Tripping on a Halo: A Romantic Comedy

by Alessandra Torre

  She smiled, and he felt his heart flip a little in response.

  There wasn’t Pictionary, much to Autumn’s disappointment. There was a Scrabble board, and they spent a couple of hours bent over the board, competing over words. She cooked burgers, he opened up a bag of chips, and they worked their way through most of Nate’s beer.

  The more she drank, the more she talked, and the more layers that unfolded.

  “Most embarrassing death,” he prompted.

  “Too many to name,” she shot back, sitting sideways in the wicker chair.

  “Cop-out.”

  She gave a confident smirk, which might join his list of top five favorite Autumn expressions. “I can give you five without thinking twice about it.”

  He spread his hands. “I’m waiting.”

  She stuck her thumb out and rattled off the first one. “Kenneth Pinyan, who died from internal injuries after having anal sex with a stallionnnn.”

  Her word slurred, the final syllable given extra attention, and he smiled at how quickly the alcohol had hit her, the last hour a quick downward turn into clumsy Autumn. Still, he nodded, giving her the point and waiting to see if she had anything else.

  “Number two. The owner of Segway was killed when his Segway drove off a cliff.”

  Not really embarrassing, as much as ironic, but he let it slide.

  She counted the third one out. “Three. Dayton, Ohio. 1986. A couple was having sex in a car. He died mid-thrust, and she was stuck underneath him. Died of hypothermia and dehydra…” She paused, her brow furrowing.

  He waited for her to continue. She didn’t, and he guessed at the word. “Dehydration?”

  “No, I’m fine.” She lifted the bottle of beer as proof. “What were we talking about?”

  “That’s it.” He swiped the beer from her fingers. “No more alcohol for you.” Pouring out the bottle in the sink, he reminded her of the task.

  “Oh. Right.” She started to launch into a fourth and he tossed her bottle in the trash and held up his hands in surrender.

  “You know what? I give up and stand corrected. I will never question your Guardian Angel knowledge again.”

  “Thank you.” She stood up and did a little bow, her right leg buckling, and she swayed before sitting back down. “God, I’m drunk.” She lifted a hand to her head. “I think the alcohol is making my headache worse.”

  He came to her chair and bent over to get a kiss. That was another great thing about drunk Autumn. She seemed to relax her stiff stance against affection, a position he would eventually decimate altogether.

  She gazed up at him, her lips parting, back stiffening, and her arms folded, limp-wristed, into her chest. He froze at the sight, his chest tightening, and examined her more closely. In his chest, threads of panic began to pulse. What the…

  “Autumn?” he said quietly, trying to keep his voice calm while his heart galloped against his chest. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  She looked at him, confused. Leaning forward, she tried to push at his chest and then, without warning, vomited all over the floor.

  34

  He drove, his hand on her chest, keeping her upright, and dialed 9-1-1. The truck bumped hard, and she mumbled out a curse, her body curving around his hand. The operator answered, and he explained their situation, cursing the camp’s lack of physical address.

  “We’re off Chat Franklin Road. If you can have an ambulance at the gas station by the boat ramp, I can be there in ten minutes. Maybe sooner.”

  “You shouldn’t be driving,” Autumn said quietly. “You’ve been drinking.”

  Yeah, well. The ambulance wouldn’t be able to get down the camp’s roads. He gripped the wheel tightly, answering the emergency operator’s questions and trying to keep the F250 on the muddy path. What the fuck had he been thinking, bringing her out here? Why couldn’t he have been a normal man and taken her on a romantic getaway to a beach resort, with a hospital and modern conveniences readily available?

  “I really think you’re over…” Her voice dropped off and he looked over to see her head loll forward, heavy on its axis.

  He cursed, jerking the truck into park and trying to lift her head. “She’s unconscious,” he told the operator grimly.

  “Is her posture still decorticated?”

