Yuri POV

 

February 21st, 2030

 

I know I’m just going through the motions.

 

I’m still in shock.

 

It’s been 2 small days since my wife was taken from me.

 

Even saying that now in my head, it doesn’t register.

 

Wife.

 

Gone.

 

Those are two words I never would have put in the same sentence...yet, now I have.

 

And nothing will ever be the same again.

 

The past 2 days have been sleepless, full of the process of putting Jessica to rest.

 

It’s almost inhuman really, this process.

 

I have called in funeral arrangements, flights and condolences to her family.

 

I have serenely keyed my credit card numbers to order forms for caskets and penned my signature to receipts.

 

I have done all of this without a flicker of emotion.

 

I have been brave, brave like Jessica would want me to be.

 

Then there is the human part, when the calls come.

 

Litanies of love and loss, words meant to salvage my soul have perforated every piece of me.

 

Listening to people cry over my pain feels utterly disingenuous, though I know they don’t mean it that way.

 

It makes me angry, too.

 

Not because they are breathing and bawling in my ears and she isn’t.

 

No, they make me enraged that I can’t feel anything.

 

I have tried to let their tears leak into me, in the hopes that it will awaken my heart, but there is nothing there.

 

There is no stir or echo of emotion, just a bottomless pit of nothing.

 

And I’m furious over the fact that they can still feel her and cry for her like I should be able to.

 

Sometimes, I’m sure all my work must be for someone else, because if it really was for my wife, it would have killed me.

 

It should have killed me.

 

If I really loved her, then I should be unraveling at the seams.

 

I should be drowning in my misery.

 

There is no way that I should have the strength to do this, because of my love for her.

 

Even now, along the stretch of highway 57, I drive.

 

I drive with steady hands.

 

Fixed on the wheel they don’t move, don’t quiver.

 

I stare at them and the proud bands of my wedding rings.

 

They are impossible hands for a widow.

 

A widow has old withered hands whereas mine are steady and strong, soft and youthful.

 

So, she can’t be gone.

 

I can’t be alone.

 

The rationale stops any tears from falling.

 

The fields race past my speeding rental car as I head south from the airport.

 

I roll down my window and just breathe in.

 

The sweet scent of seeded fields brushes my face and for the briefest of moments I close my eyes.

 

Jessica and I always promised we would come back to where we grew up in Illinois.

 

She had always envisioned a welcoming home, a chance to visit her old stomping grounds, feel the sunshine and breathe clean air.

 

She said those were her reasons, though I knew her well enough to see through to the truth.

 

She desperately yearned to rub her success in the face of everyone who ever doubted her.

 

There were so many people who said she couldn’t make it.

 

That a backwater Midwestern girl with a decent voice couldn’t survive in the cold, fast world of New York.

 

I had known her then, a boastful ingénue, bursting with promise and drive.

 

Her stalwart arrogance and glimmering potential incensed me back in those days.

 

I wanted to escape our provincial world just as badly, but with no hope or talent, she was a telling reminder of how unfair life was.

 

My own cruel words had stood in testament to my jealousy many times.

 

However, they didn’t break her, they just fueled her on toward that pinnacle, pushed her toward greatness.

 

Somehow, mercifully, two things happened.

 

The first was, she grew into herself.

 

Now, years later, she is no longer the backwater Midwestern girl with a decent voice, but the glimmering jewel of the Broadway stage with the silver voice of an angel.

 

And the second...well, she became mine.

 

She is finally the woman she wanted to be.

 

She finally was the woman she wanted to be.

 

Was.

 

I shake the word away and tighten my hands on the steering wheel focusing on something else.

 

Having lived in New York for so long, I had forgotten this image of unfettered landscapes.

 

It feels foreign and timeless, untouched and pristine.

 

The bright open sky hangs crystal clear above me.

 

I study the swatch of blue, how the color is so vibrant and all encapsulating.

 

It draws me in enough that I slow the car down just so I can look at it.

 

It is almost more than a sky.

 

It domes over me with promises of crisp breezes and puffy white clouds.

 

I feel if I really look closely, if I narrow my eyes a little more, I’ll see straight into heaven.

 

But she wouldn’t be there anyway.

 

Because, she isn’t gone.

 

I swallow my thoughts and speed up.

 

“Oh God,” I whisper ironically when I catch sight of the massive Effingham cross.

 

The white monolithic beacon of religious rightness paints doctrine across a blazing blue sky.

 

It’s still miles away, but it jars me as I stare at it.

 

I forgot that it used to mark my off ramp home to Danville.

 

I forgot it was here.

 

It had once given me such faith.

 

It reminded me that I wasn’t alone, that someone was always watching over me.

 

It let me know that even with all my previous trespasses, I was loved.

 

Especially, when my family me for getting pregnant in high school.

 

God was all I had left then.

 

It was more than a symbol of faith, it was a physical manifestation of my absolution.

 

Now, it threatens me as it shoots into the sky.

 

Its resolute presence announces unequivocally that God is watching.

 

He was watching when Jessica was stripped from me.

 

And He did nothing!

 

He watched her die and not a finger was moved, not a single care was given to that.

 

For all the tears and prayers I had put into Him, would it have been so hard to hold Jessica at a crosswalk for a few extra seconds?

 

Unless, He took her from me on purpose.

 

That thought hangs and makes me so angry and bitter I think about ramming the car into its massive steel base.

 

I would give anything to topple the power that mocks me as I drive by.

