Fierce (Not Quite a Billionaire)

by Rosalind James

  “No,” I said when he didn’t go on. “But you’re going to tell me.”

  “It’s knowing you’re that for her. Knowing that when she’s got trouble, you’re the one she’s turning to. You want to feel strong? Try being that rock for her. So my question for you is, why ain’t you doin’ that? You’re taking care of her, yeah. But you ain’t bein’ there for her. She’s carrying that heavy load all by herself, and it’s killing you. So don’t you think you better haul ass over there, put your arms around her, let her cry a little, and let her know you got her?”

  “But we—” I was having trouble getting my breath, and Eugene was grabbing his jacket, shoving his arms into it, picking up his gym bag. And stopping halfway to the door, turning, and finishing it.

  “Yep,” he said. “You broke up, ’cause you told her you didn’t care, I bet. Hurt her all the way down to her heart, made her pull all the way back, and now you’re afraid she can’t love you no more. But I got news for you. Woman like that, who’s stepped up for her sister that way? That’s a woman who knows how to hang on. She don’t know how to quit. You get on over there, man up and put it on the line. You won’t do it right, but that’s OK, because ain’t a man out there who does. That’s what women were put on earth for, to set us straight. And ain’t they just willing to do it. Besides, she knows you ain’t perfect. She ain’t expecting you to be. She just wants you to try. So you go on over there tomorrow night and do it. See if you got it in your heart to sit by her side, watch TV with her, hold that pretty hand of hers and let her know she ain’t alone, and she don’t ever have to be alone again. And see how that makes you feel. Might just make you feel good. Might just make you feel like a man.”

  Nothing to Give

  When Hemi called on Wednesday to tell me he’d be coming over with dinner, I almost asked him not to. Karen’s surgery had been scheduled for Tuesday, and the next six days were filled with appointments that I didn’t know how we’d get through, but that we had to get through anyway. And when I’d told Martine on the phone that I’d be out of the office for the next two weeks, and had heard everything she’d wanted to say in the tightness of her voice...that hadn’t helped, either. When this was over, when Karen had recovered—because nothing else was an option, nothing else was thinkable—I needed to find a new job. Looking wasn’t going to be easy, not after only three or four months in this job. But staying was going to be impossible.

  There were just too many things to worry about, so, as I’d been doing for the past week, I’d been trying to worry about none of them. Instead, I’d shoved everything out of my mind and focused on the next step, the next appointment. With the surgery looming over everything, behind everything, an enormous wave hanging overhead and threatening to swamp me.

  So when Hemi called, I wanted to ask him not to come, but I didn’t. How could I, after everything he’d done for us?

  We ate in front of the TV this time. Karen had taken to spending her days curled up in the easy chair, watching marathons of Disney movies and old romantic comedies. Tonight, it was Cinderella. The non-animated version, at least. A tiny bit less unreality.

  “Fairy tales,” Hemi said to me, spooning rice onto plates. “Not your favorite, eh.”

  “No,” I said. “But at least in this one, she’s got a little spunk.”

  We finished eating, and I took the plates to the sink. Cinderella was waltzing with the prince now, stars in both their eyes, and I tried not to feel cynical about that.

  When I headed back toward the couch, Hemi stood up and cleared his throat. “Wonder if I could talk to you a minute.”

  He was frowning, not looking one bit comfortable, and my breath caught. “Is something wrong?” I asked. “My...the job?” The surgery, I tried not to think. He’s changed his mind. It’s too much. Because, of course, it was.

  The frown deepened. “No. Course not. Your job’s safe. I told you.” Which still left the surgery. “Can we...” He looked around.

  “Don’t look at me,” Karen said. “I don’t have to get up. I have a brain tumor.”

  “You know,” I told her, doing my best to rally, “in a couple weeks, you’re going to have to come up with a new excuse.”

  “Yep,” she said. “That’s why I’m milking it now.” Her bravado and her courage shining through as always, trying to make me cry.

