“Damn you,” she whispered. “My whole heart is filled with nothing but hatred for you.” She detested him and hated that he made her hate him so much there was no room for anything else. “Sitting there in the hospital room, I want to feel something for Vange, to feel sympathy, but all I can do is think about how I hate and despise you.”
“Kate—
“How will I ever be able to trust you ever again?” she asked hopelessly. Tears streamed down Kate’s smudged cheeks. “Is this how you’re supposed to spend the eve of your wedding day? I don’t think so, Nick, I don’t think so at all.”
“I can’t stand what she’s done to us,” Nick said. He was painfully aware his future wife was more than anything inconsolable.
“Don’t blame this on her. She’s given us more than we deserve.”
He shook his head, unable to fathom her faulty logic. “What has she given us, except reduce our lives to a melodramatic soap opera?”
“Don’t you see? She’s given us the truth,” Kate said. “How can I deny she’s in a coma, and the two of you were together last night – two nights before we’re supposed to be married?”
Kneeling before her, Nick took her trembling hands into his own, and he said softly, with his voice breaking, “I can’t change what’s happened, and maybe I don’t deserve a second chance, but it seems I’ve lost you in the worst way possible. If it’s the last thing I do, I want to make this up to you.”
“Really?”
He glanced away, trying to contain his remorse. “I love you, Kate.”
“You can’t bring her back, Nick,” she said. Tears rolled down Kate’s olive cheeks, and silence confirmed her deepest fears. “You can’t bring her back.”
“Right now, Vange has been stabilized, but she’s in critical condition,” Nick said, and he gently caressed her hands and rubbed her forearms. “With each passing moment, her chance for recovery grows slimmer. Honey, you don’t want to hear this, but I’ve got to be honest.”
“Why start now?”
“Things don’t look so good, Katie, you’ve got to face the possibility –
“I don’t want to face anything, it’s too soon to give up hope.”
“Just be prepared for the worst,” he warned. He rose from his kneeling position and sat down beside her. “I just wish I knew why she did it. I never thought she would try to get to get even by swallowing a fist full of pills.”
“Is that why you think she did it, out of spite for you?” Kate asked, shocked by his egotistic outlook. She pulled her hands from his and smoothed her soiled dress over her thighs. “Maybe she did it because she couldn’t face me.”
“Kate, don’t be ludicrous.”
“Don’t even think about twisting the facts – just to ease our conscience. If only I was different, then she wouldn’t have taken such extreme measures. If I was half the person she was, she could have just told me what happened, and I would deal with it –
“Maybe she couldn’t live with herself,” he said. “Honey, you can’t blame yourself.”
“Who’s to blame then, you alone?” Kate asked, and she shook her head. “She couldn’t have cared less about you, Nick, so why would she kill herself over you?”
He turned away frustrated by her reasoning. He was not altogether convinced Vange cared about Kate. It did not make any sense, and he was unwilling to accept the guilt she was straddling herself with – and even more, he could not accept the guilt she was unloading onto him. It was as if they were co-conspirators in Evangelica’s impending demise.
“I wish I could walk away from this whole mess,” Kate said to his back. More than anything, she wanted to fast forward their lives into the future in order for this whole weekend to be in a distant memory, with an option never to look back.
“If you’d like, I can call our dads and have them postpone the wedding,” he offered. “I don’t think anyone would blame us under the circumstances.”
“Who am I to rob you of a second chance? It’s sad to say, but I don’t want to walk away out of principle and then spend the rest of my life wishing we were married.”
“We can elope at a later date, when things calm down. Anyone can run, Kate, but you’re not made like that,” Nick said.
From across the room, she looked lost sitting alone on the long couch, like Princess Diana stranded at the Taj Mahal. He moved closer to emphasize his point, “Chelsea that nitwit, is running off to California, Thad runs to the bottle, and Ben runs from one one-night-stand to the next. Vange has run into the open arms of death itself, but that’s not you, Kate. You’re stronger than that.”
