by Kim Holden
“I think I’m gonna rename you Demon Seed.”
“What? I show you my dark side and now I have to be the fucking antichrist? I don’t like that. Why can’t I just be Angry Bitch?”
He laughs hard and my heart swells because I haven’t heard this laugh out of Gus in a month. And I love this laugh.
“Well dude, since it seems my therapy session has wrapped up, I’d better get going. I need to get home.”
“Sure. Drive slowly and text me when you get there so I know you made it. And no more driving after this trip.”
“Yes sir. I love you, Gus.”
“Love you, too, Angry Bitch,” his voice low and dramatic. He pauses because he knows I’m not going to hang up to that. “I was just trying it out,” he says innocently.
“I don’t think I like it.”
“Me neither,” he says matter-of-factly. “Love you, too, Bright Side.”
“That’s better.” I like being Bright Side. I like it a lot.
Friday, December 30
(Kate)
“Gus is flying home with you tomorrow.” Keller has his arms folded over his chest. He’s expecting me to fight him on this.
He expected right. “Gus is flying here?” Normally I’d be happy to see Gus, but the fact that I’m being babysat is irritating as all hell.
He nods.
“When does he get here?” Now I cross my arms too, in an act of defiance. Even Stella doesn’t act like this. What’s gotten into me?
“His flight gets in about two hours before yours takes off. He’ll meet us in the terminal and take you from there since I can’t go beyond security.” It’s straightforward Keller. He wants to get through this quickly. He knows I’ve been grouchy all day and this is only going to make it worse.
I know they’re only thinking of me, but I hate being treated like an invalid. “I’m not a fucking child, Keller.”
He rubs his temples with the heels of his hands. “Babe, I know that.” My pissy attitude is testing his patience. “Do you want something to eat? It’s dinner time. Are you hungry? I can make something so you can take your medicine.” He’s trying to change the subject, trying to help me. But I’m still upset.
I deflect and go right back for more. “Whose idea was this?”
“Ours.” It’s exasperated. He wants to be done with this.
“So, you and Gus orchestrated the rescue together? I don’t get a vote? All I need to do is get on a plane, Keller. I think I can do that on my own.” I don’t want to be mean. It’s not me at all, but today I can’t help it. Thank God Shelly and Duncan came and picked up Stella this morning so she could spend the day and night with them. I don’t want her to ever see me acting this way. No one deserves to see me this way. Especially not Keller. The pain and misery of my illness is transforming me into someone I despise.
“Jesus, Katie, what do you want me to do? You’re not sick enough to have an escort home, but you’re sick enough to leave here? Abandon me for San Diego and Gus?”
The words open a fresh, gaping wound of guilt, so I lash out. “Stop right there and back the fuck up. This isn’t a popularity contest.” I’m so pissed that my head is starting to throb. I’m not choosing one person over another because I care for him more. I have to choose someone—someplace—to bear this burden. Huge difference.
He turns his back to me, put his hands on his hips, and then turns around to face me again. “In my heart I know that. I know that. But I’m jealous. There, I said it. I’m fucking jealous. That’s as honest as I can be.”
My normally sympathetic self is gone. “That’s stupid.”
His irritation is short-lived. He’s not joining me in my anger. His face drops, and I can tell that he’s retreating into sadness. “I can’t argue with that. It is stupid. Stupid and immature. I’m working on it. Your relationship with Gus was built over decades. I only got a few months. That makes me jealous. I just ... want more. I want more time with you.”
This is heartbreaking, but I’m still angry. My heart desperately wants my mouth to shut up, but I fire back, “And you don’t think I want that?”
He shakes his head and steps toward me to put his hands on my shoulders.
I take a step back out of his reach.
“Babe, I know you want that, too. I wasn’t trying to imply—“
I cut him off, breathing heavily, and squinting through the pain. “Fine. You want me to stay here? You want to watch my lungs battle for oxygen turn into an all-out war? You want to watch this shit really amp up as my liver finishes its descent into hell? You want to watch them pump me so fucking full of narcotics to relieve the pain that I can’t think straight or speak like a normal person? You want to watch me waste away to nothing and starve to death when I can’t eat or drink anymore? It’s going to be fucking glorious—” I’m yelling when he interrupts.
