Hold On

by Dennis Baylor

“Put your seatbelt on, babe.”

Rachel pivots her head onto Stan’s shoulder, toward his mouth. “There’s nothing out here,” she responds.

“So said the heroine of the horror flick,” Stan counters.

Rachel rolls her honey-brown eyes and shifts her body back into the convertible’s worn, leather seat. She spies the dusty speedometer flirting with ninety miles per hour.

“Boo!” Rachel yelps while putting on her seatbelt. She slides the straw, cowboy hat down between her legs as the hot air blows through her auburn hair. She reaches for Stan’s free hand relaxing on the mid-seat between them. The wedding ring on her finger glistens under the desert sun.

“How much further?” she asks.

Stan’s forehead crinkles. “Is it a rule that you guys ask the same question over and over?”

“I did not.”

“Yeah,” he blows. “Soon, love. Soon”

*****

The car purrs to a stop upon the mirage-inducing, endless stretch of asphalt. Behind them lay the same. Sweat beads around Stan’s fingers gripping the car’s steering wheel.

“What’s wrong?” Rachel asks.

“This isn’t right,” Stan says.

“What?”

“Remember I said soon,” Stan responds.

“Yeah.”

“Soon is now. Vegas should have been in sight. Come to think of it, you see any signs lately? There should be Interstate 40s poppin’ everywhere.”

Rachel unbuckles her seatbelt. She rotates her line of sight three hundred sixty degrees taking in the rocky, sandy wasteland surrounding Stan’s prized ’64 Chevelle.

“You see any cars, trucks? I can’t remember the last time we saw one,” Rachel chimes.

Stan steps out of the car. His tall, lanky frame plasters a shadow onto the hood of the convertible. “Okay, obviously I miscalculated,” he decides while circling the vehicle.

Rachel looks at the gas readout. “We still have just over half a tank of gas.”

“Yippee,” a bewildered Stan says getting back into the car.

Rachel defies Stan and snuggles up against his shoulder as the car regains its speed.

*****

Twenty minutes later Stan slows the car to a stop along the roadside. Dirt billows upward blooming around the vehicle. “What the hell?” he blows.

“Babe. Obviously, we’ll come upon something. The road doesn’t go on forever,” Rachel notes.

Stan shakes his head reminding Rachel of the bobble-head she keeps on her office desk.

“No,” Stan declares. “I’ve done Phoenix to Vegas before. This doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, we have no choice but to keep driving, right?" Rachel responds.

Stan shifts his gaze to Rachel. “You being my rock?”

“Ten years,” Rachel answers.

Stan’s dry lips part revealing the killer smile that first attracted his wife. “You know, we haven’t seen anyone for over an hour.”

Rachel’s eyes meet her husband’s gaze. “You can’t be serious?” she playfully intones.

Stan takes another look around their surroundings. The sweat-inducing wind is the only thing moving. He puts the car in park and makes a move toward his wife.

“Babe?” Rachel mocks while providing little resistance. Her hands land on Stan’s shoulders. His hands find her waist. Rachel’s lips upon his feel salty sweet as buttons unfasten and zipper seams fall apart.

*****

Rachel’s fingers dabble upon her husband’s neck while he rests upon her. The backseat cushion of the convertible feels warm against her back and legs. Stan’s musky scent keeps her attuned to the moment, feeding her desire to bring her lips together upon his sweaty forehead. She looks upward into the cloudless, daytime sky. She smiles and stirs Stan.

“Babe?”

Stan’s eyes meet Rachel’s flushed face. “What’s up?”

“We’re not in a horror movie,” Rachel says.

“Huhn?” Stan musters.

“Look up,” Rachel directs.

Stan removes himself from his wife’s melding body. His gaze goes upward. He laughs. An airliner is making its way across the sky.

“Life still exists,” Rachel says. “Shall we roll?”

Stan buttons his shirt while hopping out of the convertible’s back seat. Rachel positions her hand for Stan to take. He does.

*****

“We’re losing her!” a voice jolts in Rachel’s ears.

*****

“You see that?” Rachel asks.

Stan has the convertible cruising at ninety-five miles per hour. “Yeah.”

In the distance, a sign grows increasingly larger as the convertible gobbles up more interstate. Stan slows the car approaching the sign.