She shook her head in disagreement and looked up at him. “No, we’re all one and the same – because tomorrow at the altar, I’ll be running to you.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Maybe it’s the truth that has everyone running scared, but Vange has given me a truth I can’t deny or run from.”
“What truth?”
“It was a one night stand, wasn’t it, Nick?” Kate asked, dreading his response. Her knuckles were white as she clenched her hands into two fists at her side. “I mean, you only slept with her this once, right, except for the time way back in high school? Right?”
Speechless, he studied her tormented brown eyes, which brimmed with resignation. “You’re needlessly torturing yourself.”
“She wasn’t in love with your or anything like that, was she?”
“No, of course not, she’s always loved Ben.”
“When was the last time you were with her?”
“Kate—
“I need to know, tell me.”
Nick shook his head, and his silence confirmed her suspicions. She sighed deeply and said, “That’s what I thought. I was in her apartment earlier tonight, and I found her checkbook, on one line she had written, where it states the purpose, she wrote Abortion.”
“What does that have to do with us?”
“You tell me, Nick. What would her abortion have to do with us, with you?”
“So, you think Evangelica aborted what was my baby?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“For chrissakes, Kate, who is to say it wasn’t Ben’s baby, or Thad’s for that matter? Jesus, for all we know, it could’ve been half this town’s kid,” he only stopped because she placed two fingers over his mouth. Nick slipped away and said, “Don’t do this, not to me, and not to you.”
Holding onto herself, Kate walked away and faced the vending machines. It was as if she were trying to make one last selection, and for a handful of change the rest of her life would spit out, neatly wrapped and uniformly mass-produced. It would be what she always longed for, a picture-perfect cookie-cutter existence like her suburban gaggle of galpals.
Kate thought about her mother working tirelessly to be the perfect wife, mother and citizen. Her mother’s need for harmony and balance had been thrown out of whack by the harsh realities life had to dish out. It had been a struggle for her mother to realize that life is not a place where people can be made to fit preconceived views of perfection. And it now seemed Kaye Hesse had taken on the weight of her home, neighborhood, community and world until it crushed her. All Kate’s life, her father had told her she was the best, simply because she was a Hesse, but it was her mother who showed her how to be her best self.
“My mom spent her whole life waiting to be happy. She worked so hard to be perfect, all just to minimize the cold hard truth that seems so obvious now,” Kate whispered blankly, staring into her reflection at the vending machine.
“Honey, what’re you saying?”
“I don’t want my life to be an all-consuming lie that drains me of every last thing until there’s absolutely nothing left to do except wither away and die,” she said morbidly. Then she turned to face him, and she asked, “Tell me if I die after we’re married twenty-five years, would you dredge the gutter and marry anyone, all because you couldn’t face being alone?”
“I—I don’t understand what y
ou’re getting at,” he said, struggling to comprehend her line of thought.
“This whole town laughs at my father for marrying Shayla Whiley, but it’s only because they don’t want to admit it could happen to them,” Kate said. “Tell me, Nick, will you treat me the way your dad treats your mom? Will you have affairs and lie about them? Or even worse, flaunt them in my face? Will I put up with it and stay with you, because I’m too afraid to be alone?”
“We don’t have to become our parents,” he assured.
“The funny thing is, we already are,” she answered, and she wrapped her arms around him as if he were all she had. She felt his heart beating against her cheek, and she longed to be reassured that everything would work out fine, but she could never truly believe it now.
Shivering, Kate pulled away. Looking down at hospital-issued slipper clad feet, she wondered, “What am I even doing here. What’s the point?”
Nick held onto her and said, “You have to do what makes you happy. That’s what it’s all about, Kate, and it’s the hardest thing of all.”
“Did having sex with Evangelica make you happy?”
