Her words were kind but didn’t alleviate the hatred I felt for myself. All my fury I’d had the night before for the medical team, was now directed at myself. What kind of shit husband takes his family to a fucking island, when his wife is five months pregnant and his children are toddlers?
“I mean it wasn’t as if you were in some third-world country,” Daisy went on, as if she could read my thoughts. She pulled away from me and looked at me steadily in the eye. “The Bahamas are safe, Americanized. What happened to Pearl could have happened anywhere. Besides, it was her idea to go off to the Caribbean and take a long break.”
“Yes, but she did it for me.”
“Bollocks, Alexandre, she did it because she wanted to. Pearl is headstrong, she does what she wants.” Daisy looked down at her feet. “Sorry, ‘headstrong’ wasn’t the best choice of words.”
I tried to smile. “Actually, it is the perfect word to describe Pearl and it gives me hope. She’ll get through this, Daisy. I promise.” I kissed Daisy’s brow lightly and felt comfort with her being there; knowing she was going through the same sort of pain as I was. She could identify. She understood.
“I brought coffee and doughnuts.” I looked up and saw Billy with a tray. He set it down on a table and came over to shake my hand. Then he laid an arm around Daisy’s shoulder. Were they dating? Just friends? From the way she shifted her body a touch away from him, it looked as if he had one thing in mind and she another. He pointed to the coffees. “These two have cream. The other’s black.”
I took one of the paper cups. “I’ll take the black one if that’s okay.”
“Pearl drinks black,” Daisy said. “That song, Black Coffee—the All Saint’s version, not the Julie London version, is on the mixed tape. On her iPod, I mean. I’ve tried to have mostly upbeat songs, you know. Perk her up a little. Wake Up Little Suzy is on there, too. Apparently, music can nudge people out of comas, especially if it’s a song they recognize and that means something to them.”
Perk her up? I looked at Pearl. Sleeping Beauty. Maybe I was enough of a French frog to get her to wake up if I kissed her. Or did she have to kiss me back?
Daisy wrung her fingers through her thick red hair. “I made a promise to her once and I’ll need to speak to the staff about it.”
“A promise?” I felt nervous. What kind of promise? To get them to pull the fucking plug? To donate her organs? My eyes were darts, but Daisy just shook her head and smiled.
“Don’t look so horrified, Alexandre.”
Funny, this woman can read my thoughts.
“Once, Pearl and I were joking around, and she made me swear that if she ever ended up in a coma or was a vegetable, unable to move, that I’d make sure her beauty regime was taken care of. You know, hair-care, leg waxing and stuff. It was a joke—I never thought it would actually bloody happen, but a promise is a promise.”
I heaved a sigh of relief.
Silence sliced through the air like a razor. We looked at each other, Billy cast his eyes at the floor—maybe to stop himself from breaking down, and everybody felt speechless. Except Daisy started chatting again; obviously wanting to fill the awkward void.
She inhaled the bunch of flowers. “These lilies are beautiful. Pearl’s favorite. Well, I guess you know that already or you wouldn’t have chosen them.”
“Sophie sent them,” I said.
“How is Sophie?”
“Fine, she’ll be here tomorrow,” I told her.
“You sold HookedUp, then?”
“Yeah, we did.” Shut up with the small talk, Daisy.
“Anthony’s on his way, right?”
“Yes, he’ll be here in a while.”
“Oh God, I nearly forgot!” Daisy said, reaching into her purse. “The last time we saw Pearl she let Amy try on her pearl necklace, you know…Amy had been obsessing about it for over a year…so for a special treat, we let her, and wouldn’t you know it, Amy went off with it! Naughty magpie.”
Daisy carefully brought out the Art Deco necklace I had given Pearl—the lucky one with eighty-eight pearls, the number of infinity of the Universe, the number of constellations in the sky. She laid the necklace about Pearl’s pale neck and fiddled with the diamond clasp for what seemed forever. I felt a lump choke up my throat.
“There…these pearls can work some magic, maybe,” Daisy said, and then lowered her voice to a whisper, “The nurse will probably say she isn’t allowed to wear them, or something, but worth a try, eh?”
