Trying the Knot (43 page)

“It’s Vange! The machine she’s hooked up to
went haywire. I called for a nurse and—

“Come on,” said Kate taking him by the hand.
Together they ran down the long corridor until they found her
hospital room filled with a frantic swarm of busy nurses in scrubs.
Off to one side, brother and sister stood watching them work on
their ailing stepsister.

Sturdy Dr. Paull rushed past them and filled
the room with his energetic, authoritative commands. In front of
them, a nurse pulled closed the curtain and concealed the patient
behind billowing whiteness.

“Oh God,” Kate shuddered, holding onto Jack.
“What’re they doing to her? Hasn’t she suffered enough? Why can’t
we be with her? This isn’t right, she shouldn’t be all alone.”

Nick stepped up and wrapped a heavy arm
around their shoulders, but Kate moved closer to the ominous
curtain. He placed a comforting hand on her back, but she
retaliated by moving beyond his reach.

Kate ordered savagely, “Leave.”

“Kate, you can’t mean —

“Would you just get out of here,” she
ordered. “Haven’t you done more than enough?”

Glancing between Kate and the curtain, Nick
backed away. Jack now sat crumpled in a heap on a chair, and a
nurse quietly tried to coax him from the room. Nick was clearly
unwanted, but his feet remained cemented to the tile floor.

“What’re you still doing here?” she demanded.
Furiously, she spun around and faced him. “Get the hell out of
here, Nick.”

“Katie—

“Shut up,” she spat. “Just shut up! You did
this, we did this to her, together, you and I.”

Kate hurled herself against him, and he
wrapped his muscular arm around her, but she resisted. Wrestling
free, she beat her fist against his chest three times. It was
futile, but Nick tried to soothe her wild anger with comforting
words.

“Lies! Lies! It’s all lies!” she yelled into
his tired face. Pulling her hair back at the temples, she covered
her ears. “I don’t want to hear any more damn lies!”

Nick grabbed her firmly by the elbows and
shook her. “I never thought anything less than a lie would be good
enough for you.”

She turned away and held herself tightly as
she took a deep breath. She walked to the curtain and pulled it
aside. Clutching the white cloth, she gasped while she watched the
medical team’s efforts to revive Evangelica.

The doctor shouted over his shoulder at his
son and future daughter in-law, “I don’t know what the hell you two
think you’re doing, but I’m trying to save a life here. Take this
argument elsewhere.”

Nick had not moved since Kate’s attack in the
chaotic confusion, and the hospital stench wafted around him. He
felt powerless like a pawn being shifted around by the whims of
others. For the first time in his life, it appeared he had no
control over anything whatsoever, and it unnerved him. Amidst his
father’s heroic efforts to save Evangelica’s life, Nick thought he
could never be considered anyone’s hero, and he wondered what it
took to become a hero to oneself.

Nick left the hospital room and slowly made
his way through the long corridor until he neared the empty nurse’s
station where Ben stood waiting impatiently. Their gazes fixated
intently on one another as if daring one another to look away
first.

“I think I need medical attention,” Ben said
pointing to his nose, sounding nasal and congested.

“It looks broken,” Nick said, and he wiped
the watery snot dripping from his own nose.

“I’m sure it is,” Ben said. “Hey, are you all
right?”

Nick inspected Ben’s nose, and after several
moments, Ben asked, “Is there anyone here?”

“Everyone’s working on Vange,” Nick said
quietly, and he reached out to place a hand on Ben’s arm. Ben
looked Nick up and down, questioning and mistrustful. “I can’t say
for sure, but it doesn’t look promising.”

“Oh.”

“I was just leaving. Kate’s in there with
her.”

“She might need you right now, more than
ever,” Ben said worriedly, stepping away.

“There’s nothing I can do for her.”

“There must be something.”

“I’m the last person she wants to see or
needs right now,” Nick said. He nodded in agreement with himself
and swallowed hard.

Ben backed away as he watched Nick standing
by himself in the hallway. Finally, Ben turned around and jogged
toward the commotion emanating from Vange’s hospital room. He
increased his pace as the noise grew increasingly frantic. Ben
found Jack sitting slumped and stupefied in a chair, and Kate stood
motionless in the middle of the room.

