Thirteen Ways

Thirteen Ways

            Janice stirs brown sugar into her husband’s oatmeal. She reaches for the cinnamon sugar, remembering his fatal allergy, but cannot bring herself to sprinkle it on. She puts it in her pocket. One.

            Janice sits in the passenger seat as they drive silently to the hospital, he in his doctor’s clothes and she in her nurse’s uniform. She glances at his coffee. She fingers the cinnamon sugar in her jacket pocket. It would be easy to sprinkle it in at the next red light. They stop. They go. Two.

            They arrive at the hospital and walk through the parking lot toward the doors. They are silent, with three feet of space between. Enough space for a little girl. Janice’s blood pressure rises; she can feel her heart pound harder as she clenches her fists. Another man walks by them, headed to his car. She relaxes her hands, with concentrated effort. The hate simmers. The cold handgun she is packing underneath her blouse seems heavier and heavier. No, there is a witness. Three.

            Janice’s morning is uneventful and husbandless. She checks on her assigned patients. She makes small talk with the other nurses. She pockets some potassium chloride. At lunch she plans to put it in his leftover spaghetti. Lunch comes and goes. They do not say one word to one another. He walks away. Four.

            A car accident victim comes in with a broken collarbone and shattered pelvis. Janice assists him all through emergency surgery. He asks for a scalpel. For a moment she holds it in her tightly closed fist, planning to plunge it in his heart. Then she hands it over. Five.

            Another patient. She needs air, needs an escape. She switches with another nurse.  He is reassigned. Curse her bad luck! The elderly woman with failing kidneys pats her on the arm – what a good doctor he is; she must love working with him. It is the first time she has seen his eyes all week. If looks could kill. Six.

            She must return the potassium chloride before anyone notices. She walks in the room just as the nurse taking inventory asks her if she’s seen it. Janice checks her pockets. Here it is; I thought I would need it. The younger nurse looks suspicious but says nothing. She is blonde and blue-eyed, like Janice’s dead daughter. She reaches in her jacket pocket, feeling the cinnamon sugar container. I will do it. Seven.

            She stares at him from across the corridor. She cannot see the stooped shoulders, the dull gray eyes. She cannot see the wrinkles, the gray hair. She most certainly cannot see the sorrow that has plagued him since that awful day when he backed over her. She does not remember the frantic crawl beneath the vehicle, his cries, the blood all over his best shirt. All she sees is murder. He has never told her he is sorry. She cannot see that he says it every day. She can’t see the suicidal regret. If she could, she would count it. Eight.

            It is five o’clock. Her shift is over. She waits in the lobby. He walks in, looks at her, and they walk out the doors. No words. She does not return his gaze. She cannot. She will do it this time. She has the murder weapon in her pocket. The cinnamon. Nine.

            The silence is heavy, the tension thick. Why is it so hard to kill her child’s killer? Why does she not sprinkle it in his coffee? Why can’t she shoot him? She wants to. Ten.

            He reheats leftovers. Janice isn’t hungry. She goes to her room and changes into her running clothes. She goes to their gym in the basement and runs two miles. She benches 150 pounds. She can hear him upstairs, watching the news. It would be so easy to make it look like an accident. She could bash him in the head with a dumbbell. She could drop a bar on his neck. Then she would pour cinnamon all over his head, just in case. She runs another mile. Eleven.

            Janice finishes her workout and showers. He can hear her downstairs. He knows that she hates him. He hates himself. He wants to talk, but her icy stare locks his jaw every time. He could go down there. He stands up from the couch, but his knees and resolve weaken, and he sinks back down. Again. If only he could bring himself to do it. For her sake. He has it all planned. The rope, the rig, the chair – he would just have to jump. He sighs. Twelve.

             They haven’t shared a room since the accident. She moved downstairs, and he didn’t chase her. Janice knows that at first it was a cry for loyalty, but when he let her go, she figured he wanted it this way. She could go up there. Ask that they talk. Tell him that she hates him. Wait for him to apologize. Then she could finally have what she wants even more than she wants revenge – him. She falls asleep in her lonely bed. Tomorrow is another day. Thirteen.