The shimmering pearls looked exquisite, lustrous; myriad tones of pinkish gold and honey. I looked away—I thought I’d break into pieces.
“You know what?” I said, hardly able to speak. “I think Billy might want to be with his daughter for a bit. Have a chat.” Hint, hint, Billy—let Pearl know you’re sorry for being such an absent father when she needed you most. My anger was surging back again. At Billy, at myself. Pearl looked so beautiful in the necklace that I could no longer bear to look at her. I needed to get the hell out of this sterile hospital room for an hour or two so she didn’t feel my negative vibe.
“I’m going to my hotel to clean up, have something to eat and see my kids,” I told them. “I’ll be back in a bit. You’ve all got my number. Call me if anything, you know…happens. I’m five minutes away.”
Billy’s tall frame stood and sadness was carved across his weather-beaten face. He was a handsome man, with his loose, sandy-blond hair, and looked younger than his fifty-something years. But right now he looked like shit. I guess we all did.
Being back with my children temporarily eased me somewhat. I lay on the floor, which was carpeted wall-to-wall in a thick wool pile, and let them crawl all over me as if they were puppies. I told them how much their mother doted on them and that there was another baby on the way, trying to convince myself that everything would work out fine. But I felt haunted by what Daisy told me; that Pearl had asked her to make sure her legs got waxed if she ended up in a coma. Did she have a premonition? Sometimes, a voice speaks to you. Your subconscious, your gut, your instinct—call it what you will. Perhaps Pearl knew this was going to happen.
I played airplane with Madeleine, which she adored, lying on my back and balancing her on my feet while holding her hands. Louis was more grounded. He didn’t want to fly or play wild games. He wanted to be quiet and look at picture books or play with colored blocks.
“I’ve ordered room service,” Joy said, standing at the doorway. I turned to look at her and saw she’d been crying too. We were all pretending to each other to be brave but inside we were mush. “I thought you needed some nourishment before you went back to the hospital.” She retied her ponytail so her dark hair was scraped against her scalp. I’d become a bit obsessed with scalps, heads and brains in the last twenty-four hours. They’d shaved part of Pearl’s head. With my babies, I was always so careful when I held them, afraid to drop them, but a grown woman, who would have known such a thing could happen?
“Great.” I didn’t even bother asking Joy what she’d ordered. I didn’t care. Eating right now was an aid to help me function, nothing more. A way to fuel myself. The neurologist told me that they’d run more tests, but he didn’t want to put my hopes up.
As well as talking to all the medical staff, I’d done research. That’s all I did, in between massaging Pearl, reading her poetry and stories, and talking to her. But I hung on to Hope, Faith and fucking Charity. I reckoned for all the shit I went though for the first half of my life, I was owed one.
When I got back to the hospital, Anthony was there. He was dressed in a bright yellow shirt and pink pants, his head on Pearl’s cheek, crying his heart out. Daisy had put the ear buds on Pearl and the iPod switched on. I thought I heard the tune, Unchained Melody and it made my eyes smart. Another nurse—an older woman, this time—waddled in, adjusted Pearl’s IV bags, double-checked settings and the cardiac monitor, and left, leaving our motley party to get on with it.
Anthony didn’t even notice me. Billy was quietly
reading a magazine. Daisy looked up at me, her eyes even more puffed than before, her mascara smudged. She took me aside and mouthed silently, “Bruce is also in the hospital. Anthony’s freaking out.”
“Bruce, his boyfriend?”
“He’s had another aneurism. Obviously Anthony’s torn in two. Guilty if he didn’t come here, guilty now he is here. He’ll be flying back to San Francisco on the red-eye.”
“Poor guy. Any change in Pearl?” I whispered. I didn’t want Pearl to hear us, even though they assured me she was out of it.
“Not a peep,” Daisy murmured back. “And that’s another reason why Ant is freaking out. He overheard one of the neurologists talking about Pearl’s condition. But Ant is such a drama queen, I don’t know.”
“But I spoke to Dr. Bailey earlier. He said it’s too soon to make a definitive prognosis—that we need to wait.”
“That’s what I hoped too. But they won’t speak to me because I’m not family.”
