Once More With Feeling (29 page)

‘Of course we’re here,’ Lianne said in an undertone, her arm tight around me.

‘Friends don’t let friends cope with the aftermath of a cheating husband’s coma alone,’ Brooke said staunchly, as if she’d dealt with things like this so many times she’d put together some kind of Guide to Cheating Husbands and Comas. It made me smile to imagine it. As if it were a chapter in something she edited, something brightly lit and fun, and maybe we would all go out for fruity cocktails afterward. Instead of the harder fact that we were standing in the lobby of the Rivermark hospital, with who knew what waiting for me upstairs.

I’d thought about that a lot on my drive, in between other bombshells and unpleasant realizations. This was the end of everything, wasn’t it? Tim was now awake and
could make his own medical decisions. He could look me in the face and tell me all about the baby he’d made with Carolyn, and what that meant, and what he wanted. And then I could walk away. I’d have to, wouldn’t I?

That should have made me happy. I told myself it did. Or anyway, it would. I was sure it would, eventually.

‘All right,’ I said now, before I started sobbing all over them, something I would have thought impossible after all the day’s weeping – but no, my eyes were wet again. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

And for the first time in the weeks since Thanksgiving, I wasn’t all alone as I made my way to Tim’s room to face whatever came next. It was amazing how much of a difference that made. It was as if I could somehow breathe a little deeper, a little better, simply because they were here.

‘You look terrible,’ Lianne said, frowning at me as we stepped into the elevator and let the doors close behind us. ‘What the hell were you doing in Vermont?’

‘Please God, let it be Alec Frasier,’ Brooke replied fervently.

I stared at the plate above us as the elevator clicked through the lit-up floors, one by one. I thought about Alec and that impossible, stubborn mouth of his that so bewitched me I did things I never imagined I would. I thought about Tim reduced to that still, small body in his hospital bed, unaccountably helpless. I thought about what I wanted, and how odd it was that such a simple question
seemed to have nothing but murky answers the harder I looked for them.

‘I can’t even process how inappropriate this conversation is right now,’ I said after a moment. I wasn’t angry. Not even annoyed. It was just a simple statement of fact. ‘On every conceivable level.’

We all stood there quietly. I sensed more than saw the two of them exchange a glance, but I didn’t mind. Or react. And still the elevator rose.

He woke up and is asking for you
. I still didn’t know what that meant. I hadn’t called back for clarification. I hadn’t wanted to give my mother the opportunity to upset me any further – and, of course, I was afraid that I already knew. Tim had been so clear about what he wanted. A divorce. Carolyn. Was he asking for me so he could reiterate that? To my face? Or was he angry at me for how Carolyn undoubtedly felt she’d been treated – as my mother had predicted he would be? I didn’t want to spend all those hours in the car knowing
that
was coming at me. It had been an act of self-preservation.

Which looked a lot like cowardice, I could admit.

Once again, I saw the way Alec had looked at me as I headed for the door. Those last, harsh words. That empty place in my chest where I knew my heart was supposed to be beating. But I’d walked into that situation, that whole night,
him
, with my eyes open, hadn’t I? I’d known what I was doing, however unfair.

This is what temporary means
, I’d thrown at him, hardly
knowing who I was angry with. Or why.
And it’s not like you’d ever dream of changing your plans for anyone, would you?

Is that what this was, Sarah?
he’d asked so quietly. Too quietly.
Revenge?

But I hadn’t been able to answer. And I knew that was cowardice, too. It was funny, I thought then, staring at the lights before me in this familiar elevator that I never wanted to ride again, but I’d never seen myself more clearly than I did today.

‘The important thing,’ I said out loud, mostly to cut through the noise in my head, the rush of all those images, ‘is that Tim’s awake. And therefore better. That’s what we need to focus on.’

There was a brief silence.

‘I’m still punching him in the face,’ Lianne mused, as if to herself. ‘I don’t care if he’s been in a coma for the past few weeks, he’s still a slime ball.’

‘I’ll help you,’ Brooke said in the same tone. ‘And Carolyn too, let’s not forget.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Lianne replied, with an evil note in her voice that reminded me exactly why she’d been my best friend through all those terrible teenage years. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

And that was why I was smiling when the elevator doors slid open to reveal my entire family waiting on the other side. Just … standing there, in the elevator bank. All three of them. Looking markedly unhappy.

