1

Companion.

She searched for the word amid the rectangular pattern of letters, not realizing the correlation. She found company, but that wasn’t what the wordsearch was asking for. And it wasn’t good enough for what she needed here and now.

Emma Hildebrand sat in the waiting room outside of surgery. Her husband of six years sat across the aisle, earbuds in, Kindle projecting a movie. She didn’t care what movie it was, it was more important than her. More important than their son. If she hadn’t expected him to be there, he would have went fishing. It was how he coped and she knew it, but it didn’t make it right. And it wasn’t what she needed.

She needed a companion.

Emma toyed with the idea, she even managed to bring it up on occasion, but Don always turned the conversation on its head. He had a way of doing that, of making her feel like she was the one vicimizing him. Six years of marriage with another six spent in courtship. It’d mean the better part of her adult life was wasted, even though she’d still come out of it with two beautiful boys, God willing. How could anything be a waste when she looked into her sons’s eyes? Nothing would have been a waste, only cherished. But the two little men that came from inside her also came from inside him, from inside the man that had distanced himself from her- from everyone- but how could she find any cherishable qualities from within her husband now?

All of the best parts of him were either exhausted, dead, or manifested into the beautiful children she birthed. There was nothing left for her, nothing for anyone but his fishing buddies. Their marriage was a bottomless pit. The deeper she delved into Don’s sentiments, the darker things got and to Emma it felt less and less likely that she’d make it back out if she continued to spleunk.

She’d been stuck on this word for the last ten minutes, but realized with a fright, she’d been looking for it for the last ten years.

Companion.

She wasn’t sure why she married him in the first place. And sitting here now, alone with him staring into his screen, laughing and smiling at whatever it was he was watching, secluded from the rest of the world around him, she was convinced. How could he laugh at a time like this? Was he that self-centered that he didn’t empathize with her? With their son?

Her mind went back to the events that had unfolded over the past week, especially those of the day prior, and deep in her heart, she witnessed the truth as much as she’d known it for years.

Emma set the wordsearch down and turned to her husband. It was time.

2

"He’ll need fed when he’s crying," Emma was saying, mostly to take her mind off of what was to come. "I have enough for sixteeen bottles here in the bag, and there’s plenty of formula if-"

"I’ve raised quite a few children, my dear," Grandma Wentz said. She was smiling broadly with her youngest grandchild on her hip and she patted Emma on the shoulder. Emma knew well enough that the woman, grey and wrinkled with the bitter lapse of time, would manage. Far more than simply manage, in truth. Grandma Wentz was the head nurse at daycare for forty years before retiring, and raised four of her own. "Though not all of them grew up, I’m afraid."

The old woman’s gaze shot to the door leading out to the garage, though Emma feigned ignorance. "I’ll be pumping while we’re at the hospital, as well." Emma went in to tickle her baby boy in her mother-in-law’s arms, his feet kicking back and forth in anticipate, toes wiggling. He was always ready to be eaten by mom, all infants were. She spoke baby talk to Saxon, "I just want to make sure my big boy has enough to eat, yes I do. Yes, mommy does, you precious little booger."

"He’ll be fine, dear," Grandma Wentz reassured her. "Arthur and I love having the boys, this you know."

"I do," Emma said, "and you know how much I appreciate this, Ann." Emma’s eyes watered over. She thought all the tears had been flushed from her system, this past week had been as difficult as any. All of this from something as innocent as a toothache, it seemed surreal. Unconsciously, she grabbed the baby monitor off the counter and passed it from hand to hand.

"You’ll be fine, dear. You’re not the one I’m worried about, it’s the other one I fear for."

"You’re son?" Emma asked with a start, her face turned upwards.

"Oh, yes," Grandma Wentz said. "He was a mess the first time around. Has he talked to you about it at all?"

"To me? I was hoping he’d talked to you. You are his mother." Both of them sighed and turned to the door of the garage in unison. He was out there, doing what neither of them knew.

Don Hildebrand was a misanthrope, though it hadn’t always been that way. After his father died eleven years ago, Don began to change. And when his mother remarried less than a year later, his misanthropic thoughts turned a darker shade of cynicism. The world turned aganst him, even his young, lovely girlfriend hadn’t meant as much to him as she had before his mother’s wedding.