His hands are covering his ears and there are tears in his eyes. “Stop! Just stop. I don’t want to fight with you, babe. I want to help you. I want to take away your pain. I want to love you. That’s all I want.” He gives me a desperate look, like he wants to reach out for me again. Instead, he reaches for his coat hanging over the back of the loveseat, slips it on, and walks toward the door. “I’m going to take a walk. Try to calm down. It isn’t good for you to get this worked up. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I can’t watch him walk out the door but I hear it shut quietly behind him. The lump in my throat cannot be swallowed back and before I know what’s happening, I’m sobbing. It’s the kind of sob that makes me feel like I’m drowning. There’s no sound coming out and I’m gasping for air. I can’t catch my breath. My shoulders are shaking violently and my head is pounding. Physically, my body is fighting against the havoc brought on by each new sob. My muscles are strained and tight, amplifying the pain. I’ve never believed you could die from pain alone. Surely there’s nothing so intense that it would actually stop your heart from beating.
Now I’m rethinking everything.
I need my medicine.
I take two steps toward the bathroom before a sudden jolt of pain takes me down. Lying on the floor, it feels like I’ve all but lost control of my body and my mind. I hear myself scream through the silence as oxygen forces its way into my lungs for what feels like the first time in minutes. My second or third exhalation of pained shrieking is accompanied by bile, and seconds later I spew the entire contents of my stomach onto the hardwood floor. That was the first food I’ve been able to stomach in two days. And now it’s gone.
I’m still sobbing, but the anger is gone. Now, the only emotion I can focus on is fear. Pain is dominant, but fear is creeping in like a predator ready to attack, coming in for the kill. I can’t turn my back on it or it will take me down. Is this what my life has been reduced to? Lying on the floor in a pool of my own vomit, unable to stop crying, mentally unable to calm down, physically unable to stand up?
The edges of my vision are fading to black. Things are going dark, and this scares me more than ever. My entire body suddenly goes rigid with pain. One last thought crosses my mind. Now I understand why my mother ended it all.
Sometimes, when something terrible is happening, I try my damnedest to concentrate on the most inconsequential, unrelated detail readily available to me. A detail that, in the grand scheme of things, has nothing to do with the situation at hand. At this moment, that detail would be the fact that it’s fucking disgusting under the loveseat. I’m lying on the floor trying to figure out what just happened, but the only thing I can focus on is the fact that Keller and Duncan have probably never swept under this loveseat.
The next thought that crosses my mind is how much my jaw hurts. My teeth feel like I’ve been clenching them through a long night’s sleep. My eyelids feel crusty and sticky. And it smells like something died, like rotten food and urine. My memory is foggy. This is what it feels like to wake up from a deep sleep.
I repeat that thought. This is what it feels like to wake up.
&nbs
p; I just woke up?
I roll to my back, which takes great effort. I look at the ceiling. What the hell just happened? My limbs feel like they’re filled with jelly and my joints ache like I’ve just run a marathon. I try to sit up, but I’m so dizzy that I decide to lay back down on the floor.
Looking down at my clothes, I realize where the god awful smells are coming from. I’ve puked all over myself and the floor. Shit. This is one of my favorite shirts. Well, now it’s history. Pretty sure recycled spaghetti sauce doesn’t come out any better than first generation spaghetti sauce. I feel wet between my legs, too. Great. Pissing myself hasn’t helped matters, either.
“Keller?” My voice is hoarse and my throat hurts. It doesn’t sound like me.
There’s no response.
I’m able to push myself to my hands and knees. I crawl to the bathroom, take my medicine, and get myself into the shower. My strength is gone, but I can’t take this smell anymore. The water feels good so I curl up on the tile floor and let it soak into my clothes and hair.