There was a pause.

I felt as if everyone were staring at my smile, then – as if it were the physical equivalent of a very inappropriate mariachi band crashing a funeral or something. I tried to wipe my expression clean, but it was too late. The tension was already much too high, and mounting. I could practically taste it.

We all stared at each other. Everyone looked awful, which made me feel better about my zombie impression but was also a bit alarming. My father appeared to be wearing the largest, most ill-fitting orange sweater of all time. My mother’s hair was uncharacteristically frizzy and her face looked slept on. Carolyn, meanwhile, looked hollow-cheeked and haunted. None of these were the reactions I was expecting. This was not the way they should have been celebrating Tim’s awakening – which, of course, made me wonder what had happened.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked briskly, diving right into what scared me the most. ‘Why are you all standing here? Did something happen?’

‘You could say that,’ Carolyn snapped. She glared at me as if I’d done something to her. I let my gaze drop to the faint swell of her belly and couldn’t imagine what that might be, relatively speaking, even as relief trickled through me. If she was angry, Tim couldn’t have died. If she was angry, it had to be something else altogether.

‘Head injuries are very strange things,’ Lianne said into the coiling tension. ‘Recovery can be very—’

‘You should see him,’ my mother told me, interrupting Lianne. ‘Alone.’

I knew better than to view that as a gesture of support. Not from my mother. Which meant it kind of terrified me.

‘Tell me what’s happening,’ I said, looking from her to my father and then back. They were a wall of grim, with beetled brows and tired eyes. My father kept shaking his head, which was never a good sign. ‘You’re scaring me.’

And then I looked at Carolyn, because I figured she would know, and she certainly wouldn’t go out of her way to spare me the blow. And what I’d learned since That Day was that there was always, always, a blow.

‘Did he slip back into his coma while I was driving?’ I asked, hearing the uncertainty and the beginnings of a new panic in my voice. ‘Is that what you’re not telling me?’

‘No.’ Carolyn’s voice sounded almost strangled. She couldn’t meet my gaze. Were those tears glinting in her eyes?

I felt someone grab onto my hand from behind – Brooke or Lianne, I couldn’t tell – and I was absurdly grateful. I held on. Tight. Carolyn held one hand over her heart, like it hurt her from within, and I was too freaked out to even think the usual sardonic thought about that. Much less express it.

‘He’s awake,’ Carolyn said in a very odd voice. As if she were trying to be formal. Or careful. But that didn’t make
any sense. ‘The thing is, he doesn’t remember anything.’

‘Anything?’ My mind raced. Because I wasn’t even remotely as mature as I wanted to be, I thought first of television shows, not real life.
Alias
, for example, as Brooke and I had already discussed. ‘Are you talking about amnesia?’

‘It’s a kind of amnesia,’ my father chimed in then, in his lecturing professor voice. ‘Did you know that some people have to relearn all their motor skills? Language?’

‘Tim can’t speak?’ I asked numbly. My mind wouldn’t accept that. I couldn’t make sense of it. Whoever was holding my hand squeezed it.

‘No, no.’ Dad sighed. ‘He’s one of the lucky ones.’

There was another silence. I heard Brooke mutter something behind me, and I couldn’t blame her. I was about to kill somebody myself.

‘What doesn’t he remember?’ I demanded, frustrated and afraid. ‘Will someone just
tell
—’

‘Me,’ Carolyn blurted out, her face twisting, her hazel eyes nearly black with unshed tears. ‘He doesn’t remember
me
. The last six months are just … gone.’

‘Six months?’ I echoed stupidly.

‘Six months,’ she threw back at me, with what felt like more aggression than the moment called for. ‘The last thing he remembers is your birthday party.’ She let out a hollow laugh. ‘But not the most important part of it.’

It took me a moment to understand that she was, in fact, confirming the fact that she had hooked up with my
husband at my own birthday party back in June. I blinked, but couldn’t quite bring myself to summon up the necessary outrage. I felt … empty. And the truth was, I didn’t want to imagine it. Them. How it all began. I didn’t want to plot it all out in my head and use it to torture myself. There was quite enough in there already.

