“What the fuck does that mean?” I shout, pushing my hands through my hair, fire exploding in my brain, torching my fucking heart.
He holds up his hands, maybe in admission, maybe for protection from me. I don’t know. I don’t care. I want to kill him for telling me this.
“It means that we’re baffled as to what’s going on.”
“Baffled?” I repeat, fuming. “How can you be baffled? You’re a fucking doctor. You’re not supposed to be baffled.”
“We will continue to monitor her. We will continue to look for answers.”
“Yeah, because a coma’s not a fucking answer,” I shout. I push my fingers hard against my temple, pushing, hurting, something, anything to make this stop. I take a step closer. “Make her wake up.” Another step and he steps back, and I beg harder, grabbing for his white lab coat. “Make her wake up. Make her wake up. Make her wake up.”
“I would appreciate it if you could leave right now,” Doctor Whitney says in a wobbly voice, as he struggles to step away from me.
“Make her fucking wake up,” I say, trying to reach for him again, pleading.
Then I feel strong arms hold me back, drag me away from the doctor I want to throttle. I’m pulled out of the room, into the hall, inside the elevator, down to the lobby.
Outside. Where it’s dark and starless, and Robert has wrapped his arms around me, and my face is buried in his shirt, and the splinter in my heart hurts so much, jagged as it expands, hollowing out my insides, until all I am is this empty ache.
“I don’t know what to do,” I sob in a voice I don’t recognize anymore, a voice I never wanted to hear coming from me. “I don’t know what to do without her.”
He’s crying too. I can hear the hitch in his throat as he speaks. “All we can do is hope. That’s all we can do. Hope.”
* * *
I imagine her words. Her laughter. Her singing Bonfire Heart. I feel her hands, her hips, and her body.
But it’s all in my mind, because I wake up quickly, snapping out of a restless few minutes of sleep here on the edge of her mattress.
I wake up because there’s noise in the room. The same nurse with the long braid is back, doing her thing, checking on my wife.
“How’s she doing?”
“She’s the same, honey. Harley’s the same.”
At least she calls her by her name.
When my first brother died at birth, too young to live, my parents hadn’t named him. I was only thirteen years old, and I insisted we name him. I named him Jake.
Then came Drew. Then came Will.
They came and they went, touching down on this earth for seconds in some cases, for a few days in others. But they were named. I made sure they were named.
By all accounts, my daughter is staying. Her heart is strong, and she’s healthy, and there’s not a thing about her that baffles any doctor. But no one knows what is happening to my wife, and so no one can help her, no one can save her. She exists in the in-between. I long for her voice with every cell of my body; I’d give anything to hear a snippet of a word from her lips.
I flash back to our days and nights together, to the little moments, like playing Frogger and making her a cheesy miracle, then the bigger ones, like bringing her to the tree in New York, telling her I loved her for the first time, marrying her in the sky.
They were all amazing in their own way. All precious.
“Can I be alone with Harley?” I ask the nurse when she’s done.
“Of course, sweetie,” she says, patting me on the shoulder as she leaves.
I swallow, and the lump in my throat hurts so much, like a hard knot that will never leave. I take her right hand, and wrap my fingers around hers.
We always held hands. The night we met, I held her hand as we walked to the train station. When we were just friends, I held her hand as we walked throughout New York. Then the night I took her away from Mr. Stewart at the Parker Meridien, we practically flew out of that hotel, holding hands.
I’ve held her hands as I’ve made love to her.
I want to hold her hand for the rest of my life.
It’s such a small thing, such a simple act, but such a privilege; such a gift.
Like every single moment with her.
And I don’t know if I’ll have that luxury for much longer. So it has to matter. Every moment matters, because sometimes they are all we have.
“Harley,” I whisper, wishing this were a TV movie and she’d squeeze my fingers when she heard me say her name. But I’ve been saying her name for a long, long time tonight, and it hasn’t happened. “I don’t know if I’m going to see you again. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But you have to know that I love you more than I ever thought was possible. I have loved every second with you. You made me believe in love, you made me believe in myself, and you made me a new man. But I’m not here to talk about me, or even about you right now. Because there’s something else we need to talk about. We need to name our daughter. I can’t wait for you to meet her, Harley. She’s beautiful, and she’s so fucking healthy,” I say, my voice breaking as a salty tear hits her hand.
“Her heart works perfectly, and when you place your hand gently against her chest, you can feel it beating under your palm, and it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt. She has blond hair already, and it’s soft, like a duck. But now that I think about it, I’ve never touched a duck. But I bet a baby duck has really soft hair, and so does our daughter. And she smells good too. Is that weird that I think that? But I do. She just smells sweet and powdery, and you’re going to fall madly in love with her too. You have to meet her, Harley. Just squeeze my hand, so I know you’re going to meet her, okay?”
I wait for a response, and for the briefest of seconds I’m convinced she moved, shifted a knee, an elbow, something. But the room remains still and quiet. “It’s okay if you can’t squeeze back. I know you hear me. I believe it. And I know what we need to name the baby. Her name is Hope. That’s our daughter’s name. Her name is Hope.”