“Make them stop,” she pleaded hoarsely as Ben
wrapped his arm around her. “Tell them to quit torturing her,
Benny. It’s inhumane.”

“Doctor,” said one of the nurses. She placed
a concerned hand on Dr. Paull’s arm. “It’s time to stop, Doctor.
She’s gone.”

“Goddammit,” Dr. Paull exploded, as his
attempts to revive his patient came to an abrupt halt.

“Doctor, please,” the nurse repeated
firmly.

With resignation, Dr. Paull backed away from
the table and rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand.
Defeated, he said only, “Time of death, three-eighteen AM.”

Kate’s knees buckled under, and Ben grabbed
hold of her. As she turned to bury her forehead in his shoulder, he
gathered the teary-eyed bride-to-be in his arms and, she wrapped
herself around him.

“No,” she said and repeated, “No No No.” His
lips swabbed her tears as he held her close.

“It’s okay, Kate,” Ben whispered in her ear.
“She’s in a better place.”

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Nick.”

“You don’t have to marry him. Marry me
instead.”

“Oh, my God,” she repeated, looking over her
shoulder at Evangelica’s lifeless body. She felt like crawling onto
the hospital bed next to Vange, and would have except Ben held onto
her. He gathered her close to him with one arm, and he rested a
hand on Jack’s head and pressed it against his side.

The doctor curtly made his way past the trio
of grief and with a wave of his hand, he said of his future
daughter in-law, “Sedate her.”

chapter twenty-two

part iv – backwards and forwards

Far above the maddening crowd, Thad made last
minute preparative checks in the balcony, as the crowd below dealt
with an unexpected delay. The missing bride and her brother
prevented the nuptials from commencing. The fidgeting crowd
appeared to be teetering on the edge of their seats, and from his
elevated position, Thad marveled he had never before during such a
formal occasion seen so many black and blue marks.

A portion of the guests appeared to have
wandered in from a WWF tournament. Most obviously wounded was Ben
with his broken nose. He had refused to let Dr. Paull treat it as
he did not want to ruin the wedding pictures due to a garish
bandage swaddling the middle of his face. Although the groom
inflicted the ruinous blow, he had not escaped unscathed. Nick’s
neck bore thumbprints from Chelsea’s death grip, and his cheekbone
was bruised where Ben must have landed at least one previously
unnoticed punch.

Thad watched as Ben escorted his parents down
the center aisle. His mother’s face was scratched from Shayla’s
dagger-tipped fingers. Never one to go down easily, Jane Feldpausch
had landed a few blows to Shayla’s heavily made up bruised face.
But it was Jane’s own drunken, self-inflicted wounds that screamed
out the tragedy of her defunct ovaries. Thad was grateful when his
mother took a seat alongside his father and spared him with a rear
view, which almost passed for normal. Her missing purse was slung
over one shoulder. In her inebriated state, her drunken logic
caused her to stash the purse in the woods near their house. Her
every intention had been to skip town while everyone was at the
wedding.

Thad zoomed in his camera for close ups, and
he snapped a few pictures of Ben as he made his way to the front of
the church. Earlier, Thad had given Ben a hand escorting the
wedding guests to their appropriate sides of the church. As he
promised Kate, Thad stepped in when Jack, the other usher, failed
to show. The flood of guests eventually dwindled to a trickling
stream of stragglers that Ben managed alone.

Peering over the railing down into the
intricate guts of the ornate church, Thad watched Kate’s father
lugging around his video camera. Thad understood the need for
wedding photographs, but he considered an actual video of the event
a sadistically boring memento for newlyweds to inflict on their
unsuspecting family and friends. With an unlit cigar chomped
between his teeth, Chief Hesse circled the church on his eternal
quest for America’s funniest home video.

“So, what do I play?” Alexa asked. She sat
slouched over, pouring through a hymnal at the organ. She was
responsible for ensuring Vange’s prerecorded vocals were played on
cue but due to the unforeseen delay, Nick requested she retreat to
the balcony and play organ music to pacify the restless guests.

“Play the Prayer of St. Francis.”

“I don’t know any religious tunes.”

“Don’t you know any classical stuff? What
about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, you know Ode to Joy?” Thad
suggested. He did not feel very joyous, but at least his bloodshot
eyes were concealed behind little round sunglasses.

