by Katy Paige
“What, Erik? What?” she barked, eyes blazing, her chest hurting from the way her lungs forced air back and forth into them, trying to keep her tears from falling.
“I care, Katrin. Of course I care. I made a promise. I promised Ingrid that I’d—”
She saw red. Bright, raw, blistering red.
“Stop. Talking. This has nothing to do with Ingrid. Leave her out of it.” She yanked her wrist out of his grasp with an angry jerk, turning her body away from him. Her voice was low and spiteful when she spoke again, looking at him over her shoulder. “You know what, Erik? You’re a coward. There’s something between us, and it’s not just fun. I mean, it is fun, but it’s also intense, and it’s real, and it’s growing, and it’s…good. And it scares the hell out of you. Well, it scares me too, but I’m not running away from it or minimizing it or trying to shut it down just because it might actually mean something.”
She had lost her battle with her tears and they coursed down her face in furious rivers of wet heat. She half expected him to rub her back or try to pull her to him, but he didn’t touch her. She hoped she had hurt him. She remembered him calling Wade a coward with disgust, so she knew the word had meaning for him, and she hoped she had made him angry. And hurt. As angry and hurt as she felt now.
She didn’t turn to face him when she spoke again; she couldn’t look at him. But, she knew he could hear her words in the quiet of the car.
“Erik…don’t come back here again if it’s for Ingrid. I mean it. I don’t need a babysitter, I don’t need a big brother, and I have enough friends. Besides, I don’t kiss my friends, I don’t—” Her voice broke, and she clenched her fists into tight painful balls, propelling her to finish. “Unless you’re coming back for me—for us…unless you’re coming back for us, Erik, don’t come back at all.”
***
He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she hurried up the stairs to the porch, unlocking the door and closing it behind her without looking back. He felt like he’d been hit by a bus, by a train, by a jet.
Erik stared at the building until he saw the light go on in her room, then bowed his head in frustration, slamming his fist into the steering wheel again and again until the skin on his knuckles split open. How had that conversation gotten so out of control? He just wanted to keep things casual so their families wouldn’t…wouldn’t…
The pain in his chest, in his heart, was so sharp; he winced, rubbing it with the heel of his injured hand. He had hurt her, but the worst of it was that he might have lost her, and part of him felt like weeping with almost-paralyzing fear.
She was furious with him.
Not coming back again was impossible.
He was screwed.
ENTR’ACT
Can I call you?
Can we talk?
–M
***
Ӓlskling, please write back.
It came out all wrong.
–M
***
It’s been three days, Katrin.
If you don’t write back, I’m coming down there.
Tonight.
–M
***
Please do not come down here.
Leave me alone, Erik.
You said yourself that there is no us.
And God forbid I get any more attached to you.
–Katrin
***
I got freaked out. I just wanted to slow down, not end things.
I’m sorry.
–Erik
***
You should be sorry. You really hurt me.
And you know what? You got what you wanted.
There’s no us, Erik – no labels for you to worry about.
Hope this is slow enough for you.
***
I’m coming on Sunday, Ӓlskling.
–M
***
Don’t.
***
You said not to come back unless I was coming for us.
We need to talk about us, Katrin.
I’ll be there on Sunday at 4pm.
–M
Chapter 12
She never wrote back.
She hadn’t written since Thursday.
Don’t.
One word that made him sick to his stomach with worry, made his heart ache with longing for her, with frustration, with anger at himself.
To say it had been a long week was an understatement. It had been excruciating. Interminable. He felt lost and sad; the real possibility that he may have lost her sat in his heart like iron, and he couldn’t remember ever feeling so miserable.
All the other times when he broke off things with a woman who wanted to get more serious, it had been his choice, and he only felt relief as he walked away, no matter how upset she had been. This time was totally different. This time the tables were turned. She was pushing him away, and it hurt. And only one thing hurt more: the idea that she was out of his life for good.
There was no way around it. He had been wrong. He thought they could hide their feelings for each other, keep their budding relationship a secret. But he saw now that they couldn’t. His feelings for Katrin were too big for him to take a step back; they weren’t going anywhere, and he was going to have to figure out how to get comfortable with the word “us” because another sleepless, desperate week spent longing for her, scared he had lost her, wasn’t something he ever cared to experience again.
Driving south toward Skidoo Bay, he thought of her coming down the stairs last weekend, how pretty she looked, dressed up just for him. He had ruined their evening with his doubts and fears. He felt thoroughly like the jackass she said he was.
Because the bottom line was that being an “us” with Katrin was better than being without her.
It was a small, but significant, step for Erik: the first time in his adult life that he needed to make space for someone else. And the thought did scare him. His heart beat faster with misgivings, old panic and fears about being tied down to someone, but then he’d think of her, of Katrin, and he knew he didn’t really have a choice. He simply couldn’t imagine his life right now without her in it.
