Текст книги "Forever Loved"

Автор книги: Deanna Roy

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

17: Gavin

We’d been sitting in those chairs all day, but nobody had spoken a word.

Corabelle’s parents sat in the far corner of the ICU waiting area, her mom knitting and her dad reading the newspaper for what had to be the tenth time.

I had given up on contacting her when I sent a message and heard her phone chirp from her mother’s bag. Rosa had messaged me three times too, but I’d found a way to make her ringtone silent and the messages automatically move to a buried folder, so I didn’t notice her anymore.

The nurse who’d found me sleeping on the floor by Corabelle’s bed had been nice about it. She led me out into the waiting room and said the staff would let me know if she could be visited.

The doctors never spoke directly to me, but the waiting room was small enough that when they stopped by to update Corabelle’s parents, I could hear. I knew she’d been put on the ventilator only as a precaution, to help her lungs, and that it was coming out sometime today.

I felt utterly helpless.

Jenny breezed through the door, pausing to look around, then hurried toward me. “Oh my God, how is she?”

Corabelle’s parents looked up, watching us, eyes on Jenny’s vivid pink mop, wild and unrestrained above her green coat. She looked like a Pez dispenser.

“Still in ICU.”

“You said that in your text. But really. What happened?”

I shrugged, but didn’t miss the way Corabelle’s mom stiffened, her knitting needles still. She knew something about what had led to the relapse, or complication, or whatever the hell it was. “Ask her parents. They had me thrown out.”

Jenny followed my line of sight to the Rothefords. “Huh,” she said, her voice low now. “I can see where she gets her looks, but what is with the geektastic dad?”

I stifled a laugh. “He’s very teacherly, isn’t he?”

“Is he?”

“Nah. Banking or accounting or something like that.”

“I can see it.” She turned back to me. “I thought she was getting better.”

“She was. Sitting up. Walking.” And responding, I thought, remembering the night after I snuck back in. Damn. Hopefully that hadn’t put her over the edge.

Jenny propped her black fuzzy boots on a chair across the aisle. “She was pretty upset at you yesterday. You weren’t responding to her texts. She seemed to think she was getting out, but you had her keys.”

“She was in ICU when I got here.”

“What happened to you yesterday?”

I looked beyond her to the wide desk of the ICU, flanked by doors. No way was I telling Jenny about my jaunt to Mexico. “Work, stuff. I came when I could.”

She unzipped her puffy green coat. “So what’s the story with you and the parents?”

“Not too friendly.”

“They still mad about your exit strategy?”

“Probably from now till the end of time.”

Jenny tugged a turtle-shaped backpack onto her lap. “Can’t blame them.” She unzipped a pocket and withdrew a shiny packet of chocolate-covered espresso beans. “For Corabelle. She goes nuts for these.”

I took the gift, tied in a bright ribbon that Jenny had decorated with the words “Cora Pumpkin Spice Frozen Latte Dish Room Wallbanger.”

I had to laugh. “Nice.”

“Kiss her for me.” She leaned over and mussed my hair. “But probably not until you’ve had a shower. Dude, you would scare small children.”

Her words made me think of Manuelito on the porch, holding his green truck. I had to swallow before I forced a light answer. “Scaring small children is my specialty.”

Jenny jumped up. “Let me know if she gets back in a room. She was out cold the first time I came. I missed her whole lucid period.” She took a few bouncy steps away, then turned back around. “You all—” she said loudly, getting the attention of the whole room, “should help those people,” she pointed to Corabelle’s parents, “and this guy,” she aimed a finger at me, “remember that they have something in common. A girl in there.” She thrust her hands over her head to gesture to the ICU.

With a fierce nod, she loped out of the room.

Corabelle’s dad looked ready to pop, his face was so red. “Who was that?” he asked.

“Don’t shout so,” Mrs. Rotheford said. “Gavin, come over here.”

I unfolded myself from the chair and moved down the row to sit opposite them. This was unexpected. “That’s Jenny. She works with Corabelle at the coffee shop. They also take astronomy together. We all do. The three of us.”

“She seems very…original,” Mrs. Rotheford said.

“Loud,” Mr. Rotheford added.

“Both. She’s good for Corabelle. Keeps her from getting too serious.”

Mrs. Rotheford set down her knitting. “I’ve been wondering something.” She glanced over at her husband, who was staring at his newspaper as if I didn’t exist. “Why is it that Corabelle is working at a place like that? She had such a good job in New Mexico.”

