Always

by Sarah Jio

“It is,” she continues. “But I don’t think we should panic. It’s possible he’ll return later. I’ve notified hospital security to keep an eye out for him nearby.”

  I look out the open doors that lead to the balcony. Waves ripple onto the sugar-sand beach below. Everything about the scene is peaceful and placid, but inside all I feel is terror. Cade is on the streets again. And I am thousands of miles away.

  “I’ll catch an early flight back,” I say. “I can find him. I know where he goes.”

  “I hate for you to have to do that,” she says. “But I—”

  “He’d do it for me,” I say.

  Ryan doesn’t say anything when I set my phone down. “Cade’s missing,” I say. “You probably heard.”

  He nods and leans back against the pillows propped up behind him. I can’t tell if he’s upset or annoyed or both.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “But I have to go. I can’t be here knowing that he’s on the streets again. He’s lost, Ryan. He needs my help. And I know that it may be hard for you to understand, but I have to help him.”

  Ryan sighs. “Of course I don’t want you to go,” he says. “But you have to do what you have to do. Our relationship has always been about that sort of trust, and freedom to do what we need to do.”

  “Thanks,” I say as I frantically pack, then call the airline to change my flight. If I can get a cab immediately, I’ll be able to catch the eleven A.M. flight home to Seattle.

  I slip on a pair of jeans and put my hair into a ponytail. Before I wheel my suitcase to the door, I walk back to the bed, where Ryan is still lying shirtless beneath a sheet.

  “I hate to go,” I say. “But I have to.”

  He looks at me for a long time, then pulls me to him. “I wish you didn’t have to,” he says. “But do what you need to do, baby.”

  My eyes well up with tears as I kiss him goodbye. “Thank you. You don’t know how much that means to me, Ryan.”

  OCTOBER 10, 1998

  The pain is excruciating.

  “Keep breathing,” Tracy says as she drives her Volvo up James Street to Swedish Hospital. “We’re almost there.”

  I nod and take a deep breath, then exhale before crying out in pain again. Towels are wadded up beneath me on the seat. I’ve never seen so much blood.

  “Hold on,” she says. “Just a few more minutes.”

  I’m dizzy and weak. I know what’s happening to me. I’m aware the baby Cade and I conceived may be leaving my body, just as Cade left me. Left the planet, really. I turn to Tracy and cry out. “It hurts so much.” And I think then that physical pain is nothing compared to the anguish my heart feels. Bearing this alone. Can I do it?

  “I’m here,” she says, swerving into the hospital parking lot. “You’re going to be okay, I promise.”

  “I hate him,” I scream through the pain ripping through my abdomen. “I hate him for not being here.”

  “Breathe, honey,” Tracy says as she drives up to the hospital.

  Tears stream down my cheeks as she rolls down the window and shouts at a hospital employee in blue scrubs near the elevator. “We need a wheelchair!”

  Moments later I’m rushed in a dizzy blur to the fifth floor. Medical staff hover around me.

  “My God, she’s bleeding out!”

  “Get the doctor!”

  “Where’s the father?”

  “Hurry, get the IV in!”

  “Her blood pressure is falling!”

  It’s like a nightmare where you want to scream, but you can’t. I am alone with my pain, both physical and emotional. I moan and weep; Tracy speaks for me. She squeezes my hand and wipes the sweat from my brow. I feel pain shooting like daggers from my back to my stomach.

  I feel everything when I so desperately want to feel nothing.

  “Tracy?” I cry.

  “I’m right here.”

  “I lost the baby, didn’t I?”

  She squeezes my arm. “I’m so sorry, Kailey.”

  I roll to my side and moan as a doctor with a soft voice and dark-rimmed glasses approaches holding a syringe. “This will take care of the pain,” he says.

  The needle pricks my skin, and moments later I’m enveloped in a blanket of calm. Nurses and doctors buzz around my outstretched legs, carving out the remnants of a life that will never be.

