Abandon

by Stephanie Dorman

  Stepping into the bedroom he looked around for something to wear. The clothes he had worn the night before were crumpled in the corner where he had discarded him. He hadn’t known coming in from the lake the night before with Annalise that this morning would be like this, but he still couldn’t find it in himself to regret it. He knew Katy would be hurting right now but he would talk to her, and she would move on. In fact, this might be good for her. She had been using him for far too long as a crutch. Perhaps by removing himself she would find her own strength.

  He knew he would have to talk with Kevin, Jenna and Jake about everything. The group dynamic would shift, and Katy’s anger at Cort and Annalise would require an outlet of some sort. He expected Jenna would be the most sympathetic to her plight and he made a mental note to get to Jenna as soon as she woke up.

  He was five steps from the door, with one boot still needing to be put on when he heard the loud crack and the shrill scream that followed it. He froze for a second, trying to figure out what he had just heard. When it finally registered, his body responded as if compelled by some force greater than him. He was out of the house in less than fifteen steps, and looked out at the scene before him in horror. There were footprints in the snow leading from the doors to the dock. Then they led around what he thought was the lake. If it weren’t for the crack in the ice where he saw Katy’s tiny hands grasping to the ice he wouldn’t have known. The snow had covered the ice making it blend in seamlessly with the shoreline.

  Cort ran towards the lake at breakneck speed. His mind searched every piece of knowledge he had ever gathered about broken ice. Movies in his youth of rescue missions in the arctic stuck out in his head. Scenes of people yelling at each other, saying he would need to find a way to distribute his weight evenly or they both would fall in. He would have to be on his stomach and rely on his arm strength to pull her up. Cort wondered what her body weight was, and if he had the ability to pull her out of the water alone.

  Reaching the shoreline he saw Katy’s tiny hands gripping the ice and how it was crumbling beneath her grasp. Her lips were already starting to turn blue and her head was barely above the water. He paused for a second and looked back to the house just in time to see Annalise turn from the door and rush up the stairs. She was probably going to wake up Kevin and Jake. He got on his stomach in the snow and started crawling towards Katy. “I’m coming!” he shouted. “Just hold on!”

  He thought Katy’s head bobbed in acknowledgement, but then he saw her hands slowly release the ice. He crawled even faster towards her sinking body. It seemed like an eternity before he reached the edge and began checking his weight distribution. He seemed stable, God he hoped he was stable enough. If he wasn’t this could become an even stickier situation that it was previously. He hoped Annalise was rounding everyone up as fast as she could in case he failed.

  He reached his arms into the frigid water, wrapping his hands around Katy’s arms. The water was so cold it felt like a million needles pricking into his skin which assaulted his brain trying to trick it into releasing Katy and pulling his arms back up into the cold winter air. It took everything he had inside of him to force his arms to start pulling her up. He had her half out of the water when he realized she had nothing but a robe on. The water must have permeated every inch of her body the way it did his arms in amazing speed. Some part of his brain started to recognize that if she made it through this, it would be a miracle, but he wouldn’t allow himself to concentrate on that.

  Annalise and Jenna were on the shoreline, holding onto blankets. All he had to do was haul Katy the rest of the way out of the water, and get to the blankets. They could warm her up and she’d be just fine. He began pulling, exerting an amazing amount of strength he didn’t know he had, until finally her slippers tore free and her entire body was on the ice. He turned her face up to his and he could see that she wasn’t breathing, her lips a color of deep blue. He had to start CPR, thin ice be damned. He tried to remember how to do them from the various classes he had taken over the years, and started with chest compressions. Katy started to cough up water almost immediately and breathing on her own. Her eyes still weren’t open, but she could breathe. That was good enough to move her, it had to be.

  He started pulling her body low against the snow and ice until they almost reached the shore. The ice here would be strong enough to hold both of their weight, and he reached down and scooped her up in his arms. He was moving as fast as he could, but it didn’t seem fast enough. He had to get her out of the robe, and into something warm. Upon reaching the shoreline, Jake appeared at Annalise’s side and immediately moved to begin wrapping Katy in the blankets.

