by K. M. Scott
The day I graduated with honors from Cornell and the look of sadness on my mother’s face when she congratulated me, wishing my father could have lived long enough to see that day too.
Standing in the rain at my father’s grave later that day with my diploma and hoping somehow he saw what I’d achieved.
The moment I learned my first book would be published.
That first time I tried heroin and the euphoric sensation of flying it brought with it.
The feeling of complete and utter failure as I walked into rehab the last time.
Alone in my apartment and seeing the most beautiful woman in the world appear on my television screen for the first time.
My mind’s a jumble of fear and confusion, but somewhere in all that fleeting memories of my time with Kristina begin to appear in my mind. They calm me so as my car finally hits the bottom of the ravine and the air bag explodes into me, I’m relaxed. As the shock of what happened settles into me, I feel my head fall forward toward the inflated air bag and then there’s nothing but darkness.
Kristina sits next to me quietly reading what I wrote that afternoon as I absentmindedly play with the ends of her hair, twirling them around my finger and then releasing them to do it again. I’m nervous to hear her thoughts and opinions on the story so far. Will she like it or will she think it’s useless drivel that makes her question agreeing to be my muse?
I call Silk our story, but in truth it’s hers. I write only because she inspires me. Without her, there is no Silk. Without her, there is no story to be told.
If she knew how much she means to me. I say the words I love you, but they never seem to be enough to convey what I feel for her. They’re hackneyed and tired, overused by people who have no idea what love is and desperate souls who think they’re some kind of magic to keep others in their lives long after they’ve decided they no longer want to stick around.
I wish I knew better words for how she makes me feel. Yes, I love her, but it’s more than just that. I love her. I adore her. She brings out the best in me, things I never knew existed inside me or were possible for me. I’m the man I’ve always dreamed of being with her.
Because of her.
Turning to face me, she looks at me with watery eyes. Is she sad? Does the story I’ve written about her make her unhappy?
“Ian, this is beautiful,” she says in a quiet voice, instantly calming my fears. “I love this story. You’ve made Kate everything I wish I ever was. She’s strong and fearless, but she loves Sean with everything she has.”
“Do you like Sean? Do you think I wrote him the right way for her? I want the reader to see how much he goes through for her and still loves her more than even he can understand.”
Kristina’s smile lights up her face. “Oh yes! He’s just what she needs. The part where she won’t let him in because she’s afraid that her feelings aren’t what his are made me cry. She kept telling him that he didn’t want her and that she was no good for him, but he knew the truth. He knew she didn’t just care about the physical thing between them. He knew there was more. I love that.”
I kiss her gently on the lips and take a deep breath in, happy my muse loves the story I’ve written because of her.
“What happens next? Do you know?” she asks as she leans her head on my shoulder. “I want to hear all about it.”
I lean my head on hers and close my laptop. “Not yet. The story isn’t finished. I have some more to write.”
“Will they end up happy, Ian? Is that how this ends?”
“I don’t know yet. I haven’t written the rest of their story.”
Kristina wraps her arms around my waist and sighs. “I want them to be happy.”
I open my eyes, unsure of where I am. Sharp pain tears through the top of my head. I run my palm over my cheek and pull my hand away to see blood. Slowly, the accident filters through my brain and I remember being run off the road and sent down the embankment. I look around to see if anyone has come to help and see the back of Kristina’s SUV nearby on fire.
Panic rushes through me at the thought that she’s trapped in there. I need to get out of this fucking car to help her! I try to move, but my left arm is stuck between the door and the seat. It should hurt, I think, but that doesn’t matter now. I have to get to Kristina.
I pound on the window hoping someone will hear me. I can’t watch her burn to death in that car and not do anything, so I scream, “Help! Help us! Get her out of there!”
My voice begins to give out I scream so loud, but a terrifying thought creeps into my mind as I see the flames engulf Kristina’s car. Help won’t arrive in time to save her and I can’t save her trapped here. She’ll die because I couldn’t save her.
Why isn’t she screaming for help? Tears come to my eyes as the thought of her already dead from the accident forms in my brain. No. God, no! Don’t let her be dead already.
“Kristina! Can you hear me? Answer me! Kristina!” I yell as loud as I can and hope she hears my pleas. But I hear nothing in return.
I begin to feel weak and keeping my eyes open becomes difficult. Somewhere nearby the sound of sirens floats down to where we wait, but it’s too late.
My eyes close as I accept the reality. It’s too late.
CHAPTER NINE
Ian
I open my eyes slowly to see the stark white walls surrounding me. I don’t know this place or where I am. I’m in a bed, and I hear machines beeping and buzzing around my head. Directly in front of me is a window but not to the outside.
I’m in a hospital.
“Ian, can you hear me?” a gentle voice asks.
I turn to see an older woman leaning over me with a look of happiness on her face, which I hope means whatever I’m in the hospital for isn’t going to kill me. Her soft brown eyes stare down into mine as she waits for my answer, and I nod.
“Yes,” I croak out, my throat instantly hurting from just that one word.
