Better Living Through Fiction
Cindy McCray had a favorite saying. It was “if you’ve got your health, then you’ve got everything.”
She learned it from her father and it became her mantra. She told it to the grocery store clerk and to the person who did her nails and to the local city bus driver. She shouted it from the rooftops and told everyone she met for it amazed her how few realized it. Every morning she checked that her limbs were working and that her breathing was sound and then she thanked God.
Her husband Sam was the superstitious sort and said that if you think too much about your health you'll jinx it. He also said that if you get too high over good health then you’ll get too low when you’re sick but Cindy always seemed to be in such excellent health that his theory went untested.
On her 28th birthday Cindy said that celebrating a birthday every year was too infrequent. "Our time on earth is too precious and brief to recognize it annually – why not measure it in days?" So every day at 10:38am (the time she was born) she’d sing Happy Birthday to herself and she'd sing it again at 5:19pm for Sam (the time he was born) and they'd eat a piece of birthday cake. (She didn’t put candles on it due to the city fire code.) Her husband, in putting up with it, wasn’t sure if he was edging closer to sanctity or insanity, or whether there was really any difference. He knew he loved her despite her eccentricities. He also knew when his real birthday came it didn’t feel like his real birthday. It felt like just another day.
When Cindy turned 12,723 she drove to the store as was her custom. (“Cake supplies don’t grow on trees!” she told Sam, when asked about her grocery receipts.) She was proceeding through an intersection when a huge green truck tried to make a left at the same intersection. She slammed on the brakes but it was too late – there was the shock of impact and she looked down amazed at the sheer wrongness of seeing bone jutting from skin. It nearly made her vomit for bone was meant to be used but never seen. She lost consciousness before she could check the extent of other injuries.
Her condition stabilized and Sam held her hand in the intensive care unit. He feared greatly, not so much for her life now but for how she would handle her ruined health.
“Honey…,” she said with great effort.
“Yes?”
“It’s almost 5:19…”
He cried.
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