“Where are you?” he asked, not waiting for me to tell him what was happening.
“The hospital, third floor.,” I heaved out.
“I’ll be right there.”
Nick
I rushed to get to Lyndsey yet again, and I wondered how much could one person take. Sometimes my experiences in Afghanistan seemed less significant in comparison to the things she went through time after time.
I tore into the doors of the hospital lobby, remembering the last time I’d been here, the day we’d found out that Raoul was dying. Lyndsey was alone in a seat by the window in the oncology waiting room. I sat down gingerly on the chair next to her, not sure how much “comforting” was appropriate at this point. She turned to me and threw herself into my arms, answering that question pretty clearly.
I held her as her shoulders shook. I knew there’d be no tears. She’d become so adept at holding them in, but her body shook with the effort it took. “Oh, Goldilocks,” I said as I stroked her hair. “Can you tell me what’s happened?”
I felt like I was somehow warped at that moment. Even knowing how much Lyndsey was suffering, I still reveled in the feel of her warm body in my arms, her sweet skin under my fingers. How I could get that kind of pleasure out of something so tragic disturbed me.
I tried to get her to talk again as I held her. “Can you tell me what the doctors say?”
She finally lifted her head from my chest. Her poor face was ravaged by fatigue, yet she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. “He’s unconscious, and they’re not sure if he’ll wake up again.”
I swallowed past the lump rising in my throat. “God, I’m so sorry, Lynds. I really hoped you’d have a little longer. What do you want me to do?”
She tore the bottom half off of a piece of paper, and held it out to me. “Leesa wants me to call everyone on this list so they can say their goodbyes. Will you help?”
“Absolutely.”
We sat for the next thirty minutes and made phone calls. The visitors started to arrive soon after that. The hospital didn’t even try to enforce any visitation policies. I guess they figured he was dying no matter what—it wasn’t going to hurt him to have people parading through his room all damn day.
Raoul and Leesa had spent the last thirty years building a group of friends who felt like family. When they heard that Raoul was in the hospital they came out in full force. The staff from The Grill visited before and after their shifts; customers who’d been eating there for years showed up with cards and flowers. Lyndsey and I coordinated everyone, including some guys who went over to the house and worked on the yard, a couple of women who cooked a freezer’s worth of food and left it for Leesa, and Gabe who took charge of Jack while Lyndsey was at the hospital eighteen out of every twenty-four hours.
Leesa stayed at the hospital, sleeping on the pullout chair they kept in Raoul’s room. Lyndsey only went home at night, and I worked a couple of my night shifts, but took a couple of others off. My schedule, already so screwed up by working nights, got even crazier as I tried to be at the hospital as much as possible during the day when Lyndsey was there. Day four of the vigil, I was wearing out fast, but then it all changed. Leesa came out to the waiting area where Lyndsey and I were camped out and said, “He’s awake,” before she turned sharply around and marched back down the hall.
Lyndsey and I looked at each other. “Did she say . . .?” Lyndsey looked confused, her eyes wide.
“Fuck, let’s go,” I answered, grabbing her hand and jogging down the hallway.
We arrived in Raoul’s room to find him arguing with Leesa and a nurse. “I’m telling you I feel fine, and I want to go home!”
He turned as we entered the room. “There we go—the kids will back me up. Don’t I look fine to you? These two want to make me stay here. I figure the long nap did good things for me. It was a little vacation, and now I’m ready to go see the ocean and check on my flowers.”
Lyndsey looked at me warily before she walked to the bed and sat on the edge. “Um, you know, Raoul, you were out for like four days. That’s a little more than a nap. I’ve got everything under control at the house. Why don’t you quit giving everyone such a hard time and stay here for a little longer?” She looked at him intently, then said very softly, “We’ve all been through a lot, maybe you can cooperate for just a bit?”
Raoul glanced at Leesa who was watching him, her face drawn from the days of constant worry. I could see the realization wash over him like waves on the beach. “Come here, baby. I’m sorry. You know I’m just a cranky old bastard.” He held out his arms. Leesa went to him, and Lyndsey, the nurse, and I quietly backed out of the room.