As I raise my hand to massage my throat, the woman moves over to a table and quickly returns with a cup of water. “Here, drink this. Your throat is tight because you haven’t spoken for a while.”
I take a sip of water and close my eyes as it slowly hydrates my parched throat. A few more sips and I feel ready to risk speaking again. Swallowing hard, I say, “Where am I?”
“Columbia Memorial. You’ve been here for nearly five days.”
Five days? But I don’t recognize the hospital name as one in the city. “Where is this hospital?”
“Hudson, New York.”
My mind races through memories of that day when my car careened off the side of that mountain road. I look down in horror at my left arm and remember it mangled and bloody. Now all I see are bandages.
Confused, I ask her, “My arm?”
The look of happiness on the woman’s face morphs into one of concern, and she presses a fake smile onto her worried face. “They tried…I think I better let the doctor answer your questions. Let me go find him.”
As she moves away toward the door, I reach out with my right hand to grab her arm and say, “I need to find out about Kristina. Is she okay? What happened to her?”
“I’m sorry. Let me get the doctor and he can help you. Just one minute.”
She hurries from the room with an expression that tells me she’s as confused as I am, but why? Is it because they couldn’t save her?
I lay there for over an hour waiting for someone to come in and explain what’s going on, all the while my heart sinking lower and lower at the thought that Kristina’s gone. She’s gone because I couldn’t save her.
I see Sheila stop in front of the window to my room. When our eyes meet, she begins to cry and covers her face, which makes me sure however I may feel that I don’t look as good as I think I do.
She walks into the room slowly, wiping her tears from her cheeks as she approaches the side of my bed. Dressed in jeans and a short sleeve blue and white print top, she looks like she always has. Not incredibly feminine
or even attractive, but like herself.
“Oh, Ian! What happened? How do you feel? Do you know who I am?” she says on a sob as she squeezes my hand.
“Of course. You’re my agent, Sheila Rogers.”
“Yes, yes! They didn’t know if you’d have any permanent brain damage after the accident. It was awful! I got the call that you’d crashed your car down a ravine and I rushed up here. I’ve hoped every day that you’d finally wake up.”
“Where’s Kristina? I need to see her. Is she here? Did they bring her here?”
Sheila gives me the same confused look that the other woman did and says nothing for a few moments. When she finally speaks, her words make no sense.
“I don’t know, Ian. Was she in the car with you?”
“No, she was following me and that truck must have run her off the road too. Her car was on fire. Did they get to her in time? Where is she?”
After a few more moments of silence, Sheila quietly says, “I don’t know, Ian. I just knew you were in the accident.”
“I need to speak to her. I need to know she’s okay,” I say as I begin to feel real fear that she’s not safe.
“Okay, okay. Don’t get yourself upset. You just woke up. Take your time.”
“I don’t want to take my time! I need to see her. I need to let her know I’m okay and see she’s okay.”
Sheila closes the door and returns to my bedside. Pulling up a chair, she sits down next to me and sighs. “Ian, I’ll see what I can find out. What do you remember?”
I try to remember the details of the accident, but my brain seems fuzzy on the details, so I just tell her what I know. “I was in a car accident coming back from the cabin after you told me to get out of the city. Not that I’m blaming you, but you seem a little confused about what happened. The car slid off the road and down the embankment. Kristina was following me in her car and I saw it on fire.”
Sheila gives my hand a sympathetic squeeze and frowns. “Honey, I’ll see what I can find out. I just know I got a call saying you’d been in an accident. There was no mention of anyone else.”
I shake my head, refusing to believe what she’s saying. “No. She was in the car behind me, Sheila. I need to know what happened to her.”
Sheila takes my hand to calm me down, but I can’t stay in that bed. I need to find Kristina and know she’s okay. I don’t care that I’ve got tubes and wires all over me. Slowly, I move my legs to try to get out of bed, but she stops me.
“Ian, please. I need you to relax. I’ll help you find out what happened, but I need you to stay in bed until the doctor comes in.”
“Please find out. I need to know she’s okay. Why won’t anyone tell me what happened to her?”
“Okay, I’ll help you. I promise.”
My chest feels like someone’s hit me with a sledgehammer. I struggle to catch my breath as the thought that Kristina is gone fills my mind and I mumble, “I think I’m feeling tired now. I’m just going to close my eyes for a little bit. Do me a favor and tell the doctors to let me sleep, okay? They can do their tests and ask their questions later.”
She nods and gives me her best fake but sympathetic smile. “Okay, Ian. I’ll tell them.”
I roll over and close my eyes to block out everything. Who I am. What my life is now if Kristina isn’t in it. How little I have to go back to.
That the woman I love may not even be alive anymore.
* * *
Two unsuccessful surgeries to fix the nerve damage in my left arm and three months of physical therapy to learn how to live without the use of it and now for the first time in what seems like forever, I’m back at my apartment. Unlike everything else in my world since I woke up in that hospital bed, it’s the same as I remember. At least there’s that. I might have gone into shock if I opened the door and saw LL Bean décor all over the fucking place.
