Shortness of Breath

Chapter Fourteen

Casey - October twenty third

The first three days without Wilson were hard. Each passing hour was as stagnant as the previous, and with every moment that went by there was a feeling of being trapped. It felt as though time were standing still, as though there were no movement, no progress whatsoever. The wake wasn't scheduled to be held until that Thursday. It was a relatively long waiting period, but given the apparently suspicious nature of Wilson's death, the M.E.'s office needed time with the body before it was ours to mourn. I'd taken off work to stay home with Cooper, who wouldn't go back to school until the funeral was over and maybe even a little longer. I had calls every day from the families of my patients who wanted to know why I was no longer checking in, and every time I had to explain, and every time I had to hear the sympathy speech. The speech never got any shorter, and it had very few variations. In my mind, it served one purpose and one purpose only: to remind me that this was my life now, for an indefinite period of time until I'd sufficiently convinced everyone that I'd moved on and they stopped feeling a need to feel bad.

At first, Cooper was a wreck. He was old enough to understand, but I don't think he fully did. I'd had to be blunt with him and spare the euphemisms. I refused to try Wilson's God imagery on for size, convinced that that kind of circumventing would only make things more blurry. I wouldn't tell him Dad had gone to heaven, that he was with grandpa Paul or that he was an angel now - I told him very plainly that his father had died, and while I'm sure that choosing to phrase it that way put me in the minority of widowed parents, I don't think it made me a bad one.

In all other ways, Cooper responded as I'd have expected him to. At first, he cried and cried a lot. It was unequivocally the most heartbreaking sight and sound I'd ever withstood, and it tore me apart to know that there was nothing I could do. I let him cry, and cry he did, and when he'd run out of energy and run out of tears, he spent the rest of his time in quiet solitude, not feeling like doing much of anything.

Emerson, contrarily, seemed to feel like doing everything. While she wasn't going to school either, she was doing everything in her power not to be at home. I didn't blame her. I was losing my mind being stuck in that house around the clock with a despondent Cooper and an empty bedroom. I knew that, much like me, she'd had a relationship with Wilson that was strained at best. The older she got, the harder it got for the two of them to relate on anything. He was hard-nosed and obstinate, and she was fiery and opinionated, and in the seemingly rare moments when they were both home, more often than not they were banging heads. Even despite all that, he was her father, and I knew she had to be feeling something in the days following his death. She refused, however, to show it, and instead channeled all her energy into staying busy. And that was a trait that I knew she'd inherited from me.

For Emerson and me, the casting aside of emotions had a way of manifesting itself in tension. She was coming home late, I was rarely sleeping, and for that reason and others we were both constantly on edge. While we rarely exchanged words, when we did they were loaded with contempt. I knew she was still mad at me for letting him die without anyone knowing how I truly felt about him, and I think I was still mad at myself for the same reason. But mostly I was mad at the world, for having Wilson go this way and turning my family inside out.

On the third night, Emerson didn't come home until 12:30, long after Cooper had gone to bed. Much like it was during every day, the house was silent when she walked in, and I couldn't keep myself from snapping. I hated the way my voice sounded when I spoke, but I couldn't stop it.

"You know, if you can be out all night without even shooting me a text, maybe you can go back to school."

She just rolled her eyes and tried to walk by me, as aware as I was that this was the first full sentence I'd spoken to her since God knows when.