  Decorticate posture had been a term taught to him in his EMT classes—the posturing characterized by a stiff frame, arms bent in toward the body, the wrist and fingers held on the chest. Autumn’s exhibition of the signs had been his first indication that something was seriously wrong. When his gaze had darted from that to her eyes, one of her pupils dilated, he had started to piece together the other symptoms. The confusion. Incoordination. Headache. It hadn’t been the alcohol. Something was seriously wrong with her—and her symptoms were getting worse.

  He checked her. “Yes. Her legs are stiff also, they’re sticking straight out.” He racked his memory, trying to remember what decorticate posture had meant. It wasn’t a stroke, but it had been serious. Something with the brain.

  “I’ve got an ambulance on its way, but it’s important that you get there as soon as safely possible.”

  The woman didn’t need to repeat herself. He slid back over into the driver’s seat and jerked the truck into drive, flooring the gas and praying, desperately, that he wouldn’t be too late.

  The ambulance was waiting at the closed gas station, lights flashing, the back doors open, paramedics ready. When he came to a stop, they were already pulling open the passenger door and rolling up the gurney. He launched out of the truck and to their side, barking out symptoms and timeframes, giving them everything he knew about her.

  “Contact her next of kin,” the closest EMT said. “We’ll need medical history and to know if there are any health surrogates or advance directives in place.”

  Advance directives. The words stopped him in his place, the thought of life-prolonging procedures, or Autumn’s incapacity… he raked his fingers through his hair, wanting to rip out every strand by its roots. He ran beside the gurney, grabbing her hand, but it was limp, her features slack, void of life.

  “Where are you taking her?” He choked out.

  “Ocala Regional. You can ride with us or follow.”

  He warred between leaving his truck or driving after the three beers, Autumn’s concern echoing in his mind. “I’ll ride with you.”

  They began to load the gurney and he ran around to the truck, grabbing his cell and finding Autumn’s in the cupholder. Making it back to the ambulance, he gripped the handle and stepped up into the clinical space.

  “You aren’t supposed to be calling me,” the female voice drawled. “You’re supposed to be having vigorous outdoorsy sex and taking notes to tell me about later.”

  “Ansley, this is Declan Moss.” In another world, another moment, he might have seen the humor in her greeting. Now, he could barely speak without breaking down.

  “Oh.” She paused. “Declan. Hello. Is everything okay?”

  “No. I need you to come to the hospital in Ocala. Something’s happened with Autumn. Do you know if she has any medical problems?”

  She inhaled sharply, then spoke to someone in the background. “She doesn’t have any medical problems. She’s perfectly healthy, aside from a sugar addiction.”

  He didn’t know whether to be relieved or more concerned. If they knew what this was, at least they could do something to fix it. For it to come out of nowhere… his hand tightened on the phone.

  “Declan, I need to know what happened. You’ve told me just enough to freak me the fuck out. Did she get injured? Shot? What’s going on?” Her voice grew harder with each question, and he wished he had more to tell her.

  “She started to have a headache. She grew confused. Uncoordinated. I thought—we thought it was the alcohol, but it started to get worse. Much worse.”

  “Headaches?” She let out a strangled laugh. “She always has headaches. That’s normal. And she’s… Autumn. She’s al
ways a little uncoordinated and confused. Maybe this is nothing. Like you said—”

  “It’s something. I need you to come here as soon as possible. They’re asking for a health surrogate or advance directives.”

  She fell silent, then he heard her scream at her husband to get the car.

  35

  Autumn died at 10:12pm.

  It was a short death. They brought her back to life as Declan watched, paddles shocking her heart back into action, her pulse spiking to life on the monitor. But it was weak and the issue was her brain.

  Now, he huddled in a waiting room chair, Autumn’s family beside him, and tried to sort through his feelings. It seemed unfair that he had spent six months running from her, when he could have been holding her. Loving her. By the time they had finally met, he’d only had a week with her. A combined twenty-four hours, tops. That wasn’t enough time, not when those hours had been the best of his life. Anger spiked through him at the unfairness of it all. She had spent so much time protecting him and he—in the moment when he could have protected her—he had been the one to put her in danger.

