Martha was dying. Her doctor knew it, her husband, David, knew it, and me being her caregiver, knew it too. The only one who didn’t know was Martha.
It was the spider bite that started so small, just a little red bump like a blister. Then the itching started, and it didn’t stop. Martha dug her nails in to relieve herself, but it only made the bite bigger. It grew to the size of a silver dollar, and her doctor circled it with a black Sharpie.
Martha swallowed the antibiotics he gave her twice a day for three days, but still the bite grew worse. The doctor circled it again and again until he couldn’t anymore. Martha’s whole leg was swollen, and at the center of it all was a black hole opening up.
Downstairs her doctor told David to amputate her leg before it was too late. Upstairs Martha sat in her recliner, the glow of Perry Mason dancing across her face on the TV screen. Her leg was propped up on a pillow, and the pillow was saturated in Martha’s pus. She took a drag on a Virginia Slim before calling my name between hacking coughs, “Emmmily!” When I appeared in the doorway she spit into a rag and held it out to me. “A Coke for my cough, would you?” Martha said, annoyed that I hadn’t thought of it sooner. I hesitated.
“Your doctor wants you on water, Martha.” She waved her hand at me.
“Coke, I said, you dumb bitch! I don’t give a fuck what he wants.” She started coughing again as I retreated to the kitchen. I grabbed an empty Coke bottle and placed a funnel over the top to pour Diet Coke in from the two liters David kept. He instructed me to do so my first day as Martha’s live-in nurse, not because he cared but because he hated her, and the two liters of diet Coke was actually laced with rat poison.
Not only was Martha dying, she was also diabetic, a diabetic who refused to drink diet anything, a diabetic who was being slowly poisoned by her husband who saw an opportunity and took it under the guise of caring for his poor sick wife. In her delirium from the fever, Martha never could tell what she was drinking as long as it was in a regular Coca Cola bottle. She sat only in her chair, slept there, ate, and shit there too. David paid well, so he wouldn’t have to look at her. He slept downstairs, and I slept in the room adjacent to hers in the old Victorian house which was in no way a home.
Death was a choking presence in the house. David wanted it, he welcomed it. He didn’t tell Martha she would lose her leg because he wanted the gangrene to eat what was left of her because the rat poison was too slow.
The smell kept getting worse. I started wearing a mask and told her it was for her protection, but really it was a death mask, one I’d lined with drops of lavender and rosemary oil.
Soon the night came when I’d changed her bandage for the last time, strips of her flesh stuck to the gauze as I stood there silently screaming inside, horrified by the green pus dripping from Martha’s wound.
“Emmmily, ice…” Martha whispered in a daze. I brought in a pack of ice and placed it on her forehead. Her eyes rolled around. Her cracked lips opened, “Couuugh drrrops…” she slurred pointing at the box of Luden’s on the tray beside her.
I shook one out and placed it into her cigarette stained mouth. Martha inhaled and the cough drop disappeared into her throat. Her eyes popped open as she clawed at her neck. I leaned her forward as she started to gag and screamed for David’s help. He didn’t come.
Martha fell forward from her chair and grabbed me by the hair trying to raise herself up. I bent her fingers back one by one trying to pry her lose. “MARTHA! You have to let go, or I can’t help you!” Martha pulled harder, pulling me down with her, like she was drowning, then suddenly she was limp on top of me. I rolled her over and her eyes stared blankly up at me.
I ran from the room screaming for David. He appeared at the bottom of the stairs, “What’s going on, has Martha died?”
“She’s choking! You have to do something!” David slowly ascended the stairs and disappeared into Martha’s room before reappearing to say,
“She’s finally dead.”
I didn’t want to go back up there, but all of my belongings were still in my room across from Martha. I took the stairs one at a time. I wouldn’t look at her. In my doorway, phone in hand, I switched the light off to my bedroom and started to leave when I saw Martha sitting up in her room. I gasped, “Martha?”
She turned towards me and got on all fours, her eyes were cloudy and glazed over as she began crawling to me. As I swept past her she crawled faster and grabbed my ankle, biting into me. I screamed and jerked my leg from her grasp before running down the stairs calling for David. “Martha’s alive! She’s alive!”
David met me at the bottom of the stairs before hurrying up into Martha’s room, then reappeared quietly. “Its okay now. I think you’re in shock is all.” He pulled me in for a hug with his back to the stairway. Martha peeked around the corner and smiled down at me as her hands met the first step at the top of the landing and the next.
“Look there, it’s Martha!” David turned to look, but Martha had slipped back into the shadows. I felt blood dripping down my leg.
“Come now,” he said, “you need to lie down and have a Coke, Emily. Martha is dead.”
