As I pull away from the airport, the Defender growling a low protest as it changes gears, all I feel is a bone-deep sense of grief, for Catherine’s sister, for the two of us and what might have been.
Chapter Thirty-eight
“Between too early and too late, there is never more than a moment.”
― Franz Werfel
Catherine
I STARE OUT the window of the plane at the clouds below. My thoughts are a jumbled fog of questions and self-ridicule and regret.
Some part of me thinks it can’t be true. How could Nicole try to take her own life? Is this my fault? Am I responsible?
I try to figure out when my sister would have made such a decision. Was it suddenly? Had she been planning it for a long time? Was it because I didn’t answer her birthday email?
A hand touches my shoulder. I jump and turn my head to find a stewardess smiling at me. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee, tea?”
“Coffee, please,” I say automatically, although my stomach lurches at the thought of food. Maybe the caffeine will give my brain the ability to make sense of the phone call from my mother. And the awful, awful realization that I may not make it in time. That Nicole may die before I get there.
I lean my head against the seat and close my eyes.
I think of how things have been between my sister and me for the past three years. Of the anger I was certain had rusted a hole inside the center of my once bottomless love for her.
But somehow, since the moment I ended the call with my mom, I have only been able to think of Nicole as we were before three years ago. Before Connor. I remember us as little girls, the way Nicole wanted to do anything I did. I picture her following me through our house, her love-worn doll Emmy tucked under her arm. It didn’t matter what I was doing or where I was going. Nicole just wanted to be a part of it.
Was I a nice older sister? Or did I take advantage of her devotion to me?
I wonder now, as I have wondered many times in the past three years, why Nicole chose Connor. Was it about taking something from me? Or was it my sister never having enough faith in her own ability to make her way, to trust her choices? She had always tried to follow mine. In some convoluted way, was picking Connor just more of that?
Should I have seen that before now? Before Nicole decided life wasn’t worth living anymore?
A sob rises up in my throat and I lean forward in my seat, wrapping my arms around my waist and pressing my lips together.
Please, God. Please give us a chance to fix this. Please don’t let her die. Please. Please give me another chance.
Chapter Thirty-nine
“Believe that life is worth living and your belief
will help create the fact.”
― William James
Nicole
IT’S DARK.
She stumbles, hands out in front her, trying to find something solid to latch onto. But the darkness is like she imagines space must be. Billions of miles of universe with planets so far apart that there is no hope of falling into one. Still, she tries, grappling, reaching out, staring so hard for any speck of light that it feels as if her eyes might pop from her head.
There’s a voice. A woman. And another. A man. Younger.
She tries to focus on their conversation, but at first it sounds like a foreign language she’s never heard before. Sentences uttered so fast she cannot make out the individual words. One breaks through. ICU.
ICU. Who’s in the ICU?
Fear lashes at her. Is it one of her parents? Catherine?
As if the conversation has been slowed down for her own comprehension, she understands more of what the voices are saying. Front desk nurse. Predicting an ICU patient dead by morning. This one. Organ donor.
Confusion drowns her brain. Maybe she blacks out. When she becomes aware again, she is wondering who they were talking about.
A hand touches her arm. Nicole. Nicole. It’s her mother’s voice. Saturated with tears. Nicole, please wake up. It’s Mama. I’m here.
Pain consumes her. She wants to go to her mother. She tries to run, but her legs are stuck in something. It feels like quicksand, and it is pulling her down, down, back into the blackness. But just before her head goes completely under, she realizes who the voices were talking about. The patient expected to be dead by morning. The organ donor.
They were talking about her.
Chapter Forty
“I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than the things I haven’t done.”
―Lucille Ball
Catherine
I GRAB AN Uber at the airport. The quickest one is the most basic, but I don’t care. With me and my suitcase stuffed in his backseat, I urge the college student to get his economy car to the hospital in West Palm Beach as quickly as possible. He takes I-95 and pushes the small vehicle toward eighty. The car shakes, but we’re taking the hospital exit within a few minutes, and I appreciate his focus on getting me there.
When he pulls up at the entrance, I thank him and slide out of the backseat, pulling my suitcase behind me. Inside, I ask the volunteer at the front desk which room my sister is in and then ask if I can leave my luggage with her. She starts to tell me she’s not supposed to do that, but maybe it’s the distraught look on my face that makes her change her mind. I pull the case behind the desk, make sure it is out of her way and then bolt for the elevator.
Nicole is in the ICU on the twelfth floor. I wait for each numbered level to slide by, each one ticking by in synch with the pulse in my throat. The doors finally open, and I step onto the waxed white floor, looking left and then right for the ICU signs. It’s to the right. I walk quickly down the hall, following the arrows to a pair of red doors marked INTENSIVE CARE UNIT. No more than one visitor allowed at a time. Ring buzzer for admittance.