  —

  When it’s over, I stare out the window despondently. The cherry trees that line James Street are starting to lose their leaves. Two years ago, Cade and I walked hand in hand along that street when they were in full bloom. He stopped to shake a branch and let the pink blossoms flutter down. “Snow, for my beloved.”

  “Excuse me, Kailey,” the doctor says, approaching me cautiously. “I thought you might like to know”—he swallows hard—“that it was a girl.”

  My heart surges. My daughter. Cade’s daughther. We are a family now, joined together forever by this little life we created. But he’s gone. They’re both gone. And the world is dark.

  Tracy reaches for my hand. “Oh, Kailey. I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.” She places her hand on my arm. I close my eyes and weep.

  DECEMBER 15, 2008

  I am restless on the plane home to Seattle. I shift into a million positions, lose interest in the in-flight movie, try to sleep but can’t, and am basically miserable. Flying has always fascinated me: the concept of being thirty thousand feet high, suspended between here and there. In no place, really. While it used to give me comfort, this middle place—this idea of being neither here nor there but in between—it doesn’t now. The pilot can’t fly this thing fast enough, and as I watch the clouds out the window I’m plagued with worry. Cade, I’m coming. I’m coming.

  I speed-walk through baggage claim to customs, then outside to flag down a cab. I call Harborview, but when they transfer me to Cade’s building there’s no answer, so I instruct the driver to take me to Cade’s apartment. I ask him to wait while I rush to the reception desk. He’s still gone.

  We drive downtown next, past Le Marche, past his old Pioneer Square apartment, up and down Fourth and Fifth six times.

  “Miss, you want me to take you somewhere else?” the driver says, turning to me at a stoplight.

  It’s the most expensive cab ride of my life, but I don’t care. I tell him to circle downtown once more. We do, but Cade is…nowhere.

  “I guess you can take me home now,” I say, dejectedly giving him my address.

  Ten minutes later, we’re parked on the street in front of my house. I pay the fare, and the driver lifts my suitcase out of the trunk. I stand on the sidewalk as he drives away, then turn to the house. My eyes widen when I notice a figure sitting on the second step of my porch in the shadow of the wisteria vine.

  I drop my bag when I see him, hands at his sides, knees propped up slightly on the steps. “Cade!”

  His face brightens when he sees me. “Hi,” he says.

  “Cade, what happened? Why are you here?”

  He rubs his forehead. “I don’t know. I, I…I missed you.”

  I feel a burst inside, sort of like the first taste of a lemon. It’s intense and all-consuming. “You did?”

  “You were gone for so long,” he says.

  “Just three days,” I assure him, reaching for his hands. “I came home as soon as Dr. Branson called and said you were missing.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I just…”

  “I won’t leave again, not for a while. Not until you get more settled. You’re making such good progress. The new medication seems to be working.”

  We walk inside the house, and when he reaches for my suitcase, at first I shake my head. But he insists, so I let him carry it.

  Cade nods. “I’m remembering. More and more.”

  “Like what? Tell me something.”

  He smiles. “Like…you. And boats.”

  “Boats?”

  He nods. “We took a ferry ride, didn’t we? To an island.”

  “We did,” I say. I pull my cellphon
e out of my pocket and scroll through my photos, old and new, that I scanned and saved, to find the one Cade took of me on the ferry so many years ago. “Do you remember this?”

  He blinks hard, reaching out for my phone. He takes it and stares at the image longingly. “I do.”

  He smiles. “It’s like a blurry dream.”

  “You saved my life that day,” I continue. “Do you remember?”

  He nods.

  “Funny that when I asked you what you remember, you said boats.”

  A cloud falls over his face then. I sit down on the couch and he sits beside me.

  “What is it?”

  “There’s something else I remember,” he continues.

  “What?”