The jumbled memories in my head begin reassembling themselves. I remember the fight with Keller, the yelling. I remember him leaving. I remember crying, and the pain, and the shaking, and the vomiting. And then I remember nothing. And it all makes perfect sense.
“Katie?” Keller’s voice is muffled and far away but the panic is undeniable. The bathroom door nearly comes unhinged when it’s thrown open. “Katie?” He’s crying. It’s ninety-five percent fear, five percent sadness. When he sees me it shifts, five percent fear, ninety-five percent sadness. “Babe, what happened?” After turning off the water, he’s on his knees leaning into the shower cradling my head up and out of the water pooling around me with one hand while he’s searching his jeans pocket for his cell phone. “Shit, where’s my phone. I need to call an ambulance.”
I shake my head. “No, no ambulance.” I feel like shit for treating him like I have all day. Whatever horrible feelings I was harboring earlier, they’re gone. I look him in the eyes and don’t like what I see. “Pretty sure I had a panic attack and then I blacked out. I’m not going back to that damn hospital.”
His face falls and he brushes the hair away. Then he climbs into the shower with me, fully-clothed, and pulls me into his lap. He’s holding me, rocking back and forth.
My cheek rests against his pounding heart. “Baby?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. About earlier. I’m not mad at you; I’ve just been in a shitty mood.” I gesture to my wet clothes. “Obviously I do need someone to take care of me.”
He tightens his hold on me. “I’m so sorry, Katie. I never should’ve walked out on you like that. I should’ve been here.” He’s beating himself up.
I raise my chin so I can see his face. “This isn’t your fault.”
“Oh Katie, I’m so sorry. I hate this. I hate that you’re sick and there’s nothing I can do to make it better. I just want to make it all go away.”
“You make it better every day. You may not be able to heal my body, but you heal my spirit. I think that’s why I’ve been so upset all day. I don’t want to leave you.” Tears are pooling in my eyes. “I don’t. But I have to. I can’t be a burden to you, especially with Stella here. The end is going to be awful. I’ve accepted that. I know that you’d go through it with me if I asked you to, but I can’t do that to you. Audrey’s already made arrangements to have a hospice nurse come to her house to keep an eye on me. I want you to remember the good times, not the shitty ones. Not the end.”
He sits me up, and we look at one another with tears in our eyes. “I’d do anything for you, Katie. I’d walk through hell and back. All you have to do is ask.”
It’s the hardest thing I’ll ever say. “I think I need you to just let me go, baby.” I squeeze my eyes shut against the tears.
His face contorts in pain, and he fights back a sob. “We still have tonight, right?”
I smile and nod. “We do.”
Keller peels our wet clothes off and wraps me in a towel. After he returns with clean clothes for both of us, he dresses and helps me into sweatpants and a sweatshirt and proceeds to comb the tangles out of my wet hair.
I close my eyes. “You’re pretty good at this.”
I can’t see his face but I know he’s smiling. “Years of practice. I’m a dad, remember?”
I think of him caring for Stella as a child. I think of him guiding her as a teenager, of him being there for her as an adult. All of it makes me happy. Keller has a purpose, a reason to keep going after I leave. That gives me some peace. I need to remind him what a great dad he is. “It’s one of my favorite things about you.”
He raises an eyebrow at my comment. “Really?”
I nod. “Definitely.” I’m exhausted and my body aches all over from my episode earlier. “Can we finish this conversation in bed?”
Taking my hand he helps me stand. “There’s something we need to do first,” he says, and walks me through the door to Grounds. It’s closed up for the night, so it’s dim and quiet. He stops when we’re standing in front of the window. He squeezes my hand. “Let’s watch the sunset.”
I smile and hold his hand with both of mine as I look out toward the horizon. My grip intensifies as the colors shift into brilliant pinks and blues, and it’s only as darkness descends that I realize how hard I’m squeezing.
The look in his eyes is love, plain and simple. “I love how passionate you are about the important things in life. Like sunsets.” He smiles. “And people.”