If it weren’t for Emma, Grandma Wentz wouldn’t have seen her grandchildren at all. Don refused to call his own mother as Emma lay on the birthing table. She had to call the woman herself in between contractions. Emma even had to get off the bed herself to find her phone, it was all too much for Don to get off the seat he was in as he watched the Steelers game. To be fair, they were in the red zone with only a minute and a half to go. It could have waited.

Emma set the baby monitor back on the counter and shook her head in disgust, withdrawing her gaze from the garage. It’d been a few months since the last time she’d thought about it this in depth, but this past week had reopened the door. And with the crystalline notion that Ann hadn’t known how to address her son ever since the death of his father seemed to cement the crushing doubts she’d had on the matter. Emma doubted anyone truly understood Don outside of his fishing buddies, but even they were fleeting. He couldn’t keep them around for more than a season. How she lasted twelve years, she’d never know, but she thought she could petition the Vatican for a saintlihood.

"You want to go talk to him?" she asked his mother, the woman that had raised him into the fine young man she’d fallen in love with, before her actions destroyed him.

Ann snorted laughter. "Like he’d talk to me. No, dear. I’ll be fine." She hiked Saxon up on her hip reaching down for the diaper bag at her feet. "I think I’ll just be going now, I’ll wake Brendon if I don’t shut my trap." She threw the strap to the bag over her free shoulder and grabbed the bag full of feeding supplies and extra breast milk.

"Oh, allow me to help, Ann." Emma took the feeding bag from her hand, in the other the baby monitor from the counter, and led the old woman toward the front door, away from her estranged son. Emma took Saxon from his grandmother’s arm to secure him in his car seat. She knew Ann was more than capable, but her heart needed the reassurance. Saxon was her baby, the little boy that looked so much like Emma that Don questioned his lineage. Emma shut the door and blew the little boy kisses through his cracked window, she wasn’t sure when she would see him again. A week at least, maybe more if things didn’t-

She wouldn’t think of that. She couldn’t.

Ann put the sedan in drive. "You’ll keep us posted, dear."

"Naturally, Ann. You don’t know how much you mean to-" she looked up at the closed garage and waved a perfunctory hand that direction- "me. Thank you, so much."

"You’ll be fine, dear." Grandma Wentz smiled and pulled away.

Emma found herself staring, watching them as they arrived at the stop sign and exited the neighborhood onto the main road. She missed Saxon already. As they disappeared out of sight, her head slumped and she solemnly started for the driveway. What was going to happen next? Brendon was napping, she didn’t want to wake him. Don was doing God knew what in the garage, she didn’t want to see him. She could sit down with one of her wordsearchs or try a puzzle, but that hadn’t got it off her mind in the last five days. A puzzle in solitude used to be her go to tranquilizer, now she couldn’t even focus on that. Couldn’t drag herself away from her son’s needs, and the needs of his father. Her own needs. The fact that no one as getting any of their needs met.

Who was her husband really? Who was Donald Hildebrand? The man’s own mother hadn’t dared talk to him before his son’s heart was opened up for the second time in the boy’s short three years of life. Emma cringed; she doubted that her husband had even known the changes in his demeanor over the last decade, or even cared about the destruction they’d caused.

The garage door panged into motion, startling Emma, forcing her to halt. Her eyes widened as she gazed down at the baby monitor. Please, don’t wake up. The boy would be put through hell for the second time in his short life over the next forty-eight hours, a good nap wouldn’t ease his strife, or hers, but it would be a kindly sort of gesture. A calm before the storm.

Don emerged from the garage ducking below the rising door. His eyes met his wife’s momentarily then passed by looking toward the barren street. A grim smile grew on his face. She could see he was carrying something, but she couldn’t lay eyes on the object as he exited the garage on the side of his truck between it and the wall of shrubs seperating their driveway and yard.

"So," he said, "she’s finally gone, the old wench."

"Don, that’s your mother." She was taken aback. There was no love lost between them, but to be so openly vocal about it when he was unprovoked was unlike him. He was the kind that used words that would slowly eat away like wind and rain to stone or cancer to flesh. This lashing felt more like a bullet from a gun, something he’d say when he had heard enough and wanted to silence his foe, kill his prey.

