I Wish You Happy: A Novel

by Kerry Anne King

  “Not now,” he says, as if I’m a child clamoring for a treat. “Tomorrow, maybe. Go home. Eat something. Get some sleep. This has all been a shock for you.”

  When I don’t budge from the chair he stashed me in, he sighs, squats down in front of me, and takes both of my hands in his. “Rae. There’s nothing you can do here. Take care of yourself first, and then you’ll be up to visiting her in the morning. If she takes a turn for the worse, I’ll call you. Deal?”

  I nod, past words for the moment.

  “I’ve got another emergency surgery. Gotta go.” He smiles one more time, then leaves me, cold and very much alone.

  My fault, as usual. I refused the second date, and with it, the possibility of building something with Max. What would it be like, now, to have a man who would hold me, shelter me, comfort me?

  “Let me buy you dinner,” Mason says. “Please.”

  Mason is not promising in the comfort-and-shelter department. I shake my head. “I don’t think I can do food.”

  Even as I say it, my stomach does an empty wobble. I trace back through the events of the day, realizing that I haven’t eaten so much as a breath mint. Breakfast was preempted by Oscar’s death, which feels like days ago, rather than hours. I missed lunch because I was late for Bernie, and then there was Kat.

  “A drink, then,” Mason says.

  Maybe he’s hitting on me, but all my radar is picking up is an uncertain relief, an emptiness, a restless irritability that might be mine or his. My emotional super sensors feel fuzzy and full of static, blown up by a volume overload.

  “You’d be doing me a favor. I don’t want to be alone.” The cuffs of his tailored pants are deformed by water and mud. There’s a grass stain on one knee. Despite the graying hair he looks young and vulnerable, as much in need of comforting as I am.

  “Do you always travel without your wife?” I glance pointedly at the white line circling his ring finger.

  “Divorced.” There’s a hitch in his voice, and my heart softens. I’ve never bought into the opinion I hear from other women, that divorced men are dangerous, hormone driven and desperate. It’s the emotionally available men who scare me.

  Decision made, I stretch and push myself up out of the chair. All of the tension has drained out of my body, leaving me floppy and limp.

  “Want me to drive?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I’ll meet you there. Sports bar, next to Benny’s Inn.”

  We walk in silence out of the hospital and into the cooling evening air. I feel incomplete and unfinished, like I’ve walked away from work in the middle of a shift. I sit there long after Mason’s rental turns out of the parking lot, my mind looping over and through the events of the day, caught up in a futile search for meaning.

  The bar is loud and crowded and drowns out the thought loop in my head. Normally this sort of crowd is a torment for me, my emotional radar system picking up emotions faster than I can process them. But tonight, numb as I am, I find the press of bodies and clamor of voices unexpectedly comforting.

  Mason has commandeered a small two-person table at the far edge of the room. I order nachos and a beer, but Mason starts in with whiskey, straight up, and keeps them coming.

  “You driving far?” I ask, watching the second shot vanish down his throat in two long swallows.

  “Staying right next door at the inn. Figured I might as well.”

  Relieved of the potential responsibility of driving a drunk home to bed at the end of the evening, I pick at my food and sip at my beer pretty much in silence. It’s not until Mason is on drink number four and I’ve reached the bottom of the bottle that I dare to ask him what’s on my mind.

  “What did you mean, earlier, about Kat?”

  “What about her?” His eyes are fuzzy. His hair, short and tightly curled, still manages to look rumpled. His tie is crooked.

  “A woman on a mission, you said.”

  Mason under the influence is no longer a man in a hurry. He adjusts his little paper coaster so it’s in the middle of the table and sets his empty glass down with a little thud.

  “I’m going to tell you a thing,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. I wish he wouldn’t, but I can see there will be no stopping him. When the waitress swings by I ask for another beer. I figure I’m going to need it.

  Mason leans in closer, his tie dangling nearly in my nachos. “Truth time. It was my fault my wife left.”

  I steel myself for what I’m sure is coming, wishing myself well away from here. I should have known better. I did know better.