It scared the hell out of him that his feelings for Katrin had reached a tipping point, but they weren’t at the beginning of some mild flirtation that could still be ended without leaving a mark. They were already in the middle of something, as she said, that was intense and real and growing and good. He didn’t really know what he was going to say to her once he got there, but if she still wanted him, he would figure out a way to deal with his fears because he sure as hell wanted her.
He pulled up in front of the clinic and parked his car. It’s not that he was expecting her to be watching for him from the swing or sitting on the front steps, but the sharpness of his disappointment surprised him. Apparently, he’d been hoping she’d be waiting for him.
He rang the doorbell, and was further surprised when José answered, regarding Erik with cool eyes.
“Erik.”
Old rivalries die hard. “José.”
“What can I do for you?”
Erik really hated this guy. “Is Katrin here?”
José’s eyes narrowed as he eyed Erik. “She didn’t tell you? Ingrid didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” He didn’t like José’s tone. His heart started beating faster. What was going on? Where was Katrin?
“She’s sick. She caught—”
Erik barreled past him, knocking a vase of white roses off the reception desk, taking the stairs two or three at a time, practically climbing the whole staircase in a giant leap. When he reached the top of the stairs, he strode to her bedroom door, but he was stopped by Gabrielle’s firm hand on his arm.
“Slow down, bredda.”
Erik practically growled at her. “Is she in there?”
“Calm down. She fine, Erik. She okay now. Di worst is all over now.” Gabrielle’s voice was low and soothing while her fingers gently massaged Erik’s arm. She pulled him toward the small sitt
ing area next to the bedroom, holding his eyes with hers. “Come sit wit me for a while.”
“I want to see her.”
“You will. She sleepin’ now. Come sit wit me. I tell you what happened.”
José appeared at the top of the steps, first wary, then just annoyed as he glanced back and forth between Erik and Gabrielle. He took a seat on the couch beside Gabrielle, facing Erik, who stood before them with his hands on his hips, eyes focused and blazing.
“What’s wrong with her?” Erik asked him.
José looked at his folded hands. “Started on Friday morning. I thought it was strep at first. We had a wave of cases this week once we opened the doors. She tested positive and she was burning up. Gave her some antibiotics and told her to go to bed and rest. But then the rash started, and the vomiting. Until she had nothing left. All through the day on Friday. My biggest concern was that she couldn’t hold down the antibiotics. She couldn’t hold down tea—”
“Couldn’t hold down no water,” Gabrielle said. “I find her on de bathroom floor, all passed out, on Friday night. José, he carry her to de bed and we do de IV antibiotic. And poor dumplin’, she sleepin’ all day yesterday and most of today. De rash look bad, Erik, but she outta de woods now.”
His heart was racing with this news, and his stomach rolled over, picturing an IV line coming out of her arm. “So, what was it? Was it strep?”
José shook his head. “It started that way. But it progressed into scarlet fever.”
Erik’s face froze. The only reference he had for scarlet fever was books in which patients weakened or died. “Scarlet fever! Scarlet fever? That’s fatal!”
José raised his eyebrows then shook his head. “Used to be. But not anymore. It’s pretty easy to treat with antibiotics now, as long as you can keep them down. I admit I got worried when the vomiting kept bringing them up, but the IV took care of that. She’s holding them down now orally. She’s on day three, and she’s going to be just fine. She’ll lose the rash in a few more days. She just got a really, really angry strain of strep.”
Helplessness this overwhelming was foreign to Erik and deeply disconcerting. “Why didn’t you call me?”
José regarded Erik with barely concealed anger. “Last I checked, Erik, you’re not her family.”
“I’m all she has up here, and you know it. Why didn’t you call me?” he demanded with a growl.
“You’re not all she has. She has us,” José said, tilting his head toward Gabrielle. José’s emphasis on the word us wasn’t lost on Erik. “Anyway, I called her brother. He and Ingrid were comfortable with the way we were handling things. They offered to come up, but by this morning she was improving. They knew she was in good hands.”
“Ingrid didn’t tell you to call me?”
“You’re a fool if you don’t think Ingrid knows what’s going on between you two.”
Erik took a step forward and snarled, “I should punch you in the face.”
“Don’t try it.” José was quick to stand up across from Erik, bronze arms crossed over his broad chest. “She didn’t want you here, Erik. Which shouldn’t be a big surprise after the way you treated her on Sunday night.”
Erik swallowed, his worst fears encroaching. She hadn’t texted back. She didn’t want him. He had lost her.
It made him want to smash his fist into José’s smug mouth. “That’s none of your business.”
“Actually, it is. She made it my business when she told me about it. She’s my patient. She’s my co-worker. And she’s my friend.”
Gabrielle stood up placing her hand on José’s arm. José turned to her, and Gabrielle held his eyes for a moment. “José.”
“I want to see her,” Erik said.
Gabrielle shook her head. “Erik, she still sick.”
He spoke more gently. “I need to see her, Gabrielle. Please.”
