Morning Is Dead by Andersen Prunty

Author:Andersen Prunty [Prunty, Andersen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grindhouse Press
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

A Hospital at Night

Part Eight

April coughed out cigarette smoke and coughed out the night and walked back into the too bright lobby of the hushed hospital and into the elevator that felt like a tomb and back up to Alvin’s floor. The outside chill still clung to her and she kept Mirabel’s sweater pulled tight around her shoulders. She harbored a secret desire to walk into Alvin’s room and find nurses and Doctor Banks gathered around him, trying to revive him. Instead she found Mirabel seated in one of the two chairs beside the bed.

“How is he?” April asked.

“Same.”

April sat down in the chair next to her.

“Thanks for the cigarette. I borrowed your sweater.”

“Don’t worry about it. Are you planning on going back home?”

April chuffed out a laugh.

“A hotel, maybe? You could probably even take a little nap here. You have to be tired.”

“I couldn’t sleep. I wouldn’t want to wake up.”

Mirabel nodded. “I’m here to listen, if you want me to be.”

“You know, I don’t think I really hated him until I found out he was cheating on me.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“A wife knows. Wouldn’t you know it if your husband was cheating on you?”

“Definitely. I could tell just by looking at him.”

“Well, he had become someone else so I wouldn’t have been able to tell just by looking at him. But he would come home after one of his mysterious absences and I could smell her on him.”

“Did you ever confront him about it?”

“I couldn’t. Saying it out loud would have just made it more real, if that makes any sense. But I wouldn’t sleep with him after I knew, not that he really wanted it anyway. Guess he didn’t need it. I don’t think it makes me a better person or anything, but I would never have slept with Morning if I didn’t know Al was cheating on me. And the worst part of him doing something like that was how it made me look to other people. Apparently, he didn’t really try to keep it a secret. I ran into a neighbor at the store and she looked at me like she didn’t know me and I asked her what was wrong and she said she thought I had changed the color of my hair. And then she started to explain and then she stopped and there was this moment of realization. We both knew. She had seen Alvin out with someone else and assumed it was me. She didn’t have to say anything else.”

“I’m sure it hurts.”

“It’s one of the worst feelings in the world. And it’s amazing how I could manage to explain away everything else—maybe he lost his job because he was depressed and wasn’t able to make it in on time or fulfill his duties while he was there, maybe he started using drugs to cope with the depression, maybe he really was just bored and needed a change—but I couldn’t find any way to justify him fucking someone else. I gave him everything.

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