  “You’ll have noticed I’m an obnoxious asshole,” he continues. “I drink too much. I work too much. She was my second wife, another failure in a long list of disasters. Plus, she went for the jugular with her financial demands, and she had a shark attorney.”

  “You were cheating on her, then.”

  “What?”

  “She wouldn’t have gotten your money if you weren’t cheating on her. Or beating her. Were you beating her, Mason?” Alcohol seems to have unleashed my own mean streak, and I’m a little shocked to hear the words leave my mouth.

  Mason laughs, though, as if I’m being charming and witty. “Work is my mistress,” he says. “Who has time for two women? Or the energy. I don’t know how men do it. Nope. Never said she got the money, just that she went for it. It was ugly.”

  I’m still waiting for the punch line. “And?”

  “I let her have the house. I moved into this hotel in Chicago, working, drinking. Drinking a lot, to be honest. And it gets to where there doesn’t seem to be much point to anything. You know? One night I take a good look around me. The room is sterile and cold and empty. I’ve got nobody. My exes are teaching the kids to hate me. Nobody loves me or would care if I was gone. This is what I told myself, anyway. And so, I pull all the towels out of the bathroom and lay them out around a chair. Get out my handgun, load it, and actually hold it to my head.

  “That’s a strange sensation. Where do you put the muzzle? I’ve heard horror stories about guys who meant to take themselves out and blasted off their jaw or half of their face, and failed to die. I try it under my jaw. In my mouth. At my temple. Nothing feels right.”

  “And then?”

  “And then nothing. I went to bed. Woke up in the morning, put the gun away, and went on with my life.”

  He pauses to take a swig out of his new glass and catches the expression on my face.

  “Don’t look at me like that. You’ve thought about it. Fess up. Not a gun, maybe. But something. Everybody’s got a method in mind.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Sure you do. Everybody does.”

  He believes what he’s saying. I can see that. But I have never in my life had the idea of killing myself so much as drift through my head. I can guess where he’s going with this confession, and I don’t want to hear it. Too late.

  “Take this Kat, now,” Mason says. “She had her own method. Not quite as sure as a gun, but these things aren’t logical, you know?”

  The only thing I know is that I need to get away before I come unglued.

  I shove my chair back from the table. “Thanks for dinner. You’ve got this, right?” Not waiting for acknowledgment or a good-bye, I work my way through the crowded bar, my eyes focused on the door.

  It’s dark outside, cool now, with a breeze that smells of grass and dust and distant rain; I click the “Lock” button on my key fob, leaving my car where it’s at and heading home on foot. Beer and nachos slosh around dangerously in my stomach. I don’t realize I’m crying until the breeze picks up and chills my cheeks. I brush the tears away, feeling anger well up again to overtake the grief.

  Out of all of the other cars and drivers on the road, Kat chose me. Used me.

  Who does a thing like that?

  Well, if she wanted somebody to take her out, she picked the wrong person. If there is one thing at which I excel, it’s deflecting other people’s plans for me. For the first ti
me in this long and crazy day, I feel free, the righteous tide of anger clean and bracing as a north wind. Tomorrow I will shake off this whole thing. No thoughts about Mason or Kat. No visits to intensive care. Just my usual routine, and maybe I’ll take on the orphaned kittens I told Jenny I couldn’t handle a couple of days ago.

  By the time I reach home, I’ve managed to convince myself that nothing in my life has changed.

  Chapter Four

  By morning, all of my good intentions are undone. At 10:05 a.m. I show up to ICU with a get-well-soon card and a bouquet of flowers.

  “How is she?”

  Van, the nurse on duty, looks like the wrong side of a night shift. His hair stands up in a bush on top of his head; a beard shadow darkens his jaw.

  “Hey, Rae. Wondered when you’d be up.”

  “News travels fast.”

  “News of this kind, for sure. How are you?” He emphasizes the you, giving me the benefit of his full attention so that I know he’s really asking, not just throwing me casual politeness.

  I smile, to demonstrate how well I’m taking everything. “I’m good. A little sleep and some coffee cures everything. You, on the other hand, look like hell.”