Then the tears fall again relentlessly, and that hollow deepens so much more. I didn’t know there was more of my heart to carve away, but the pain tells me I was wrong. There is.
* * *
Later, I visit the baby in the nursery to feed her. After her bottle, I take a pen and add her name to the pink cardboard sign on her bassinet.
Hope Westin.
When I lay her down for her nap, I start the trek back to Harley’s room. On the way, I spot a sign I hadn’t noticed before.
I follow it, and as the sun rises I find myself in the hospital chapel. I’m not a religious person, I don’t even know if I believe in God, but I am consumed by this overwhelming need to make some sort of peace.
The chapel is a small room with wooden benches, a few plants, and pictures of serenity hanging on the wall. There are no signs of different faith in here. Only one faith, one wish—that the ones we love heal. Here, we all pray to the same god.
I walk past each picture. The first is an image of the woods in spring,with emerald green grass and mossy trees. Next, a cove on a beach, as the sun sets in a fiery orange glow. Then I stop hard in my tracks when I see a painting of a cherry blossom tree.
The design I’ve perfected over the last several months.
I touch it. I’m probably not supposed to, but nothing stops me as I trace my fingers along the trunk of the tree, then up to its branches, lush with pink blossoms, like the ones I drew on Harley that night in New York.
I marked her with a sign of what might come. I didn’t know it then. Who would have known it then? But there it was, in pink blossoms, red leaves, and brown branches on her body.
Because this tree may be a symbol of beauty, but it also signifies the fragility of life. In Japan, the cherry blossom trees bloom beautifully each year but for a short time, and their brief flurry is a reminder of how lovely, but terribly short life is.
Gone, before we know it. Before we can have all we want from it.
I want so much more from this life. I want so much more with her.
But even if she dies now, even if she leaves this earth and my arms for good, she will leave knowing love. Knowing that I loved her with every ounce of my heart, mind, body and soul. That I held nothing back. That I gave her all of myself, all of my love, all of my heart. That our love is unbreakable, that it’s for all time, and that even if it’s short, it was great. It is great. It is the greatest thing I have ever known.
She is my everything, and she will always be the love of my life, the love of my death, the love of my soul. I have loved her with no regrets, and I will continue to for the rest of my life, and even then some.
Even then some.
Because not loving her is like not existing, not breathing, not being. I don’t know how to live without loving her, and if that’s how I have to spend the rest of my days on this earth—loving a ghost—that’s how it will be.
* * *
When I walk past the nursery, Hope’s not there.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Harley
Something slips through my fingers. I don’t know what it is, maybe a blanket, maybe a touch, maybe just a dream.
But then it’s gone.
And the world goes black again.
Until it’s not black. Until something bright shines in my eyes, and I blink.
My eyelids close, and I hear a gasp. A thrilled sort of sound.
Noises filter in and out of my head. Voices I don’t know, saying words I can barely process.
Scale. Response. Stimuli.
Then I hear a grunt, a soft ohhh. And I don’t know where it came from until I feel my lips moving, and it registers that the sound came from me. I try to move, to shift up on my elbow. Pain sings through my body like an opera, vibrating powerfully inside me. My hands fly to the source—my stomach.
And it’s not hard and round anymore. It’s soft, and covered in bandages, and it hurts. But then I forget about the hurt as one thought blares in my head, loud and clear.
“Where’s my baby?”
A woman with a long thick braid and dog bones on her clothes swivels around. “Oh, sweet lord in heaven! You’re awake.”
“Who are you? And where’s my baby?”
“Oh, honey, we’ll go get her for you.”
Within seconds, it seems, a nurse rushes into my room holding a baby. “Here she is,” the nurse says, handing me a bundle.
“I had a girl?”
“You sure did. She was six pounds, five ounces, and she’s one day old.”
I look down at the little person who was once inside of me, and I have no clue how she got out or what’s happened for the first day of her life, but she fits in my arms so perfectly. I try to bend to kiss her, but even my neck hurts. Still, I manage, as her sweetness, her softness, fills me up.
My little girl.
I have a daughter now, and she’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever met, and I already know I want to give her everything: all of my love, all of my heart. I snuggle her as close as I can manage, and she lets out a contented little sigh; the sound tells me she knows—instinctually—that I’m her mama.
I hear running. Boots smacking in the hallway. Loud, heavy, fast, then skidding to a stop. And when I raise my eyes to the doorway, there he is. My Trey, in jeans, boots and a T-shirt, and I’ve never seen a person look happier in my entire life.
His whole face is lit up, almost as if he’s glowing with joy, as if it’s radiating through his body, lighting him up from the inside out.
He runs to me, and at first I think he’s going to drop down to his knees and hug me, then I think he’s going to scoop me up in his arms, but he doesn’t do either, and I’m glad, because I think both would hurt immensely. Instead, he brushes my hair off my cheek with his gentle fingers, softly tucking the strands behind my ear. Then he kisses me on the forehead, so lightly it feels like a butterfly has touched me, and that’s what I need right now.
This soft touch. His joy. Our baby.
“You’re okay,” he says, like that’s a miracle, too. Then it becomes a question. “You’re okay?”
