One Can Still Lose With Science On His Side

Roy Hexull tried his hardest to breathe slowly and deeply to give the illusion of sleep but his wife was no fool, at least not when it came to the habits of her husband. In all of their twenty-eight years together she'd never known him to fall asleep in the position in which he was awkwardly sprawled. It seemed too loose, too comfortable. Ever since finding his first love, science, Roy had slept rigidly like a man who needed numbers, laws, and predictable outcomes to trust the world around him enough to make himself vulnerable through the supposedly restful act of sleep. Anne knew that something was wrong when he laid there like a ragdoll. She was also well aware that her groom would not come forth with his tormentor without any provocation. In a rare act of marital defiance she reached for the switch on the bedside lamp and brought the quantifiable world that Roy loved and needed so desperately back into their vision.

"Honey, what's wrong? We've been in bed for almost an hour and you still haven't fallen asleep."

"Nothing," Roy lied. "It's just something that happened at work today."

Anne pulled the comforter down to her waist and sat up against the headboard.

"Oh dear. Have they been talking about downsizing further?"

"No."

"Did Dr. Thurston start in on you again about your book not being published? That mean old toad's always been a thorn in your side. It's only gotten worse since Molly died. I hate to say it, but he was such an impossible man to deal with that I think she's better..."

"No, Anne. My colleagues aren't getting the best of me." Roy's tone was even and calm. In the dim orange glow of their bedroom he was somehow more in control than when the lights were off. His wife, on the other hand, was growing frantic with her inability to guess his dilemma. The passionate one had sparked the conversation but was quickly losing her composure. The man of science was cool as an executioner and equally as shrouded.

"Have they taken the coffee machine out of the break room?" came the last vain attempt to solve the mystery. Roy had had enough of the charade.

"No, Anne. Everything is fine in the break room. My coworkers are the same boring middle-aged men they've always been. There wasn't talk of another round of lay-offs, and the sandwich you made for me this morning was delicious." A faint and rare smile shot across Roy's lips at the addition of that last one he'd added for good measure. He was confident that it went unnoticed. Sometimes, when Anne wasn't paying attention, her husband was quite the comedian in spite of himself.

"Well then what is it? Why have you been pretending to be asleep for the past hour in the hopes that I'd drift off without you? What are you trying to spare me from with your silence? I'm your wife, Roy. Your partner."

It was suddenly obvious that Anne had been watching her empowering television programs again. He could tell when she'd been inspired by some overweight talk show hostess by the way that her words failed to sound like her own. Cable television was one invention that Roy wished had never been created. Not all scientists were on the same team.

"It's nothing that'd concern you, dear. It's a minor crisis that only another lab rat would cringe at. I can assure you that it won't affect our time-share at the shore this summer or my pension plan. After tomorrow it won't ever cross my mind again until I review my notes sometime down the road. It was an odd quirk in a simple procedure, something that couldn't even be considered an experiment. A culture I'd been growing in a petri dish reacted in a way I'd never seen before in all my years of research. I added a solution that was supposed to turn red upon contact with the control substance, but instead it turned blue. Bright blue. It's a process that we do multiple times a week in the lab and it shouldn't have happened that way. I tested the compounds present. I charted and diagrammed the chemical equations. I asked Dr. Thurston if he'd switched vials on me as a practical joke and he almost threatened to file a grievance. None of it got me any closer to the answer. For the first time in my life I'm completely stumped with no further means of pursuing the truth and I'm having a hard time chalking it up to one of the world's unexplainable phenomena. There. Are you satisfied?" After giving his speech the corners of Roy's lips were thick with white spittle. That faint smile was long gone.

"No. No, I'm not," Anne said, wiping the crud from the mouth of her beloved. "I knew I should've married that nice young carpenter like my mother told me to thirty years ago. Have some water. You're dehydrated and probably losing what's left of that overworked mind of yours."

She picked up the glass of water that they'd always kept on their nightstand and never used, thrusting it towards Roy's dumbfounded face. He sipped obediently from the glass staring wide-eyed at his bride, stiff and tense and put in his place. The tides had turned again. Anne had managed to get her husband back. After turning the light back off Roy was snoring within minutes. Anne listened lovingly for awhile before following suit. Part of her wanted to wake him and put him out of his misery, but she refrained. Perhaps it'd do Roy some good to fall asleep thinking his formulas had finally let him down. Maybe he'd dream in color, like that bright blue. She'd wait until morning to remind him of the date. That Thurston was sure a riot. If only her May flowers would come a little sooner for once...