Trapped in Silence My SOS in Morse Code

When I came back to myself, my husband was pinning another woman down and kissing her like a man gone wild.

The nasal cannula pressed against my nose. I couldn't make a sound.

Their thick, ragged breathing poured into my ears.

"Easy," Raymond Delgado murmured. "Don't press on Genie's leg. I spent two hours massaging it for her today."

The woman didn't care. "She's a living corpse. You really think she's going to wake up?"

Four years ago there was a terrible car crash, and I became a vegetable.

If Raymond hadn't thrown himself over me, I'd have died on the spot.

"God, this is so annoying. When is she going to die?" the woman asked suddenly.

Raymond stopped what he was doing, adjusted my nasal cannula, and said nothing.

The next day, the neurological rehabilitation specialist made his usual rounds.

He announced it right there:

"I'm sorry. The patient is brain-dead."

Raymond fell apart.

"That's impossible! You quack! My wife was fine last night!"

My best friend, Andrea Winfield, pleaded with the specialist.

"I'm so sorry, Dr. Lambert, the family's just overwhelmed. She's still so young. Please, take another look at her..."

The specialist turned to a young man.

"Jesse Fuller, you just got back from overseas. You assess the patient's condition."

A pair of warm, soft hands took mine and started the muscle-strength test.

This was my last chance.

I gathered every bit of strength I had and touched his palm once.

Then again.

Three short touches, followed by three long ones.

Jesse's hand went rigid.

The patient's hand had moved.

Not a muscle spasm. Not a nerve reflex.

There was a familiar rhythm buried in it.

He'd been in an amateur radio club back in college. He couldn't mistake it.

This was the internationally recognized Morse code.

【SOS】

......

Just then another large hand knocked his aside and snatched the patient's hand back.

"Dr. Fuller."

Raymond gazed at the woman on the bed with an aching look, his voice trembling slightly.

"My wife has been through so many surgeries since the crash. If she's held on this long, she's the one who's suffered the most."

Jesse turned his head and studied him.

The man took the wet wipe the head nurse handed over and cleaned the patient's hand, the veins standing out sharply beneath the skin.

His body held a wary, defensive stance.

"I don't mean any harm. It's a routine check," Jesse said, all business. "The patient just moved."

You could have heard a pin drop in the room.

Dr. Lambert examined me again.

He announced, the way he always did:

"It's just the pathological reflex of a vegetative patient."

"No, it isn't." Jesse's voice was quiet.

Every eye in the room fell back on him.

The temperature in the room dropped hard.

Andrea suddenly burst into tears.

"Dr. Fuller, please. Stop giving the family this empty, groundless hope..."

She squeezed to the foot of the bed, pressed her palm to the sole of my foot to feel its warmth, then neatly tucked the blanket back in.

That familiar scent slipped into my nose again.

My guess had been right after all.

The woman in my husband's arms last night had smelled exactly like this.

Now that the truth was clear, the pain came late, and it came hard.

The sole of my foot, where Andrea had touched it, began to ache in faint threads.

The phantom pain shot up from my foot to my heart.

I wanted to move my fingertip again.

To tell Dr. Fuller that my beloved best friend of fifteen years and my husband were sleeping together.

But my index finger stayed limp and slack, like all the numb limbs on my body.

Never again under my control.

Dr. Lambert gave Raymond a sympathetic look.

"Family of the patient, I'm going to declare the time of death now."

The head nurse checked her watch calmly, ready to record it.