Looking at Numbers (For Louise).

92.
92.
95.
91.
90.
90.
90.
89. (Anxiety)
89.
89.
89.
91.
92.
95.
95.

Her eyes had changed. Instead of the steely blue I was so used to, they were glazed; clearer. She said, "Rebecca, you should write a book called 'Looking at Numbers'." Or, rather, she wrote it. In that slanted, spidery hand I'd recognize anywhere. She wasn't talking anymore at that point. She smiled, slow and reassuring. I laughed because I knew she wanted me to, and also because it was funny, I reminded myself. To my own ears, it sounded hollow and exhausted. Those goddamn numbers. I couldn't seem to tear my eyes off them. It's weird, I thought to myself. I hate numbers. They make me feel bored and stupid. And yet, here I am in this drab room, watching my life swing from stability to panic mode, based on fluorescent numbers on a screen. It was strange; ironic even. But mainly it was just hard.

There were flowers; tulips I think. Purple and a bloody orange. I traced my fingers along the lines of her hand. They were long and loose and thin. I thought, this is crazy. How are we sitting here, now, like this? Last month we'd sat in a cafe in the dying afternoon sun, having lunch and sneaking a midday glass of wine. It felt easy; illicit even. Like we shared this great, defiant secret.

I looked down at my white hands with their chipped gray nailpolish against her still and darker ones. She wore no rings. As I leaned into her to adjust the sheet that had begun slipping off her shoulder, her wedding band banged against my bare chest underneath my shirt--a reminder. I wore it sometimes on a thin gold chain against my skin. It's slight weight comforted me now. I pulled it out for a second; memorized its contours for the thousandth time. Gold with three diamonds. Collateral from a marriage that had ended, sort of.

We took turns. Different faces; bodies spinning in and out of that room, a foreign space yet one we'd all become all too familiar with the past two days. Two fucking days. I wanted to scream, cry, punch something until I felt the searing of real physical pain. My throat was dry and I could feel the darkness under my eyes. Someone brought sandwiches, but the sight of them made me ready to vomit. Later there was coffee--that was better. It hit my empty stomach like a scorching shock to the system. The numbers flickered and we continued to watch like we were drugged. At times it seemed like she slept, but we started to realize that she was just closing her eyes for periods of time. Sometimes she would smile; lock eye contact; write her part of conversation out on paper, but mostly it was just quiet.

When the doctor came around, her heels clicked. The sound of them grounded me; it was concrete and brought me out of a haze of watery blue eyes, the rise and fall of breath after breath, and those goddamn fucking numbers. She was young and kind and conscious and in control. It felt easy to trust her. She spoke lots of separate times with our grandma and we all felt a cool relief in the calmness of her voice.

We listened to Leonard Cohen and she loved it. Her Leonard. That voice like gravel; like butter.

"Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin/Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in."

"And the light came from her body/And the night went through her grace/All summer long she touched me/I knew her, I knew her/Face to face."

"Come healing of the body/Come healing of the mind...Come healing of the spirit/Come healing of the limb...Come healing of the reason/Come healing of the heart...Come healing of the altar/Come healing of the name."

It was like a salve. Coffee cold, skin hot, mind blank, heart cracked.

That face without the mask, finally. So beautiful; so serene. Those blue, blue, hazy, clear, clean blue piercing blue eyes as they traced the dingy room. Trailing over every face; accounting for each person. That soft, slow smile. Such calm. That breath, finally her own. Even as it failed her. Low, shallow, slow. Again and over. The longest hour. Those numbers finally gone, thank god.

The sky that morning was like burnt pearl--the palest gray. Iridescent. It rained. I was glad. It saved me, I think. As that hour of breaths spun its way out, it sounds insane but so did the sun. By the time she left us, light was blazing through the shitty, narrow window in that room. The screen where the numbers had glared and fluctuated for what felt like a year's worth of hours was blank. I felt relief fall through my body like liquid. My dad's hands on my shoulders were the softest touch I'd ever felt but also they were the heaviest lead. I wanted to scream til my lungs shattered. I wished I was dead. I felt high on the purest drug I'd ever tasted. I didn't remember how to move my feet; open my mouth.

That night, laying in bed, my eyes stayed open. All I was conscious of was breath. It was all I heard. I couldn't get away from it. And so I lay there; feeling it. I listened all night. It was cathartic and like torture all at once. In the morning, I drank so many cups of coffee I lost count, and tried to imagine my life without her. I couldn't. Instead, I sat in the early light and thought of those oceany eyes and their calm all morning long.