“Of course.”
“And I know you wanted to know. I really…I tried to get him to tell you. He knew you suspected he was hiding something from you and still, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t tell you.”
Jess replayed the conversations she’d had with Jake. So many times he had evaded her. Why? When she could have helped him? When she wanted nothing more than to help him?
“When I pressed him about it—about his big secret,” Jess said, “he tried to tell me it was that his parents were on the run somewhere.”
“Well,” Elizabeth said. “That part of his life is certainly tragic. It’s the reason he’s alone in the world. It’s the reason he has some serious intimacy issues.” She laughed. “But it was never his secret, and when he invited you to come and live with him, what he didn’t realize is that we needed to make up for some lost time. We needed to have him stay on bed rest until we could catch up with our data and make sure we weren’t over-or under-medicating him.
“He was so angry with us at that point because he said it meant he had to push you away. It meant you had become suspicious. I tried to shake some sense into him. I told him, rightfully so, that he would die if he didn’t stay there, in bed. If he didn’t start doing what he was told. If he didn’t start taking his condition seriously. If he didn’t give our cure a way to work.”
Jess bit at her lip. That’s why he hadn’t come with her, when her grandmother died. Oh, Jake. The assumptions she had made…
When Jess spoke next, her voice was barely above a whisper. “Why didn’t he just tell me?”
“I don’t know, Jess. I know that he doesn’t want anyone to think of him as sick. Especially you. I know that he wanted to be with you, like a normal man, for as long as he could. Maybe he thought he could let you go. Or maybe he always had it in his mind that he would—“
“What? That he would what?”
“That’s what I’m calling you about.” Elizabeth sighed. “We’ve always worried that, if we weren’t very careful, Jake would be someone who would… determine the end to his own story.”
The connection crackled, and she lost part of what Elizabeth was saying.
“So, now what?” Jess demanded. “Where is he? What can I do?”
“Jess,” Elizabeth’s voice cracked. “I’m not sure how to say this.”
“Just say it.”
“For the past few weeks, it’s almost as though Jake has given in. Certainly, he is experiencing more pain, and while we haven’t seen the decreased motor function that we would expect with this pain level, he is reporting a sense that he knows he is holding it just at bay. He feels a bit hopeless. It’s like he’s already succumbed.” Elizabeth cleared her throat. “Just try to imagine the frustration for a man like Jake—struggling to walk, to speak, even, eventually, to breathe and to swallow? Also, imagine that he is alone in the world, except for his doctors, and, of course, you. Truly, there is no way to put into words the feeling of defeat these patients endure as they enter the advance stages of the disease.”
“So you feel he has reached these advanced stages?”
“I believe that he is starting to, and I believe that, beyond our medication, the only reason he’s been able to hold it off for as long as he has is because he’s always been so strong mentally. Now, I believe that…well, that this mental fortitude is unraveling.”
Jess felt lightheaded suddenly. All she wanted to do was to hold him. To feel his face between her palms. To wrap her body around his. To take away his pain. “So, where is he now?” Jess asked, as her taxi pulled up to the curb at the airport. She handed the driver her credit card, staring straight ahead and pressing the phone tight against her ear.
“Miranda, the supervising physician, and I… we think that, with you on board, we can help pull him back to where he was. We can prolong his life and we can relieve his pain, at least for the time being. But before we can save him from his disease, Jess, we need to save him from himself.”
Jess’s vision narrowed and darkened. She could see just in front of her, but everything was swimming. Her chest constricted and she felt a whoosh of empty space, of aloneness, all around her.
“Just… get here, Jess. Please. Just get here as fast as you can.”
“But you are the expert, Elizabeth. What can I possibly do?”
“To start, Jess, we hope you can help us find him.”
She swallowed hard and closed her eyes.
“And Jess?”
“Yes?”
“There’s something you need to see.”
***
Was Jake even still alive? Was he hurting? Was he suffering? Did he think she didn’t care?
The flight attendant’s scarf looked too tight around her neck. She kept pulling at it as she stalked up and down the aisle, grinning widely. The gentleman in the seat beside hers turned to nod and to say hello, and when he did, Jess saw he had an enormous tumor growing from the lymph nodes on the left side of his neck. It was a swollen mass, at least nine inches long, with skin stretching tight over the top. It distended his cheekbone and his eye socket. Jess swallowed and returned his greeting, and then the man turned his face straight ahead again, and there was no evidence of the tumor at all. Viewing only the right side of his face, no one would ever know.
Suddenly she felt as though everyone was choking, suffering, dying. Even she. Everyone was locked in a state of decay and there was nothing she could do; nothing anyone could do.
The man beside her extracted a book from his bag. Jake’s book. Live Every Day of Your Life. The sight of it took Jess’s breath away. There wouldn’t be many more days for this man. She hoped that he was happy and that he had someone, somewhere on the ground below, who would enfold him in a tight embrace and not let go until he did.
That was all she wished for anyone now. Not to die, cold and alone, at the base of a staircase. Not cold and alone anywhere, unaware that Jess loved them.
While she’d waited for her plane to board, Jess had tried to call Jake, again and again, but his phone only rang and rang. She had listened to his outgoing message at least a dozen times, imagining his full fleshy lips forming each and every word.