  If she’d been home, she would have seen the signs. Realized something was wrong. Called an ambulance.

  And … if she’d never seen him that day of the plane crash, she never would have attributed her head pains to his safety. She would have gone to a doctor. Followed normal protocol instead of wasting all of her time following him around, worrying about him, when she had been the one at risk.

  A colloid cyst had been the cause. All of those sharp pains she had associated with his danger—that had been her brain screaming for help. And now, it had progressed to the stage where the cyst had blocked the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. Declan had been searching every site on the Internet to educate himself on CSF and colloid cysts, and the more he learned, the more his stress rose. The only solution was the one they were taking now—a complicated and high-risk surgery to attempt to remove the cyst.

  The three potential outcomes were all bleak. First: potential paralysis of her entire left side. The second: coma. And finally… and the most likely of the three: death. He asked what the chances were of a complete recovery, but was only given a regretful frown. “At this point, those chances are too slim to measure. This is the time to set realistic expectations.”

  The “realistic expectations” were that he would not leave her side. If she was paralyzed, he would take care of her. He’d build her a beautiful home with ramps and unique design features to accommodate her limitations. If she was in a coma, he would sit beside her bed every day until she woke up. And if she died… at that point of the thought process, was when Declan normally broke down into tears.

  Ansley and Roger were used to it. They had all spent the last two days in varying states of grief. Autumn’s niece and nephew had been shielded from it, a carousel of babysitters soon replaced by Bridget, who stepped in and offered to keep them at her house. She’d been filling their time with trips to the zoo, movies, junk food and fun. At the moment, all they knew was that Autumn was “sick” and had the general impression that it was something as simple as a cold.

  Four and a half hours had passed since they’d taken her into surgery. It should have been over by now. Ansley had worn out the path to the reception desk, her constant requests for updates yielding no new information. Declan pinched his palms together and, for the hundredth time since loading her into the ambulance, began to pray.

  Finally, more than two hours after the surgery was supposed to be over, the door to the ER swung open. The doctor came out, slowly pulling off his gloves. Declan looked into his face and saw all he needed to.

  October

  ONE MONTH LATER

  “Mr. Moss.” The man stood, extending his hand, a leather portfolio pressed tightly to his breast. “I’ve heard so much about you.” He gestured to the empty seat across from his desk. “Please, sit. Unless you’d prefer we move to the couch?”

  “No, this is fine.” Declan took one of the high wingback chairs. “Where would Autumn sit?”

  The man thought it over. “She liked to wander. Touch things. She moved around a lot. I suspect the majority of her seating decisions were designed to irritate me.” He almost smiled, the edge of his mouth twitching before settling back into place.

  “She liked to irritate you?”

  He set the portfolio on the desk and opened it to a blank pad of paper. “She didn’t like me very much, I’m afraid.”

  His memory was fuzzy, but he believed the term she had used was tool bag, so the shrink’s powers of perception were capable. Declan smiled. “That’s okay. She spent half of our interactions shoving me away from her.”

  The man sat down in the heavy leather chair, taking his time to arrange himself into place, one thin knee crossing over the other. Picking up a polished black pen from the desk, he uncapped it and studied him. “I was told by the trust that she is in a coma, is that correct?”

  Declan nodded, his throat tightening at the simple four-letter word, one he had never given much thought to before. Now, it was his life. Wake. Shower. Work. Autumn. Coma. Sleep.

  “If you’re here to find out things about her, I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.” The man rolled the pen over in his hand. “Whether Ms. Jones is incapacitated or not, she is still considered to be living, and our conversations are protected by confidentiality laws.”

