That’s what it was for Catherine. Reality for her is a successful business in which she still plays a vital role. And I know she will blame herself for her sister’s suicide attempt. I truly hope that is what it turns out to be. An attempt.
I want to go to her, break down the walls she is building around her own desire for happiness. But the timing is wrong. I don’t want her memories of me, her vision of what we could have been, to be woven into the fabric of the pain she is going through.
What choice is there then but to accept what she is asking of me?
Chapter Forty-three
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”
― Walt Whitman
Catherine
IT’S THE END of Nicole’s second week in the hospital. There has been no change in her condition. She is unresponsive to all stimulus, doesn’t respond to our pleas for her to wake up. Her stare seems to see a thousand miles away, and I despair that she will never come back.
Mom and Dad have gone downstairs for a cup of coffee when I go in for my fifteen minute visit with Nicole. I’m sitting in a chair next to her bed, massaging the palm of her left hand when Doctor Lewis comes in to check on her for morning rounds. He’s a nice enough man who looks overworked. His gray hair is a little too long, as if he hasn’t taken the time for a haircut in a while. I’ve formed the impression that he cares about his patients. There are just too many of them. He greets me with a quick good morning and a perfunctory, “Any changes you’ve noticed?”
I wish I could say yes, wish for any sign, however small, that Nicole is getting better. “No.” I draw in a deep breath and say, “What are the chances, Dr. Lewis, that Nicole will wake up from this?”
He lifts the sheet from the bottom of the bed and traces a pen-like instrument down the sole of each of her feet. There is no response. He pulls the sheet back down, looks at me with a resignation I wish I did not see in his eyes. “A true coma usually doesn’t last more than three to four weeks. We’re at two and a half for Nicole, so I haven’t given up hope yet.”
My heart flutters, settles. “What happens after four weeks?”
He’s quiet for a moment, and then in a matter-of-fact voice, says, “The patient dies. Or transitions into what we call a vegetative state or the patient regains varying degrees of consciousness.”
I absorb his honest explanation, trying to picture Nicole remaining this way for the rest of her life, and I can’t bear the thought of it. My voice is shaky when I ask, “Do you think it is still possible she will regain consciousness?”
“Anything is possible, dear,” he answers kindly. “I’ve been in practice long enough to know that we doctors do not have all the answers. The human body is resilient, but I have to be honest with you. Your sister’s overdose would have killed her if she hadn’t been found when she was. She meant for her effort to succeed.”
The words slice through me with their obvious truth. It is impossible to deny.
“And here’s something to think about,” he says in a somber voice. “If she does pull through, her will to live will have to be different than it was when she made the decision to take her life. I have seen families devastated when their loved one survives only to succeed at a later date.”
The revelation is a sobering one. Somehow, I’ve been thinking only of her pulling through. And that if she does, it would mean everything is better. I realize that isn’t true at all.
Dr. Lewis places a hand on my shoulder, squeezes once, and then he leaves the room. I sit in somber silence, staring at my sister’s face, barely recognizable with the tubes in her mouth and nose. I take her hand in mine again, drop my forehead onto the mattress of the bed, sobs shaking through me. I try to stifle their sound, but I cannot. My grief is unbearable because not only am I mourning the loss of the sister who was once my best friend, I cannot deny my culpability in the desperate place Nicole must have been in that last night.
“Nic.” Her name breaks from my lips, and suddenly, I am pleading with her. “Please come back. Please give me another chance. Please don’t go like this. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have forgiven you. I do forgive you. Come back to us. We’ll find our way. Just. Come. Back.”
My tears fall onto our hands, mine clasped tight with hers. All of a sudden, I go completely still, raising my head to stare at Nicole. I felt something. Not a complete squeeze of my hand, but something. My heart races with hope. I know, somehow, I know, my sister has understood me.
Chapter Forty-four
“To die, to sleep –
To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub,
For in this sleep of death what dreams may come…”
― William Shakespeare
Nicole
SHE SEES HERSELF from above.
She is terrified because it’s as if she’s seen someone who looks just like her, and she is obviously not well. There is no denying that the woman lying on the bed with all the tubes protruding from her body is her. The sobbing woman next to the bed is Catherine.
She sees all of this from above the bed, as if she is suspended in the air or has a peephole in the ceiling. Her heart feels like someone is squeezing it hard enough to take her breath away. She wants to reach out, reassure her sister she is here with her. But is she?
She tries to speak, but she can’t hear her voice. She wants to go to Catherine, comfort her. Her feet are in quicksand, and even as she tries to pull them out, she sinks lower. With every effort, she feels more of her body disappear into the depths below. She calls for her sister, but she isn’t sure whether her voice is audible. She knows she is sinking deeper and deeper. In a moment, she will be under. If she can just keep her head up long enough to let Catherine know how sorry she is. “Catherine!”