  “Stop!” Annalise said, moving between Jake and Katy’s body. “You need to get her out of the robe first. All the blankets in the world aren’t going to help if she’s still in that wet robe.”

  Annalise began peeling off the robe with the ease only a female could have in this situation. Kevin and Jake immediately turned their heads away when Katy’s breasts became apparent to them. It was silly, Cort thought, because modesty was probably the last thing Katy would care about in this instance. Jenna grabbed the blankets out of Jake’s hands and began wrapping the parts of Katy up that Annalise exposed until she was a barely recognizable bundle in his arms. He was about to start moving toward the house when Jake reached over and pulled Katy out of his arms.

  “I’ll take her,” he said already starting towards the house.

  Cort stood in a stunned silence, watching Jake run with Katy to the sliding glass doors that would provide her the warmth she so desperately needed. Jenna began wrapping Cort’s arms in the remainder of the blankets and began ushering him towards the house. This must be what shock was, he thought as he let Jenna’s gentle hands propel his body forward.

  He couldn’t help but imagine what the last half an hour had been like for Katy. She had been confronted with a horrible betrayal and gone out into the elements barely wearing anything. She had probably been crying, and she probably didn’t even notice she was out on the ice. She must have been terrified when she heard the crack and began to fall through the ice. And it was all his fault. Everything that happened to her from this point on, if she lived or died would be on his head. Cort felt the guilt settle over him and he shuddered.

  “You should get in a warm shower Cort, we’ll take care of Katy,” Jenna said as they reached the house.

  Cort nodded and stepped inside walking towards the bedroom that he and Katy had shared. She was on the bed, with Jake and Kevin trying anyway they knew how to warm her up. He walked past them, not saying a word, to the bathroom they had shared and turned on the shower. He didn’t even strip off his clothes before he stepped inside, letting the warm water run over his body.

  The shock was still there, and he began thinking about the past three weeks. He hadn’t touched Katy sexually since they got here, and he instantly regretted it. He should have done more to comfort her out here. He should have let her know he was there for her in whatever way possible. He had recognized that he had let his feelings for Annalise color his behavior toward Katy, but as he thought about Katy laying on the bed outside the bathroom fighting for her life, he realized exactly how bad he had fucked up.

  He thought of everything he had done in his life, and all the pain he had probably inadvertently caused people through his actions. He had always prided himself in the fact there had never been a time when he had actually done something which would put another persons life at risk. He had never been a drunk driver and he had never used a gun except in the most safe way possible.

  Katy had to survive, he thought as he pressed his head against the wall in the shower. He couldn’t have her death on his conscience.

  Chapter 23: Annalise

  Deep Creek Lake, Western Maryland

  December 25, 2012

  It had been two days since the accident on the lake. Two long days since the morning Katy had fled from the house in tears after discovering Cort’s betray
al. Two long days since Annalise and Cort had heard the crack and the scream. Since that day, Annalise hadn’t slept for more than an hour at a time. Her dreams were plagued by images of her walking on the lake. If Cort hadn’t come out the night before, would it have been her falling through the thin ice into the cold depths of the lake? Would anyone have heard her screams over the sound of the storm? Looking at the bed in front of her, she watched Katy struggle with every shallow breath she took. She hadn’t woken up in two days, and Annalise wondered if behind those closed eyes she was tortured by images of what she walked in on that morning. In her heart, Annalise knew she would never know. She knew Katy would probably never wake up. The water had been too cold, and it had taken them too long to release her from the icy fingertips of death. At this point there was nothing to do but wait for a miracle, or wait for Katy to give up the fight and succomb to the pain Annalise knew her body was feeling.

  The door next to Annalise creaked open slowly and Kevin shuffled in, taking the seat across from Annalise. Annalise didn’t raise her face from Katy’s to look him in the eyes. She couldn’t - because Kevin would know. Since the accident, no one had asked any questions. No one had pressured Annalise and Cort as to why Katy was out on the lake alone that early. Not a single person had asked why Annalise and Cort had been the only other ones up. If any of them were going to put it together though, it would be Kevin, and she couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t look into her eyes and immediately know the truth.