My hand is on the buzzer when I hear my name and turn to find my mother walking toward me with tears streaming down her face. My composure melts, and I let myself be folded into her arms, each of us holding onto the other as if we’ve been dropped in the middle of the ocean and must not let go if we are to survive.
Finally, she leans back and pushes a strand of tear-soaked hair from my face. “How is she?” I ask, the words barely audible under my fear of hearing the answer.
My mom shakes her head, glancing down and then meeting my gaze with tear-drenched eyes. “Not good. She’s so lucky they found her.”
“Who? Who found her?”
“There was a fire alarm in her building. The firefighters were going door to door to find the problem. If they hadn’t gone in to check her apartment, no one would have found her in time.”
A sob rises out of me at the image of Nicole dying alone. I think of the last time I saw her, a weekend a few months ago when I went to South Carolina to visit my parents. She’d been so happy to have me there, and even though she’d questioned me about the divide she sensed between Nicole and me, we had mostly avoided the subject and done the things Mom liked to do when I was home, visit aunts and uncles, go to the library on Saturday morning where she enlisted my help picking out a few novels to read. Go to church on Sunday morning and have as many relatives as possible over for lunch afterwards.
She had looked so happy that weekend and always young for her age. But this weight that has been dropped on her, Nicole’s attempt to take her own life, has aged my mother overnight. I feel instant grief, fear stabbing me at the thought of losing her as well as Nicole.
“Oh, mom. She’ll be okay. She has to be.”
My voice breaks, and I press my face to her shoulder the way I used to do as a little girl, and I dreaded telling her something I had done wrong. As if she feels the awful burden weighing on me, she pulls back and says, “What is it, Cat? I know something happened between you and Nicole, but neither of you has been willing to tell me. Do you think I haven’t sensed the divide between you two?”
Reluctant as I am to meet her knowing gaze, I pull back, meet my mother’s eyes. “I don’t want to te
ll you now, Mom. I promise I will, but it doesn’t feel right now. All that matters is that Nicole gets through this.”
Mom wants to know the truth, but she nods once, and says, “Go in and see her. We can only visit one at a time. I’ll wait out here. Just go through the doors, and the nurse at the desk will take you to her.”
Here, I falter. The thought of seeing Nicole alone fills my feet with concrete, and I can’t bring myself to move.
“Go on, honey. She needs to know you’re here.”
Tears fill my eyes, and I want to sob out the truth. That it is my inability to forgive my sister that is the reason she is here.
*
THE NURSE IS a woman in her fifties who has clearly seen more sadness than any human should have to process. I see this in her eyes as she puts a hand on my shoulder and directs me down a short hallway to the bed where my sister lies, still as death.
“She’s in a coma, as you know,” she says, her voice soft and sympathetic.
“Can she hear us?” I ask.
“Many people think the answer to that is yes.”
“What do you think?” I look at her, wanting to see her answer as well as hear it.
“I’ve had patients tell me they did have awareness when they were unconscious. And I have to say, there were some memories voiced to me that I knew to be accurate.”
I don’t know whether to feel comforted by this or alarmed by the thought that Nicole might be aware of where she is and what has happened to her.
“I try to tell family,” the nurse says, empathy underlining her words, “that the important thing is to just be present. Let them know you’re here. Sit with her. The doctors are limiting her visits to fifteen minutes. I’ll be back, okay?”
I nod, trying to thank her, but I can’t make any words come out. She walks away, heading back down the hallway to the front desk.
It is only when I am alone that I let myself fully look at my sister. I cannot stop the sob that rises up out of me. I sit, collapse, onto the chair next to the bed. Her skin is so pale it is as if all the blood has been drained from her body. Her arms lie to her sides, her palms flat against the mattress. The tube inserted in her mouth is hooked to a machine that helps her breathe. The sound it makes is a soft whoosh-risp, over and over again, that reminds me with each intake that it is the machine keeping her alive.
I sit, staring at her. Not a single word comes to me. The only thing that comes to my mind is Why? Why have you done this to yourself? Why did you betray me?
They are not questions I can ask. I reach for her hand, lace her cold fingers through mine. There is something in the connection between us, her skin against mine, that melts the awful rock of anger in my heart. I drop my head and begin to cry. I hold her hand as tight as I dare, and finally, the words come. “Nicole. Come back. Please. Don’t go like this. I need you. We’ll find a way back. Don’t. Go. You’re my sister. I forgive you.”