  I smiled at her, bent, and kissed the top of her head, and this time, she didn’t brush me away. Instead, her hand came up and gripped my wrist. She held on tight for a moment, and I had to blink the tears back.

  “You want a cup of tea?” I asked.

  “No. I think you should talk to Hemi. I mean, since he’s our Fairy Godfather and all. If you’re not nice to him, he might change his mind.”

  It was too close to the truth, but I knew that wasn't why she’d said it. I straightened, wishing that I wasn’t in my PJs, that I was wearing something more than lipstick. I hadn’t wanted to change for Hemi, hadn’t wanted to think about appealing to him tonight. Some sort of last gasp at independence, or denial of my real circumstances. But it would have been so much better, I realized now, to have gone into this conversation holding a few more chips. At least wearing the armor of looking halfway desirable.

  “Um,” I said. “Bedroom. It’s that or the outside hallway.”

  “Right,” he said, “bedroom.”

  He followed me in there and waited while I shut the door. I sat on the bed, wishing there were another option, and gestured for him to sit, too, but he didn’t. Instead, he stood in front of me, ran a hand through his hair, opened his mouth, and closed it again.

  “Bloody hell,” he muttered. “This is hard. Can’t think how to start.”

  I hadn’t thought it was possible, not really, but my dry mouth and racing pulse were telling me otherwise. “Please,” I managed to say. “Just say it. If you’ve changed your mind, tell me.” And then I sat and waited for the axe to fall.

  “I have,” he said. “I have changed my mind.”

  For a moment, I actually couldn’t breathe. “Oh,” I said. “Oh. That’s...” I tried to think of what to say, and couldn’t. “That’s...bad,” I whispered. “Could you...could you help me figure out what to do, then? Or could Josh? I don’t want to ask. But—please. Karen can’t wait any longer. Please.”

  I was begging, and I didn’t care. And Hemi was staring at me.

  “What?” he asked. “No. Of course not. You think I’m telling you I’ve changed my mind about helping with the surgery? No. Of course not. No.”

  “Oh.” I shoved my hands between my thighs and tried not to shake. “Oh. Thank you.”

  “Bloody hell.” He’d sat down beside me now, was reaching for one of my hands, squeezing it in his own. “That’s not it. Of course that’s not it. I’m here to say...to ask if we can start again, somehow. I know I’ve done everything wrong so far. But all this with Karen...I’ve been going mad, thinking about you here by yourself, wanting to be with you, and I’m pretty sure that means something. I don’t know how to do this. But I’d like to—” He stopped and looked at the far wall, took a deep breath, and let it go. “I’d like to try again. If you’ve got it in you to give me another chance.”

  I put my other hand to my head, which felt as if it were literally spinning. I didn’t answer for long seconds, just sat there and tried to think, and couldn’t. I knew Hemi was waiting, and I couldn’t care.

  “I...can’t,” I said at last, and felt the hand in mine give a jerk. “I just can’t. Not now. I hear what you’re saying, and I know how much it would have mattered to me a couple weeks ago. It’s probably going to matter again sometime, and I’ll be thinking, why did I answer you like this? But I can’t—I can’t even think about it now. When you said you’d changed your mind, all I thought was that it was Karen, and I was so...so panicked. The panic’s so close, all the time, and I just...I can’t care about this right now. I can’t think about...about pleasing you, or about what you want. I don’t have it. And I know that�
��s so ungrateful,” I hurried to say. “I know it. And I’m sorry.”

  For once, his face wasn’t wooden. It was twisted into something like pain, and I didn’t want him to have pain, but I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t. I didn’t have one single thing left to give, and I was trembling again.

  “I can’t...I can’t feel anything,” I tried to tell him. My throat was closing, and I had to hurry and say this, had to get it out before I cried. “I can’t tell anything. I just...I just...”

  “Oh, baby.” Once again, he had his arms around me, was holding me to him, and I couldn’t help it. My own arms came out to wrap around him, to hold onto his shoulders, and I buried my head in his warm chest, felt his heart beating under my cheek, and shook.