  His face is strained, as if he’s recalling a horror he’d just as well let slip back into the cobwebbed corners of his mind. And I’d like him to, but I have a feeling this memory is significant somehow.

  “Cade,” I say, placing my hand on his arm. “Tell me.”

  He stares straight ahead. “It was dark. There was water.” His hand trembles in mine. “I felt something hit my head.”

  “Something? What?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “It was cold. Waves crashing all around. I could taste blood in my mouth.”

  “Cade, are you sure? Dr. Branson said your memories would return, but that sometimes they’d be jumbled.”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe.”

  “Is there anything else? Anything more specific?”

  He’s quiet for a long moment, and I don’t try to fill the air with chatter. I want to give him space to remember.

  “Princess,” he says.

  “What?”

  “That word was on the side of the boat.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He nods. “I think so. It was painted in navy-blue letters.”

  I pull up my phone and open a browser window. “Maybe it’s a type of yacht.” I Google “princess yachts” and sure enough, there’s a company of the same name.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’m going to look into this.”

  “What do you think it all means?” Cade asks.

  “I’m not sure,” I reply. “But I promise you, I’m going to find out.”

  —

  I drive Cade back to Harborview. Together we take the elevator up to his third-floor apartment.

  He makes me a cup of coffee with the coffeemaker I bought him after receiving the green light from Dr. Branson, and I smile when he hands me the mug. “You used to love coffee,” I say.

  “Did I?”

  I grin. “You bought one of those enormous La Marzocco espresso machines, like the ones they have at cafés.”

  “I did?” He laughs.

  “You did.”

  “It was red.”

  I nod.

  He sits down on the love seat, and I join him. There isn’t much space, so our thighs touch, as do our arms. “What was I like?” Cade asks, looking suddenly thoughtful.

  “You were larger than life,” I say. “You loved music and vodka martinis with cheese-filled olives.”

  He raises his eyebrows.

  “You loved travel and people, and owned a thousand records. You told the funniest stories. In the two years I dated you, you never ran out of stories, and you never stopped making me laugh.”

  “Two years,” he says, a little in awe, a little regretful.

  “Yes,” I say. “And I loved every day, even those hard days at the end.”

  “Why were they hard?” he asks. It’s as if Cade’s mind is on fire, exploding with questions, his brain’s circuits firing so rapidly that his speech is having trouble keeping up.

  I tell him about the drama with Element Records. I tell him about how he began drinking heavily. I share James’s accusations.

  He turns to me, eyes so big and earnest that I want to pull him to me and hold him tight. “I wish I could still make you laugh.” He nods. “Like I used to.”

  “Oh, Cade,” I say, feeling an intense rush of emotions wash over me. “I’m just so happy I found you again. I’ve missed you. Every day since you’ve been gone. And I looked for you around every corner of this city. I was always looking for you, even when that voice deep down told me it was time to stop. I had to mourn you like you were dead. I had to say goodbye. And I’ve never been the same since.”

  He touches my cheek to wipe a tear away. “What did you do all those years?”

  I swallow hard. “I got a job in New York working for a magazine. It was grueling. I had a boss from hell, and I pretty much hated every minute of it.” I laugh. “My apartment was infested with mice.”

  He smiles, listening intently, patiently.

  “I moved back four years ago when my editor offered to bring me back to the Herald. I met Ryan after that.”

  Cade looks at his feet.

  “Sorry, I…” My voice trails off. I don’t know what I’m beginning to say, or even what I want to say.

  “Do you love him?” Cade says suddenly.

  “Yes,” I say. It’s the complicated truth.

  He nods. “I was so lucky.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To have had you in my life,” he replies earnestly, regretfully.

  “But you still have me in your life. And you always will. That will never change.”

  “I wish…”

  I wish, too. So much.

  His eyes meet mine, and their pull is magnetic, so I close mine tightly. I can’t. It isn’t right. He’s not himself, and I’m…

  I feel his fingertips on my lips and a wave of emotion washes over me.

