The
Odds
Things
had gone well, almost perfect. They, with guilty pleasure, behind closed doors,
admitted they were happy. Responsible living, good decision-making, and hard
work had resulted in robust college funds and retirement accounts. They had
satisfying careers, interesting hobbies, close friends, and a rescue dog.
However, here he is pushing two crumpled dollars across the sticky counter.
“One Powerball, please.”
The
clerk, eyes stitched to his phone, asks, “Picking your own numbers or you want
the machine to do it?”
“I’ll
pick my numbers.”
The
clerk stuffs his phone into his pocket and the bills into the register. He runs
his fingers through his greasy hair and taps the screen of the digital lottery
machine. Celestially, it glows to life. The clerk hovers his hand over the
integers, and says, “Shoot.”
He closes his eyes, inhales through his nose,
and is repulsed by the scent of fried chicken and hot dogs. The winning lottery
numbers float through the mire to the surface.
“Twenty-four.” In a blur of complex
medication regimens and frequent vomiting, he and his wife had celebrated
twenty-four years of marriage. The scent of two dozen roses wafted through the
house triggering her nausea. Holding back her hair, he recalled the first time
he saw her striding, head high and shoulders back, across their college campus
before she slipped on a patch of ice. He raced to help gather her books and
find her glasses. She tucked her loose, brown locks behind her ears and frowned
at the scratched lens. Even with her furrowed brow and pinched mouth, he
thought she was lovely. He gripped her mittened hands, pulled her to her feet,
and never let go.
“Okay,” the clerk says.
He opens his eyes, and says, “Sorry. Sixty.”
According to the prognosis, she has sixty days to live. The doctor, rubbing his
temples, had informed them of the menacing itinerant mass and granted her six
months. Within four months, they accrued a debt of sixty thousand dollars in
the high cost of hope. She had always been athletic and vibrant; healthy as a
horse. A quotidian ritual, rain or shine, she and the rescue dog jogged five
miles before breakfast, while he repeatedly hit snooze. If anyone could beat
the egregiously unfavorable odds, she could.
The clerk raises his eyebrows.
“Three.” She had endured three rounds of
chemotherapy and radiation. The exasperated oncologist had reiterated the
intention of chemoradiation was exclusively for pain management. After each
treatment, between bouts of heaving, she apologized for her diagnosis,
abandoning him, and the financial burden. She cursed herself for leaving the
kids. He had pressed his palms to his ears and shouted at her—swore at her—to
shut up. In stunned alarm, she widened her owl-like eyes, large in her bald
head, and stopped. That moment is one of his many regrets.
“Twenty-one.” Twenty-one years ago, their son
was born. After three years of charting her basal temperature and cervical
mucus, they repressed tears of joy until she burst from the bathroom waving the
positive pregnancy test. Although difficult to conceive, he was an easy and
contented baby with his father’s bright blue eyes and his mother’s natural
optimism. Their golden-haired child believes his mother will prevail and live
to see him graduate college in the spring. No one has the heart to tell him
otherwise.
A man waiting to pay for his beef burrito and
doughnut scratches his beard and sighs.
The clerk urges him to continue. “And?”
“Fourteen.” The age of their surprise child:
the unexpected and tempestuous daughter. An effortless, yet conflicted,
pregnancy provoking tears of frustration after returning to the work force and
landing her first corporate account. The relentless morning sickness and
fatigue brought her to her knees and to the emergency room for rehydration.
After a string of sleepless nights with their screaming newborn, they
humorously decided there was an inverse relationship between the ease of
conception and the temperament of the baby. Their daughter refuses to accept
the diagnosis and rages against the absence of her mother from her future
graduation, wedding, and motherhood. He has secretly and regretfully poached
her college fund for the experimental, animal-tested treatments. His daughter’s
scowl tells him what he already knows; he should be the one fading away, not
her mother.
“And your Powerball number?” the clerk asks,
glancing at the line of customers.
His biggest fear, his worst nightmare, is to
be alone. “One.”
Paisley
Kauffmann is a registered nurse and writer. Her work has appeared in The Talking
Stick, The Birds We Piled Loosely, The Writing Disorder, Corvus Review, The
Indiana Voice Journal, Grey Wolfe Storybook, and The Other Stories Podcast.
Believing in the art of practice, she is working on her fourth novel. She lives
in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two pugs.
Tags:
Short Fiction