Kiss (13 page)

GAIA WAS FLOATING. SAM WAS there, holding her hand. There were unfamiliar people, sounds, words, things she couldn't make sense of, but there was always Sam. He held her. He gave her his warmth.

“I love you.” The words came to her in Sam's voice. She wanted very much to open her eyes and see if it really was Sam, and if so, to see if he was talking to her when he said them, as she fervently hoped he was. And if he was saying those words to her, and maybe even if he wasn't, she wanted to say the same words to him.

But she couldn't. She couldn't open her eyes or make words.

Was she alive anymore? Was Sam real? Was he really there with her?

Maybe it was him. More likely it was heaven.

But if this was heaven, if this was what death felt like, then it was okay with her.

I've
been trying to figure out why I don t have any tears for Sam tonight.

I do hate him at the moment; that's true.

But I thought I loved him.

All this time I figured I haven't been able to cry over him because I'm too numb. I'm too bottled up and confused to feel things very well.

I never imagined the possibility that I didn't love him.

Because I do love him. I mean, I'm pretty sure I do.

I mean, I do. Don't I?

You know what's really retarded? An hour after Sam left, I called Ed Fargo.

Then I remembered he was in Pennsylvania. He was there for Thanksgiving with his weird, obese grandmother who called me Feather.

Then the memories fell into fragments and shards that didn't make any sense at all.

ELLA ROLLED HER EYES AT THE emergency-room doctor in St. Vincent's Hospital. This was a night of highs and lows, currently stuck on low.

The doctor was talking about Gaia, bleating words like
concussion
and
subdural
something and
hematoma
something else. But he wasn't saying anything about “slashed to ribbons,” which was what Ella really wanted to hear.

She was jubilant when she d first gotten the call from the hospital, sure that her plans had gone off without a hitch. Then she entered a period of confusion after she arrived at the hospital, during which it appeared that Gaia
hadn't
been slashed at Penn Station. Gaia, she was told, had spent several semidelirious hours before a doting Sam Moon brought her to the hospital, unconscious, from his NYU dormitory. The girl who'd been slashed (Ella had followed the story excitedly on the eleven o'clock news) was
not
Gaia, and yet Gaia had found her way to the hospital with some grave problem nonetheless.

Ella perked up when she heard the doctor use the word
coma,
hoping that her goal might be achieved even without the extra bonus of disfigurement. But wretched, impossible Gaia had miraculously managed to sidestep the coma, in spite of a serious head injury.

“Mrs. Niven, I'm sorry to bother you with all of this information. I'm sure you'd like to see her,” Dr. Somethingorother was saying. He was Indian or maybe Pakistani and spoke precise, melodious English.

Ella sighed. She couldn't very well say no, could she? “Of course,” she said.

“You'll be pleased to know she's already been moved out of ICU. Her condition is stable.”

Whoopee.

Ella followed the white coat up an elevator and down a hallway, through a set of swinging doors, past a waiting room and a nurses' station.

Dr. Whatever turned around to talk some more. “She's not yet fully conscious. Still a bit bleary. Try not to be alarmed. We do expect her to make a quick recovery, but it's never as quick as all of us would like.”

If Gaia woke up before she was thirty, it would be too quick. Ella nodded blandly. She hated doctors. Particularly the one she'd blown up earlier in the evening.

The doctor stopped in front of room 448. The door was partially open. He gestured for her to enter first. She started into the room and quickly stepped backward. She backed out into the hallway.

“Excuse me, Doctor,” she said. “But there's somebody else in the room.”

The doctor's eyes lit up. “Yes, that's her friend who brought her here. His name is Sam, I think? He hasn't left her side in hours. He is quite devoted to her, no? He is the one who gave us the information to find you.”

“Fine,” she said. “Very nice. But would you mind asking him to leave? I really need some time alone with my . . . foster daughter.” Sob, sob. “Besides,” she added in a confidential tone, “if I can speak frankly, I don't like that young man. I wouldn't be surprised if he were part of the reason that Gaia is here in the first place. . . .” She let her voice float off enigmatically.

