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My husband, a swarthy sure footed Euro alpha male with capable hands, reaches for a support while up on a shoddy scaffold and it suddenly collapses. He falls backwards and plummets fourteen feet, head first towards cement. Luckily an old tire leaning up against the house tags and turns his body enough to save him from snapping his neck. His side smacks and shatters like porcelain, breaking several ribs and puncturing a lung. He starts to bleed from the inside out, like tea through a cracked cup.

Meanwhile, oblivious, I’m tripping the light fantastic, reading my stories to gushy fans, six hundred miles away. Oh, this year our marriage has been stretched as thin as skin pulled over a gaping wound, bound with a few home job sewing needle stitches. I am giddily glad to be free from the strain and pain of it for a week. I’m sipping red wine, a delicious eve, twirling my heels, boning up on my witty repartee when my candy apple cell phone rings.

His voice is whispery, watery: “Don’t rush home, there’s nothing you can do, I’m not covered…we’ll need the money…”

My heart drops, the music stops. Sounds exactly like my Dad on the phone, before he died. Lungs full of fluid. Swimming in his own sea.

As I pack up my trinkets and board the plane, I’m suddenly hit with how much they are alike. Both men, not physically big, but they seem huge, voices as velvety and rich as a five star Hotel lobby. You know, the kind of Mickey who swaggers into a party and martini olives jump in their gin. Flames burn a little bit brighter and everyone, men and women, stand about two inches taller. One look into those wolfish 007 light eyes and you know at least one glass is going to break tonight. How can men like this be shattered and vulnerable?

I tip toe into his hospital room. How small he seems in that baby blue gown, dizzy with morphine, blowing into a dinky plastic lung capacity tester. Harder. The ball has to hit the happy face. Dad had one of those too. He’s not going to be pleased being here: the food, the smell, the pain…and two months to heal. The last thing he needs. No work before Christmas. I brace myself for the onslaught of troubles and worries and guilt for being away having a good ol’ time during his accident.

Instead, my husband looks up, his face splits open with relief and tears of tenderness. He reaches for my hand and draws me in, “I’m so thankful for you and our baby, I’m so thankful to be alive.”

Ever gregarious, he raggedly introduces me to his courageous party: the Indian family huddled around their dying matriarch, the crass harmonica player with cancer, the wheezing toilet seat pisser in the corner. Yamiko the nurse flutters in and titters when my husband jokes his “nads” get dipped in the low rider they have in the washroom and Wheezer doesn’t flush. She assures him she’ll find a solution. I wonder if it involves cradling. Yes, it’s a regular riot, chatty as a cocktail party in this place for the sick and dying.

He jokes but laughter hurts for him and so do hugs, he’s too tender. Every breath is a sacrifice. Who knew ribs were so important?

I suddenly think of Genesis, that myth I hate as a feminist: Adam’s rib. As if woman was created from a little piece of the almighty man to be a “help mate”. Yeah? God also created the middle finger, take a piece of that. Oh, my father was big into female submission. Girls are to be seen and not heard, the woman is there as a support for the man, his needs always come first. A bone of contention between us.

But this is where my Dad and husband differ. The man I married has never once asked me to be the smaller part of him. And when I see him here, every breath pained, I suddenly hold the idea of Adam’s rib in a different hand. I see how important ribs are, a safe haven for the heart. I want to protect him. I want to cradle him in my strength. I want to be that close. Unbroken.

Help me God, help me be to be a good “help mate”.

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