This week's prompt is from Framing Device 'the coughing wouldn't stop'. Enjoy!
~
In Sickness and in Health:
It was a beautiful, warm spring morning when Dillon sat down to breakfast. The sun was just coming up, spilling over the yard and through the patio doors into the dining room. Its light cast a warm yellow pillar over the table and the hot breakfast waiting on it, steam still rising from the bacon, eggs and sausage on his plate. The coffee machine was plipping and burbling as it brewed a fresh roast, but there was a glass of orange juice sitting at his place. Jeanine saw him enter the room, his wife smiling as he did. “You’re right on time,” she told him. “I just put the plates down.”
Dillion nodded appreciatively, though he was a little surprised. Things between them had been tense. Jeanine had always been insecure and recently she’d been letting it get the better of her. Snooping around, questioning what he was doing whenever he went out, his late hours when she knew it was crunch time at the office. He felt like a suspect in a murder investigation.
“Thank you,” he said as he took a seat, taking a drink of juice. It was full of pulp and made him cough. She’d forgotten that he didn’t like his juice with all that extra shit in there, but it wasn’t worth starting a fight over it. He had a busy day coming up. “I’ll be home late tonight,” he said. “Penderson red-penned the drafts we sent him again, so we have to start over from scratch again.”
“You’ve been working a lot more at the office than usual,” Jeanine pointed out. She was a lovely woman, about five years younger than him. They’d been married for about six years now. “I hardly ever see you these days and when I do, you’re distant, distracted.”
“You know what it’s like,” he reminded her. “Deadlines, client demands. The Penderson thing is worse than usual, but it’ll settle down. When it does, we’ll do something, just the two of us, okay?” He took another sip of juice, coughed again. There was an odd aftertaste to it. Was it past its best-by date?
Jeanine just stared at him. “You’ve told me that before.”
“I know, but once things-”
“-settle down, yes I know.” She stood up and poured herself a glass of orange juice, took a sip. There was a long pause as Dillon ate his breakfast as quickly as he could. He could sense another fight on the horizon. He coughed again, thumping his chest. It felt like a piece of pulp had gone down the wrong way.
Jeanine took another drink from her cup. “Who is she, Dillon?”
His eyebrows raised. “‘She’? She who?”
“The woman you’re sleeping with. Just... just tell me the truth. That’s all I want. Give me that much.”
He coughed again, shaking his head and standing up from the table. “I’m not sleeping with anyone,” he snapped. “We’ve talked about this. You need to get a grip. You’ve been through my phone, you call me at work. Now you’re coming at me like this?” He should have known this was an ambush. “Christ, Jeannie. Just... Jesus Christ. I’m trying to juggle bullshit at work and your bullshit here at home and you’re not making either of those easier.”
“I know I’m not the brightest woman there is,” she replied. “My mother always told me it didn’t matter what my grades were as long as I tried my best. My father would just smile and tussle my hair. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. I... knew I wasn’t as smart as you when we met, but you were the first person who made me think it didn’t matter. I thought you respected me.”
Dillon coughed a bit harder. “I don’t have time for this, Jean. I have to get to work.”
“I talked to Gerald,” she said, looking down at the cup in her hands. “He told me Penderson approved your drafts more than four months ago, and the next phase of the project after that. You haven’t been working late.”
His throat felt tight now and his stomach clenched painfully. “We’ll talk about this when I get home,” Dillon told his wife. “But Gerald? Really? Did he tell you I had him transferred for-”
“Don’t, Dillon. Just don’t. I don’t want another lie. I know it took me a while to figure it out. I know you and she were probably laughing at me, how stupid I was to believe you all this time but I thought...” She shook her head. “You told me I was insecure and crazy for months. I even started to believe you, but I just... I... I hoped you’d have enough respect for me to tell me the truth now, when I knew what was going on. I wished you had, but... you don’t care at all, do you?”
Dillon tried to speak, but all he could do was cough, his vision turning grey. He clutched at the doorframe, sliding down it. The coughs turned to gasps and rasps.
“If you’d told me the truth,” Jeanine said, picking up his cup of orange juice and dumping it down the sink, “if you’d given me just that last little bit of proof that you felt something for me that wasn’t contempt...” she held up her own mug. “...I’d have let you drink from this before you left.”
It took a few minutes more for the twitching and gasping to stop, but then the house was quiet with the only sounds being the calls of stirring birds as they stirred awake.
Jeanine looked out the window, enjoying the way the sun washed over the yard, its warmth filling the kitchen. She looked over the freshly turned topsoil of the spring garden waiting for her. She’d finish her breakfast and then she’d get to work.