"You can’t pick your family," he responded, firing another bullet. He set what was in his hands at his feet and returned to the garage. Emma reluctantly circled the tailgate of his truck to see what he’d carried. Before she could see it in full, he returned with his hands again full. This time with three rods and a tackle box. At his feet, she saw, was a case of beer.

"What the hell are you doing?" She was furious.

"Going to do a little night fishing."

"Night fishing, Don?" She was attempting to remain poised, but she was failing greatly. "You plan to go fishing right now, Don?"

"I do," he said, setting the reels and the tackle box in the bed of his truck. He looked at her suspiciously, almost as if he was unsure of the severity of her reaction.

"You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Don!"

He bent over to pick up the case of beer and added it to the rest of his gear, returning to the garage again. He was shaking his head in disbelief. He really doesn’t get it, she thought. He’s really that blind, or just that selfish. She rushed up the driveway to meet him at the mouth of the garage as he was on his way out with his vest and bucket hat.

"Don, our son is going to the hospital tonight, and you want to go fishing?"

"It’s a toothache," he said sheepishly.

"It was a toothache, Don. That was a week ago! For God’s sake, have you not noticed the boy’s neck, or the lesion on his chest? Did you not sit in the meeting with the doctors when they said he’d need the procedure?"

"He’ll be fine."

"Jesus Christ, the great Hildebrand motto. He’ll be fine, you’ll be fine. Everything will just be fine!"

"He’s a fighter, he’s got my blood." He bypassed her and opened the driver side door, placing the vest in the cab and the hat on his head.

"You’re really going fishing? Right fucking now?"

"Right fucking now." He produced his keys from his pocket and jiggled them beside his ear, a triumphant look on his face.

"Our son is about to have his second surgical procedure on his heart and you’re going fishing. Don, you don’t see a problm with that?"

"The surgery’s schedued for tomorrow, Emma. I don’t see a problem with that. What’s the big fucking deal?"

Her heart sank, it was the truth. He couldn’t see why her anger flared or how egocentric he was being. But he hadn’t seen it for ten years now. Fraud would say Don Hildebrand’s superego died with his father and left the id to run rampant. He truly had no feelings save the ones he felt for himself, all infantile impulses were his, and in large part, Don lived outside the realm of reality. She’d been asking him for months, years even, to be more involved in her emotions, in what the kids had needed. Especially Brendon, for he needed so much more than any normal boy his age, and he always would.

But this man before her, this was Donald Hildebrand. This was her husband.

She began to weep.

"And so it begins." He slammed the door of his truck. Now he was angry, the calmer words of erosion would now turn to bullets, and this time she held the target. "Why are you crying, Emma? The fucking surgery’s tomorrow. I don’t need to be there for you to get him to the hospital, do I? Have you forgotten where the fucking place is?"

Emma was speechless. She’d seen him like this unnumerous times but never when an event of such paramount was set to occur in one of the boy’s lives. If it was to be her opened up on the table, she wouldn’t bat an eye. This would be typical. But this was his child, his first born son, was that not supposed to mean something to a man?

All she could do was cry, unabashedly.

"Jesus Christ," said Don, reopening his door. "I can’t take this shit right now, Emma. You’ll get him there just fine. I got all the faith in the world in your abilities to put a three year old in a car and steer the fucking thing to its destination."

"I got all the faith in myself as well, Don. I know what I can do. The part that’s killing me is I’m finally seeing what you cannot do."

He sniffed fury and climbed into his truck, slamming the door and gunning the engine, startling her. She should be ready for such petulance after six years of marriage, but the boy within her man always had a way of leaving her speechless. The boy set the shifter to R and flew down the driveway. On the road, he thrust it down to D, and before he drove off he rolled the passenger window down. Instead of an apology or a valid explaination for his actions as she had hoped, he summoned his fist and protruded his middle finger in her direction.

Her weepings became sobs. This was her husband. This was what became of the one she’d chosen to spend the rest of her life with. She’d seen the decline in him after the passing of his father but simply figured it normal after losing a parent. When his mother remarried so quickly, she figured that’d blow over relatively quickly as well.