  She is still considered to be living. Of course she was. She was less than a mile away. Skin warm. Heart beating. He’d just eaten lunch with her. For this prick to even suggest anything else… he gripped the arm of the chair tightly and forced himself to calm down.

  His emotions, during the month since her surgery, had been all over the place. He was wound up, jittery. Prone to anger one moment and anguish the next. Autumn’s entrance and sudden exit from his life had left him with a mountain of feelings that he struggled to process and didn’t know how to handle.

  The man’s gaze focused on his tight grip on the chair and he sat back a little in his seat. “Grief is a very powerful emotion, Mr. Moss. There are ways to work through it, if you’d like some help.”

  “I’m not grieving,” he said tightly. “I’m fine. She’s fine. I’m here because …” His mind floundered. Why was he here? He had made the appointment without thinking, desperate for contact with anyone and everyone who had known her and chasing… searching for some sign of her life. He’d walked in this office with a glimmer of hope that this man might say something, anything that would help. But maybe he had had the right mindset from the beginning—and kept psychology in the garbage bag of events that weren’t for him.

  So far, he’d walked dogs with Mrs. Robchek, then sat down in her floral-covered living room and received in-depth tours of every scrapbook Autumn had ever made her.

  He’d driven south and had dinner with Mr. Clevepepper, who had griped about politics, the heat, and the wax jobs of The Villages’ women, all the while saying little about Autumn, other than complimenting her coffee.

  He’d taken Mr. Oinks to his vet appointment and met Adam, who had expressed sharp concern for Autumn while giving Declan the exciting news that Mr. Oinks’ reluctant testicle had finally dropped.

  He’d eaten a dozen meals with Ansley and Roger, taken Paige and Caleb to the playground, and wandered through Autumn’s empty house like a lost puppy.

  He’d run out of places to go, and this session was only five minutes in and the prick was already making everything worse. She is still considered to be living.

  “Autumn had a singular focus and that was on you,” the doctor said, peering at him through tortoise-framed glasses. “Don’t consider it a burden of guilt. As I told Autumn in our last session, I believe that watching out for you was helping her recover from the loss of her mother. She was a strong woman, Mr. Moss.”

  “She is a strong woman,” he gritted out. “Stop talking about her as if she’s gone.”

  The man nodded. “I understand.”

  He unde
rstands? What kind of bullshit response was that? He didn’t understand anything about this situation, and he sure as hell wasn’t fixing it. Out of every loose end he’d followed, this had been the biggest mistake.

  He stood, moving to the door, the plush Oriental rug silencing the sounds of his steps, and he shoved the door open and breezed past the receptionist without saying a word.

  Talk about a waste of three hundred dollars. No wonder she hated that man.

  He jabbed at the elevator button and swallowed the wave of emotion that threatened his composure.

  November

  “Can you build me a dollhouse?” Paige threaded her fingers together and begged, her pigtails bobbing as she danced in place before him. “Pretty please?”

  “Hmm…” Declan mused. “I don’t know. I’m very expensive. Do you have money?”

  “No.” She shot out the word with such cheerfulness that he had to laugh.

  “Do you have any ideas?”

  “YES.” She reached forward, turning a page in his pad and tugged at his pen, pulling it out of his hand. “Let me show you.”

  “Wait.” He stopped her, carefully pulling the latest Aldrete drawings out from the book and opened his leather binder, sliding them into the pocket. “Okay, show me.”

  The little girl bent over the page, her pen working, the tip of her tongue stuck out in concentration. He closed his eyes for a moment, tired. He’d been at the office late, going over items with Nate, Benta’s parcel finally picked out and purchased. Now, with the smells of pumpkin pie and turkey heavy on the air, and the soft couch enveloping him, the desire to settle back on the leather and sleep was overwhelming.

  The sound of heels on wood floors woke him. He turned his head and watched as Ansley walked through the doorway and stopped, an orange dishtowel in hand. “Paige. Wash up for dinner.”