  He didn’t say anything at all, just held me until the shaking stopped and I was able to sit up again.

  I should be embarrassed, I knew, but I couldn’t be. I should be happy, or relieved, or sad that I couldn’t be any of those things. And instead, I had nothing. I was empty.

  “You don’t have to do anything now,” he told me. He had my hand again, and I hung on, because hanging on helped, and stared at the floor, because I couldn’t look at his face. “You don’t have to say anything. If you can’t make a decision, you don’t have to. You can tell me to bugger off, and I’ll go. Or you can let me come and sit with you, bring you and Karen dinner, whatever helps. I’m not going to change my mind about helping you, no matter what you decide, no matter what you say to me. The rest of it can wait.”

  “I can’t...” I was still trying to get my breath, to take that in. “I can’t even think about sex.”

  “Oh, sweetheart.” His arms were around me again, his hand smoothing over my hair, and somehow, my head was on his chest again. “I know.”

  The Best Sister

  The days had seemed like they would never pass, but they had passed all the same, and it was Tuesday. I was in the waiting room with Hemi beside me; the same place I’d been since I’d kissed Karen in a curtained cubicle in pre-op, had seen her with the IV in her arm.

  “Hey,” she’d told me. “I just thought of something. We totally should’ve asked Dr. Feingold to save my tumor for me. I could keep it in a jar. It could be like a little pet.”

  “You forget,” I’d said, doing my best to smile. “The building has a strict no-tumors policy. Besides, what if we have company over, and somebody thinks it’s gefilte fish?”

  Her face had twisted at that. “Oh, man. Gag me. I have nausea, you know.”

  I’d squeezed her hand and said, “See you soon. Minus the passenger.”

  “Yep. Because I need that like a hole in the head. Oh, wait.”

  I’d choked out a laugh and kissed her, and then they’d wheeled her away and I’d come out here and tried not to think about what was happening, and what was going to happen. What I was going to hear. But when I’d tried to go back into the neutral zone where I’d been living for so long, I couldn’t get there.

  The minutes ticked by, one eternal second after another, until they’d turned into hours. I sat in an armchair that should have been comfortable, except that nothing could possibly be comfortable now, and waited. Because that was what you did in a waiting room.

  My mind tried to skitter down into panic, and I began to count the petals on the flowers in the huge framed watercolor opposite in a desperate attempt to reverse it, or at least to stop it. That wasn’t going to help. I needed to stay calm. For myself, and for Karen. When Karen opened her eyes again, she was going to see a sister who was smiling, who was telling her that everything was going to be all right, and who could make her believe it.

  Surely it would be true.

  I yanked my mind back to the flowers again. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one.

  “All right?”

  I dragged my gaze to Hemi, and he must have seen what I was trying so hard to hide, because he was closing his laptop and setting it down beside him.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he told me gently. One big hand smoothed over my hair, his lips brushed my forehead, and that was almost worse. I was going to cry after all if he kept doing that. I was going to lose it.

  I pushed myself back from him. “I know. I know, because Dr. Feingold is the best. I’m all right. Really.” My hands were cold. Shaking. I pressed them together for warmth, for stability, like a desperate prayer.

  How could two hours take this long? I looked at my watch. It hadn’t been two hours. It had been three. I battled the fear back once more, picked up a magazine, turned its pages without seeing a word, then set it down and went back to counting petals.

  “I’ll go get you a cup of coffee,” Hemi said, and I nodded. Not that I cared.

  That was why he was in the little anteroom, though, when Dr. Feingold came out at last, the green scrubs covering him from cap to toes. Not looking worried, and not smiling, either. Looking perfectly…neutral. But something in his face…

  My legs trembled as I stood up and forced myself to walk to him. And if the minutes I’d waited had been long, this walk was a hundred miles.

  “It went reasonably well,” he said, and my legs began shaking so badly, my knees were actually knocking together. My arms had gone around myself, and even my lips were trembling, my teeth wanting to chatter, the cold fear grabbing at my heart and lungs. I couldn’t get my breath. And still I waited.

