The wife
Hannah van Didden

 

‘My wife's stopped functioning,' the man said to the doctor. A woman wearing a navy blue dress stood inanimate at his side, her face set in perpetual surprise. The man demonstrated his point, failing to shift the woman's gaze by shouting and shadow boxing in her face before attempting to twist her arms behind her.
‘Don't break her!' the doctor laughed. ‘I get it. You can leave the medical examination to me.' He turned to the woman, umming and ahhing his way through the placement of stethoscope to chest, paddle to tongue, thermometer to forehead, hammer to knee. Through all of this, the woman remained frozen in place.
‘I think I know what the problem is,' he announced, coiling the stethoscope around his white collar. ‘But to be sure, I will need to conduct an internal examination.' The woman gave no reaction to this statement, so the doctor turned again to the man. ‘Would you be prepared to give your consent?'
‘Of course,' said the man. He signed the necessary papers and together they flipped the woman onto the stretcher behind the doctor's chair.
The doctor lifted the woman's dress, shone a torch, said ‘Aha!' very loudly, and used a pair of tongs to retrieve a scroll of paper concealed within her.
‘It's as I thought. She was backed up with words.' Unravelling the paper, he added, ‘And it looks like these are for you.'
‘What can I do about it, doctor?' asked the man.
‘Go home. Read the scroll. Then eat it.'
‘Eat it?'
‘It's the only way you'll absorb the message. Take it with a slice of pie.' The doctor looked him keen in the eye. ‘And not just any pie. This pie must be freshly baked and filled with the entrails of a whitetail deer.'
‘I don't understand,' said the man.
‘It may seem a strange prescription.' The doctor placed a hand on the man's shoulder. ‘But I see no other way.'
The man walked out with the woman stowed like a surfboard under one arm.

Three days later he returned, the woman by his side as unblinking and unresponsive as before.
‘How did you go?' The doctor had to ask even though he knew the answer.
‘I read part of it,' said the man, ‘but it didn't agree with me. So I tore it up and fed her the words. With pig's blood. My butcher doesn't do venison. Or entrails.'
Bits of the scroll, torn into tiny shreds that were dark with old blood, sat just inside the woman's mouth. The shreds were folded at the edges, where they had clearly been shoved to fit.
‘Then there is only one more thing to do,' the doctor said.
‘Of course,' the man replied.
‘But it comes with significant risk.'
The man nodded and handed over the requisite papers, already signed.
Seeing this, the doctor wasted no time. He picked up a large needle and pricked the woman in the thigh. The air screeched with her release and the papers from her mouth fluttered round the office. In a matter of seconds, the woman had disappeared; in her place was a deflated balloon made of a brittle grey plastic.

The man picked up the balloon and, when he shook it at the doctor, it shattered, which shocked them
both. The man pushed aside smoky crystals with his index finger, revealing the woman's wedding band. It was also dark and plastic.
‘Utterly worthless,' he said, and he threw down the ring. ‘I could sue the pants off you.'
‘It was a high risk operation,' the doctor said. ‘And you gave your consent.'
‘If only I'd known...' The man let his voice trail off.
‘If only you'd done as I asked in the first place,' said the doctor.
‘Maybe,' the man said. ‘So what now?'
‘I'll give you the name of a good counsellor,' the doctor said. ‘For now, take what you can from this event and get on with your life.'
The man took the doctor's words literally: he dropped to the ground to gather the paper shreds. But before he could grasp the first of them, the papers turned to a dust so fine that what wasn't swept away by the air-conditioning unit was breathed in by the man, sparking a long bout of influenza during which no one visited or tended to him. Only then did he begin to feel something akin to grief.

 

*

 

Hannah van Didden writes where the story takes her—usually somewhere dark but truthful; often beautiful. You will find small pieces of her in places such as Tahoma Literary Review, Crannóg, Southerly, Pulp Literature, Atticus Review, Southword Journal and, of course, the little journal.