The McCain Marriage Contract

I pretended like I didn't notice the reporters and paparazzi that gathered in front of Raymond's house that afternoon. Initially, they were just one or two persons but soon enough, just like ants gather around sugar, a large number of gossip- seeking humans lined the front gate, laying siege and hoping to catch any piece of information they could use to make their social media pages pop.

"What in the hell is this?" I groaned. I was enjoying the peace and quiet in Raymond's mansion and I wished it could continue forever, but the press had other plans. It was so funny that, before now, I didn't exactly consider tech billionaires celebrities worthy to be chased around by the press, but here I was. I wondered who to blame for this invasion of my privacy. It couldn't be Raymond because he also wanted out of the marriage, and seeking publicity didn't make sense. Or maybe it was him. Even though he didn't know what it was, he knew I had something to hide. And what did a person with something to hide hate the most? An invasion of their privacy because that would spill the beans on whatever it was they were trying to keep hidden. And with the way he said what he said the evening before, I was certain he was not joking. Maybe this was his sad attempt to make me tell him exactly what I was hiding or to make me decide I wanted to break up with him.

Still thinking about it I didn't believe Raymond would take this route to get me to want to leave or to find out whatever information he so desperately needed to squeeze out of me. The private investigator thing seemed more like his thing, something more sophisticated and well-thought-out. But then there was somebody who could make this kind of call without stopping to consider the immediate, direct consequences, someone who could not get the heat from the direct consequences. Tony McCain.

It was possible that Raymond had gone to meet his father to tell him that he was no longer interested in the marriage and then, Tony, who could never take no for an answer decided to involve the paparazzi. It was a dick move but it was pretty smart. If the marriage was no longer a secret, of course, we could be pressured to stay in it for the length of time agreed.

Very early the next morning I drove to the San Francisco General Hospital where my dad was. Previously I used to go any time before noon and everything was fine. The last time I was there, just a few days back, I spoke with the doctors and they updated me on my dad's health. I was beyond overjoyed to see that he was no longer in a coma. His eyes were open and he was gradually regaining consciousness. However, they said, it would take quite some time for him to regain full bodily functions seeing as it was a stroke that precipitated the coma. He could barely make out words because his speech was still slurred as a result of the palsy that took over half of his face. Also, besides the extensive neurological damage that had been done to his muscles and the loss of blood supply that made them non-functional or poorly functional, he was recumbent for quite a while and so it would require serious physiotherapy to get him anywhere close to his premorbid state. Luckily I had a good amount of money for just that No thanks to the uninvited press, now I had to wake up as early as 4 a.m. have a hurried bath, and rush out of the house to drive to the hospital. I believed it was only a very bored or very lonely person that would be seen lurking outside of Raymond's residence by that time of the day. I had lived in that house for the past six days but I still found it difficult to refer to it as mine; I didn't even consider myself a befitting guest at the house. This was a life I just could not seem to adjust to.

At the hospital, I was confronted by a cranky nurse at the front desk who insisted it was not yet time to visit any patient. I knew I was in the wrong because it wasn't even 5 a.m. yet but a kinder manner of approach would certainly not end her life. Besides, it wasn't as if she was seeing me for the first time. Thankfully one other nurse sauntered by and smiled at me generously. "How are you doing, ma'am?" she asked before turning to whisper something in the rude nurse's ear. I didn't hear what she said but whatever it was worked some magic because Rude Nurse ditched her uptight look and gave me a smile even bigger than Kind Nurse's. "I'm so sorry, ma'am," she said. "I guess I was a bit cranky from working the night shift and I may have projected that in the way and manner with which I spoke to you. It's not time to visit your father yet but I can let you in."

I smiled my gratitude to Kind Nurse who had somehow gotten this one to behave. Slowly and steadily I walked to my father's ward on the Neurology floor. As expected Dad was still asleep when I got there and I did not try to wake him up. I sat down quietly scanning through my old write-ups which I consulted when I had to prepare content for my blog, back when I still ran a blog.

I must have dozed off or so but around 7 a.m. a doctor came into my father's room for his pre-rounds. He seemed surprised to see me there but he just smiled at me. He looked at my dad's chart and the readings from the monitors that beeped by his side, then he also examined him lightly, and updated his treatment plan on the 10-inch tablet he wielded. From what he explained, my dad was showing more progress and there was a need to be happy. Just before he left the room he turned to me and said, "I think congratulations are in order, Mrs. McCain." That was when I decided that I needed to move my dad to a new, quieter facility where I would be undetectable.

I had been in this marriage for less than a week and it was the most stressful thing I'd ever had to do, even more stressful than worrying over my critically ill father.