  “I’m still thinking we’re probably all right,” Dr. Feingold said. “But I’m sorry, Hope. It’s not quite as clear-cut as I could have wished. We’ll have to wait for the results.”

  He was looking around now. Looking for Hemi, who was finally there, his arm going around me, holding me up.

  “The biopsy is on its way to the path lab,” Dr. Feingold said. “No point in talking until there’s something to talk about, except to say that we got it out.”

  “How long?” Hemi asked.

  “Tomorrow,” the doctor said. “If it’s fast.” He exchanged a look with Hemi, and I knew what that look meant. That Hemi would manage, somehow, for it to be fast. So I would know. So I could cope, and help Karen cope, too.

  But for now, all we could do was wait.

  It wasn’t good, that long morning waiting with Hope for Karen’s surgery to be over. And the day following it was worse. Waiting, and wondering. About what the outcome would be for Karen, and what it would do to Hope if it wasn’t good.

  If I’d thought my heart had been ripped out before, I hadn’t known the half of it, because now, that heart had been wrung out and squeezed dry. I did my best to work, to take my mind off it, but I still found myself with heaps of time to contemplate exactly why I’d always avoided getting emotionally involved. Because it hurt like hell.

  We waited, and then we waited some more. All night in the critical care unit, because Hope wouldn’t leave, other than for brief fifteen-minute visits with her sister, and a dinner and breakfast I managed to persuade her into in the hospital cafeteria. She didn’t want to talk, but she seemed to want me there, so I stayed and held her hand, just as Eugene had told me to do. And when she finally fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion—I held her then, too. The only thing worse than being there, helpless to do anything but that, would have been not being there. So I stayed.

  On Wednesday, they moved Karen into a regular room, and Hope lost a little of her frozen rigidity once she could see her sister, could talk to her and touch her. I came to join them in the afternoon, sitting in the corner of the room while Hope sat next to Karen and held her hand.

  Hour after hour of Karen lying with her eyes closed, half in and half out of consciousness. The nurses had told Hope that touch helped, and a bit of quiet talk did, too, so that was what she did. And I sat and watched them and thought how little I knew about love.

  Just now, Karen’s eyes were open, then closing again, and Hope was talking.

  “Remember Mrs. Lee?” she asked her sister, her voice quiet, so sweet. “Remember reading the magazines? You never liked the fashion ones. You said they
were boring. You liked the women’s ones best, especially once you got to be eight or nine and could really read them. Your favorites were the advice columns. ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?’ That was a good one. When the new Ladies’ Home Journal came out, you used to sit and read it to me while I stocked shelves. And you’d say, ‘No. This marriage cannot be saved. People are jerks.’ I remember how that used to make me laugh.”

  Karen smiled, just a twitch of the mouth, and Hope smiled back, then broke off, because Dr. Feingold had come into the room. And just like that, all the rigidity was back.

  “Good,” he said when Karen opened her eyes. “You’re awake. How’re you feeling?”

  “Pretty...good,” Karen managed to say, and I thought that Hope wasn’t the only woman in her family with courage to spare.

  “We’re doing well here all the way around,” Dr. Feingold said. “You’re bouncing back just about as well as you could be. I’d like to say that’s me, but I’m afraid we’ve got to chalk at least a little bit of it up to you. Because you are one tough cookie, Miss Karen Sinclair.”

  He got another little smile from Karen for that before her eyes drifted shut again.

  “Yes,” Hope said. “She is. And thank you. The nurses all said that you were the best. I know we’re lucky. Thank you.”

  “Always good to hear,” he said. “Remind me to pay them off later. And normally, I’d take you outside the room to talk about this next thing. But in this case, I think Karen gets to hear, too, because...” He did a little drumroll on the empty second bed. “We’ve got nothin’ but net here. The results are back, and we’ve got a big all-clear. ‘Benign’ all the way through. That bottle of champagne you’ve got under the bed? Time to haul that thing out and pop the cork.”