Always and Forever (31 page)

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Authors: Karla J. Nellenbach

BOOK: Always and Forever
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I'd had my time. I'd known love in all its many forms. Really, asking for anything more would've been the worst kind of gluttony on my part. No, I'd take the days I had left, and I'd cherish them, but I was done fighting it. When Death came calling, I'd be okay.

It was my time.

After a while, Dad pulled Mom and Ben away, promising to take care of everything so that I could go home soon. They leaned on each other as they left the room, three walls where the foundation had just crumbled beneath them, frantically reaching out to each other in order to stay upright.

Once they were gone, I tugged on Kal's arm until he crawled up into the bed beside me. Tears continued to stream down his face. “It's okay,” I whispered, slid my good arm around his shoulders, and drew him in close. “We knew this was going to come eventually.”

“Not so soon,” he mumbled dejectedly. “I can't lose you now, Mia. Not when we finally got back together.”

“Shh, it's alright, Kallie. I promise. Everything will be alright.”

He just curled into me and cried harder.

I tightened my grip on him, rocked him gently as his tears soaked through my gown and tore into my heart with the ruthless precision of the sharpest scalpel. Centuries passed, and slowly, his tears dried. With a sad sigh, he lifted his head off my chest, pressing a light kiss to my collarbone as he did.

“I'm done being a big baby, now,” he said as a pained grimace twisted up his face. “I hope.”

I couldn't help but smile at that. Same old Kal. “I really do love you,” I whispered.

His eyes welled up again, and he nodded, swallowing against them.

I reached up, pushed a stray lock off his brow, and tucked it behind his ear. “Will you do something for me?”

“Anything,” he answered instantaneously.

Small smile tipping up my lips, I blinked against tears of my own that were fast forming. “It's not much.”

“Whatever you want, my Mia.” He leaned in close until our foreheads pressed against each other. “Just say the words, and it's yours. I promise.”

I licked my lips, a soft sob falling out. “Will you love me,” I asked, “for the rest of my life?” A hollow chuckle floated out of me at the stupid request, but it felt like the only thing worth knowing the answer to at the moment.

Even more tears cascaded down his cheeks, a rushing current that could easily take me away. His eyes slid closed, he sucked in a hitching breath, and then, slowly, ever so slowly, he shook his head, our noses rubbing together with the movement.

“No,” he breathed out just before pressing a soft, sweet kiss to my lips. “No, Mia. I'm going to love you for the rest of mine.”

T
HIRTY
-F
IVE

THE NEXT MORNING SAW MY RELEASE
from yet another hospital stay. On the bright side, I wouldn't be going back there ever again. See? Death within days did have some high points.

The ride home was a silent, somber affair. Dad drove, while Kal rode shotgun, leaving Mom and Ben huddled around me in the backseat, the air thickened by their grief combined with my stubborn determination to hold on just long enough to tender all my goodbyes.

That's all I had left to do. Say goodbye. Then, I could die.

Dad pulled into the driveway, the car slowly rolling to a stop, and he turned it off with a gruffly muttered, “We're home.”

Everyone climbed out, and Dad reached into the backseat after Mom alighted to scoop me up into his arms. With little more effort than he'd expend carrying a sack of potatoes, he crossed the yard while he maintained a slow, steady pace that kept me from bouncing around too much.

Inside the house, the first thing I noticed was how the furniture of the living room had been rearranged to accommodate the clunky, hospital-style bed that had been brought in by the hospice people. Dad marched across the room and laid me gently down on it before unwrapping me from the coat and blankets I'd been swaddled in.

Once I was all settled in, Ben climbed up next to me—on my good side—and hooked his arm around my waist. “I don't want you to die, Mia,” he whimpered in my ear.

Mom stiffened. Hands that had been busy smoothing down my blankets stilled at my brother's words. Her lips compressed into a
thin, tremulous line as she fought back yet another sob. Lately, she seemed to have an endless supply of them.

I wanted to reach out to her, to help her through this, but Ben had my mobile arm pinned to my side, a glimpse of what life as a quadriplegic was like. I tilted my head against him, rubbed our skulls together in a weird kind of gesture meant to comfort. “I know, Benj. I don't either, but it's going to happen. Not today,” I hurriedly added at his moan. “But we have to get ready for it. It won't be much longer.”