“Oh, yeah, good one,” she said, cracking her
knuckles. Alexa hammered out the first few bars before messing up.
“Hey, Thad, do you think two people can be loyal to one another,
even after all this ceremonial bullshit fades from their
memories?”

“Um, I think that’s the reason for all this
ceremonial bullshit, so it doesn’t fade from their memory,” Thad
said. “What, don’t you believe in happily-ever-after?”

“I want to,” Alexa said, studying the organ
keys. “Did you know swans mate for life?”

“Well, you’re no swan,” he said, amazed at
his sister’s unnatural longing to couple up for all eternity.
Despite their dysfunctional origins, she seemed prepared to forge
her own path into the unforgiving jungle of domesticity. “Just say
no to the whole idea of matrimonial bliss.” Alexa laughed out loud
and resumed playing the organ. Stooped over, she pounded away
maniacally on the keyboard with her wavy hair dripped over one
black eye, where Jack’s rock had hit her the night before.

Ascending footsteps sounded in the balcony,
and Chelsea emerged at the top of the stairs. Despite her faint
trace of a satisfied smile, she looked as tired and worn out as he
felt. While she leaned against the railing with her back to the
crowd, he inspected her bright fuchsia dress. It was the same
horrific Scarlet O’Hara formal dress Alexa wore. They looked like
Prom escapees.

Chelsea raised a fringed shawl and spun
around witchy like Stevie Nicks. Her voice dripped with insularity,
“Don’t I look positively Bo-Peep?”

“You’re pretty in pink,” he said and snapped
her photo. “What’s up with the shawl?”

She lowered the out dated crochet shawl fall
to expose the back of her arms, which were covered in purple
bruises as it had taken all Thad and Ben’s might to pry her off
Nick’s back last night.

“These black and blue marks make me look like
a heroin junkie,” she said proudly. “I can’t wait for it to spread
all over town I’m strung out.”

“Still no sign of Kate?”

“No,” Chelsea said. “I think Nick went to see
if he could find her.”

The wedding party was causing their usual
commotion directly below them at the back of the church. They had
not yet begun to dry out from their drunken escapades. Although he
was sure he was missing prime photo opportunities, Thad did not
have the energy to trudge down the steps and stalk them like the
Paparazzi.

Silently disapproving, Chelsea noted Thad
smelled like a brewery, and it was too soon to be drunk. “Hell,
it’s noon somewhere,” was his customary defense, which she found
lacking and not at all amusing. Chelsea had fled the church foyer
to escape Nick’s Frat pack along with the concerned intimates of
the bride. Moreover, she was too hung over to listen to Kate’s
father, who had taken charge of the informal gathering and his
booming voice sent her scurrying for shelter.

The organ music only intensified her
headache, and she longed for this heinous conjugal hell to be done
with once and for all. “I don’t feel very joyous.”

“Still headed off to California?”

“If I can ever get out of here.”

Chelsea’s car was strategically parked like a
getaway car across the street from the church. After the ceremony,
she planned to speed away fast and furious before she eventually
collapsed in a cheap roadside motel. Purely for dramatic effect, it
was her intention to drive as far as she could withstand in the
bridesmaid dress. Due to the culminating events of the past
twenty-four hours, she looked forward to the long solitary trek
across the country. Chelsea realized there was no point inviting
Thad to join her because his ship appeared permanently and
miserably docked in Portnorth.

“Don’t forget to write,” he said, busy
checking a camera-topped tripod. “You write the best letters of
anyone I know.”

Concerned, Chelsea blurted, “Thad, the
sunglasses don’t hide the fact you’re drunk. Haven’t you heard,
fear of failure is a manifestation of narcissism?”

“Who’s afraid?” Thad asked, and he laughed
from behind his little round sunglasses. He retrieved a flask from
his pocket and tilted it in her direction. “Unlike some people,
Chels, failure is not exactly something I run from.”

She rolled her eyes and said, “I better get
back to the other crisis at hand. Promise me you won’t hurl
yourself over the balcony, or do anything else equally
moronic?”

“Suicide is not my style,” Thad said, and he
captured her look of agitated boredom on film. “For posterity’s
sake.”