  “Short-staffed again,” he says. “Day shift couldn’t make it in. I’m working ’til they find me a replacement. Last I heard, that might be by noon.”

  While I feel for the guy, I’m grateful he doesn’t have the energy to challenge my own story. In reality, I slept restlessly and woke repeatedly to the sound of twisting metal, moans of pain, and the sensation of running over a human body. What I saw in the mirror this morning was not advertisement material for beauty sleep.

  Van looks back at his screen, clicks a button, types a few words.

  “She’s critical, but stable. We’ve got her on oxygen, but no need for intubation, at least not yet. Urine was bloody, but now it’s running clear. Vital signs are stable. Her head CT came back okay, so that’s good news. Head injuries take out more bikers than anything else.”

  “She was wearing a helmet.”

  “Not much protection if the head gets squashed or hit hard enough. Anyway, she was lucky.”

  My mouth tastes metallic, an unwanted image arising in my brain of Kat’s head popping like a squashed grape, and I swallow, hard. “Did we find her family?”

  “Not yet. No ID on her, and she’s been too sedated and out of it to talk to us. The cops are trying to trace her. Nobody in Colville seems to know who she is.”

  “Kat,” I tell him. “Her name is Kat.” From the desk I can look through a glass wall into a room where a slight figure lies inert, hooked up to monitors and IVs.

  “We got that much,” Van says. “Ambulance crew said you might have saved her life, you know.”

  “I didn’t do anything. Look, Van, can I go see her?”

  “I don’t know why not. She probably won’t know you’re there.”

  All at once I’m not sure I want to see her. I could leave the flowers and go. Nobody would judge me. Nobody except me.

  Coward, I tell myself, and tiptoe through the door into Kat’s room.

  It’s hard to see the woman for the tubes. Tape distorts one side of her face, anchoring a suction tube in her nostril. The other cheek is the color of a ripe plum. An oxygen mask covers her nose and mouth. Her blood pressure and oxygen levels are stable. The EKG beeps out a reassuring and steady eighty beats per minute. Like Van said, the urine flowing into the catheter bag is clear.

  Both hands rest on top of the sheets, bandaged, and I remember her hand and mine sealed together with the warm wetness of her blood, the way she wouldn’t let me go.

  Anger is easier than grief, Bernie always says. It’s true. Guilt settles down on my shoulders as my anger dissipates. I pull a chair up close to the bed and lay my hand gently over her bandaged one.

  “Hey, Kat, it’s Rae. You know, the one who ran over you. Can you hear me?”

  Her eyelids flutter, but her eyes don’t open. She doesn’t move. I bolster myself with Van’s report that there’s no brain injury. Pain and medications. That’s all. I can’t imagine how her body must hurt, from head to toe. My own joints ache, my knees bruised from kneeling on the pavement.

  I clear my throat and move my hands to my lap. “Well, okay, then. I just wanted to make sure you’re doing all right. The nurses are awesome here. Get well, okay? I’m sorry about your bike.”

  I sound like a babbling idiot.

  As I start to shove the chair back, her lips move, but I don’t catch what she’s saying. The oxygen mask obliterates everything. Her eyes open and focus on me, and she lifts a hand to paw at the obstruction.

  I ease her hand back down onto the bed. “Easy, you need that. Your lungs have been hurt.”

  Her lips move again, and this time I lift the mask away, just for a minute.

  “Stay,” she croaks.

  Alarms go off all over the place. Oxygen level falling, heart rate rising. Something has kinked in the IV tubing, and the pump starts beeping. Van comes running in to see what’s going on. He replaces the mask, adjusting the strap that holds it in place. Kat’s eyes, panicked, cling to mine, and I pull my chair close again.

  “Easy,” I tell her. “You’re going to be fine.”

  “Visitors might not be the best idea,” Van says, frowning at the monitor. Her heart rate has jumped up over one hundred.

  Kat’s right hand wanders to rest over the broken place in her ribs. Her left reaches for me. I lay it gently down on the bed and place my own over top of it, weighting it there. Her eyelids drift closed, and she slips back into unconsciousness.

  “She was trying to talk,” I say. “I won’t touch anything again. I swear.”