The doctor hesitated. Clearly he didn't know what to think, and yet he was too polite to question her. “Yes. As you wish,” he said.

“I'll just use the bathroom and collect myself for a moment,” Ella said, stepping down the hall. “I'll come back when I can see Gaia alone.”

A strong instinct was telling Ella she didn't want to be introduced to Sam Moon. A somewhat twisted instinct, but those were the ones she'd learned to listen to.

SAM WATCHED GAIA'S EYELIDS for signs of her waking. Just in the last five minutes she'd opened and closed her eyes three times, once almost focusing on his face. His heart soared. Dr. Sengupta said she was going to be okay, and he was starting to believe it.

Sam ran his thumb from the tip of her index finger up her hand and wrist to the soft underside of her forearm. Her eyes flickered.

He leaned over her and buried a gentle kiss on her neck. That was more for him than her. He hoped she didn't mind. The hint ofa smile seemed to pull at the side ofher mouth. Or did he just imagine that?

What he really wanted to do was to climb into the narrow bed and press her close to him, to hold her with his whole body until she woke up. And after she woke up, too. But you weren't really supposed to do that in a hospital, were you?

Most people hated hospitals, and in theory, Sam did, too. But this hospital, on two separate occasions, had brought him closer to Gaia. It was the site of some of his worst experiences and yet some of the happiest feelings he'd ever had.

“Sam?”

He glanced up. He saw Gaia's doctor and felt slightly abashed. “Yes?”

“I'm sorry to ask you because I can see how much you wish to stay with Gaia, but her guardian, Mrs. Niven, has asked for time alone with her.”

Sam knew it was a reasonable request, but his heart was breaking nonetheless. “Maybe I'll just wait in the waiting room for a few minutes till she's done.”

Dr. Sengupta took in the state of Sam's hair and clothing with kind eyes. “Why don't you get yourself home and have a rest? Perhaps you could come again tomorrow? Visiting hours, as you might imagine, are long over.”

Visiting hours? Sam was no visitor! He was . . . what? Nothing. He was nothing. But Gaia was his life. Did that count for anything?

“But I —” He really, really didn't want to go yet. He wanted to help usher Gaia back into the land of consciousness, to be with her when she crossed over. He needed to make sure they both knew that what happened between them was real. “Please, could I just —”

“I'm sorry. I have to respect Mrs. Niven's request.” The doctor did look truly sorry.

Sam turned back to Gaia. He took both of her hands and brought them to his heart. He leaned over and pressed his cheek against her good one. “I love you, Gaia,” he whispered in her ear. “I can't help it anymore.” It might not have been a classically romantic thing to say, but it was true. She'd understand, he knew. He kissed her ear, then straightened up.

Her eyelids were fluttering again. He saw her hands moving against the sheet as soon as he'd released them. Were her hands looking for his? Did he just hope so?

“Thank you, Doctor, for everything,” he said, trying not to look as unhappy as he felt. “She's really going to be okay, right?”

“Yes, I believe she is.”

Sam trudged out of the room and down the hallway.

“Good luck to you, Sam,” the doctor called after him, and the words somehow sounded ominous.

Every cell in Sam's heart was telling him not to leave her now. He was afraid that once he was gone, their magical, frightening night together would be gone, too, with him left as its only witness.

And not the most reliable witness, either.

IT WAS HARD AND CRUEL. IT downright sucked. In her dream, hovering someplace beyond the living, Gaia had Sam. He held her and told her he loved her.

Here, in reality, she had Ella.

She wished she could go back to being dead.

“ . . . You have quite a track record, Gaia. Twice in the hospital in two months,” Ella was blathering. “You're going to send George's insurance premiums into the stratosphere.”

Gaia exerted all her strength propping herself up in the hospital bed. It made her uncomfortable for Ella to see her lying down.

“ . . . And insurance only covers eighty percent of the bill, you know,” Ella continued pettily.

Gaia looked down at her hands. They felt cold and lonely. “Thanks a lot, Ella,” she said numbly. “That makes me feel a lot better. If the photography thing doesn't work out, maybe you could get a job with Hallmark in the get-well-card department.”

