by Liz Newman
“Kleinstiver,” she said.
The man with the kind dark eyes stood over her. “No. Dr. Prateeri. Pleasure to meet you, Miss Evans. How do you feel?” Dr. Prateeri scribbled on a clipboard as he gazed at her.
“You tell me,” she said, her mouth dry.
“I can go over your diagnosis with you now if you’d like.”
“What time and day is it?”
“Monday. Seven-oh-five in the evening.”
“Will you excuse me for ten minutes? I need to make a phone call. Does this phone dial out?” She reached for the phone next to her bed, recoiling in pain.
Dr. Prateeri picked up the phone and set it down closer to her. “Be my guest. I’ll be around till eight thirty. Just have the nurse page me.”
Skye nodded, her fingers flying over the numbers. “Clarissa? Conference me in with Kleinstiver.”
“I’ll connect you to his cell phone,” Clarissa answered.
Kleinstiver picked up the phone and greeted Skye, his voice tense. “Bad news or worse?”
“Bad.”
“Turn on TBC. Excuse me. TNBC.”
Skye accessed Teleworld from her remote control. Denny Moss’ face appeared before her, conducting an interview in a sing-song voice. Skye Evans had been deleted from below the title, which now simply read Around The Clock.
“Bad news, indeed.” Skye leaned back onto a pillow.
“Ready for the worst? More than half your team is gone,” Kleinstiver said.
“Who’s missing from my team?”
“Edie, Annalise, Morgan, and Ting, as well as various support staff and techs. You’re now sharing your secretary with Denny. There is a huge interest in international markets, and the new board of directors determined that to start buying satellite offices overseas, they would have to significantly tighten the belt here in the United States.”
“I’m glad Clarissa still has a job,” Skye sighed. “Edie and the others are all young. Talented. They’ll find something else soon. And I still have you.”
“You’ll always have me, toots. Just not at the office. I spoke to Alfred after the meeting and packed up my things, on my own accord. I was very frank with him. Denny Moss…well, to be plain and crass, sucks. Completely and utterly sucks. I told Alfred I could name twenty qualified journalists off the top of my head who deserved the opportunity to sub for you, and who wouldn’t sink your show into the toilet for the sake of making a name for themselves in seven months. I think Alfred wants the show to fail. Exactly why, I can’t figure out yet, but why else would he hand the reins on a highly-rated show over to his girlfriend? And frankly, I find it deeply offensive that I started out in the mail room and worked my way up simply because I lacked certain cosmetic assets.”
Skye gripped the bedclothes. “He wants the show to fail so he can cure Denny of her compulsion to make a name for herself as a broadcaster. And what does she care if it does? She’s got her home on Fifth Avenue and her high rise with a view of Central Park. Kleinstiver, you need to ask for your job back. What are you going to do for a living?”
He laughed. “Don’t worry about me. I got a decent severance package and an offer at another major network on the down low. Richard and I are going to take the girls to Paris for winter break and then I’ll begin another job. Take my advice and dump Meyer.”
“Good news travels fast.”
“Edie brought in a copy of some gossip page today. Your knight in shining armor made the front page. Apparently, he’s being sued for assaulting a photographer that took some pictures of you after you…got hurt.”
“Fax it to me.”
Dr. Prateeri knocked on the door and poked his head in. Skye said goodbye to Kleinstiver.
“Miss Evans, I’d rather go over this with you now than wait until tomorrow. I have a feeling that you will want to leave the hospital soon, and I urge you to stay until the end of the week, at the earliest.”
“So, what’s the diagnosis, doctor?”
“What you have is a very rare type of endometriosis. Normally, it is very common for women to have cysts in their ovaries, and to go for years without even knowing about it. You developed a very heavy mass attached to an artery, and that heavy mass collapsed the artery. Hence, the burst at—” Dr Prateeri lifted a page from his notes and read the page underneath “—the wedding,” he continued. “I have sewn up the artery, and if all goes well it will heal over and the blood will be diverted elsewhere to the body. I biopsied the mass, which was abnormally large, but not cancerous.”