Hell. More questions that I shouldn’t be fielding. I was a Class A bullshitter, though. “She needed a break from all that pressure. Slinging beans is easy work.”

“At least she has scholarships,” Mr. Rotheford said, surprising us. “Hate to think how much debt she’d be in if she didn’t.”

So they didn’t know any of it. Why Corabelle had left, that she’d lost everything. I didn’t blame her. For a girl like her, the pride her family felt was everything. I was lucky I had no such constraints.

Time to make good on the promises I’d made on the floor of the ICU. I leaned over and fished Corabelle’s keys out of my back pocket. “You guys might want these. I went over there and took out her trash and checked on things. But at work I can’t get to my phone, grease and all.” I held them out. “You are up here all day.”

Her father took the keys greedily, clutching them in his fist. I felt the power shift again, like I had when I’d let him stand over me. I recognized that he needed to feel some control, since so much had been taken away from us.

A nurse wound her way through the chairs. “Are you all the Rothefords?”

“We are.” Corabelle’s father gestured to himself and his wife.

“I’m Gavin,” I told her.

“Ah, so you’re the young man she keeps asking about.” The nurse smiled. “She’s doing fine. I think the doctor updated you?” At their nod, she went on. “We should see her moved back to a regular room tomorrow if tonight goes well.”

Mrs. Rotheford let out a relieved sigh. “Can we see her?”

“I have the doctor’s okay to let you in for just a few minutes.”

All three of us stood up, but Corabelle’s father shot daggers at me. “He’s not—”

Mrs. Rotheford squeezed his arm to cut him off. “He’s like family.”

The nurse nodded. “It will be fine.”

We followed her out of the waiting room and through the pass-code door. The curtains were still as I remembered, and Corabelle lay with her head just slightly elevated near the center.

Mrs. Rotheford stumbled when she saw all the monitors, and I knew exactly how she was feeling after last night. At least they had been spared the big blue tube snaking into her mouth and the wheeze of the machines.

“Hi, Mom,” Corabelle said, her voice cracked and weak. “You guys look terrible.”

“Not half as bad as you,” her dad said.

Her eyes rested on me, then back to her father. “You call a truce?”

I came around the opposite side and knelt next to her. “Don’t worry about us. You doing better?”

“I’d rather be in astronomy.”

“Now I know you’re delirious,” I said. “I better call a nurse.”

She lifted her hand to smooth back my hair. “You look like you slept on the floor.”

I glanced up at her parents, who stared at her like she was going to disappear any minute. “You heard about that?”

“It was quite the talk of the nurses.” Her eyes grew wide and she sucked in a breath, then coughed weakly. Her next breath was wet and rattling, and seemed to take all her strength to pull in.

I took her hand, and she squeezed it.

Her mother held on to her other arm above the IV. “You shouldn’t talk,” she said. “You still have a long way to go.”

Corabelle nodded and closed her eyes. “No more taking off down hallways.”

I frowned. What was she talking about?

Her parents looked shaken and guilty. Something had happened. I lifted her hand to my lips. “I’ll be right here. I’m not leaving for a minute.”

She opened her eyes again. “I know.” She turned her head to her dad. “Be nice to him, please?”

Mr. Rotheford nodded, his eyes glistening. “Of course, baby.”

“You used to be close.” Her voice began to trail off.

The nurse came up behind us. “Let’s let her rest. You all should take a little break and go home. There won’t be any more visiting her until tomorrow.”

I laid her hand back on the bed, clenching my jaw to keep from getting too emotional.

Her parents, ever obedient, followed the nurse right out, but I lingered as long as I could get away with, until she stood in the doorway and said, “It’s time.”

Mr. and Mrs. Rotheford waited out by the desk. When I came out, he passed me Corabelle’s keys. “Seems like you’ve been taking care of things.”

I held the heavy ring in my palm. “I have tried, sir.”

“We’ll see you tomorrow, I trust?”

“Absolutely.”

“All right then.” He turned to the door and walked with his wife over to the elevators.

I stared at the keys and the silver butterfly on a chain that held them together. I wasn’t sure what had made him change his mind. It felt like that moment in the parking lot of the funeral home, when I was screwing up, walking out, and he had told me I could do it, I could help his daughter.

I would not let him down.

18: Corabelle

The lights recessed into the ceiling changed in style and brightness as we moved from the ICU through the hallways and back to one of the main floors. Two guys in blue scrubs controlled the bed, and I forced myself to keep my eyes on the panels above to avoid feeling embarrassed as we rolled down hallways where normal healthy people could walk past. My face was half covered with a surgical mask. No one would know if they were being protected from me, or me from them.