Gabrielle looked at José again, searching his eyes, still holding his arm. Erik watched as her face softened and she smiled at him gently. José stared back at her and finally sighed in resignation. “Well, maybe you have the antibodies, although I was shocked as hell that she didn’t. Being a nurse and all.” He looked at Erik squarely, as if he was trying to figure something out. “If you upset her, I’m throwing you out.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“I mean it, Erik. I know she cares about you, but don’t make me regret this.”
José looked at Gabrielle, and Erik almost turned away from the intimacy of his gaze. José reached down to touch her hand, caressing her fingers before he removed them from his arm and left the room, heading downstairs.
Gabrielle watched him go and then gestured for Erik to follow her to Katrin’s bedroom door. “She look a little rough around di edges, Erik. Just so you know.”
“I don’t care,” he whispered.
Gabrielle nodded, pushing the door open for him. “I see how much you care ‘bout her. Maybe it’s time she sees it too.”
He walked into the dimly lit room where Katrin lay sleeping soundly on her back, covers tucked up under her chin so that only her face was visible on the white pillow under her head. It had been several years since he had entered a sick room, but he was assaulted by the memories of his mother’s illness and felt light-headed as images and sounds flooded his brain. Unwanted images. Awful sounds. Memories he had buried deeply and tried desperately to forget.
He leaned over the bed watching Katrin’s chest move up and down slightly. There was no distress in her breathing, no ragged rasping sound as she inhaled as he had become accustomed to hearing from his mother toward the end.
He let his hand hover over her forehead, but he didn’t feel heat being thrown off of her body. Her cheeks were very pink, he suspected, because of the rash. As soon as she woke up, he would get a washcloth from the bathroom and soak it in cool water to try to soothe her irritated skin. She had a large glass of water by the bed, and tissues. He looked around, finding a bucket for her vomit, should she still need one. There was a small pile of towels, and an extra pillow if she wanted one. He grimaced at the IV pole lurking in the corner, lines neatly coiled like behaving snakes. Looked like everything was in order.
His shoulders relaxed a little, and he crept to the rocking chair in the corner of the room by the windows. Without making a sound, he lifted it and moved it beside her bed, so close that his knees would almost touch her covers as he rocked. Then he sat down and waited.
When Erik’s mother lay dying of cancer, her care had been left, primarily, to him and Jenny. They weren’t the sort of family who could afford much outside paid care, and anyway, they wouldn’t have wanted that for his mother. Once her diagnosis was terminal, it was all about making her comfortable in the few months she had left.
That long, hot summer they had re-read her all of her favorite books in the last lucid weeks of her life: Pride & Prejudice, Persuasion, Jane Eyre, North & South, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. When they weren’t reading, they were watching her favorite movies, twenty-one-year-old Jenny lying to her left on the bed, and when he wasn’t working, twenty-two-year-old Erik to her right.
In a strange way, mutually—if not verbally—agreed upon, he and Jenny had recreated their years in the schoolroom with their mother, reading the familiar words and discussing the Edwardian tales of love and longing. They were older now, but their mother was still the teacher, the adult, the voice of reason and experience, sharing her thoughts and life experience, an urgency to her words as she delivered final lessons to her children like a legacy, knowing that she was running out of time.
In those hot summer evenings, occasionally his father and brothers would join them for a movie, even ordering pizza a few times. They would all sit on her bed together, teasing each other, laughing about old memories, trying to ignore the fact that they were all sitting on their dying mother’s bed in the middle of what used to be their dining room.
His mother had turned a bad corner at the end of the summer, and the pizza and movies en
ded for good. His father suddenly spent more and more time in the park, leaving Erik and Jenny alone to care for her throughout the last terrible days.
It was then, in those terrifying, dark days of fall, that his father abandoned his dying mother, demonstrating with heartbreaking clarity for young Erik that vows are meaningless and nothing, least of all love, lasts forever.
As Katrin slept peacefully and Erik rocked in the quiet of her room, he sensed something changing inside of him. When other women had wanted to be half of an “us” with him, it had been unthinkable for him. Until now. Until Katrin. Looking at her, so little and red-cheeked beside him, made him wince, made him wish it were him, not her, lying there.
His head wasn’t having it. That is crazy, Erik. Is that what you want? To care about someone so much it hurts? It leaves you unprotected? You don’t want that…do you?
His heart roared back, Goddamn it, I do. I can be a better man than he was.
It was a strong voice, deep inside, brooking no argument, firm and sure. He closed his eyes, bowing his head in total defeat, his eyes burning from unshed tears.
I’ve never felt this way before, I’ve only read about it. But I want her in my life, I need her in my life, and I just hope it’s not too late.
He heard her stir beneath the covers. His eyes flashed open and he leaned forward, the old encouraging, sick-room smile coming easily. She moved her head toward him, her eyes fluttering open, then closed, then open again, dreamy, only half awake.
“Erik,” she murmured, and her eyes closed again, her lips turned up slightly. Her voice was soft and thick and breathy. “You’re here. Where were you? I wanted you so much. So much.”