“Knock on wood,” said Skye dryly. She tapped on the maple nightstand by her bed.
Dr. Prateeri’s lips stretched tightly for a moment. “Unfortunately, the entire mass could not be removed, and what’s left of it may become cancerous at some point, and it may not. There is also a high incidence of regrowth. I recommend you have a laparoscopy and biopsy done yearly.
“One of the hardest parts of this job is being the bearer of bad news, but I would rather you understood the implications of your illness from me than to get information from a website searching for the source of another health problem later. This mass, what’s left of it, may grow again without signs or symptoms, and if the blood begins to pool into the scar tissue, then the artery would also burst again. Alternatively, a clot could form, and the blood flow might build up. It would be analogous to a faulty dam, under a great deal of pressure, finally bursting open. The force of the blood flow might push the clot through your body, directly to your brain or your heart.”
The news hit her like a punch to the solar plexus. She gasped for breath. Sardonically laughing at the rapid change of fortune over the course of the last three months, she wiped away the white matter sticking the corners of her lips together. “The fun never ends. What are the chances that I’ll live to a ripe old age and not feel any repercussions from the surgery?”
“Truthfully, I cannot give you a time line or any kind of percentage. What you have is so very rare it is impossible for me to do so.”
“So, with this knowledge,” Skye said thoughtfully, “I’m expected to go on living my life, knowing that any moment my ticket might get punched but I have no way to prevent it or even have any warning that the end is coming?”
“The end is coming for us all, Skye. Imagine with me, if you will, that this happened twenty years from now. The mass would still have grown inside you. You would have still lived a great deal of your life not knowing what was going on inside of your body.”
“That doesn’t help me to feel any better, Dr. Prateeri. In more than one way I’m waiting for an alarm clock to ring, hoping that this might be a terrible dream. Or that death comes quickly. Perhaps tonight now that I’m prepared. Tick tock tick tock tick tock.” She moved her finger back and forth like a metronome on a piano. Her eyes widened as she laughed again. He gave her a look she determined he must use for insane patients.
“Rest assured, Miss Evans. Life is meant to be lived, no matter the circumstances.”
“I asked that the grim reaper call me Skye, so you might as well start addressing me as such.” Skye’s hands fiddled around in her lap. She leaned over and flipped open a magazine. “I don’t suppose you have any limitations on your own lifetime,” she said through clenched teeth.
“That’s not the kind of information I usually share with my patients,” Dr. Prateeri patted the foot of her bed softly and left the room.
She threw down the magazine on the bed and pressed the call button. The nurse answered. “What level is your pain?”
A chart hung on the wall with round faces in various shades of color, beginning with a yellow smiley face and progressing on to a red face contorted in a scream. She felt a very dull sense of physical pain, but a great deal of mental anguish.
Not wanting to be caught in a fib, Skye responded, “Eight,” choosing the green face with furrowed brows and a scowl.
A nurse bustled through the door and administered a pain reliever through her IV tube. Skye stared at the heavy o
ak door until shadows formed and night fell. She thought about Gibbs and what he said to her in her dream. What you heard was simply a brain bleep, an unconscious piece of Buddhist mantra floating around in the old temporal lobe, she thought. There’s no jumping from this point. From now on, life will be lived slowly and carefully. Changes at Teleworld occurred without her input and knocked her down a mountain that had taken years to climb. She would attend to her injuries for the moment and strap her gear on and claw her way back to the top, even if she died doing so. For the sake of the fallen, her trusted Kleinstiver and Edie and the many who supported her, whose respect she’d won. Her hand floated up to her eyes, wiping her tears away.
A hospital clerk walked in. “A fax came in for you, Miss Evans. Urgent delivery. I know you need your sleep now, but sometime tomorrow, may I trouble you for an autograph? My daughter wants to be a journalist when she grows up. Just like you, she says.”
Skye nodded as she took the fax and read it.