  “How’s she doing?” he asked, reaching out to put a cool cloth on Katy’s forehead and another behind her neck. The fever had been raging for a day and none of them had any power to stop it. They had tried getting her to swallow some aspirin, but all it had done was blocked her airway, so they had been taking turns replacing the cloths on her neck and forehead hoping to cool her body temperature.

  “Same as earlier,” Annalise whispered softly.

  “You know, you should probably go lay down in your room. One of us can watch her for a while,” Kevin suggested. She imagined he probably had a concerned face, his gentle brown eyes were probably urging her to take his suggestion. Unfortunately, it was all conjecture because Annalise still couldn’t look at him in the eyes.

  “Annalise. Look at me.” Kevin said. Slowly, Annalise raised her eyes to meet his. They were filled with concern and it made Annalise hate herself even more. Kevin was sitting there concerned for her, when she was the reason that Katy was in the state she was in. He put a free hand on hers, covering it with a gentle squeeze. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Feeling his hand on hers, and seeing his brown eyes with so much concern, she felt the guilt start to assail her in fresh waves. For the first time since Katy had run out of the room that morning, she started crying. At first, it was just a tear in the corner of her eye, but it quickly progressed into gut wrenching sobs. “It’s my fault,” she managed to get out between gasps for breath.

  Kevin moved from his place beside the bed and put his arm around her. “How is it your fault ‘Lise, you didn’t push her onto the ice.”

  She didn’t know if she could do this. She didn’t know if she could explain to Kevin the morning that Katy had discovered her and Cort. She was almost positive he would hate her. Hell, she hated herself. “Not physically, no, but I might as well have.”

  Kevin stiffened beside her. “What do you mean?”

  “The reason she was out there, the reason she didn’t notice she was on the lake, she walked in on Cort and I in the morning Kev. She saw us in bed together.” A heavy silence descended upon the room after she spoke the words out loud. She knew that Kevin was processing the information trying to figure out what to say next. “He came to my room to talk me out of leaving the night before and it just happened; I should have stopped it. It’s my fault; if she dies, it’s my fault, and I hate myself so much right now.”

  Kevin rubbed her shoulder slowly, “Cort is a grown man ‘Lise. He was in your bed because he wanted to be. And what happened to Katy, that isn’t your fault. That’s just shitty luck, shitty blind luck that the storm covered the lake with snow and that she didn’t see it was thin ice.”

  Annalise sniffled, moving her eyes to looking at Katy on the bed. She was so pale, so fragile, and so weak. It should have been her, and here Kevin was, trying to comfort her. “She wouldn’t have been out there if it weren’t for me,” she argued weakly.

  “You don’t know that anymore than I do,” Kevin replied taking his arm off her shoulder. “She could have gone out there looking for the dog, she could have decided to take a walk. There’s any number of scenarios that would have ended exactly the same way. Besides, she already knew about you and Cort.”

  “I know, because I blabbed it the night before,” Annalise responded, shaking her head so her long locks fell over her eyes. Maybe if she hid her face, if Kevin couldn’t see her eyes, she would be protected from the pain in her soul somehow.

  “No, I mean she knew about you and Cort. She asked me about the history when you guys were out on the dock the night before,” he began to explain. Annalise, shook her head, cursing herself. Of course Katy would ask Kevin for the sordid details of her and Cort’s initial relationship. Annalise felt a new source of guilt, if she had been able to control her temper at dinner, Katy never would have asked Kevin. Annalise’s thoughts must have been pretty transparent because Kevin continued his story. “She could tell after the argument at dinner that something was off and she wanted the details so I told her the truth.”

  “And what truth was that?”

  “That you were the only girl Cort had ever really loved, and Cort would always find a way to be with you,” Annalise stared at him in disbelief. Before Katy had fallen through the ice, Cort had told her that she was the one, but after, they had barely spoken. She didn’t know if their new budding relationship would be able to survive considering the effects it seemed to have on those around them. Kevin moved a piece of hair out of her face in a fatherly gesture that gave her a small amount of comfort. “I don’t know if you knew this but after you guys broke up, he was in pretty bad shape. He spent months battling his own insecurities and trying to figure out ways to get you back.”

