NONFICTION
That Place I Can't Go
by Mark Venturini
You say, "I'm okay," but it's a lie. I feel the sweat bead on your arm, your soaked nightshirt. Even in the dark I know your eyes are lost in that place I can't go.
"Who am I?" I ask, but you don't respond. Your husband has vanished from your thoughts.
"Kathy, please come back to me," I plead.
I turn on the light. "I'm okay," you yell, belligerent, defiant. Your cheeks are flushed; your eyes roam without comprehension. I want to yell back – No, you're not! But it wouldn't do any good, so I resign myself to the practiced routine of Diabetes Mellitus.
Blood wells red as I prick your pallid finger. The monitor flashes 26. Dangerously low. You jerk your hand away. "Leave me alone!" You draw the covers to your neck. "Cold."
I throw off the covers. This isn't routine, won't be fixed by a simple sip of juice or bite of cookie. How could I let your glucose fall so low?
You lie curled; spasms course through your legs and into your arms. "I'm sorry I didn't check you," I whisper, "but I was so tired."
Many times you had showed me your bright-red emergency kit, and many times I said, "I can't."
"You may have to," you replied each time and showed me the sterile syringe and glucose vial, the instructions in simple diagrams.
"What if I do something wrong?"
"You'll be fine."
Your voice fails as you fall deeper into the disease. But your words fill my head as I open the kit and fill the syringe. "You'll be fine." But where? How?
"Here," your voice echoes. I ease the needle under your skin, push the plunger with little resistance.
Damp cold seeps into me as I grab you and hug you, waiting. Waiting so long. Slowly your breathing eases, spasms stop. Minutes drag by as your eyes begin to focus. "Who am I?" I whisper.
My Kathy smiles back at me. "Some stranger I seduced."
Besides flashquake, Mark Venturini's stories have appeared in Leading Edge, Flash Me Magazine and The Sword Review. He is a member of the WorD (Write or Die) Writers Group in Monroeville, Pennsylvania.