The Last Day

FIVE

After Natasha left the den, she walked down the hallway, the slate cool against the soles of her bare feet. The combination of chilled wine and Ambien was an effective white noise generator. Natasha was confident that she knew enough about her own body and the drugs to ensure that she wasn't in any real danger of overdosing. There was the time, a few weeks earlier, when she had awakened in the tub half filled with cold water, dried vomit in her hair, with no memory of either throwing up or getting into the tub. She mixed the drugs only occasionally, she thought, as she ran her hand along the wall.

She had been lucky so far that her hands hadn't started shaking during surgery. The duration of the tremors so far was short-usually a few seconds-but they seemed to be coming more often. She would have to have tests run to see what was causing this, but there was no explanation for the tremors that was good. If she had a nervous system disorder, like MS, she was screwed-her career would be over. With the diagnosis of any degenerative disease, she would have no choice but to quit performing surgery. She knew she would have to seek a diagnosis soon.

Walking by Barney's bedroom, Natasha reached out to brush the knuckles of her left hand gently across the smooth wooden door. For nine years of nights she rarely walked past this door without pausing to visit with her son or to open the door quietly take a peek in, check on her sleeping child. The room had not changed in a year. Six months earlier, when she had men tioned to Ward that it might be time to begin thinking about boxing up just the clothes in their son's closet and few drawers, he'd started screaming at her like a lunatic. It was as though Ward expected Barney might return as long as his room wasn't altered. As often as not Ward didn't remember discussions they had, to the point that often she wondered why she bothered to talk to him at all.

The one thing she was sure of was that Ward hadn't loved their son any more than she had, and he couldn't possibly miss him any more than she did. If he wanted to think he had a corner on that, fine, but it would never be the truth. If it were possible for her to trade her life to bring Barney back, she'd die in the next second with a smile on her lips. But he couldn't come back, so she was determined to live the rest of her life. If Ward decided to live his, then they could do so together. If not, he'd have to make his own way to its end.

She went into her bedroom, closed the door, dropped her robe on the floor, flopped down across the bed, and stared up at the ceiling.

Natasha picked up a small stuffed bear that she'd had made for her son while he was still inside her womb, and still lying on the bed, pressed his hand. The recorder inside the animal said in her voice, “Little guy, Mama loves you so very much.” Her own voice brought tears to her eyes, and she hugged the bear to her chest.

She reached over to Ward's side of the bed and felt his absence. She put her hand under his pillow and a dreamless sleep overtook her.