  Annalise couldn’t help herself, she scoffed. The idea that Cort spent any time pining over her was ridiculous. That just wasn’t who Cort was as a person.

  “I know it’s hard to believe because he hardly ever shows his emotion, but it’s true. There was this one night early in the fall, we went camping and he got drunk off an entire bottle of rum. All he could do was talk about you and how you were the only person he was instantly comfortable with. He said you were the one person besides me he could share everything with. He waxed poetic for hours about how the greatest tragedy in his life was the fact that he lost you, and he’d never find anyone who could replace you. You would always be the standard that every other girl was measured against. He fell asleep outside his tent clutching the empty bottle of rum and when I woke him up the next morning he told me in the most serious voice I had ever heard come out of his mouth that he would never get over you.”

  That story, she could believe. Cort had always been a sort of lightweight and whenever he got drunk he had tended to turn to self evaluation. She groaned, recognizing the situation for what it was. He had loved her which is why he brought her here. What she didn’t understand, still, was why he had brought Katy. If he hadn’t brought Katy, they could have avoided all of this. “Then why was he with her?”

  “I think he just got to the point where he needed someone to dull the pain. It was eating him alive ‘Lise. I don’t think Katy was ever meant to be anything but a placeholder until he could figure out how to deal with his insecurities and could get you back again. Then DC happened, and here we are.”

  Kevin didn’t say anything after that, and Annalise didn’t feel the need to respond. In truth, everything that Kevin was saying she had already known somewhere deep in the recesses of her heart. Maybe part of that was the reason she
never thought to stop his advances that night. She had recognized there had been something different about his kiss, a desperation she rarely saw in him. Somewhere in the back of her brain she had known he was trying to express an emotion that was difficult for him to speak out loud. He had been trying to express his need for her without words.

  She watched Kevin as his eyes scanned Katy’s body looking for any sign of life in the silence. Whatever the reasons for their indiscretion, it didn’t absolve them of their part of Katy’s current state. Cort and Annalise’s passion for each other wasn’t supposed to be a tool to hurt those around them, yet here they were, with Katy teetering on the edge of life and death, and guilt plaguing Annalise’s every breath.

  Annalise’s thoughts were interrupted by Kevin jumping from the chair beside her, “Katy, Katy, can you hear me?” Katy’s body shifted slightly, and a barely audible moan escaped her lips. “Katy, you have to wake up, you have to come back to us,” Kevin said shaking her body gently. “Someone! Bring me more cold towels!” he yelled outside of the room.

  Annalise stood up and backed herself toward the door. She wasn’t sure what Katy would remember of that morning, but she was damn sure that if it was her, she wouldn’t want the see the woman who was in bed with her boyfriend first thing after waking up.

  Chapter 24: Cort

  Deep Creek Lake, Western Maryland

  December 25, 2012

  Kevin was leaning over Katy, feeling her forehead and checking her pulse while the rest of the room was staring in silence from somewhere along the wall. Jenna had her hands clasped in a prayer towards the heavens and he thought it ironic that someone who had never been that religious before the events of the past month had somehow found their way to God. If anything, the past two days had caused him to realize that God hadn’t been listening for a time.

  Annalise was standing next to him, still as a statue watching the events in the room. They hadn’t talked in the two days since the incident. Part of it was that Annalise had been keeping a quiet vigil by Katy’s bedside, barely moving to eat or sleep herself. Even when they passed in the halls for brief moments they were like gunslingers from old Westerns waiting to see who would flinch first. As much as the guilt tugged at his heartstrings, he knew it was probably a crushing weight on Annalise’s soul. The truth was, Cort didn’t know what to say to her to make the pain lighter because he agreed with what she was thinking. They were at fault for Katy’s current state and until her ultimate fate was decided he would have no way of knowing exactly how deep Annalise’s guilt would go.