The nurse assured me she would let Gavin know that I had moved. Even though it was six a.m. and way before normal visiting hours, he was out there, she said. To cheer me up, they had put the words “Gavin Report” on a whiteboard by my head, crossing out “On the floor” and “Behind the curtain” to say “In the chairs.”

We trundled down a long hallway, different from the one I had been on before, and one of the orderlies opened a wide door. This room was similar in layout to the last one, but instead of gray walls, it was painted a soothing slate blue.

The team worked to set up the IV stands and blood pressure cuff and oxygen monitor. I wished I could get the oxygen line out of my nose, but the doctor told me as they discharged me from ICU that it would probably stay another day. They had been giving me suction treatments, a horrifying vacuum through a tube they stuck down my nose. I was not going to let a single soul in the room during those and hoped they would be done with them soon.

“Can we get you anything?” one of the men asked.

I shook my head.

“Your nurse will check in with you soon.” He glanced at the whiteboard. “Looks like you’re getting Suzie. She’s a good one.”

After they left, the room was quiet and still. I didn’t have any books. No one to talk to. Not even my phone to check. Solitude I was familiar with, but having no type of diversion was going to kill me.

A bouncy young nurse in scrubs emblazoned with ducks breezed in. “Hello, Corabelle,” she said as she checked all the tubes and wires. “I’m Suzie. I’ll be with you until evening.”

I stared at her ducks, my throat thick. The cartoon images were either the same brand as the ones I had put on Finn that last time, or remarkably similar. I had avoided prints like that ever since, but here they were, leaning over my hospital bed. Maybe they were a sign that he was watching, like the butterfly by the ambulance door.

“Is Gavin coming?” I asked.

Suzie’s face puckered. “I’m not sure. Is that your…husband?” She hesitated, I knew, because I didn’t seem old enough to be married.

“Yes,” I said. Why not? “He was in the ICU waiting room.”

“I can buzz over there and make sure they tell him you’ve moved.”

“Thank you.”

But all that was unnecessary, as after a quick knock, his dark head peered through the doorway.

“We’re here,” Suzie said. “You must be the husband.”

His eyebrows shot up and a mischievous grin crossed his face. My heart caught, and I caught a brief flash of what it had been like to be in high school, without any doubts about him at all, just reveling in the harmony we always found when we were together.

“I am indeed.” He strode into the room and dragged a chair next to the bed. “You’re looking better,” he said to me. The back of his hand brushed my cheek. “You’re pink again.”

The nurse picked up her iPad. “You’re allowed water, so I’ll get you some. And a soft breakfast will come in a few hours.” She flicked through several screens. “Pain meds are in your IV for now.” She looked up. “I think you’re all set. Is the bed in a good position?”

“Can I go a little higher?”

She nodded and reached for the button. “Just don’t tire yourself out.”

My head came up a few inches, and breathing was a lot easier again.

“Thank you,” Gavin said.

She headed for the door. “Buzz me if you need anything.”

He waited for her to disappear, then said, “Alone at last.”

“Next time I try to be all dramatic, just tie me to something until I calm down.” I felt a cough coming on and gripped the sides of the beds. The gurgle in my chest was something I could not get used to, and as the tickle grew into a full-on expulsion, I could tell goo was going to come out.

I pointed at the sink area of the room. “Paper towel,” I wheezed, trying not to suck the gunk back into my throat.

Gavin jumped up and snatched several sheets, hurtling back to me with a spryness I remembered seeing on the track field, back when he’d been forced to do a sport by his father. He’d been great, except that doing it for his dad was a huge demotivator.

“Turn around,” I told him, and when he was looking the other way, spat the gunk into the paper towel. This had been going on since midnight, when I woke up with the urge to expel the contents of my chest. I balled up the towel and shoved it under the sheets. “Okay.”

When he settled back in the chair, his face was distressed. “You all right?”

“It’s got to come out.” I shrugged. “Hospitals are not sexy.”

He grabbed my hand. “You’ll get out.”

“I was hoping to be in class this morning. It’s Monday. Astronomy.”

“No chance of that.”

I sank back against the pillow, watching him. I couldn’t get enough of that black mop, those sideburns, his jaw. Sometimes I felt I was seeing him for the first time.

He played with my fingers, working up to something. “So, what happened? Why were you out of your room?”

I figured he’d get to that. “Parents. Dad.”

He nodded. “He’s definitely holding a grudge.” He shifted to one side and tugged a key ring from his pocket. My keys. “I gave him these back, but then he returned them, saying I was doing a good job watching your place.”