Broadcast Journalist Skye Evans Passes Out at Wedding
Cypress Columns exclusive sources say that TNBC’s future teetotaler had a little too much to drink before her best friend’s wedding. According to witnesses, Skye Evans, daughter of former sportscaster Talon Evans and the glamorous former news broadcaster Carolyn Chase, snatched Jonas P. Laurenti’s bride’s train away from her dress during the ceremony, then ran out of St. Augustine’s Cathedral in a quaint little town north of Montreal. Skye Evans tripped and fell down the steps and face-planted at the bottom. She verbally assaulted a freelance photographer who attempted to assist her. Appearing on the scene, the former billionaire playboy Charlie Meyer threw punches at the photographer, breaking his jaw. The photographer has now filed a million dollar lawsuit, alleging damages and distress from the attack.
Will Charlie Meyer and Skye Evans be falling in love rather than falling down steps any time soon? Perhaps, but no promises can be made on holy ground until Charlie Meyer cleans up his last mess. Cypress Columns reporters have uncovered that Meyer is still legally married to a Louisiana woman who alleges that he left her and her family with hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid debts and has maintained a refusal to acquiesce to a divorce, citing that the money was community property and he still has intentions of reconciliation. Cypress Columns discovered that Charlie Meyer still leads a lavish lifestyle, even in the wake of the Bartholomew Meyer Financial Services recent bankruptcy and frequents chic New York City nightspots. Cypress Columns also uncovered this photo of broadcast journalist aka paramour du jour Skye Evans and Meyer.
Jonas P. Laurenti penned, produced and directed the blockbuster movie In the Mirror, based on his best-selling novel. He also wrote and produced the critically acclaimed drama Significant Others, due in theaters this summer.
Skye crumpled up the fax and her hand floated down to her side, the paper balled into her fist. A paramour. The host of a leading news show, a Laney Frost Award winning journalist, and now a paramour. If only it were the nineteenth century. I’d howl like a banshee, throw a bedpan, and give in to sweet, stress-releasing hysteria Before sleep rescued her, a phrase ran through her head, and as her eyes moved back and forth beneath closed lids, one sentence flooded her thoughts. Life is too short. Life is too short.
“Breakfast,” sang a cheery food service worker as she bustled in the next morning and set down a tray of Jello, chicken broth, and tea.
Two nurses burst through the door, one with an embroidered name badge that read Doreen and the other with the same style of badge bearing the name Agatha. Still chatting to each other about a prior patient, they flipped a groggy Skye onto her side, removing the bloody pads from beneath her body. Agatha felt Skye’s stomach.
“No solids until tonight at the earliest.” She turned to the other nurse. “I’m going to need more sponges.”
The nurse left the room as the other nurse sponged Skye’s body down, tapping her foot as she waited impatiently.
Agatha poked her head out of the room door and said, “Doreen?” Skye closed her eyes as she heard the nurse’s footsteps retreat. The door opened again, and footsteps strode in. Feeling gas rumble in her belly, Skye clenched her buttocks to keep from flatulating, but the gas broke through and she farted loudly. A giggle escaped from Skye’s lips as she relaxed, knowing the nurse probably dealt with human obscenities all day. A rank smell of methane filled the air.
“Good morning to you, too, Skye,” Charlie said.
“Ugh!” Skye wailed with indignity.
Her bare bottom hung out of the hospital gown and as she turned her head, she saw Charlie staring directly at it. The blood on her thighs stuck them together, and the pillows the nurses bolstered her with afforded her only the option of remaining on her side. The nurses rushed back in and shooed Charlie out of the room. After her sponge bath Skye sat up, waiting for him to return.
He smirked as he reappeared at her side. “Sorry I was late to the wedding. My punishment really stinks. I hope that’s as bad as it gets, because this is pretty unbearable.”
“I hate you, you know that? I really, really do.”
“You don’t hate me. I’ve seen you naked already anyway. And sometimes you fart in your sleep.”
“Go away,” Skye muttered. “You’re too late.”