I realized that I had absolutely no idea how I felt about any of this.

‘You should go talk to him,’ Carolyn said then, much more quietly, and her voice shook. My stomach twisted, and then lurched when she reached out as if to touch me. Whatever she saw on my face made her drop her hand. ‘I know that you hate me, and probably him, too—’

‘I don’t hate anyone, Carolyn,’ I said, interrupting her. And it was true. ‘I’m numb all the way through.’

She looked at me for a moment, and then nodded, as if she’d talked herself into something. Or, knowing her, out of it.

‘He’s scared, I think,’ she whispered. Her face twisted. ‘And all alone. He needs you, Sarah.’

I snuck up to the entrance of his room and stood there, uncertain, before peeking around the curtain. When I did, it was hard not to make a noise – to gasp or cry out or otherwise react.

He was propped up in his bed, his blonde head turned toward the window. The winter light poured in and he looked thin. Drawn. Cold in such an antiseptic room. It
felt so strange, now, to see him sitting up at all. To see him with far fewer machines connected to him. He looked tired. Sick.

But he looked like Tim again. I told myself the strange feeling creeping through me then was gladness – that he was alive, awake,
him –
but it wasn’t quite that simple.

I hovered there, not sure what I wanted to do, not sure what I was supposed to do. And then he turned his head on his pillow, not without difficulty, and saw me.

For a moment, we only looked at each other.

His eyes were still so blue. Wide and confused now, but still that same summer-sky blue that I’d always loved so much. Even thin and pale, he still had the look of the friendly, focused man I’d always known, if reduced somewhat today beneath those thin layers of hospital blankets. I felt a sharp pang, deep inside.

He looked like the man I’d married.

The one who would never do the things he’d done. The one I’d trusted to adhere to our plans, to believe in this life we’d built. The one I’d chosen, deliberately and purposefully, because he’d made me believe that he could be trusted in the first place. That he would be safe. Permanent. Easy. There was such a riot inside me as I looked back at him. Pain and betrayal, yes. But something deeper and richer, running like a deep vein beneath. Grief, I thought, and felt it twist through me in some kind of dark confirmation. But surely I should be happy he was awake? That he wasn’t dead? That was what mattered here, didn’t it?

It was a pity I was still so small inside, I thought then. That I couldn’t help but think about myself at a time like this, when if I was any kind of person, I would be more concerned about him. What did his memory loss mean
for me
? For us? What would it do to this tragic little triangle we were in? A better person would have waited before entertaining such thoughts. I was disgusted with myself.

I had to acknowledge, again, the part of me that had seen this accident of his as an opportunity to hold onto him a little bit longer. To keep us from being as over as we’d seemed before his car had spun out on that icy road. That part of me was deep in grief today, and I understood it. Some part of me would always grieve for what we’d lost, long before the accident. Him. Our marriage. Whatever happened now, whatever had happened while he was in his coma or in those six months with Carolyn, I’d loved him.

It didn’t matter what he remembered. I would always mourn the loss of the way I’d loved him, all the way up to the moment I stripped that blue blouse off of my body and everything changed.

‘Sarah—’ he began, but his voice was raw, unused. It was little more than a croak, and it spurred me into action.

‘Don’t talk,’ I managed to get out past the lump in my throat, rushing inside the room and making my way over to him. ‘Don’t say anything now. You need to rest, Tim. You’ve been through a horrible ordeal.’

And what was funny was that I meant that. I had no
urge to yell at him here, in this state, while he looked at me with all of that confusion and panic on his face. I had no desire at all to punch him in the face, as Brooke or Lianne would have done. I didn’t want to think about any of the things that loomed here with us in this tiny room, elephants dancing in circles all around us, demanding to be named and noticed. I didn’t want to think about the things he’d done, or the things I’d done, or even the conclusions I’d come to when I’d assumed he would wake up with his memory intact. I didn’t want to think about anything at all. I wasn’t sure I could.

I’d given all of that up. I’d moved on. But that was before – before it turned out he didn’t remember any of it. It was one thing to walk away from the guy in the hospital who didn’t want me, but what if he didn’t feel that any longer?