Then a few months later, he proposed. How could you tell someone that you didn’t want to marry them until they came out of their funk? Look, baby, I love you, but you’re kind of acting funny. It didn’t work that way. Especially for Emma Gray, the woman she was before all the years of verbal and emotional abuse, back when she was naive and dainty. Now, she wore silent scars that were never properly cauterized and the infections were setting in, almost too deep to be cut out.

She’d need to make a conscious decision soon, or the wounds would fester beyond salvage. She’d need to reopen old wounds and cauterize them once more. But how could she trust herself to close the wounds properly when she had failed so miserably the first go round? And the second and the third and the fourth? She wondered if she’d even be able to crack the surface of some of the old cicatrices because of the mounds of scar tissue spreading like wild fire. Or would she need amputations instead?

Emma watched Don drive off, finger still broadcast for the world to see but only meant for her. Delirious and exhausted, she stood at the mouth of the garage, alone. She was out of ideas, out of patience. Out of her mind. Her husband was no longer a man, this she had known for a long time. But when did he stop being a father?

She cringed.

Emma jumped as the baby monitor called for her in her hands. She smiled, startled, yet thankful. At least now she wouldn’t be alone. Emma went into the house to get her son up from his nap. In an hour’s time, the two of them would be at the hospital, awaiting Brendon’s second heart surgery.

Possibly alone.

Possibly forever.

3

"Don?"

He didn’t look up from the Kindle. She placed herself in a position that blocked the soft light that radiated from above. The Kindle continued projecting, but the shadow was enough to turn him.

"Don," she said again, this time without the underlying question.

He removed his earbuds. "What? This is the best part."

Emma looked at the Kindle. The Evening News team were circling Ron Burgundy and the Channel Four News team on their bicycles. To be fair, this was the best part, but it didn’t matter. She took the Kindle from his lap and set it on an adjacent chair.

It was time.

"What the hell are you doing?" he said. "I was watching that."

"Don, you’ve seen Anchorman a thousand times, and you’ll see it a thousand more. Yesterday was a once in a lifetime opportunity-"

"Oh, wonderful. Here we go."

His face went as sour as his words, yet she pressed on like she hadn’t noticed either. "A real chance to show me how much you cared, not just for me, Don, I know you don’t care for me anymore."

"That is not true."

"It is, though," she said calmly. "And I’m okay with it. I’ve come to accept it over the years. But this was about Brendon, Don. You’re oldest son."

"Oh, this is bullshit," he said, shrinking in his chair. "Here, Emma? Of all places, here?"

"Where else, Don? When we’re at home, you’re never with us. You’ve had less than five dinners with me and the boys in the last two weeks, and one of those weeks we were distraught over the possible ailments of our son. But that didn’t stop you from finding solace somewhere else. Like on a boat, perhaps. In a can of beer. With Decker or Dre. Anywhere but us."

"I’ve never been there for your dinners, yet now you want to complain about it."

"Don, I’ve been saying this for almost five years now!" She was getting angry and her voice resounded throughout the empty waiting room. "Remember the first time I mentioned the idea of a divorce? You took your rings off and called Dre. The two of you went to the bar and you came home after three in the morning, piss ass drunk and you may have even been stoned as well, it doesn’t matter now."

"You’re right it doesn’t matter, Emma. So why bring it up?"

"Remember before that when my father died?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

"You bitch," he barely breathed.

"You went fishing, Don. With Decker and Dre. You remember the last time our son was in the hospital and I sat in this very room?"

He shifted in his seat.

"Don, answer the question. Do you remember the last time we were here?"

He let out a lengthy sigh. "No," he said softly to his shoes.

"And why is that, Don? Why is it that you don’t remember the last time that Brendon was in this hospital getting heart surgery?"

His face flushed. She pushed his buttons, though now that were pushed and couldn’t be pulled, she wasn’t sure if this was the proper place. He was a volcano of emotional turmoil just waiting to erupt, and she just shifted a plate within him. He was bubbling hot with magma.

But now was definitely the proper time. She’d been reeling him in, now she had to see if she could catch him in her nets.

"Where did you go when your father died, Don? Where were you when Ann married Arthur?"

"This isn’t fair," he belted. "You attack me for what I am, here? Here, Emma?" She backed away from him a step. "You want to know where I was, huh? You want to know? I was out on my boat, that’s where. Fishing, you’re damn right I was. I was fishing. It’s where I go when I have nowhere else to go. So, yes I was fishing. Same place I was the night my father died, the day my mother wed that fucking asshole. I was fishing. It’s what I do, it’s who I am." His face relaxed a little. "It’s how I deal with shit, Emma. You know that."

