trout

The glass door separating us from the talking attorneys opened. A tall frizzy woman with an angry calculated stride aimed herself in my direction.
Halfway down the hall she held out her hand like the Terminator would hold out a gun, and approached me with laser sharp focus.

"My name is Mrs. Nightmare," she said.

"My name is Trout," I replied with a firm handshake.

"You owe me an apology. I haven't heard one word from you. I demand an apology. Do you realize what it is like being a mother? Have you ever had a mother? Have you ever had children?" Her words flew out of her mouth like a rookie actress rehearsing for a soap opera role. These were the same words she left on the front door of our house. I had no words.

My Hero grabbed my arm and started pulling me towards him.
"You have no right to be talking to her," My Hero barked at the steaming, phony woman. I had no words.

"You damn right I do. I have a right to say all kinds of things right now." She appeared so proud of herself it entertained me. I stood speechless, staring at her performance.

"We should not be talking without the presence of an attorney," My Hero shouted. He had crystal clear thoughts and refreshing diction. "Stay away from my wife. You have no right talking to her. Leave her alone. Leave us alone."

Mrs. Nightmare, otherwise known as The Second Wife, lost her character and shrieked frantic sentences that my ears refused to hear. She shouted something about killing the father of her child... how could I sleep at night... something about mothers. After a powerful inhalation she seemed to repeat all those sentences over again, as if we had pulled her cord. I didn't want to pull the cord.

My Hero gripped my arm and stormed up the hallway, hollering at an unbridled level, "This woman is threatening us and I will not have it!"

The attorneys behind the glass wall suddenly dropped their conversation and came running after us. Did
this happen in real life? I never lived in reality before this car accident. I felt new to these dramatic and painful bouts of reality. Attorneys with navy ties flapping, running down a fluorescent-lit hallway, looked surreal. Still, I had no words.

Our attorney, Mr. Earnest, stood about six-foot-three and had no problem blocking Mrs. Nightmare's attorney, scooping us back into the bankruptcy hearing room.
"She can't come after you in there," he said.

My body shook violently against my control while My Hero and I heard more sad people going through bankruptcy. While I shook and sobbed, the entire accident rushed behind my eyes like a silent movie on a never-ending reel.

The Duccati flying towards my car, the feeling in the stomach that we just might miss each other, the smell of disaster, his helmet aiming for my windshield, and his obvious effort to throw himself away from the windshield, so only one of us would die. All that leather and expensive protective gear didn't save him.
He hit my car at lethal speed.

Then there is the part of the movie where I stood outside the car, my spirit floating away from my body like an escaped balloon, watching the paramedics come up with the same conclusion, "There is no way he will survive this."

Forty-eight hours later I am wailing, retching, and flailing myself in a crazed frenzy, screaming, "He's going to die, he's going to die, he's going to die!"

My spirit long lost. My Hero held me, searching inside his heart for the
unwritten "Guidebook On Traumatic Situations With Your Wife". All he could say was, "Please know I love you," and "Please try to find something that makes you happy." This was a new plea for him. It used to be, "Please, just come home. Don't sleep in that office another night. Please, just come home."

One image kept me from spinning and retching- a fish. In an advertisement for Bozeman, Montana, a delicious photo of a man's strong hand held a fat, wet, rainbow trout. The fish looked so alive and healthy, freshly plucked from a thriving cool water environment, his fertile river.

Exhausted from that violent spell, I realized I was the fish, held out of my element for far too long, suffocating in scratchy dry oxygen. My spirit gone, I felt no desire to live.
The next morning, My Hero tried to rouse me for work. I wouldn't open my eyes. I didn't care if I ever woke again. Dying, I was already dried up on a sun-bleached boat deck, my skin fried to the splintery wood, stuck like fish skin on a grill.
My Hero rescued me with a bucket of water, a therapist, and love. He peeled me gently from my dying place, summoned my spirit, and set me free into a new live river. I sank to the bottom at first, but then my spirit awoke, and I swam far away from Mrs. Nightmare. Green, cool, rushing waters carried me to our fresh new life. My Hero found me upstream when he could be certain it was safe to leave our house and business and studio to the bank. As My Hero reminded me, "As long as we stick together, we can survive anything."

Now thriving in reality, I finally found my words.