“You are family, Daisy.”
“Thanks for that.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “Anthony said that—”
“I heard the doctors discussing Pearl earlier,” Anthony piped up, his lip trembling, his body shaking uncontrollably.
Billy put his magazine down and gathered a measured breath. “We need to speak to Dr. Bailey directly, Ant. What you heard was hearsay.” His face was gaunt and drained, his eyes empty with fear.
I came over to Anthony and laid my hand on his shoulder and gave him a pat as if to say, There, there, now. I felt ridiculous—I didn’t know what else to do—the man was a blubbering mess. I didn’t want him to say anything in front of Pearl but he couldn’t be stopped.
He blurted out, “They were talking in a lot of technical, medical jargon, you know. Cerebral edema, sub-something-or-other bleeding, cervical spine fracture. They said that her frontal lobes and parietal lobes are irreparably damaged, and that when the anesthesia wears off they can establish brain death. Something about Doppler flows and oh yes, of course they want to get their greedy hands on her kidneys.” He started wailing, braying like a donkey, tears spilling from his inflated eyes. “Why me? Why is it all happening at once?” he yodeled.
I squeezed his shoulders. “No, Anthony. Dr. Bailey wouldn’t be so unprofessional. He’s one of the most respected neurosurgeons in the country. And the neurologist, too. They’d let us know something like that, straight away. There’s the baby to think of, as well. You must have misheard.”
Anthony gulped air. “It’s the weekend. He probably wanted to go fishing or something…you know, couldn’t face getting into some heavy family drama, so thought he’d wait until after the weekend to tell us the bad news.”
I didn’t want to argue about this with my brother-in-law, out of his mind with upset, so I let it pass. I had an urge to throttle Anthony, choke some sense into him, chuck them all out of the room, Daisy included, and just lie there quietly with Pearl. Alone. But they, too, had a right to be with her.
Yet Anthony continued, as he wrung and twisted his fingers through his hair and cried, “I’m sorry, call me a coward but I am not going to stay here and watch my sister die! I mean, she is dead, right? Technically dead, being kept alive by machines? Her brain isn’t functioning!” His pale blond eyebrows shot up. “All they have to do is yank out the tubes and that’ll be it!”
“Enough, Ant,” Billy barked, trying to remain calm. His fists were clenched though; the tension in his body was raw, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, his jaw tense. “If you need to leave, then just go. Nobody is judging you—we all will deal with this on our own terms.”
“That’s right, Dad. And my terms are shattered to pieces! My terms are…fuck, I don’t know…I can’t even think straight, but I cannot and will not watch while they fucking pull that plug. Bruce needs me. Pearly isn’t even aware that I’m here!”
“I dispute that,” Daisy said quietly. “She knows. She knows in her soul and in her heart—which, even if her brain is supposedly… ‘dead,’ is still beating, by the way.” She whispered the word dead. “She knows,” she added, “how much we love her.” Daisy buried her face in her hands and then rushed out of the room, crying, into the corridor. I followed her, nearly crashing into a man hobbling along with an IV pole. I needed to find the nurse, call the doctor on his cell or find someone who knew what the fuck was going on.
Pearl’s brain had to be alive and functioning. Who was to say someone was ‘brain dead,’ anyway? There were miracles, weren’t there? Misdiagnoses? She had to pull through.
She just had to.
Or I’d wander through life nothing better than a grain of dust.
PEARL’S EPILOGUE.
His hands were music to me all day long. His touch so full of love, so perfect, that I drifted in and out of a blissful dream. We were making love and he was telling me that I was the most beautiful woman he had ever known. Were we making love? I don’t know, because every time I woke up it was just the movement of his hands and the song of his voice. Poetry. Stories. Tales of Madeleine and Louis. Laughter filled my ears.
And here I am. In a strange world of non-being, yet feeling so alive! So alive with love. I’ve lived. I’ve done everything I’ve ever wanted to do. Some people will tell you that living is the most important thing. But I say it’s true only if you are living with life in your heart. Otherwise you’re dead.