“That’s progress.” I had planned to let his disappearance go, but the keys had been a big factor in everything that happened. “So, Friday? Where did you go?”

His expression never wavered. He had always been better at holding in his feelings than I was, but normally he didn’t keep things from me. This time, though, I could see he had something to hide.

“Elbows in a grease pit.”

“All day?”

His jaw tensed. “One of the women – the paid ones – tried to take advantage of me. I had to deal with it.”

Bitterness that he’d ever been with women like that burned in my belly. “How?”

“Just got me tangled up in her family business. I got out of it. It’s fine now.”

I noticed now a nick on his chin, a cut surrounded by a bruise. “Come here,” I said.

He leaned in, expecting I might want to kiss him, but I ran my fingers across the injury. “Were you in a fight?”

“I get in a few scrapes here and there.”

“Since when?”

“It’s in the past, Corabelle. I play pool. I place bets. Sometimes drunk people get pissy.” He sounded exasperated with me.

“This is not the past. This is now.” The extra volume in my voice caused another coughing fit to begin and I sucked in air, pointing back to the paper towels.

This time he pulled the whole metal container off the wall and set it on the rolling table by the bed. Typical Gavin.

I snatched a couple from the bottom and scraped my tongue with the rough paper to extract the goo. God, this was too much.

He sat in the chair, looking at the floor, waiting for the spell to pass. I balled up yet another round and shoved it in my stash.

Gavin must have seen that movement, as he hopped up and snagged a trash can from the corner.

“Thanks.” I dumped the balled-up paper into the bin.

He stared at the plastic container for a moment as if he wanted to comment on it, then set it back down. As much as I wanted to ask him what was on his mind, if the whole towel thing was too disgusting for him, I didn’t want to know. Probably the same as he didn’t want to know how I felt about what happened Friday.

Before I could prompt him again about the bruise, he changed the subject. “Jenny came to see you.” He reached around for his jacket on the back of his chair. “She brought you this.” He passed over a packet of chocolate-covered espresso beans. “I didn’t even know you liked them.”

“I do.” I held the packet on my belly and lay back. I was so tired. Maybe it was best to just let it go for now. “Remember how you came over that night, the first night, and just talked to me?”

He leaned forward on the bed, running his fingers up and down my arm. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget anything about that night.”

“Can you do it again?” I closed my eyes. “Elementary school. That would be good.” The past was easier. Simple times.

His voice was smooth and exactly the tonic it had always been. “So remember Mrs. Grady?”

I smiled. “Yes.”

“She had a bottle of cough syrup in her drawer, and back then we thought that’s what it really was. One time, Michael Rollins decided to steal it and take it on the playground.”

His words rolled over me like the sea sounds on the white-noise machine we once had. I didn’t think I was tired, but his story kept skipping parts, and I realized that it wasn’t him, but me, and that sleep was going to snatch me away.

* * *

Gavin was still on the chair, looking at his phone, when I woke up.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

“No word from my parents?” I tried to prop myself up, but it was too much effort.

“It’s only eight a.m.”

“Oh, so I didn’t sleep long.”

“Nope.”

“I’m used to waking up and having days pass.”

He laughed. “I wish I could do that.”

“I guess they have my phone still.”

“They have all your things. But I would expect to see them anytime now.”

I fumbled for the button to the bed and buzzed the head up a little so it was easier to breathe. “I did get loose of the social worker, at least.”

“Really?” A dark expression crossed his face.

“You think I should talk to her?”

“No, no. I mean, not unless you want to.” He stuffed his phone back in his pocket.

“I just want to get out of here.”

“Me too.”

A knock at the door made us both tense up. “Playtime’s over,” I said.

But the face that peeked in wasn’t my mother or father, but surrounded by tiny sprigged-out pigtails.

“Tina?” I pushed the button to sit up even more. “You’re here already?”

“They flew me in for a thirty-day contract. If it works out, they’ll keep me on.”

“Really?”

“Yup. I set up the art room yesterday, but you were in ICU, so I couldn’t see you.” She stood at the end of the bed, all respectable looking in a blue ribbed sweater and long black skirt. Only when I saw her legs did I see her personality in her outfit – black-and-blue-striped leggings.

She turned to Gavin. “You must be the boy.”

“Tina, this is Gavin.”

She extended a hand and they shook. “Nice to meet you.” She turned back to me. “So what’s all this?” She swirled her hand in the air.

I glanced over at Gavin as he shifted in his chair.

Tina missed nothing. “Something happened.”