  “Nurses are the worst,” Van mutters, walking around the bed, checking all the tubes and monitors as if he suspects me of tampering. “You know better. What did she say? Anything about family? Someone we could call?”

  I shake my head, not wanting the sound of my own voice to cover the memory of hers.

  Stay. That one whispered word breaks through every one of my carefully built barriers. Kat has nobody. No family, no support, barely even a voice just now. Warmth fills my chest. There’s no more room for anger and confusion, only the certainty that if she needs me, I’ll be here.

  All that morning I sit by Kat’s bed, soothing her when she stirs, watching the monitors and tubes and machinery as if my will alone can keep things operating smoothly. The day nurse, a woman I don’t know, works around me like I’m part of the furniture.

  Twice Kat wakes up, thrashing around until her wild eyes find mine, then sinking back into the dark. By noon I’m stiff from sitting. The nurse comes in to do procedures and kicks me out for a bit. I’m reluctant, but she’s insistent.

  “Go eat something. You have to take care of yourself, too.”

  I’m not hungry, but I head toward the cafeteria anyway, remembering when I’m halfway there that I’m expected at work in a few hours. The thought of getting myself from here to there seems unrealistic and unreasonable.

  My cell phone will never hold a charge, but by some miracle it has one bar of battery left. I stop in the lobby to call in sick. At least I try. Jeannie is sympathetic, but sounds a little desperate.

  “Are you sure?” she says, her voice pitched high with tension. “We’ve got nobody, Rae. Corinne worked a double yesterday to cover for you. She can’t do it again.”

  Silence stretches while I search for an excuse that will work, some way to explain my situation, and that gives Jeannie time to latch onto her position of authority.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sure you’re shaken up from yesterday. But we need you.”

  Need again. This time being needed feels like duty and obligation, not a wonderful infusion of warmth. But responsibility is a huge motivator, and away from the bed and the monitors and the evidence of the damage done to Kat, it seems a little weird even to me that I’d skip work to stay with her.

  “All right. I’ll be in.”
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  I’d meant to go back to Kat, but there isn’t time. I’ll have to go home to change. I still haven’t eaten, and there’s nothing in my fridge to take for my work lunch. I’m not hungry, but I grab a prewrapped sandwich and a bottle of water in the cafeteria and take it to the tables outside. The sun is hot, but it feels good on my cramped muscles. The cellophane wrapping on the sandwich has sealed itself so tightly at the seams it’s going to require an act of God to get it open.

  “Hey, Rae. Mind if I join you?”

  The voice belongs to Cole Evans, LMHC, DMHP. A mental health crisis worker, and one of the people in town whose job it is to send the dangerously mentally ill or suicidal off to a locked unit for supervision and care. We’ve worked together on a few cases over at the nursing home.

  I can’t think of a word to say, and he takes my silence as permission, setting his tray on the table and sliding into the chair across from me.

  He’s casually dressed in faded blue jeans and a collared T-shirt. Dark hair with just a hint of a wave grazes his collar. His eyes are dramatic and vivid, a light brown that borders on amber. He also has a quiet intensity that makes me feel like those eyes are seeing more than I want to show him.

  “You probably know why I’m here.”

  “You mean you’re not just stalking me for the pleasure of my company?”

  “That part is the bonus.” He grins and stabs a straw through the top of his plastic drink container.

  I can guess only too well the reason why he’s here, and I don’t want to talk to him. Gathering up my ill-fated sandwich, I shove back my chair and get to my feet. “I was just leaving. Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to get ready for work.”

  “When can we talk?” He transfers his lunch from the tray to the table. Salad. Vegetables. A big slab of roast beef flooded with gravy. Then his gaze arrests me again. “There’s no urgency, since she’s still mostly unconscious, but I’d appreciate your input.”

  I seem to have grown weights in my butt, and I plunk back into my chair, elephant heavy. He has hawk eyes. That’s what they are. And I’m a squeaky, quivery little mouse without a hidey-hole. My hands are shaking again. I want to squeeze them together between my thighs, anything to make them stop, but they are still clutching a sandwich destined never to be eaten.