She hears her own scream, but her sister hasn’t heard her at all. She continues to cry, heartbroken. Then the quicksand takes her under altogether, and her chance melts to ether.
Chapter Forty-five
“Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door.”
― Emily Dickinson
Anders
IT’S ALMOST SEVEN P.M. The sky is turning dark with just a hint of pink sunlight tinting its edges. I slide out of the Defender in the parking area just off Needham’s Point Beach. A few other vehicles are parked nearby. Hannah Brathwaite texted earlier this afternoon to ask if I wanted to help with a baby turtle release. It’s something I always enjoy being a part of, but something in me had resisted the thought of going. I knew being here would remind me of Catherine, and it does.
Hannah waves from farther down the beach, and I walk toward her, determined to see this amazing miracle with the same appreciation with which I have always seen it.
“Hey,” she says, walking over to give me a hug. “How are you?”
“Good,” I say. “You?”
“Nervous.”
“How many?”
“Fifty-six.”
“That’s good.”
“Every one counts.” She pulls back to give me a long look. “Where’s your friend Catherine?”
I hesitate and answer truthfully. “She’s no longer here.”
“Ah,” she says softly. And then, “I had the impression she might stay.”
“Would have been nice,” I admit.
“Did you ask her to?”
I attempt lightness even as I hear myself fail the attempt. “She has another life she had to get back to.”
“Umm, I had the feeling she was pretty taken with you, Anders. And you looked happy with her.”
“I could have been,” I admit.
Hannah takes my hand, leads me over to the trays where the baby turtles are waiting for their release. She bends over, picks one up. “Life is short, my friend. We have to make the most of our chances. We’re not so different from these little guys. Happiness is out there. But it’s not guaranteed, and we can’t wait for it to come to us.”
Sh
e sets the little guy down, and he starts out across the sand, heading for the ocean. We both kneel next to the tray of babies and gently lift them out, one at a time. They instantly set off after the first one, instinct telling them what to do.
Watching them, my heart tightens with hope for them all. And as the last few dip into the small waves at the edge of the beach, I understand clearly what I can learn from them.
Chapter Forty-six
“Yea, I shall return with the tide.”
― Khalil Gibran
Nicole
SHE SEES THE light and walks toward it. Thoughts flit through her mind, but she can’t grasp on to any of them. They are elusive like the lightning bugs she and Catherine used to try to catch on summer nights when they were little.
The light is so bright it hurts to look into it. She tries to open her eyes wider, but the glare hurts, and she squints against it. She wants to raise her hand to shield her eyes. The effort seems monumental, like dragging a sled full of rocks uphill. But she’s pretty sure she’s moved it a little so she keeps trying.
“Nicole.”
Catherine’s voice. She sounds both close and far away at the same time. Nicole attempts to answer but her lips won’t move.
“Nic! You moved your hand. Can you hear me?”
Her sister’s voice is frantic. She wants her to answer, and she so wants to do this for her.
Where am I?
The question screams through her mind as if she’s said it out loud, but she doesn’t think she has. It’s too muffled, trapped.
But then she feels her hand being held, squeezed. “Nicole.” Her sister’s voice. Her sister’s hand stroking her cheek.
“Cat.”
She hears the sound of her own warbled voice and knows she has managed to utter the name out loud. And then her sister is sobbing, the sound both broken and joyful. That is the moment she realizes she has crossed the threshold between the dark and the light.
Chapter Forty-seven
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
― Mark Twain
Catherine
THE THING ABOUT second chances is knowing what to do with them if they’re given to you.
In the hours following Nicole’s awakening, I watch my parents cry with relief even as I realize their joy is tangled up with the same thorny questions encumbering my own. Will Nicole be the same as she was before the coma? Will she feel the same despair that led her to make the choice she made? Can I drown my own feelings of betrayal with the gratitude I feel to have her back?
The only question I can answer for myself is the last one. That is the only one I have any control over at all. As I stand at the foot of my sister’s bed, watching my mom hold her hand and speak to her in a soft voice, I decide once and for all that I will put the past behind me. Completely. Irrevocably. I don’t want to be the person who chooses not to do that. Who chooses bitterness as the pill I swallow each day.
Dr. Lewis has told us only time will reveal the damage caused by Nicole’s overdose. Only time will tell how fully she will recover.
Three days pass before Nicole speaks more than a word or two. I’ve found it hard to know what to say and have let my mom and dad be the reason I stand back and say little. But finally the time comes when I’m left alone with my sister. She has been moved to a room that is a step down from ICU, and we are allowed to visit as long as we like. Mom and Dad have gone downstairs to get something to eat, and I’m sitting next to Nicole’s bed, watching her sleep.
When she opens her eyes, tears seep from the corners, and I realize she hasn’t been asleep at all.
“I don’t deserve to have you here,” she says in a voice that sounds like a rusty replica of hers.