“I had a mishap,” I said.

She glanced down at my wrists, a movement neither Gavin nor I missed.

“No, not like that. I mean, I ended up in the ocean, and I caught pneumonia.”

Tina looked back and forth between us. “Interesting timing.”

I didn’t know what else to say. I had only met Tina once. She was the one who had convinced me to come clean to Gavin.

“We’re good,” I said. “I told him everything.”

“And he’s still here. That’s a promising sign.”

We stared awkwardly at each other for another minute.

“Well,” Tina said, “I have to go set up for my first art therapy. I just wanted to come by and say, ‘Thank you.’ It’s a career move I didn’t see coming.”

“I think you’ll be great,” I said. “Who knows, I might end up in your class.”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “That might not be a bad thing, you know. Sometimes we have to admit that we can’t do everything on our own.”

Gavin stiffened, and I could see he was taking this all wrong. “I’m here now,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”

Tina turned to him. “I believe you. Just – just don’t take anything for granted. It’s a slippery slope.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

She held his gaze for a moment, challenging him. I could see she knew all the ways men could fail and expected him to do the same. “I’ll drop by again later.” She waved and slipped through the door.

“What’s the story with her?” Gavin asked.

“I met her a week ago, after she did a suicide talk.”

Gavin snapped his fingers. “I remember her. She’s come before. I’ve seen posters.”

“Yeah.”

His forehead creased. “So you went to a suicide talk?”

“No, I just drove her to the airport after.” I realized I was giving him the same runaround I’d done with the social worker. It shouldn’t be that way. “The doctor thought it would be a good idea. She lost a baby too. He lived three hours.”

Gavin looked at the door as if he could see the pain in her wake. “She had a tragic air about her.”

“She’s been some bad places.”

“Suicide, obviously, if she does talks.”

“Yeah.”

The muscle in his jaw started to twitch, and I braced myself for what he might say next. After a lengthy pause, he asked, “Do you – do you think about that?”

“No,” I said reflexively. “I mean, not really. I guess I do things that are probably…not…typical.” He didn’t know about the black, my escape. It was in my past, and I had planned to leave it there. But then I had just done it two days ago.

“Corabelle, when I was at your apartment,” he paused, trying to find the words.

My brain raced. What might he have found? I didn’t keep a journal. I never left any clues about what I did.

“I took out your trash.”

I knew where this was going. “You found the bags.”

“With holes in them.”

I pictured my moment in the dorm, the sack on my head, throwing up into the plastic. “It’s a quirk I have.”

“Why do you do it?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Try.”

“I had a rough time, a year ago, after the professor.” I stopped, squeezing my eyes shut.

He reached for my hand. “You can tell me anything.”

No secrets. We’d agreed. “I had been doing this thing when I got distressed, where I hyperventilate until I sort of…black out.”

“Like pass out? All the way? Unconscious?”

I nodded.

He expelled his breath in a rush. “Okay.”

“And one night, that night, I guess I thought I would take it a step further, with the bag.”

“Corabelle…”

I turned to him, seeing the distress all over his face. “It was okay. My body saved itself. But since then, I just didn’t want the temptation. The risk.”

He brought my fingers to his lips, warm against the chill of my skin. “I’m going to be here from now on.”

“I know. I’ll be fine.”

“When was the last time you did it?”

“The bags? Not since that one time.”

“The blacking out.”

My chest hurt so much more with his question. To lie? Or tell the truth? “Friday.”

“Here? In the hospital?”

“Yes.”

He held my hand in both of his now, his head bowed as if he couldn’t bear to look at me.

“I’m sorry if I seem too crazy. I get it if it’s too much for you.”

His grip on me was so tight, like he was hanging on to the last rope before being cast out to sea. “You’re not too crazy. Whatever there is about you, I accept it. We’ll work it out. We’ll figure it out.”

My belly heaved with the release of all the emotion I’d held so tightly inside. “I love you, Gavin. I don’t know how I got through those years without you. I should have looked for you. I should have known where you’d be.”

“You did find me.” He lowered our hands and pressed them to his chest so he could look at me again. His eyes were so blue against the slate walls, bright below the dark mop of hair. I could picture him in every stage of his life, from little boy, to lanky adolescent, to the man I’d surrendered to so many times since we rediscovered each other. “You came right to my door.”

Another knock surely meant my parents were arriving. Gavin took his last private moment with me to lean across the bed and kiss me lightly on the lips. “I’ll love you all your life,” he whispered.

Then the room overflowed with people and flowers and chatter, and once more, life moved forward.