“Hold on, Mia,” he begged. The plea was a vicious stab to my bruised and battered soul. “You're strong. You've beaten cancer before. You can do it again. You just have to fight it. Promise me you'll try to hold on, to get better.”

How could he ask this of me? Didn't he know that I'd do anything, say anything, be anything if survival was at all possible? I'd wasted my time with them all. I knew that now. Now, when it was too late to do anything about it. But this couldn't drag out. I couldn't hold out any longer.

Like tiny grains of sand sliding through my fingers, life was slipping away from me in draining seconds that needed to be drunk down quickly or else I'd lose them forever and ever. I had to harness this time, make memories that I could carry with me when these dying days were at an end.

I opened my mouth to respond to him, to tell him something, anything that would steal the hurt from his eyes, bring back that brightness that I knew and loved, but there was nothing, a vast emptiness that I hadn't the faintest idea how to fill.

“She's trying, Ben,” Dad said, stepping forward to lay a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “She really is, but this time it's different.”

“No.” He burrowed deeper into me, looking for some safe place where he could hide from all this unending tragedy. But there was no such place to be found, no haven from this particular reality.

Then, Ben slid away from me, Dad all firm hands and gentle words as my brother fought futilely against him. With one last whimper, a cry of defeat that cut through the air like an exploding bomb sending shrapnel bulleting into all of us, he collapsed against Dad, let himself get taken from my side.

The side where his body had been pressed into mine went instantly cold with his absence. Mom, face a tortured mask of grief, crawled into the bed with me and laid against my dead arm. She shifted me slightly so that we both could fit, a sad reality that I couldn't move even a scant inch without some assistance, and then her head was on the pillow next to mine, warm coffee breath dancing across my face.

“Are you tired?” She asked as she tucked the blankets up to my chin and then smoothed them down around me. “Dr. Shreve said that you should rest as much as possible. Try not to strain yourself.”

A tired, hollow laugh floated up out of me. “Yeah, because I was just thinking that I should go out for a 5K run right about now,” I joked.

“Mia—” When had she started sounding so tired, so old? She'd aged a decade, if not more, in the last twenty-four hours.

“I'm okay, Mom. Really.”

“Here, Mrs. Gordon,” Kal murmured, holding a steaming mug in front of her. When she didn't look like she was going to take it, he set the cup on the table beside the bed. Then, he moved around to my other side and perched on the mattress.

We made an odd sort of triangle. My mother on one side, my lover on the other, me smack in the middle, trying to hold us all together. I wasn't quite sure I was succeeding at it, either.

“I thought you might like this,” he said and held my book up. He smirked down at the glossy cover, one brow arched as he considered it. “Kind of
Gossip Girl
-ish, even for you.” He lifted laughing eyes to meet mine. “Want us to read to you? I'm sure you're dying to know what happens to—” His gaze drifted down to the book for a fleeting second. “—Jenna Monroe and her endless parade of eye candy.” He rolled his eyes at that.

Smile tugging at the corner of my lips, I nodded.

That one tiny movement was what finally spurred Mom into action. She shot upright, hand extended to snatch the paperback out of Kal's grasp. “I'll read to her,” she said, the determined expression on her face daring Kal to argue with her.

Wordlessly, he handed the book over. And, as Mom started to read, her lilting voice wrapped me up in comforting ribbons of
childhood days spent listening to her recite fairy tale after fairy tale, Kal slid off the mattress to settle into the chair beside the bed. I started to protest this change in positions, but his hand found mine, fingers stringing through each other and squeezing gently.

Mom continued to read, the light musical quality of her voice lulled me into a light drifting slumber, but I fought against it. I didn't want to sleep now. I wanted to stay here with them. Time was of the essence, and I couldn't afford to waste it. So, I fought and I fought until the last of my energy slowly drained away from me.

*   *   *

Time passed in hiccups and gasps, hitching, panting breaths that moved forward and backward with no real concept of quantity, only quality.