She stepped forward and pressed her hand to his shoulder, sitting in the chair next to him. He looked like he might cry, Emma hadn’t seen him cry since he left their apartment the night his father died. "I know it is. It’s your coping mechanism." He turned to her with shining eyes. "But it’s not mine, Don. I don’t need scaly fish to make me feel better.

"Do you know where I was those nights, when our fathers passed and your mom rewed? I was at home bawling my eyes out, Don. Weeping for them, weeping for you. Weeping for us! Even then I knew we would never be the same if you couldn’t find the time to talk to me about your problems anymore. About the scariest things in your life. I am where you should release your vulnerability, Don, not your damn fish. Sure, the fish won’t run and tell someone what you said, but neither will I. I’ll only help you grow. Fear makes a fine soil if it’s cultivated properly, and vulnerability bears the juiciest of fruits. Tears can run like rain with me and I won’t call you names, Don. I’ll only find a way to help them nourish the seeds that we’ve sown, together.

"Do you notice there’s a pattern here? Do you notice how when the shit hits the fan, you go everywhere but to me? Well, when are you going to stick something out with me? When are we going to work something out together instead of apart? You might be able to cope out there on the water, but you leave me here all by myself and I’m dwindling, Don. I’m three frayed strings from falling down the well.

"Don, I need you. I need you to make me feel better. I need you to come to me when you have nowhere else to go. I need you to need me, to hold me and tell me it’s going to be alright. I need your love, Don. Your unconditional love. I want the first thought that pops into your head to be about the kids and me, and I wish you would share it with me no matter how horrible it seem and we will find a way to work through it together, for the kids. And us, Don. We are what’s important, not your fish. Your family needs you, and I need you."

His face beat on and off like a strobe light. First with fury, then with worry. And back and forth, neither emotion holding for long enough to ring true, and he was never more intimidating to her than at that moment. And never more human.

She felt his strength coming through and evading him like the rise and collapse of his chest. He was diffident, never one to grab his inner feelings by their horns and ride them anywhere but to the nearest lake. She felt him. The inner workings of his conscious and subconscious battling endless duels within. And in half a heartbeat they were singing duets. Will he fight for his wife, Emma Hildebrand, or will he flee to his mistress, the buoyant, motorized shelter he always ran to?

Could he overcome his disinclinations and break down the barriers he put up after his dad had passed on? If not for her, then for who? Little silvery fish in the sea and lakes? She was at least of his species, someone that at one time in his life, he imbued all of his passions and fears to, and she had recipricated them threefold. She loved that man, the man that showed her that passion unabashedly. Unafraid of the connotations that feelings carry with them. He was a free man, her man.

Then he became a constricted constructor. A great builder of walls to board his emotions in, as so they couldn’t be fiddled with by anyone. But she wasn’t responsible for his father’s death. It wasn’t her fault. So why shut her out? The woman he was supposed to love? If he wanted to be reclusive in his hideout, he might be so inclined to at least give his loving wife the password every now and then.

"Let me in, Don," she whispered to him, her eyes wide and ready to burst. She was so close. He was so close. This would be a marvelous breakthrough. She would tell their grandchildren about this day.

He took a deep breath, a breath that sounded as if his very lungs were quivering as much as he was. A single tear manifested at the corner of his eye and slid down his cheek.

"Oh, Emma, I-"

A door crashed open behind her. She dropped his hands and turned. A man in a white robe stained with deep red splotches walked toward the two of them. His look was sullen and he washed his hands, one over the other, continuously. "Mr. and Mrs. Hildebrand?" he asked, though he knew them. Emma could only nod as the doctor’s eyes fell to the floor. "I’m very sorry," he said. "Something went terribly wrong, and - we did all we could."

Don Hildebrand erupted, giving the chair he sat in a shove that sent the entire row askew save the chair that Emma sat in as she looked at the doctor with tears flooding over her. Don stormed out of the waiting room, banging both swinging doors nearly off their hinges.

Emma began to sob and wail into her hands. Her husband left her alone when she needed him most.