I reach for her hand, clasp it between my own. I lean forward until my forehead is resting on our joined hands. I try to speak but the words stick in my throat. When I finally lift my head, Nicole is staring at me, her eyes filled with a remorse that twists my heart. “I’m so sorry, Cat.”
“I know,” I say.
“I wish I could redo all of it.”
“There’s plenty I wish I could redo,” I say. “I shut you out. I’m so sorry for that.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“I blame me.”
“Catherine, you’re not the one who did wrong.”
“I closed my heart to you. That’s wrong.”
Fresh tears slide down Nicole’s face. “Next to mom and dad, there’s no one who matters more to me. I don’t know how I could hurt you the way I did.”
A canyon of silence hangs between us.
“Why did you?”
The question is out before I can stop myself from asking. I’m immediately filled with remorse and wish I could take it back.
“I’ve asked myself so many times,” Nicole says in a barely audible voice. “The only answer I have is that I’ve always wanted to be you. You’ve always been the better version of me.”
I sit back in my chair, shocked by what my sister has just said. “Nicole. That’s not true.”
“It is true,” she says, sadness tinging the words. “It’s not an excuse. Nothing excuses what I did. If I’m honest though, maybe I thought it would be nice to be wanted by someone the way Connor always wanted you. I think I believed if he wanted me as much as he wanted you, that would mean I was as good as you.”
“Nicole.”
My voice cracks in half, and I swallow back the sob pushing its way up from my throat.
Tears well up, slide down her cheeks. “I know it’s awful, Cat. What I did is inexcusable. Unforgivable. And you were a good sister to me. It’s not your fault that I felt like less. You never tried to make me feel that way. Everything that happened is my fault.”
“I wasn’t a perfect sister,” I say. “I know that. There were times when I took you for granted. But I loved you. And―”
“I betrayed you.”
I could deny it, but nothing really makes sense to me except being willing to look at the truth. “It felt that way. But where there’s love, there should be forgiveness. I should have forgiven you, Nicole.”
Nicole starts to cry then, bone deep sobs pouring out of her. “I don’t deserve it.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, put my arms around her, pull her tight against me. “Yes,” I say. “You do deserve it. And I forgive you. I want you back, Nic. I’ve missed you. I’ve missed us.”
Nicole presses her face to my shoulder. Her tears wet my blouse.
Minutes pass, and Nicole goes limp, silent. And then she slips her arms around me, hugs me back. So hard that I cannot take a deep breath.
That’s how our parents find us. I look up to see Mom and Dad standing in the doorway, their faces lit with relief and joy. I hold out a hand. They walk over and circle us both with their arms. And for the first time in a very long while, it feels as if we might finally have a chance to be whole again.
Chapter Forty-eight
“That is one good thing about this world…there are always sure to be more springs.”
― L.M. Montgomery
Catherine
OVER THE NEXT two days, Nicole and I pour our hearts out to each other. We say things we should have said long ago, airing hurts and slights until we finally reach what feels like the bottom of them. Once we’re done, it feels as if the painful stuff has been purged, and we can navigate our way back to what was once good between us. And we start to talk about the old times, crazy stuff we did as kids, climbing trees we shouldn’t have climbed, sneaking into a neighbor’s barn so we could play with the baby chicks. And the times we tried our parents’ patience to breaking point, the dumb stuff we did as teenagers when we thought we knew everything there was to know.
The first time Nicole smiles, I feel as if a storm-dark sky has been penetrated by a ray of sun, and there is hope that we might have sunny days ahead. They won’t all be that way. Life isn’t like that. I’m
old enough to accept this. But the good days are worth the bad ones we endure. And while I’ve had plenty of friends I value and appreciate, family is different. Nicole and I have a lifetime of history. No one, other than my mom and dad, has known me longer, loved me longer. I will never again forget the value of this. Despite the way we’ve been tested, I love her and always will.
Chapter Forty-nine
“There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.”
― Dalai Lama
Catherine
I’M IN THE cafeteria on the main floor of the hospital getting a salad I am admittedly tired of as the mainstay of my diet when I hear someone say my name.
The voice sends a wave of shock rippling through me. I go still, sure I’ve imagined it.
Slowly, I turn around. “Anders.”
He looks uncertain, as if he isn’t sure I will be happy to see him. “Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” I say back, my gaze taking in the unbelievably wonderful sight of him. He’s dressed in faded jeans and a white button-down shirt, his tan skin visible at his throat and arms where the sleeves are rolled up. My heart is beating so fast I can feel it against my chest. “What―”
“I should have called. But I knew you would tell me not to come.”
I start to deny it. He’s right though. I would have. I’m suddenly remembering what I must look like, all remnants of my own sun-kissed skin gone beneath the hospital’s fluorescent light pallor. My hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and I haven’t bothered to put on makeup since I got here. “I look―”
That Birthday in Barbados Page 18