“Nah,” he waved a hand in the air. “I was just on time. Gave that nasty photog the old one two. You’re not the only one who needed medical care. Look.” Charlie showed her his hand. His knuckles and wrist were braced and wrapped tightly in white bandages. “I brought you flowers. And a card.” He handed it to her and she opened it.
The front of the card read Greetings from Ground Zero. Inside, a computer-generated photograph of a tourist with a view of the Twin Towers behind him, standing and smiling into the camera, above the text. American Airlines Flight 11 was inches away from hitting Tower One. She sighed and closed the card.
“This is tacky. So now what, Charlie?” She stared at him. He raised his eyebrows and opened his arms, sitting down on a chair across from her bed.
“I’m here now. Look, Skye, I’m not good with schedules. Having to be somewhere at a certain time, for certain things. I just can’t do that, Skye. It’s just not me. You and I, we have fun together. I want to make love to you forever, Skye. You’re smart, beautiful—you don’t need me to tell you that.”
Skye let out a long breath and looked toward the window. “I lived in Manhattan, upper west side, until I was eight,” she said. “There was a pizza place four blocks down that my dad and I used to walk to. They had this saying, something like Life is too short for bad pizza. Something like that. Last night when they knocked me out on morphine, that’s all I thought about.”
“Pizza?” Charlie said dumbly.
She found the balled-up fax on the night stand and threw it at his head. It bounced off his forehead and hit the ground. He straightened out the page, giving her a long glare, and read. He laughed aloud.
“What part of that is funny?” she snapped.
“I broke his jaw,” Charlie said, then ducked his head and finished reading.
“Are you married?” she asked.
“Yes.” He sighed. “I borrowed some money from her parents and I meant to pay it back but—”
“Why does a billionaire’s son need to borrow money?” Skye spat.
“That was for a business idea that she had, but her father didn’t take her seriously, so he wouldn’t loan it to her. I wanted to help her make it happen. If I am guilty of anything, it is of loving her too much. Now I’m on the hook for money I can’t pay back.”
“For money you won’t pay back! Because when you could, you didn’t!”
“Why are you so damned mad? What difference does it make to you whether I pay her back or not?”
“Because we have no future together, you and I, We never did. Life is too short. Goodbye.”
“Skye—” he began.
“Leave!” she ordered. “You have no commitment to me, which is the way you like
it. Please go before I have someone escort you out.”
“I can’t leave you like this, Skye. Let me stay until you get better. Please. I know you think I don’t care. I do. I really do care. I’m not perfect. I have faults. Isn’t having me around better than no one at all?”
Her posture relaxed a little and he continued, encouraged, “We can’t let this go so quickly. Somewhere inside that angry head of yours, you know it’s true.”
“If you stay with me any longer, I fear I’ll never get better. Do me a favor and leave. I’ll call you if I change my mind.” Skye sighed and turned on the television.
“When I walk out that door, all promises are off, Skye. I’m not going to think about you or worry about you and I’ll do my damndest to forget you. Other women, whatever it takes, if you make me leave I will do as I please.”
“I think you will anyway. Don’t you always?” Her eyes narrowed and glittered as she stared him down. He flew out the door, slamming it as hard as the buffered hospital door would allow, which yielded little effect.
Skye crumpled the Photoshopped card Charlie gave her into a ball in her left hand, crushing it so hard her knuckles became stark white. It rested beside her hips, unfurling slowly. She opened it, straightened it out, and placed it on her nightstand.
“Evidence of stupidity,” she muttered. “In case I’m dumb enough to change my mind.”
She slept and hours later she heard someone saying her name. Her eyes opened slowly. On the TV screen, a host for a celebrity rag mag show chatted in front of a still shot of Tabitha in her wedding gown surrounded by her bridesmaids, taken before the ceremony. His toupee tilted precariously on the side of his head.
“Teleworld nightly news journalist Skye Evans collapsed at a wedding last weekend,” the host said. “Sources say that she actually bled on the wedding dress of high profile writer and socialite Jonas P. Laurenti’s bride. Pictures of the dress can be seen on newsstands in this week’s Star Sightings magazine.”