Before he could reply, an intrusive commotion erupted at the end of the brightly lit hallway, and it had spilled over infringing on their private moment. In a mad dash, Jack came running toward them with his one open eye reflecting terror. With his abrasions showing through his skimpy hospital gown, he looked like a freshly minted pint-sized Frankenstein monster.
“It’s Vange! The machine she’s hooked up to went haywire. I called for a nurse and—
“Come on,” said Kate taking him by the hand. Together they ran down the long corridor until they found her hospital room filled with a frantic swarm of busy nurses in scrubs. Off to one side, brother and sister stood watching them work on their ailing stepsister.
Sturdy Dr. Paull rushed past them and filled the room with his energetic, authoritative commands. In front of them, a nurse pulled closed the curtain and concealed the patient behind billowing whiteness.
“Oh God,” Kate shuddered, holding onto Jack. “What’re they doing to her? Hasn’t she suffered enough? Why can’t we be with her? This isn’t right, she shouldn’t be all alone.”
Nick stepped up and wrapped a heavy arm around their shoulders, but Kate moved closer to the ominous curtain. He placed a comforting hand on her back, but she retaliated by moving beyond his reach.
Kate ordered savagely, “Leave.”
“Kate, you can’t mean —
“Would you just get out of here,” she ordered. “Haven’t you done more than enough?”
Glancing between Kate and the curtain, Nick backed away. Jack now sat crumpled in a heap on a chair, and a nurse quietly tried to coax him from the room. Nick was clearly unwanted, but his feet remained cemented to the tile floor.
“What’re you still doing here?” she demanded. Furiously, she spun around and faced him. “Get the hell out of here, Nick.”
“Katie—
“Shut up,” she spat. “Just shut up! You did this, we did this to her, together, you and I.”
Kate hurled herself against him, and he wrapped his muscular arm around her, but she resisted. Wrestling free, she beat her fist against his chest three times. It was futile, but Nick tried to soothe her wild anger with comforting words.
“Lies! Lies! It’s all lies!” she yelled into his tired face. Pulling her hair back at the temples, she covered her ears. “I don’t want to hear any more damn lies!”
Nick grabbed her firmly by the elbows and shook her. “I never thought anything less than a lie would be good enough for you.”
She turned away and held herself tightly as she took a deep breath. She walked to the curtain and pulled it aside. Clutching the white cloth, she gasped while she watched the medical team’s efforts to revive Evangelica.
The doctor shouted over his shoulder at his son and future daughter in-law, “I don’t know what the hell you two think you’re doing, but I’m trying to save a life here. Take this argument elsewhere.”
Nick had not moved since Kate’s attack in the chaotic confusion, and the hospital stench wafted around him. He felt powerless like a pawn being shifted around by the whims of others. For the first time in his life, it appeared he had no control over anything whatsoever, and it unnerved him. Amidst his father’s heroic efforts to save Evangelica’s life, Nick thought he could never be considered anyone’s hero, and he wondered what it took to become a hero to oneself.
Nick left the hospital room and slowly made his way through the long corridor until he neared the empty nurse’s station where Ben stood waiting impatiently. Their gazes fixated intently on one another as if daring one another to look away first.
“I think I need medical attention,” Ben said pointing to his nose, sounding nasal and congested.
“It looks broken,” Nick said, and he wiped the watery snot dripping from his own nose.
“I’m sure it is,” Ben said. “Hey, are you all right?”
Nick inspected Ben’s nose, and after several moments, Ben asked, “Is there anyone here?”
“Everyone’s working on Vange,” Nick said quietly, and he reached out to place a hand on Ben’s arm. Ben looked Nick up and down, questioning and mistrustful. “I can’t say for sure, but it doesn’t look promising.”
“Oh.”
“I was just leaving. Kate’s in there with her.”
“She might need you right now, more than ever,” Ben said worriedly, stepping away.
“There’s nothing I can do for her.”
“There must be something.”
“I’m the last person she wants to see or needs right now,” Nick said. He nodded in agreement with himself and swallowed hard.