The evidence of Sheila’s handiwork in keeping my apartment clean after my accident can be seen in every spotless nook and cranny of my home. I’ve spent enough nights face down on the floor to know it never looked this clean. I feel like I’ve walked into some kind of showroom apartment realtors use to hook prospective buyers.
In some way, I’m a stranger in my own home it’s been so long since I’ve been here. I look around and see Kristina everywhere. Sheila hasn’t been able to find out what happened to her, so I don’t even know if she’s still alive. Since the accident, she’s never called or come to visit or even sent a message through Sheila.
All I have of her are memories. In my love for her, I literally am alone, but now that I’m home, I plan on finding out what happened. As I have every day since I woke up in that hospital bed, I try her number but all it does is ring without anyone answering.
After walking around my place studying it like some kind of tourist in a museum, I feel drawn to the living room and sit down on the couch. I have no idea if this is what I should do. Maybe I should write. Maybe I should sleep more.
All I know is I’m alone and can do anything or nothing. My life is a blank slate.
I should consider myself lucky. How many people would kill to have enough money to do whatever they desire in life and a marketable skill if they choose to use it? How many would love to begin life anew with the chance to start all over again?
Neither of these ideas give me any comfort, though. I don’t think of myself as lucky. I think of myself as someone who had everything he ever wanted and through some terrible twist of fate had it all taken away from him. I had love and happiness, and now I have neither.
I close my eyes and lean my head against the back of the couch as I try to stay sane. Sheila’s biggest fear is that I’ll turn back to heroin again, but I don’t want that now. I don’t even really want a drink now. All I want is a way to find what I’ve lost before I completely lose my fucking mind.
Grabbing the TV remote from the coffee table in front of me, I turn it on and immediately the Netflix screen appears and tells the story of what I’d been doing the last time I sat there in front of that screen. All of Kristina’s films are there, watched but ready for me to see them again.
I choose the remake of The Misfits and sit back to wait for her to appear in front of me. My palms begins to sweat and my heart slams against my chest as each minute ticks by, and then there she is in front of me again, those beautiful cornflower blue eyes looking out as if she sees me watching her.
When she smiles, my heart fills with joy at the memory of the two of us alone and her smiling like that for me. But where is she now? I need to find her. She belongs in my arms, smiling up at me as I hold her. I need to see her look at me with those soft blue eyes and tell me she loves me.
I believe she’s still alive. She has to be.
I can find nothing online that says anything about what happened to her. No mention of her death. No mention of any accident at all. Did I just imagine it all in a state of shock as I sat there at the bottom of that embankment after the accident? But if that’s the case, why didn’t she come to see me even once while I was in the hospital all those weeks and then the three months of rehab for my arm?
I call Albert and get him moving on the only thing that matters to me. Finding Kristina. “Albert, I need you to contact Kristina Richards’s agent, publicist, manager and anyone else who might know where she is. I have to find out.”
“Okay, Ian. I can do that. You feeling okay?”
Albert’s newfound interest in how I feel seems genuine, but I don’t want to discuss my physical or mental well-being with him now. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just need you to find out where she is.”
“Okay. Give me some time and I’ll see what I can find out.”
I pull my laptop out sometime after the first twenty-four hour Kristina Richards film marathon and attempt to type. The nerve damage in my left hand makes it impossible. The fingers on that hand just sit on the keyboard, useless now. I have all these ideas for the Silk and Steel story ready to pour out through my fingers, but with only workin
g hand, I can barely write a page in two hours. Desperate to get the words out of my head, I find a pen and paper and write like I’ve never written before in my life. My mind works at a fevered pace, so at least I can say something good came from all of this misery.
Afterward, I’m exhausted and for two days, I sit and stare at the TV as I watch every film of hers and periodically answer Sheila’s phone calls meant to calm her fears and ensure I’m not doing anything terrible to myself. But it’s Albert’s phone call I wait for.
“Ian, how are you feeling? Are you getting back to writing yet?” Sheila asks in that angelic voice of hers that makes the three times daily calls to check up on me not so bad.
“Maybe, but don’t worry. I’m not doing anything illegal or harmful to myself,” I say with a chuckle, doing my best to make her feel better about her task.
“Is there anything you need?”
I hesitate for a moment, but then answer, “No, I’m fine, Sheila.” I’m anything but fine, but as soon as I hear from Albert, I’ll be better.
At least I hope so.
The phone is silent for a long moment, and then she says, “I’m worried about you, Ian. I’ve never heard you sound so sad.”
“I’m not back to the heroin, Sheila. I swear.”
Sheila stays silent again and then says, “I’m so happy to hear that, Ian. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay for you. You have a second chance, and now that you’re back home, I’m going to be working overtime to make sure I get you the deal you deserve for Silk and get that film made, if possible.”
Her mention of Silk makes my breath catch in my chest. The story of my love for Kristina. Our story.
I continue watching Kristina’s films and wonder if I’m slowly losing my mind. All of this seems so familiar, yet it’s been months. Thank God for Netflix, my old friend. It’s the only way I can keep her in my life for now until Albert finds out where she is.
My phone rings, startling me out of my thoughts of just how miserable I truly am, and I see it’s Albert calling back.