Ella exhaled in annoyance. “And you're a rude ingrate as well.”

Gaia closed her eyes, wrapping her misery around her like a blanket. She was right back where she started. She'd thought she'd made a new friend. She hadn't. She'd thought she'd run away. She hadn't.

She'd gotten nowhere, changed nothing.

Her mind summoned an image of Sam. She was kissing him, touching him, wrapping her body around his in his bed. The image brought a deep flush to her cheeks. But that hadn't really . . . They hadn't actually . . . had they?

She glanced at Ella.

What exactly
had
happened to her? How had she gotten here? She tried to piece together the endless, surreal day. She remembered being at Mary's house, of course. She remembered hitting her head on the sink in the bathroom at Penn Station. She remembered passing out — if you could call that remembering.

Things got fuzzier after that. She didn't remember coming to, but she did remember trying to get a re-fund for her stolen ticket. She vaguely remembered an explosion. She remembered walking outside and being cold.

Then the memories fell into fragments and shards that didn't make any sense at all.

She glanced at Ella again. She could hardly stomach the notion of needing information from the bitch goddess, but how else was she going to know?

Gaia took a breath. She needed to sound as disinterested as possible. “So, anyway, Ella. What happened to me? How did I get here? How did you get here?”

Ella opened her eyes wide in fake surprise. “Wait a minute. You are asking
me
questions about
your
life?”

Gaia shrugged. “You know, severe head wound and all.” She touched her hand to her bruise. “I just wondered if the doctors told you anything about how I ended up here.”

Ella studied her for a moment. “Actually, yes. Do you really not remember anything at all?”

Gaia shook her head. “Not much.”

Ella nodded slowly. “Well, you made quite a little scene. The cops found you outside an NYU dormitory. You were delirious, totally out of it, raving endlessly about somebody named Sam.”

Gaia felt her heart clench. The flush returned to her cheeks and deepened by one hundred times. If she'd really believed she'd made her heart tough enough to withstand disappointment, she'd been badly, profoundly mistaken.

“I was alone?” Gaia asked in a small voice, even though she knew she'd regret it. “I came here alone?” She was so far gone, she was giving evil Ella a straight shot at her vulnerability.

“Except for some freaked-out cops, yeah,” Ella informed her.

So Gaia's fragments of memory weren't memory at all. They were fantasy. Sam hadn't kissed her, held her, told her he loved her. Those were the crazed delusions of her bashed-in head and her pitiful, hungry heart .

She was tempted to bash her head again, to return to the place where she'd had those feelings. Of course they didn't happen in reality. Not in her reality, anyway. It was too nice, too purely good to have happened in her life.

Gaia lay back again. Ella didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

Her misery wasn't a blanket. It was a strait-jacket fastened way too tight, threatening to squeeze out her last bit of hope.

I
had a terrible thought when I woke up this morning in the bed that Gaia and I had shared, briefly, last night.

I had the thought that I dreamed the whole thing.

I would have stuck with the thought, but I smelled Gaia's faint, sweet smell in my bed. I found more than one long blond hair on my pillow. I found a somewhat tattered red dress and shoes balled up in my garbage
can.
I confirmed that my under-shirt and boxers were, in fact, missing.

Then I had a fear that was worse than the thought. I was afraid that it had actually happened, but that Gaia wasn't there. I mean, her body was there. But she was so badly hurt and delirious, and practically comatose, that everything I imagined between us happened to me. Only to me.

This fear makes me physically sick because I hate the thought of having taken advantage of her in some way.

Selfishly, that's not even the very worst part. Even worse, I fear I've opened my stubborn, tyrannical heart to an event — a girl — so stunning and miraculous, I've even gotten my brain to join in on the thrill of it. Only to discover that it never actually happened.

Which could make a man feel like a creep and a big, pathetic fool.

My brain, not surprisingly, is threatening a very sour “I told you so.”

That's the fear, anyway. I'm not sure it's the truth.

But I can say this. I never understood loneliness until I woke up in my bed without her this morning.