And when the plane landed, Elizabeth was there, just where she said she’d be. Her blonde hair was pulled tightly into a bun, and her eyes glowed a dark blue. After a quick, shaky embrace, she pulled Jess to the nearest bench, where she pulled a letter from her handbag.
“This was just lying on my briefcase this morning,” she said. “That’s when I called you.”
The letter was printed in the uneven scrawl she had seen only from arthritic elderly patients. Had it pained him to write? To form the words she was about to read? Jess struggled for a breath. Tears stung her eyes.
E,
I am a lucky man, for I have tasted the life I’ve always wanted to lead. Now I’m ready to let it go.
I hope that my participation in your research, however brief, has resulted in some degree of benefit for your future patients. I know I am one of many you have cared for, and I know that, once, I was a promising number on your chart. I am deeply sorry for my weakness.
J
P.S. Make sure Jess doesn’t forget me. She holds the key to many things. She will do something great in this life. Watch and see.
Jess read the letter twice more before she met Elizabeth’s eyes.
“He was never a number on my chart,” Elizabeth said softly, her chin quivering.
Jess closed her eyes and swallowed. “Judging from this note, do you think… do you think it’s already done?”
“I don’t know, Jess.” Elizabeth paused, then. “I was hoping you truly were the key to figuring out what to do here.” She took a deep breath and continued. “It seems the stronger a person is before the illness, the harder it becomes for them as they start to experience the final stages. We knew, going in, that Jake was a lonely man, and maybe we shouldn’t have allowed him to participate in the project. Maybe it was all too much for him, without
someone to share his pain with.”
“Why are you talking about him in the past tense? Why are you talking like it’s too late?”
“I don’t know, Jess. He left this note hours ago.”
“Elizabeth. I’m here now. Let’s go. Let’s do something.”
Elizabeth swallowed hard and looked her in the eyes, then turned away. “There’s another letter, Jess.”
Why was Elizabeth talking so slowly? Moving so slowly? Now, when every moment counted; when every moment mattered?
Elizabeth pulled out a white envelope with Jess’s name printed across the front in the same painful-looking scrawl. She tore it open, surprised that Elizabeth hadn’t done so already. Surely it contained some sort of clue.
My dearest Jess,
You deserve to be told the truth, and while it will be too late as you read this, know that I have deep regret for the way things had to be.
You deserved the truth from the beginning and I wanted nothing more than to tell you, but I was selfish, and so I found that I could not. I thought, foolishly, that I could spend a weekend with you, maybe a week or a month or—if the fates smiled on me—a year. I thought that I could treat myself to this final wish and then I could leave. I could leave the world a little happier, a little more content. Satisfied. But then I got greedy. I had to have more of you.
I’d made peace with my fate years ago. I made peace with death. And then I reunited with you. I found you, and I wanted to live again. I didn’t want to let you go. I didn’t want our story to end.
And that is how I ruined it. I ruined your memory of me, with my secrecy and my fear. If I could do it again, I would tell you about the treatments. I would tell you about my disease. My weakness. My decay. And still, I find that I only ever wanted to be your lover, never your patient. So I will not share the details of my condition. I will say that it has resulted in the degradation of everything that made me who I once was and that it has now become the end of me.
Please know that you were the bright spot of my life. You made me forget everything, at a time when I most needed to. You made me feel like I would live forever because, together, I think we do. I felt it the first moment I saw you, so many years ago, then years later when I finally kissed you, and now.
When my mind becomes quiet, images rush through. I have loved you before, in lives long forgotten. I see you in a flowing hat and dress, tightly corseted. You in a safari jacket. You in soft pink slippers, a member of some royal ballet. It is your eyes that tell me.
The first time I saw them, I had a flash of recognition. I just knew. And this gives me such great consolation, such great comfort, for I know that as this life ends for me, it only brings me closer to the next, in which I can love you with a body that is mended. A body that will allow me to love you the way I want to. The way I need to.
Please remember the story of us. Take it with you through this life.
I will always love you, Jess. And someday, in another lifetime, I will touch you again. I will hold you again. I will feel the warmth of your skin against mine, and I will know you by your eyes. Your eyes, which are kind, and powerful and knowing.
Hold the stone we found together tight, and know that we will meet again.
I am leaving everything to you, Jess, so that you may live fast and free, or slow and bound or however you most want to live this life, until we meet again.
Don’t forget me.
Jake
“What were the stones that you found?” Elizabeth asked, her eyes a steely, glassy blue.
“They were Apache—“
“Apache tears.”
“Yes.”
“The legend,” Elizabeth said, nodding, “where the warriors dove off the side of a mountain, fell to their doom, rather than risking capture.” She lowered her voice. “He told me that story once, too.”
Jess removed the stone from her pocket, where she’d always kept it. She turned it up toward the light and the deep ebony color turned nearly translucent.
Elizabeth swallowed. “He doesn’t want us to save him, Jess. That’s what the legend means.”
“I know.” Jess felt cold, suddenly. “But didn’t you just say that if we can save him from himself, we might be able to save him?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“Then why are we still sitting here?”