“Man, crisis averted.” I sighed as I leaned against the wall outside the room.
“No kidding,” Lyndsey echoed. “Excuse me?” she said to the nurse who was about to walk away. “What does this mean? That he’s woken up?”
The heavyset, older woman smiled sadly. “We really can’t say for certain, hon, but one way or another, his time is limited, you can’t forget that.”
Lyndsey nodded and the woman walked away down the hall, her white nurse’s shoes squeaking on the tiled floors.
* * *
The next two days were one long celebration. Raoul continued to feel great, and Leesa and Lyndsey were buoyed by his good spirits. He joked and laughed; people stopped in and brought him gifts. He was energetic and even ate more than usual. Still, the doctor wouldn’t approve his release from the hospital, and while Lyndsey and Leesa didn’t seem concerned about that, I wondered what we were missing in the equation.
But, it was great to see him doing so well, and we all hoped it meant that he might have some time to go back home and enjoy more days. Two nights after he’d woken up, Lyndsey and I were in his room watching Dancing with the Stars. He loved to make fun of the guys on the show, going on about the sparkly costumes and stage makeup they had to wear. We’d all laughed until our sides hurt, when during a commercial break Raoul suddenly changed tack.
“It’s nice to see you two together again.” He took a spoonful of jello from the cup that sat next to his bed.
I coughed on the soda I was drinking while Lyndsey turned pale in an instant.
“We’re n-not, I mean, we’ve been here for you, Raoul, i-it’s not like that,” she stuttered out.
I finished my coughing jag, and my eyes watered. “Sorry. Sorry.” I cleared my throat again. “No, man, we’re friends, right Lynds? She’s a great waiting room buddy.” I gave her a little fist jab in the shoulder.
I’d never seen a room go quiet so quickly. Raoul looked at me in shock, and Lyndsey stood up. “Um, I’ve got to go make a call. I’ll be back in a bit.” Stone-faced, she marched out the door and slammed it.
After she left I looked over at Raoul and grimaced.
“Smooth,” he said shaking his head.
“What? We’re not together!”
“Maybe not, but did you need to act like she was one of a hundred girls you might be hanging out with?” He glared at me.
I felt my face heat up. “Shit. It came out pretty bad, didn’t it?”
“You could say that.”
“Well, fuck, you started it.” I tried to deflect.
He snorted and picked up the TV remote to raise the volume. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Are you going to go fix it?” He looked at me expectantly.
“Oh. Oh! You mean . . .” I pointed toward the door.
“Yes.” He made a shooing motion with his hand.
“Shit.”
“Get to it you idiot before you blow your chances permanently. I’m not dying with you two like this.”
I swallowed and nodded once before I stood up and headed for the door.
Lyndsey
When Nick announced what a great “waiting room buddy” I was, whatever hopes I’d been harboring about our relationship died a sudden, bloody death. I walked out of the room and headed straight for th
e hospital entrance. I couldn’t be in the same building with him. I wasn’t sure I could be in the same city with him anymore. I was so tired of the constant ache, the way I felt like some vital part of me was just out of reach all the time. I was worn out by life, and by my secrets, and I simply couldn’t take one more minute of sitting there acting like Nick Carlisle’s waiting room buddy. Not when all I really wanted was to be Nick Carlisle’s girl.
When I got outside I paced up and down the sidewalk as cars pulled in and out of the huge parking lot and a group of paramedics joked around while they worked on their rig. I reached the end of the walkway and spun around to march back. As I turned I slammed into a big, hard chest. A hand reached out and caught my arm to keep me from stumbling back from the impact. And of course, I looked up into Nick’s eyes.
“Can you find somewhere else to go?” I sniped, pulling my arm out of his grasp.
He raised an eyebrow at me. “I could, but I don’t think I want to.”
“Aaaah!” I shrieked in frustration and stamped my foot on the ground before I turned and headed down the sidewalk again.