I can feel myself drifting away to Utopia. I don’t care that I’m leaving Life behind. Because I have loved. I’m in love and have been loved. And nobody can ever take that away from me. Someone special—Alexandre—has given me his all. I am full. Literally.
I see a light and it’s smoothing itself all around me like a warm sea. I’m bathed in shimmering gold luminosity. I’m weightless, floating. I can see Mom and she’s laughing.
She’s beckoning me to join her, calling my name.
ALEXANDRE’S EPILOGUE.
Six months later.
The memorial went beautifully, thanks to Ant who organized it all. White lilies adorned the little church on the hill and the view below was breathtaking. Rolling hills and green valleys patch-worked over the land, with houses dotted here and there. I knew that Pearl loved countryside like this. Her dad stood there, his hands behind his back, standing tall and proud, and I wondered if he minded that Daisy hadn’t chosen him, after all.
Louis and Madeleine were scampering about, squealing with delight. Only children have the privilege of being so uncouth; blissfully unaware of the turmoil going on in grown-ups’ heads, I thought. But Ant had been brave today and hardly shed a tear. The pastor read some lovely prayers and Anthony read a Walt Whitman poem—one of Pearl’s favorites, in fact.
I was wearing a suit, the same one that I’d worn on our wedding day. I felt a lump in my throat, remembering the beauty of the falling snowflakes, Pearl’s exquisite face, and I was grateful to have that memory—indeed all the memories of our wonderful life together.
I felt an arm slip under my jacket and snake it’s way around my waist. I looked down at my wife. “So, what did you think?”
“I’m sure Bruce would have loved this,” she said.
“Well, I never met the man, but the service was beautifully done.”
I peered down into the carrycot just to check on little Lily. Her smooth, delicate face looked so peaceful and her heart-shaped, pouting lips so content.
“Don’t worry, she’ll be asleep for a while now,” Pearl said, nestling her head against my shoulder.
“Shall we go back to the hotel and make another?” I asked with a crooked smile.
“Another baby? You’re a fast worker, Alexandre Chevalier; I think I’m babied-out for a good long while. But if you’re careful, I guess—”
“Let’s go back, right now. I feel like hanging out with only you, all afternoon.”
“What about those two rascals?” Pearl said gesturing over to our two runaround tornadoes on the loose.
“Joy,” I said, “is not called Joy f
or nothing. She can take them to see the Golden Gate.”
“You’re on,” Pearl agreed.
“That easy?”
“I told you I was an easy lay,” she said, and laughed.
“I wish,” I answered, taking all of her in my arms. I squeezed her tight and breathed in the Pearl Elixir. “For forty-eight whole hours I thought I’d lost my rare Pearl,” I murmured into her soft blonde hair. “My belle Pearl.”
Yes, those couple of days when Pearl was in a coma was the worst time of my life. But it turned out that the conversation between doctors that Anthony overheard was about another patient altogether, not Pearl. It was a good thing he returned home to Bruce, because Bruce died two days later. His family organized the funeral, negating the fact that Anthony was his boyfriend—refusing to have anything to do with him at all, so Anthony got this memorial together, six months later. We were now all saying goodbye. It was a poignant moment for me because, although it was sad, I couldn’t help but feel that one life was lost and another gained.
Pearl survived.
Daisy was right. Wake Up Little Suzy jolted Pearl out of the coma. Her recovery was not immediate, obviously. It took her a long time to get back to complete normality and she spent most of that time in the hospital, due to her pregnancy. I didn’t want to take any risks. But the birth went beautifully and she hardly suffered any labor pains, this time around. When little Lily popped out completely healthy, with all her fingers and toes, I thought I’d burst, I was so happy.
Since then, Pearl and I have been taking it easy. With HookedUp out of our lives and more money than anyone needs for several lifetimes, we don’t have to work. Natalie has taken over HookedUp Enterprises, and Pearl just acts as consultant once in a while. She sold on Vanity Fair—she realized that running a magazine was very different from reading one—in fact, she spends a lot of time reading, and is working on a book based on her great-grandmother’s journals. She’s a full-time mom and I’m a full-time househusband. The best job I’ve ever had. After the scare—thinking I had lost Pearl forever—I realized that there is nothing more important than family. Nothing.
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