  “Open your eyes,” he says suddenly with the same swagger and confidence that once possessed him. “I need you to see me.”

  I obey, and when he pulls me to him, I don’t protest. I melt into his embrace. My arms wrap around him, then my legs as he pulls me onto his lap. Our bodies press against each other, and then he kisses me. When our lips meet, the past, the future…none of it matters now. Only us. Only this moment.

  I pull back when I hear a knock at Cade’s door. I quickly jump to my feet and nervously run my fingers through my hair where his hands were moments before.

  Cade opens the door. It’s Dr. Branson.

  “Cade,” she says. “It’s so good to see you back. I hope you won’t leave us again anytime soon.”

  He nods, then looks at me.

  “Hi,” I say. “I was just…helping Cade get settled again.”

  “Of course,” she says, stepping back into the hallway. “I won’t keep you, but I would like to run some tests later.”

  After she’s gone, we stand in silence. I feel guilty and scared. As much as I want to turn back to him, to pick up where we left off, to shower him with all the love I still feel, I know it’s not right. I’m going to marry Ryan.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, breaking the icy silence. It cracks all around us like a winter lake on a sunny day. “We shouldn’t have done that.”

  He looks confused, but then nods.

  I take a step toward the door.

  “You could…stay,” he says.

  There is longing in his voice, and I want so desperately to go to him, to fill the void in my heart with his love, the love he once gave me so freely. But I can’t.

  “I have to go,” I say. “I…”

  He sits down, staring out the window.

  “Please,” I say. “It’s not that I don’t want to. But I just…can’t.”

  He continues to sit in silence as I place my hand on the door.

  “I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow afternoon. I promise.”

  Ryan calls from Mexico on my drive home.

  “Hi,” I say, my voice weary and distant, as if I’ve lived three lives in the span of just this afternoon. My heart feels heavy with guilt.

  “So, did you find your missing hobo?”

  I’m momentarily annoyed by Ryan’s tone, but I know I don’t have the right to be. “Yes,” I say.
“I found him and got him back to Harborview.”

  “Good,” he says. “I thought about flying home today, but the hotel is nonrefundable at this point, so I might as well stay and enjoy the sun.”

  Rain splatters my windshield. Everywhere outside it’s gray. The light. The clouds. The pavement. The world is bleak on bleak.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Just stay.”

  “I love you,” Ryan says. “I don’t always understand you, but I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I reply, haunted by the words that just flew out of my lips. They echo in my head after I’ve hung up the phone.

  I grasp the steering wheel tighter and begin to cry.

  DECEMBER 16, 2008

  “The feedback on your series keeps breaking records,” Jan says that morning at the office. “Good fodder for the editorial page.”

  I sigh, thinking of Ryan’s Pioneer Square projects inching closer to completion. “Maybe we should just leave it at that. After all, I’ve covered both sides. Both the homeless advocates and the developers have had their say.”

  Jan shakes her head. “And yet there’s still a missing piece.” Her eyes pierce mine. I know she’s right.

  “When are you going to let me read it?”

  I know exactly what she’s referring to—the article about Cade. I’ve made progress with it, for sure, but it’s far from complete.

  “Soon,” I say, letting my eyes fall upon the framed engagement photo of Ryan and me that sits on my desk.

  “Your engagement party is this weekend, right?”

  I nod.

  “I’m going to try to make it,” she says. “At least for a bit.”

  I smile.

  “Kailey, you don’t have to go through the motions if you don’t want to.”

  “I’m going to marry Ryan, Jan,” I say. “I’m going to marry him, and you are going to come to our tenth and our twentieth, and our fiftieth wedding anniversaries.”

  I turn for the door before I can see the look on her face.

  —

  I meet Tracy for lunch before stopping to see Cade. She tells me about a new guy she’s dating named Trent.

  “I like everything about him,” she says, “except his name.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “What’s wrong with Trent?”