 

After giving 100% of myself to something to my faith and my love I can’t give anymore again if all I am, all I was, can be wiped away like it never mattered at all.

 

And His messages of forgiveness?

 

Ha.

 

I will save this fury for myself.

 

My anger keeps me strong.

 

As I walk through manicured grass and come to a stop near a gathering of trees, it is the only thing I have left.

 

The sunshine rockets through the branches above my head and paints happy geo forms on the ground around me.

 

It makes sense that I put Jessica to rest on a gloriously bright day.

 

I bury my wife, while words in a tongue I don’t understand, give cadence to a pain I cannot feel.

 

I know there are eyes on me, as I bow my head in prayer.

 

I wonder if judging gazes are looking for my tears.

 

Are they watching to see if I come apart?

 

Do they want me to fall over the hole in the ground and weep?

 

Would that make my love more real, more valid?

 

I focus on the slow tick of the casket as it lowers, and shadows fall over the cherry wood, painting it black in places.

 

This is the closest she will ever be to me again.

 

I fix on that thought, knowing that a mere 3 feet of air separates me from a face I will never see again.

 

I really think about it, letting every remembered smile and soft word rake through my heart and shred me to pieces.

 

Then, to make the pain I should feel that much more acute, I think about our daughter and how her face is one I will never see.

 

Still no tears come as they should, and I’m riddled with remorse over it.

 

I glance at Jessica’s mother and listen to her weep.

 

Standing beside me, the contrast between us must make me seem absolutely inhuman.

 

Of all the people gathered here, I should be the most inconsolable.

 

When people look at me, do they wonder if I really ever loved her at all?

 

My guilt comes then, like a soundless wall that deafens me.

 

I can’t hear the prayers in words anymore nor the whistle of air through the trees.

 

The only thing I can hear is the sound of my own steady breathing.

 

It chides me with its lack of stagger and the fact that it still exists at all.

 

When we all take hands, I squeeze hard to the people beside me in an effort to literally touch emotion that will make me feel real.

 

And when they ask me to come forward, I do so without effort, automatic, devoid.

 

I drop white daisies to her casket in a poetic cyclical act.

 

And in accordance with tradition I’m the first...the first to sprinkle dirt over her.

 

The first to send her on her way.

 

When the grains ting softly on her casket I feel something crack deep in my chest.

 

And as others follow my lead, banishing my love to rot, I know that small give in my fortress is the beginning of the end for me.

 

Everything else is a blur.

 

I have no words to speak.

 

I can’t form a coherent thought.

 

Even when my oldest friends from high school hug me in support, I can’t manage an acknowledgement.

 

Sooyoung and Onew hug me all the same, ignoring my silence.

“We’re here if you need us.”

 

I clamp my lips in a thin line and just stare blankly at them.

 

I would give anything to be able to voice how I feel, but everything gets stuck in the back of my throat.

 

“I’m sorry, Yul.” Onew presses a strand of my hair back and I flinch at the tender motion.

 

I fix my eyes on Sooyoung dully, seeing but not acknowledging her surprise.

 

My eyes trace a path to her hand in Sunny’s, their fingers twisted together, and I realize what it is that I feel.

 

Jealousy.

 

Then...I can put words to my feelings. “I hate you.”

 

I hate her for being alive and still together with Sunny.

 

“No, you don’t,” Sooyoung whispers, her voice flecked with emotion despite the firm set of her eagle sharp features. “You’re just hurt, and that’s okay.”

 

I stay to watch them fill her grave.

 

I owe it to Jessica to be there until the bitter end.

 

So, I stay and watch as a machine methodically wipes her out of my life.

 

I can feel Sooyoung’s eyes on me, watching and reading over me.

 

All three of them stay, much to my chagrin because I just want to be alone.

 

I want to lay down right here in the grass and die because I can’t carry on the battle when there is nothing left to fight for.

 

When it’s finally done, when she is finally gone, the sun has moved to cut an amber glow over us.

 

I look at people who were my friends with a level gaze.

 

Sooyoung holds out her hand to me, very uncharacteristically genuine for the normally reserved and brisk . “Come with me and Sunny, just for a little while. You and Jessica always loved to visit us in California. Let’s celebrate and remember her together.”

 

I stare at her hand.

 

At the way she holds it, reaching out.

 

I want to take it, to run screaming from my life and hide.

 

But I can’t.

 

The hand before me isn’t Jessica’s and no one will ever share in the emotion and love I saved for her and her alone.

 

With as much animosity as I have left in my heart, I push Sooyoung’s hand away.

 

“I do hate you.” I say it with conviction so she knows I mean it.

 

She offers a soft rueful smile and it infuriates me.

 

It possesses me to say evil things. “I always hated you, for your better than thou attitude, for your condemnation of Jessica and my relationship, and for the mean words you said to her when we were younger. You never deserved to have her love or her forgiveness. And you’ll never have mine again. Now, get away from me, and let me mourn in peace.”

 

For the first time in her life Sooyoung doesn’t have a razor sharp response and it gives me what I want as tears light in her eyes.

 

Peace is elusive for me though.

 

I make startling revelations about myself on the flight home to New York.

 

I realize that for all my years of tenure in the ER and owning my own medical practice, I didn’t lift a finger to save my wife.

 

I didn’t try CPR.

 

I didn’t attempt a negative pressure pump to inflate her lungs.

 

I didn’t do anything I know how to do.

 

I could have reached into her chest and held her heart in my hands.

 

I could have beat it for her.

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