oh shit.” She felt faint and reached out to grab the kid, but he’d already gone to call an ambulance. Instead, she fell into the doorjamb as the horror of loss washed over her.

 

The minutes passed with agonizing slowness as she waited for the ambulance to arrive. She held his hand, cradled his head in between her large breasts, wiped his damp forehead with her shirt, cleaned the small amount of vomit that had run down his chin, smoothed his hair back from his face so he’d look presentable for the paramedics.

 

One medic held her around the shoulders and led her out of the bathroom while the other was alternately pressing on George’s thick chest, his ribs emitting a muffled popping sound as they broke under the medics weight, and leaning his ear down over his mouth to listen for breathing.

 

They loaded him on a stretcher and then in the back of the ambulance. She climbed in and sat next to him. They didn’t press on his chest anymore, and she was glad for that, that sound was getting old, but they’d pulled the blanket up over his face, and she really didn’t like that, and suddenly she wished they would start pressing on his chest again.

 

Someone else, wearing palm-tree covered scrubs, obnoxiously colorful compared to how she felt, led her through the halls of the hospital, stopping at a small room and letting her sit down. Then a man in a white coat came in. He had a small plastic bag in his hands.

 

"Mrs. Parnell?” he asked.

 

“Um...yeah,” she said

 

He sat in the chair across from her, a small desk between them. “I’m Dr. Tobeck. This is never easy to say, ma’am, but your husband has died.”

 

She just looked at him. Her brain felt like it had turned to vapor in her skull. She already knew he was dead, had known since they’d stopped pressing on his chest and pulled that blanket over his face. She knew when she saw the kid standing at the truck window that George was dead.

 

“On initial exam, we found large areas of cancer in his large intestine and liver. An autopsy will be more precise, but I’m pretty sure that was what killed him. Had he complained of anything over the last few months? abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting?”

 

She hated this man right now, she understood exactly how George must’ve felt that night in the bar. She understood how he could’ve beaten that kid to death, because she could do exactly that right now, just grab this little jerk by his starched, perfectly fucking white collar and shake him until his neck snapped like a chicken’s.

 

“He said it was the flu,” she said between her clenched teeth. But he’d never say anything ever again. He’s laying on a steel table in an overly bright room somewhere in this hospital. His