“What the hell?” Stan demands removing his sunglasses.

The weathered road sign before them, a fifty square foot rectangle of peeling letters and rusting edges, displays a stylized likeness of Stan. His animated image is seated in a car with a pronounced seatbelt cradling his chest. The words “Buckle up” display above Stan’s mocking reflection.

Rachel perches herself atop the Chevelle’s passenger headrest. “You had me going. The deserted road. The where are we puzzlement. I don’t get the joke, though.”

Stan rests his hand upon Rachel’s thigh. “Don’t leave me. Please, baby.”

Looking down upon her husband, Rachel’s face contorts with pained exertion. Stan's face dissolves into a pastel swirl of color. Rachel’s hand reaches toward him only to melt away into the blending tapestry of her increasingly darkened vision.

*****

Pain pulses through her eyes as vision endeavors to glimpse. Blood curdles in her mouth as she attempts to talk.

“Rachel?! Baby?!” she hears droning in her ears. Blurred images flit before her as two hands descend upon her shoulders, strong hands holding her down horizontally.

“She’s crashing!” bounces through Rachel’s ears as she struggles to maintain awareness. Struggles to reach the voices. Yet, they slowly become softer, to descend with her over the precipice into an unknown void.

*****

The flowers’ scent brings a wearied smile to Stan’s face as he enters the building. The bouquet rests securely in the crook of his arm as he walks down a well-lit hallway. His body twitches in revolt, at odds with being in the building. Being so close to her, so far from her. Stan comes to a stop at the closed door.

“Hi, Stan,” he hears from a cute, young woman passing him.

“Hey, Nurse Jill,” he manages. Jill continues down the hallway to enter another room.

Stan looks at the door before him. Its shiny silver handle beckons. He hesitates, as he has for the last sixteen months. Hesitating in hope, belief that she will be on the other side of the door awaiting his entrance.

Stan opens the door into Rachel’s room.

Her body, able to breathe without machinery, moves slowly up and down upon the rehabilitation bed.

“Hey, baby,” he announces. He moves to her bedside to replace the flowers brought several days ago. Stan sits in the familiar chair next to Rachel. And he stares, as he has for so many hours.

“I don’t know,” Stan says. “Better or worse. What do I do? I need you. Are you here? Hearing me?”

Rachel’s comatose, rhythmic moving shell claws into Stan’s contemplation. He looks away fearing his selfishness. Trying to ward it off with conscious thoughts of love for his college sweetheart. His devotion. Yet, something emotionally greater, emotionally needier, lingers in his visits to Rachel.

“Remember that time we got lost in the Muir. I was the one who wanted to go off. Stupid adventure. Who kept calm? Steady? You’re my rock, baby. My rock.”

The first tear is the most stubborn, nestling in the crooks of Stan’s eyes. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry.”

*****

Her lips feel wrong. The reaction in her arms and torso do not fit. Stan pulls away.

“What’s wrong?” Jill asks.

Stan feels the wedding band on his finger. “I can’t do this,” he says moving towards the apartment’s exit.

“It’s been more than two years,” Jill states.

Stan hesitates at the door, his back to Jill. “I know.”

*****

Stan plops down in the hospital room chair. His chair. His breathing calms with the streaming sound of the outside rain tapping against the room's windows.

“My mother, your mom, they say to let you go,” he says to Rachel. “I see you here, further away each day. They say it’s the right thing to do. What you would want. That I should, need to get on with my life. I tell them that you are my life, and they give me that look. Pity.”

Stan's knowing fingers reach for the diminished warmth of Rachel’s hand. He looks at the electronic health readout at the front of her bed. The same as it was yesterday, the same as it will be tomorrow. He gets up and hovers above her. His face basks in the sensation of her warm breath.

"My lover, my life. Thirteen years ago today, you became my wife," he breathes. “I kissed another woman. A nice woman. Kind. And all I could think about was you. You’ve messed me up good.”

Rachel’s eyes open. Stan stumbles back knocking down the monitoring equipment causing alarms to emit.

Rachel’s mouth opens letting out a pained, primal, guttural moan. Her eyes remain focused. Alert. Her lips quiver. Stan’s legs threaten to buckle as he places his ear to her mouth.

“Buckle up,” she manages.

Stan kisses her. And kisses her.

THE END