He strode along beside me, not having to hurry to keep up with me even though I was power walking toward the parking lot. I glanced at him sideways and saw his cavalier expression, his big body completely relaxed as he moved along next to me like we were on a stroll in the park.
“How long are you going to keep following me?”
“I’m not following you, I’m walking next to you.”
I huffed out a breath. “Fine. How long are you going to keep doing it?”
“Until we get wherever we’re going,” he said simply.
“I don’t think we’re going anywhere,” I shot back.
“Would you like us to?” He stopped and took my elbow so that I had to stop too.
I looked into his incredibly beautiful blue eyes. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” I whispered.
He led me over to a bench placed on a strip of grass in the parking lot. Even though it was dusk, there were some birds singing and it was incongruous with the smell of auto exhaust and the sounds of cars and people churning through the parking lot.
He picked up my hand and looked at it as though it held the answer to some mystery. “When I left the cabin, I was a wreck, Lynds. After you ran that day, I totally lost it. I trashed your place; I flipped out. I destroyed all the progress I’d made since Afghanistan.”
“So that’s where the hole in the wall came from,” I said. “You’re paying for that when I move out by the way.”
He shot me a look that clearly said, “that’s all you care about right now?” before he went on. “Scott, my therapist, came to see me that morning, and he told me something. He said I was trying to fix myself by saving you. I realized that he was right. As many times as I help other people, it won’t change the fact that I couldn’t help Aubra. I had to get that through my head. I had to really understand that I can’t make up for it. There aren’t scales that can be balanced. It happened, and I was part of it, part of something really horrible that cost a beautiful young woman her life.” He took a deep shuddering breath.
“I can’t save you, Lyndsey. The only person I can save is myself, and I’ve been working on that since I left you that night. It doesn’t mean I don’t still love you. God, I love you so much there’s days I think I’m not going to make it another twenty-four hours without you. But, I do. I keep going, and I keep hoping that if I can fix myself maybe you can fix yourself too?”
My hands shook, and I swallowed as the truth of my choices faced me there in a hospital parking lot. “. . . sometimes love means forgiving people.” Leesa’s words echoed in my mind. “If you love yourself—and you should—then you forgive yourself too.” Could I do it? Could I forgive myself enough to tell Nick what I’d done? The love and understanding Leesa and Raoul had showed me gave me hope that Nick might love and understand me as well.
“All these years . . . I thought that my father and mother left me, and Chris hit me because there was something wrong with me.” I felt his strong hand wrapped around mine, the weight of it, and the warmth, so different than the fragile way my own hands felt.
“I couldn’t believe that you’d really love me, Nick.” I cleared my throat, the weight of the confession making it hard to breathe. “I was convinced that if you knew my final secret that would be all it took, you’d never want to be with me again.”
He looked at me seriously. “And what do you think now?”
“I told Leesa and Raoul everything about my life before, with Chris, and they still love me. They understood. I think, maybe, you might too. I need to tell you, don’t I?”
He put his palm along my cheek. “Oh, baby, you’ll never be whole if you don’t, and for there to be an ‘us’ you’ve got to be whole.”
I nodded my head. “I know. I’m so scared though, Nick.”
He held both sides of my face now, and his beautiful eyes glowed in the declining light. “Goldilocks.” His voice was gruff. “I can’t imagine a day when I wouldn’t love you, although, I won’t lie, sometimes people fall out of love. But I can guarantee there is nothing you could tell me that would make me quit loving you. I love you too much for it to disappear like that. And I’m not here to judge you, baby, only to love you.”
“Okay. Okay.” I took a big breath and leaned forward to give him a kiss on the lips. “Just in case,” I whispered against his mouth. He smiled as I brushed my lips against his, then he drew my head to his shoulder.
“It’ll be alright, I promise,” he whispered back.
I started talking.
Chapter 18
Lyndsey
Raoul died on a beautiful sunny Friday morning. Leesa was next to him, and Nick and I were outside the door. His recovery had only lasted a few days. It seemed the doctors knew that would be the case. He was never released from the hospital, and a week after he checked in he was gone from us forever.