I nod into his already-wet cheek. “I’m okay.” A beat. “What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” he says, staying close to me, reaching for my free hand. He laces his fingers through mine, and then brings our clasped hands under our baby. I glance down at our hands, linked together, holding our little girl. “I’ll tell you soon. But for now, I named her Hope. Is that okay?”
He pulls back to meet my eyes. I’m sure they are brimming with tears; the happy kind.
“It’s perfect. And her middle name is Allison.”
* * *
“I was in a coma?”
The gray-haired man named Dr. Whitney explains that the entire intensive care unit was baffled. “By all accounts, you should have woken up after surgery.”
“Why didn’t I?”
“Seeing as you have no lasting deficits or complications from the seizure or the blood loss, I believe it was your body’s way of coping and healing itself.”
“So the coma healed me?”
He nods. “In a way, it did. The body does amazing things, and sometimes it needs to shut down before it can wake up. Coma, in and of itself, is a response to injury, and your body went through a lot of injury with HELLP, and the bleeding in your liver. It’s possible your body needed to compensate by shutting off nearly all functions to heal itself.”
Heal itself. That’s what my body did while the world kept spinning, while my daughter had her first meal, while my husband nearly broke. But he didn’t. He was strong through it all. Like he was before, with all he’s been through.
We all have to cope in different ways. Trey and I learned to cope in our own ways growing up. Then we learned to heal, both alone and together, in our time. Our bodies, our hearts, our minds.
* * *
Three days later, they release me. A nurse insists on wheeling me out, even though I can walk just fine. But once the doors to the hospital shut behind me, I stand up, and walk to the car, Trey’s arm in mine. Debbie is buckling Hope into her car seat, and then my husband drives us home, under the blue skies, with the radio playing one of our favorite songs as the sun beats down.
We reach our house and he parks at the curb. He scrambles around the car to open my door, then to the backseat to unbuckle the baby. He holds her and we walk up the steps, Debbie and Robert close behind.
Our family.
The five of us.
Six, if you count the dog, and I do, seeing as he’s waiting on the porch, wagging his tail, eager to meet the new addition.
Trey holds the door. I step inside the house. The windows are open, and the ocean air is breezing in, greeting me.
“I’m home,” I say to him.
“You’re home.”
We both look at the little girl in his arms.
“We’re home,” we say together.
Three Months Later
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Harley
A girl builds a sandcastle as high as the sky, its towers reaching the clouds. The sand glitters and the clouds glow with a radiant white light that ignites the sky into sapphire.
“You finished it,” I say, as I stare mesmerized at the final illustration in Trey’s sketchbook for me.
“I told you I would,” he says proudly, kneeling next to me, watching over my shoulder as I look at the pictures spread out in front of me on the blanket. Hope is sound asleep in my lap as I sit cross-legged on the beach, the salty tang of the ocean waves nipping in the air.
“I love it so much,” I say, tracing the final image once again. He illustrated all of the stories from my grandparents’ cards, creating a fantastical tale of a city girl who was out of place amidst the skyscrapers, then found her way home to the sand, where she lived out her days underneath the bluest of blue skies. “I kind of feel like we made a book together,” I say, under my breath.
�
��Because we did. My art, your words.”
I lean back against him, and he loops his arms around me. “Our story.”
I can feel him smile as he plants a soft kiss against my shoulder, then as he brushes my blond strands away, and kisses the cherry blossom tattoo he inked on the back of my neck for my twenty-first birthday a few weeks ago. The perfect gift.
“We’ve made other things together, too,” I say as Hope stirs, stretching out her little arms, lifting them to the sky, then curling up once more as the sun beats down on my beach baby, her breath soft against my legs.
She belongs to us. But she belongs to others, too. To my grandparents, who help me take care of her. To Trey’s mom and dad, who came out to visit her a few weeks ago. His mom cooed, and cried, and sang songs, and played with her in the sand. I email her pictures every day, and every day she asks for more. More photos, more stories, more baby.
I turn to my husband. “What will we tell her someday?”
“What do you mean?”
“When she asks how her mom and dad met,” I say twisting around to look at Trey, at his green eyes with the gold flecks sparkling. “What will we tell her?”
He sinks down on the blanket across from me, lacing his fingers through mine. He always holds my hand. He did as my friend, he did as my lover, and now he does as my husband and father to my child.
“That’s easy,” he says, running a fingertip across my palm that sends warm sparks through me. “We’ll tell her the true story. That there is a place called the ugly beautiful, and that’s where her mom and dad met.”
My heart thumps faster. “And that’s where they live,” I say, quickly adding to the story.
“And we’ll tell her that sometimes people meet in the toughest of circumstances, and the strangest of places, and there’s no reason why they should be together, except that they can’t not be.”
“And if anyone asks if she’s heard the story of a guy and a girl who were so broken at love that they never should have happened, she’ll say ‘yes, and I know why,’” I say, reaching out to touch his beautiful face, to map the scar on his cheek. “Because it was mad love, crazy love, insane love. Because it was hard love, good love, true love. Because it was the real thing, and a love like that can’t be stopped. A love like that is inevitable.”
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