Elizabeth turned her palms upward. “Because I don’t know where to go.”
“And he’s got hours on us.” Jess squeezed her eyes shut.
Elizabeth nodded.
“Why did you wait so long? Why did you wait for me?”
Elizabeth was silent for a moment, and then she raised her eyes to meet Jess’s. “I don’t think I can save him. I think only you can. He loves you, Jess. You give him hope. You could tend to him, mend him. You could do it.”
“So, where has he gone?”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. Her breath hitched.
“You know him better than I do, Elizabeth. Think.”
And then, suddenly, Jess was in the plane with him again, her first ever plane ride and she remembered how Jake had gotten very quiet as he told her of the bluffs. Of the cliff face where he liked to sit and watch his feet dangle over the ocean.
Jess’s voice was tight. “I think I know where.”
When Elizabeth’s eyes met hers, they were bright, hopeful.
“He spoke of a place, right on the coast, he said, with a hard strand of granite, hard enough to drive on. Right off the road, and then a cliff face, going right off into the ocean. The waves crashing at the base.”
“That could be a dozen places. More than a dozen.”
“But this is a place he went. A lot. He said…” Jess winced. “He said it was like the perfect place to launch.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened.
“I assumed he meant for BASE jumping….” She snapped her fingers. “It had a name he described as poetic. ‘Belvedere Bluffs,’ maybe? Or ‘Bellowing—“
“Bellingham!”
“Yes! That’s it. How far from here?”
Elizabeth’s voice was low. “It’s forty minutes away. At least. But it’s close to his house.” She was silent a moment. “That means we’re too late, Jess. That means we’re too late.”
“We have to go and see, Elizabeth. We have to go. We have to see.” Inside, a deep trembling had begun, starting from the core of her and extending out, to her fingertips, out through her voice.
***
Elizabeth’s car was tiny, with leather seats and a reflective dashboard. As they departed the airport, Elizabeth turned to her, and Jess saw that her eyes were wide and beautiful and sad, and she saw that Elizabeth loved Jake.
So she was a doctor. A specialist who had it in her power to save someone. Many, many people. All at once, Jess knew that she would someday do the same, and she would start with Jake. At the very least, she would show him that he wasn’t alone. Maybe that would be worth everything. It had been to her.
Elizabeth’s phone rang then, an old-fashioned ringtone that reminded Jess of Grandma. “It’s Margot.” Elizabeth said, glancing at the display. “Maybe she knows something.” She answered and muttered a series of guttural uh-huhs. Then, in a rush, an exclamation of “thank you” as she ended the call. Elizabeth’s face flushed, and she began to laugh. “Margot just got a call from Jake’s attorney. Jake was there, at the office. Just now. He was there to change his will, and he just left.”
Elizabeth laughed again and brought her hand to her mouth. “Apparently, Jake was acting strange, so the secretary called Margot. She told her to keep an eye on him this afternoon.”
Jess felt suddenly as though she could breathe for the first time. “We intend to,” she said. “How far is he then?”
“His attorney’s office is north of here, so he’s actually closer to Bellingham Bluffs than we are, but he’ll hit more traffic.” She gripped the steering wheel tighter and accelerated onto the smooth span of highway threading its way out from the airport. “It’
ll be a tight race, and he really shouldn’t be driving. Really, really. Call him again.”
Jess nodded and dialed. “He’s not going to answer,” she said, but she listened to his voice on the outgoing message once again— the gravely depth, the breathiness behind his words. She left another message for him, unable to keep her voice from choking as she told him she loved him. As she told him to hang on; that she was coming for him.
It was silent for a time as Elizabeth accelerated through traffic. Then Jess asked, “How sure are you that we’re going to the right place?”
Elizabeth bit her cheek. “As sure as you are.”
Before long, they merged onto the Pacific Coast Highway. Elizabeth accelerated and took the corners tight and fast and Jess watched the lights blink in and out around her. Dusk had fallen, and the ribbon of highway stretched out for miles, drab and gray and pebbly. But the ocean, to her left, it seemed to beckon her. Jess stared past Elizabeth’s profile to where the sea dissolved into a delicate silvery line far in the distance. Above, stripes of sherbet pink and orange faded into the deep blueness of the ocean, inky now that the sun had set.
“How far?” Jess asked.
“Miles and miles.”
The taillights on the cars in front winked into view and Elizabeth took a turn too wide, too fast, and had to swerve back into her own lane. Jess dialed his number again. The buzzing, grating tone of the ring inside her phone, again and again. Then his voice; his recording.
Elizabeth drove faster still and the light faded and Jess noticed the small details in the low, low light as they sped forward. How different everything looked in the evening. Palm trees. Rocks and birds and distant piers, just shadows on the landscape now, pulsing past.
The waves, this tremendous expanse of power. Was it cold? Was Jake there in the ocean? Was his body submerged? Was his car—where they had last made love—was it filled now with the stinging strength of the sea? Were Jake’s nose and lungs filled with it? Was his hair, the hair that she had pulled between her fingers, that she had tugged in passion and in pleasure, was his hair swaying now, in the sea, languid, like weeds?
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