We held the funeral on that Sunday. We’d already planned everything weeks before, so there wasn’t much to do. He was cremated, and we scattered his ashes in the ocean that he’d loved and lived near his whole life. Afterwards everyone went back to The Grill, which was closed for the weekend. We drank craft beers and toasted Raoul. Then I gave Leesa a surprise, a slideshow I’d made of photos I’d found at the house—she and Raoul throughout their lives together. By the end, she was in tears, but they were the best kind, tears of love for the man and the miraculous life they’d lived together.
By the time Raoul passed away Leesa’s sister had come from California and she stayed for the next few weeks. I wanted to give them some privacy, so I packed up my stuff, and Jack and I headed back to my apartment.
In all the turmoil of Raoul’s last days Nick and I didn’t get many chances to talk over everything he now knew about me—my daughter, Chris’s upcoming trial, the life I’d led before I came to Hawaii—but, he convinced me to do one very important thing. And so, exactly a week after we scattered Raoul’s ashes, Nick picked me up in his truck, and we headed to a small neighborhood near downtown Hilo. He reached over and put his hand on mine as we drove. “Are you ready?” he asked.
“No,” I said honestly.
“Are you sure you want me here?”
I squeezed his hand. “Yes, I couldn’t do it if you weren’t here.”
He smiled at me. “Good. I can’t wait to meet her. You’re going to do fine.”
We pulled up to a medium-sized ranch house with a large porch that ran along the width of the front façade. As we walked up the front path we stepped over a collection of sand toys. We were stepping up the stairs when the front screen door flew open and a small girl with blonde hair came out.
I stopped and stared at her, while she stared at me too. It was as if somewhere deep inside she knew me, and I recognized her in a way that went beyond her appearance. My heart beat differently when she stood near me. The world spun slower, the air was lighter. Nick knelt down and said sweetly to her,
“Hi there, are you Cayla?”
She nodded at him. “Where’s my mommy?” My breath hitched in my throat, but then a tall woman in yoga pants, a T-shirt, and a ponytail stepped out the door and smiled at me.
“Hi, Lyndsey,” she said. “It’s so lovely to finally meet you.” She put her hand out and I shook it.
“It’s really nice to meet you too. This is Nick, he’s um . . .”
“Hi, I’m Lyndsey’s boyfriend.” He gave her his most charming smile as he shook her hand. I smiled a little at the title he’d adopted for himself.
“Mommy!” Cayla pulled on the woman’s pants leg.
“Yes, Cayla. I want you to meet some new friends. This is Lyndsey and Nick.”
Cayla looked at us seriously for a minute, then took my hand. My heart nearly burst out of my chest, and I felt my eyes burning. “Do you want to see my garden?” she asked. “I show it to all of my friends.”
I nodded, struck speechless by thirty pounds of a miracle I’d given to the world. She led me around the house to the backyard chattering the whole way, while Nick and her mom walked behind us engaged in small talk.
* * *
A half hour later, I knelt on the ground in front of Cayla and we played one last game of patty-cake. I drank in every inch of her little face, her chubby hands, her big brown eyes. I could see Chris’s nose and my lashes, an expression that reminded me of my mother. I felt as though my heart literally swelled when she threw her arms around my neck as we said goodbye. With a promise from her mother that we could come back whenever I felt up to it, Nick and I got back in the truck.
“I know that was really hard, but I’m so proud of you, Lynds.” He reached over and gave me a soft kiss on the cheek. “How do you feel?”
I looked at him and smiled through the tears that I allowed to overflow my eyes. “I’m sad, but I also feel free, Nick, freer than I’ve felt in years. I mean, it’s so obvious she’s where she’s supposed to be. I really did give her the right life, the best life I could have, and I think I’m starting to see what Leesa meant. That’s a big part of being a mom.” I looked out the window at the sweet house one more time before Nick started up the truck and drove down the street. “Isn’t she gorgeous? And she’s so smart. I can’t believe how smart she is.” I sighed, my body a strange mixture of joy and sorrow—kind of like life.
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