I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him on the chin. “Sunsets and people, that’s what it’s all about. Especially people. Extra passionate if his name’s Keller Banks.”
He squats and scoops me up into his arms. Before I know it we’re standing next to his bed. He pulls back the covers, props up the pillows, and helps me into bed before sliding in beside me. I rest my head back against the wall and look at him. I want to remember him exactly like this.
“I wish I knew you better, Keller.” I do.
He slides his arm behind me and wraps his arms around me, pulling me to him. Resting my cheek against his bare chest I hear his heart beating, slow and steady. He kisses the top of my head. “Katie, you know me better than anyone else. You may not know all the trivial stuff, but you know me. The real me, deep down. You know how I think, what I fear, how I love. No one’s ever seen me the way you do. Not even Lily.”
I smile. “Can we play a game?”
He laughs. “You wanna play a game?”
“Yeah. What’s your favorite color?” I prompt. “I want to know some of the trivial stuff.”
“Okay. Umm … ”
“It’s not a hard question, baby,” I tease.
He laughs again. “I know. I’m going to say black. What about you?”
I don’t hesitate. “Orange. Sunset-over-the-Pacific orange. Your turn.”
“Mmm. Okay … what’s your favorite food? And you can’t say coffee.”
“Chocolate … or tacos.”
“Which is it? Only one answer. It’s not a hard question, babe.” He’s having fun with this.
“Fine. Veggie tacos. You?”
“My Nana’s homemade lasagna.”
“Your mom’s mom or your dad’s mom?”
“My mother’s mother. They were nothing alike. Stella’s named after her.” He smiles. “She visited every year at Christmas and always made lasagna. She died when I was ten.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, she was fun. I miss her. What’s your favorite animal?”
“Umm, cats. I always wanted a Siamese. I wanted to name him Mr. Miyagi.”
“Mr. Miyagi?”
“Yeah, you know, the old dude in the original Karate Kid movie.”
He shakes his head. He doesn’t understand.
“You’ve never seen the original Karate Kid movie?” I’m shocked. Gracie and I were practically raised on my mother’s old collection of ‘80s movies and a VCR. We could recite Pre
tty in Pink word for word.
“No.” It doesn’t register. He’s not kidding.
“Well, you need to. You’re clearly lacking in ‘80s culture.”
He smiles. “Clearly.”
“Now that that’s cleared up, what’s your favorite animal?”
“I feel like I should say turtles, given Stella’s preoccupation.” I laugh and he continues. “But probably dolphins. I’ve always wanted to swim with one.”
“Did you play sports in high school?”
“Nah, I was a nerd. I ran or rode my bike a lot just to get out of the house, but that was the extent of it, living in the city like we did. You surfed, though. Anything else?”
“No, music-based schools don’t put much emphasis on athletics. Just surfing. And dancing.”
It’s Keller’s turn. “Okay, next question: Young Elvis or old Elvis?”
“That’s actually a really good question. Old Elvis.”
“Why?” he challenges.
“Because young Elvis was handsome, but old Elvis could sing his ass off. ‘Suspicious Minds’ was the best song he ever recorded. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard a live recording of it. He killed it. What about you? Young or old?”
“I like old Elvis, but mostly because of the jumpsuits.”
“Old Elvis did have great stage-wear,” I agree. “Okay. Next: if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?”
“Hmm. I’d like to take Stella to see the pyramids in Egypt someday. That’s something I always wanted to see as a kid. They seemed so magical. They still do. So, yeah, Egypt. What about you?”
“I saw a documentary about Ha Long Bay in Vietnam when I was in seventh grade and ever since then it’s been the one place I always thought would be remarkable to see in person. Like pictures somehow didn’t do it justice. I needed to see it with my own eyes to believe a place so beautiful could actually exist.”
He’s quiet for a few moments, stroking my hair. It feels good, but the silence has me curious. I roll off his chest onto the pillow next to him. We’re lying nose to nose. He looks deep in thought. “What is it, baby?”