The News (Severance)

“Sorry?”

It was stupid, the first word out of his mouth. He blinked at the police officer at his door.

The woman’s mouth moved. Words fell into the air. He heard some of them, and others vanished.

Wife

Gemma

Accident

Mark stood with his hand on the doorknob, and it fell on him like a hammer blow, a cold weight that dropped into his gut and his legs and his bare feet. He was clammy, blinking, lost.

“Accident?” he tried. “She… Is she okay?”

His mind went blank. He shivered and didn’t stop. Something happened, more talking, they wrote things down. They recommended he call somebody.

Hand on the phone. He knew how to do this. Devon’s voice. “Mark, hey, what’s up?”

She didn’t know.

She didn’t know and he was supposed to tell her. The police officer was a dark blur on the threshold.

“Mark?”

“It’s Gemma,” he started, and his voice gave out. He clapped a hand over his mouth. Tried not to throw up. “They - they said I have to go, I have to see her — before she —“

“Mark, what are you talking about? What happened to Gemma? Oh my god, Mark, what happened? Are you okay?”

“She was driving — They said there was an accident — They said it’s bad, Devon — She’s at the hospital —“

She asked questions. He didn’t know. The blood rushed in his ears, a fuzzy droning roar. He was going to be sick. He was going to run. He was going to cry. He was going to collapse.

He didn’t do any of those things.

He told Devon which hospital and he got in the car and he went. He didn’t remember how he got there, but he went.

He just had flashes. Her hand, swollen and bandaged, cold and still. Her hair, sticky with blood that they had tried to clean and failed. Her face, sweet and ruined and empty.

The machines beeped for a while until they didn’t. Devon sobbed on his shoulder. Ricken sobbed on hers. Mark cried until his head throbbed and he couldn’t breathe and a man in a white coat with a blue pin told them it was over.

She was over.

His hand did things with paperwork. People said things that Devon wrote down. He nodded but he had no idea what they had said.

They walked out of the hospital, and the sun rose over the hills and the trees. It was beautiful. He wanted to set all of it on fire. He put his hand in his pocket and felt her wedding ring, cut in two when her hand swelled so badly, and he knew that he was over, too.