Chapter Forty-one
‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’
‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’
‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit
Catherine
MY DAD IS waiting beside my mom when I come out of the ICU. The nurse who had shown me in had kindly, but firmly, told me I would have to leave when my allotted time was up. I could see that she would let me stay had it been up to her, but I didn’t want to put her in that position.
As soon as my dad sees me, he starts to cry, and then I’m crying, too, and we’re all hugging each other, our arms forming a circle of support like pillars under a bridge.
I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen my dad cry, and the sound of his broken heart deepens the cracks in my own. It’s then I know I have to tell them the truth about what happened between Nicole and me. I don’t want to, but they deserve to know that I have a part to play in the reason she is here.
I pull back and look at them both. “Can we go somewhere private? There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Of course, honey,” Dad says in a shaky voice.
Mom leads the way down the hall and to the far end of the corridor where a small waiting area is marked for visitors of ICU patients. There’s no one else there, and as we step inside, I close the door behind us.
“What is it, Cat?” Mom asks, and I can see she is worried there is something more horrible to absorb, and maybe there is. One daughter who no longer wants to live. And another with a heart of stone.
I walk over to the window and look out across the road between the hospital and the water. I fold my arms across my chest, not sure I can hold back the dam of remorse waiting to spill out of me. The silence in the room becomes so loud that I have to get the words out. They are poison in my soul. “It’s my fault she’s here.”
I say the words without turning around. I can’t face them.
My mom’s voice is a whisper. “What do you mean, honey?”
My dad walks over, puts his hand on my shoulder and slowly turns me to face them. “Catherine. You love your sister. You’ve always loved her.”
A sob rises in my throat, and I can no longer keep it inside me. “We haven’t talked to each other in a long time. . .something happened.”
“What?” Mom implores. The agony in her voice makes me realize I can no longer keep any of it from them. Maybe I should have told them long ago. Maybe they could have helped Nicole and me find our way back.
“Connor and Nicole had an affair.”
My dad takes a step back and drops onto a chair by the window. Neither of us says anything, the silence in the room thick with shock.
I wait for them to absorb what I have said. There is nothing to add to soften it. The truth is an ugly fact.
“Oh, Cat,” Mom says. “Why?”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter now. Obviously, Connor and I had problems I didn’t recognize.”
“How could they?” Mom’s voice is a sob.
“I don’t know,” I admit on a broken note. “But is my sin of unforgiveness worse than their sin of betrayal? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself.”
“Catherine,” my dad says, disbelief underlining my name. “No one would blame you.”
“I blame me. She’s reached out to me numerous times. Asked me to forgive her.”
My mom starts to cry again. She walks to the window and stares out, her shoulders shaking.
I wish I knew what to say to comfort her. My dad. Myself. Forty years on this earth, and there is something I know with complete certainty. There are things that happen to us for which there simply is no comfort to be had.
*
THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR hours seem more like months. I stay at the hospital, make use of the family shower available on the ICU floor and sleep in the waiting room, going in to see Nicole whenever the nurses will allow me. I insist that Mom and Dad go to their hotel and get some sleep. They both look exhausted.
It’s almost six p.m. when they leave. I’ve assured Mom I will get something to eat from the cafeteria downstairs, but as I sit staring at the TV screen with a muted news channel glaring back at me, I feel sick at the thought of food.
My phone beeps, and I reach for it, glancing at the screen. Anders’ name makes my heart drop. I have purposefully blocked my mind of any thoughts of him. The darkness of this place and the reason I’m here overshadows Barbados and everything that happened there. Part of me wonders if it actually happened at all.
I tap into Messages and then on An
ders’ name.
I can’t stop thinking about you. How is your sister?
I consider what to say. Every response that comes to mind sounds trivial.
She is the same. No change yet. Thank you for asking.
How are you?
I’m okay.
Really?
I start to type. Stop.
Catherine. I want to come there. Be with you.
Reading the words, a sob rises out of my chest and spills into the silent room. The thought of having Anders here, burying myself in the circle of his arms is a comfort I do not deserve. I don’t deserve him.
My fingers type before I can let my heart change my mind.
What we had was wonderful. But it wasn’t something that could last. We both know that. I don’t know how the days we had together convinced me what we had was real. It felt real. But my life is here. Escape isn’t an option. I wish only the best for you, Anders. I won’t be coming back there. It’s better that we say goodbye now. I’m not the woman for you. I’m sorry.
I exit out of the message app, the screen blurring in front of my eyes. I turn off the phone and put it away.
Chapter Forty-two
“For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Anders
SOME PART OF me knows she is right.
What I had with Catherine fits every definition of a vacation romance.
She came to Barbados for a temporary escape from a very demanding life. I knew that up front. I live in a place that is fantasy to most. A temporary escape at best.
That Birthday in Barbados Page 17