Ben backed away as he watched Nick standing by himself in the hallway. Finally, Ben turned around and jogged toward the commotion emanating from Vange’s hospital room. He increased his pace as the noise grew increasingly frantic. Ben found Jack sitting slumped and stupefied in a chair, and Kate stood motionless in the middle of the room.
“Make them stop,” she pleaded hoarsely as Ben wrapped his arm around her. “Tell them to quit torturing her, Benny. It’s inhumane.”
“Doctor,” said one of the nurses. She placed a concerned hand on Dr. Paull’s arm. “It’s time to stop, Doctor. She’s gone.”
“Goddammit,” Dr. Paull exploded, as his attempts to revive his patient came to an abrupt halt.
“Doctor, please,” the nurse repeated firmly.
With resignation, Dr. Paull backed away from the table and rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. Defeated, he said only, “Time of death, three-eighteen AM.”
Kate’s knees buckled under, and Ben grabbed hold of her. As she turned to bury her forehead in his shoulder, he gathered the teary-eyed bride-to-be in his arms and, she wrapped herself around him.
“No,” she said and repeated, “No No No.” His lips swabbed her tears as he held her close.
“It’s okay, Kate,” Ben whispered in her ear. “She’s in a better place.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Nick.”
“You don’t have to marry him. Marry me instead.”
“Oh, my God,” she repeated, looking over her shoulder at Evangelica’s lifeless body. She felt like crawling onto the hospital bed next to Vange, and would have except Ben held onto her. He gathered her close to him with one arm, and he rested a hand on Jack’s head and pressed it against his side.
The doctor curtly made his way past the trio of grief and with a wave of his hand, he said of his future daughter in-law, “Sedate her.”
chapter twenty-two
part iv – backwards and forwards
Far above the maddening crowd, Thad made last minute preparative checks in the balcony, as the crowd below dealt with an unexpected delay. The missing bride and her brother prevented the nuptials from commencing. The fidgeting crowd appeared to be teetering on the edge of their seats, and from his elevated position, Thad marveled he had nev
er before during such a formal occasion seen so many black and blue marks.
A portion of the guests appeared to have wandered in from a WWF tournament. Most obviously wounded was Ben with his broken nose. He had refused to let Dr. Paull treat it as he did not want to ruin the wedding pictures due to a garish bandage swaddling the middle of his face. Although the groom inflicted the ruinous blow, he had not escaped unscathed. Nick’s neck bore thumbprints from Chelsea’s death grip, and his cheekbone was bruised where Ben must have landed at least one previously unnoticed punch.
Thad watched as Ben escorted his parents down the center aisle. His mother’s face was scratched from Shayla’s dagger-tipped fingers. Never one to go down easily, Jane Feldpausch had landed a few blows to Shayla’s heavily made up bruised face. But it was Jane’s own drunken, self-inflicted wounds that screamed out the tragedy of her defunct ovaries. Thad was grateful when his mother took a seat alongside his father and spared him with a rear view, which almost passed for normal. Her missing purse was slung over one shoulder. In her inebriated state, her drunken logic caused her to stash the purse in the woods near their house. Her every intention had been to skip town while everyone was at the wedding.
Thad zoomed in his camera for close ups, and he snapped a few pictures of Ben as he made his way to the front of the church. Earlier, Thad had given Ben a hand escorting the wedding guests to their appropriate sides of the church. As he promised Kate, Thad stepped in when Jack, the other usher, failed to show. The flood of guests eventually dwindled to a trickling stream of stragglers that Ben managed alone.
Peering over the railing down into the intricate guts of the ornate church, Thad watched Kate’s father lugging around his video camera. Thad understood the need for wedding photographs, but he considered an actual video of the event a sadistically boring memento for newlyweds to inflict on their unsuspecting family and friends. With an unlit cigar chomped between his teeth, Chief Hesse circled the church on his eternal quest for America’s funniest home video.
Trying the Knot Page 32