I drifted in and out, an unsteady, disjointed rhythm that we all had no choice but to adapt to. Every time I woke, the light in the room differed, sometimes full, bright light of day, others, the deepest darkest hours of night, and then others at the early seconds of dawn or the waning minutes of dusk. And, each time, they were there. My family. My loved ones.

Late afternoon of the second day, I swam up to consciousness to find Ricki sitting vigil at my bedside.

Eyes red and puffy from countless hours spent either crying or fighting tears—I wasn't sure which—she forced her lips up into a smile that didn't quite make it. “Hey,” she whispered, leaning forward to catch hold of my hand.

“Hey, yourself. What time is it?” I struggled to lift my head up off the pillow, but even that required so much more power than I had in my arsenal at the moment.

“A little past five. I think.” She fumbled for the controls on my bed and raised the back up a little. “That better?” At my nod, she blew out a ragged breath, her eyes filling rapidly. “Are you scared?” This came out as a barely audible choking whisper that I had to strain to catch.

“A little,” I answered, honestly. “But it's okay, Rick. I'm ready.”

“But I'm not! I'm not,” she whimpered. The tears spilled over to run rampant down her carefully made-up face. “I need you with me, Mia. Who's going to be my best friend when you're gone? Who's going to cheer me up and tell me everything will be okay, if not you? I need you. Don't you get that? I need you!”

“I need you, too, Ricki,” I said and swallowed hard against the swell of emotion rising up to choke me.

“Then, why are you leaving me? Why aren't you fighting harder to stay?” She collapsed in on herself, then, the weight of grief, of sadness, of bitterness and anger breaking her down until there was nothing left but a crumbled mass of debris. “Why, Mia? Why?”

I had no words for her, nothing to soothe her aches or take away her pain. Instead, I reached out, circled my weak, trembling fingers around her wrist and tugged until she climbed onto the bed with me. I slid my good arm around her, drew her in until her face was buried in my neck. Her tears soaked through my skin as all her hurt seeped into me so that I could bear this burden with her.

We laid like that for an hour, a month, a year, a decade where it was just the two of us, friends until the very bitter end, and when the last of her tears dried, she still stayed close, her arms looped around my waist, clinging to me and whispering that she'd never ever let me go.

I wished I could say the same to her, make promises of keeping her with me always, but if I had, it would've been a lie. And, I just couldn't lie to her, not after everything we'd been through. She deserved nothing less than the truth from me.

“You'll be okay.” I rubbed small comforting circles in her back. “You'll move on from all this, and you'll make new friends. I know it, Ricki. I know it because you are the best and brightest of them all. I'm so lucky you were my friend, that you were in my life, and I'm better for knowing you. I really am.”

She sniffled loudly, shook her head. “That's not true,” she whispered.

“Of course, it is.”

“No, Mia.” She pushed up on her elbows, her bloodshot eyes filled with nine different kinds of regret. “That's not me. That's you.
I should be saying all that to you.” She bit down on her lip, stifled a choking cry of agony. “Because without you, I'm nothing. You're the best friend I've ever had, and without you, I don't make sense.”

She fell down on top of me again. Her wails thundered throughout the room, bounced off every available surface, and crashed into me with such brutality that it took my breath away. She cried and she cried and she cried. And, I held on, rode out the storm, my own tears sliding into the fray.

Soon, the gray clouds crept in. My body turned to lead, pulling me under quickly and without much warning. Sneaking in amongst her keening cries, and my silent tears, sleep drew me far, far away.

*   *   *

Brad and Dave arrived just as Mom cajoled more pills into me. Every time she brought out the bottles, I wanted to rant at her, tell her that I didn't need any, that I wanted to stay as lucid as possible for what little time I had left. But the headaches were a near constant thing, a fierce pounding that radiated throughout my skull and shot down my spine.

And so, I relented. Every. Single. Time.

Upon seeing me, Brad emitted a choked gasp, his eyes widened, nostrils flared. He scurried over to my dead side and grabbed up my limp hand. “Holy Christ, Mia. Are you okay?” He shook his head. A pained grimace contorted his face. “That was a stupid question. Of course, you're not okay. But are you in pain? What can I do?”

Extricating my good hand from Kal's grasp, I reached up and pushed the hair out of his eyes. “You could get a haircut, for starters,” I told him.

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