Luanne Rice

by Summer's Child

  “She’s fine,” the doctor said. “Went through the surgery with no problems whatever. We removed the obstruction and replaced the patch. Gortex, this time—it should last her the rest of her life. She’s in recovery now, but she’s already out of the anesthesia, and they’ll be bringing her up here to the ICU in just a few minutes.”

  “Thank you,” Liam said. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Lily shook Dr. Garibaldi’s hand, touched her own heart, and thanked him. After the doctor left, she turned to Liam.

  “You thanked him even before I did,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. “I did. I’m sorry—I just—”

  “No, it’s good,” she said, turning bright pink. “It’s just … it’s just something a father would do.”

  Liam stood straight, couldn’t quite speak. If only Lily knew what was going on inside his chest, how he had felt about Rose since the instant he’d brought her into this world.

  “I was thinking,” Lily said. “About what you were saying just before the doctor came up. About the Greeks, and the vital essence.”

  “Oxygen,” he said. As she herself had said… .

  “I was thinking it must be something else too,” she said, staring at the elevator doors, hearing the lift coming closer. The doctor had said that Rose would be up in just a few minutes, and Lily was ready. She turned her gaze from the elevator to Liam.

  “What else?” he asked.

  “Well,” she said, stopping herself.

  Liam wanted to tell her what he thought, but he couldn’t say the word out loud: Love. The most vital essence of all.

  And just then the door opened, and an orderly wheeled Rose out—there on the bed, attached to monitors, but with her eyes open. She was strapped down—the sight of those straps tore Liam’s heart. They had to keep her from moving, at least overnight. She looked from Lily to Liam, and then back to Lily.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” Lily said.

  “It hurts,” Rose said.

  “I know, honey. But it won’t for long.”

  “It won’t, Rose,” Liam said, hardly able to bear seeing her in pain, knowing that the nurses would give her pain meds in a second, and knowing that she would heal fast from the surgery. “It won’t hurt for long.”

  “Promise?” Rose whispered hoarsely.

  “Yes,” Liam said, touching her head—as his own father had done when he’d made a similar promise after Liam’s arm surgery—knowing that that was just what a father would say and do.

  Chapter 22

  Rose was awake, opening her eyes as soon as they wheeled her out of the operating room. The medicine they gave her made her groggy, but she kept trying to tear the straps off her chest anyway. She wanted to move, run, hug her mother, go home.

  She slept a lot.

  Her mother and Dr. Neill took turns sitting by her bed. Sometimes they were there together, sitting so close they looked like one person. Their voices threaded in and out of her dreams, joining her waking and sleeping hours. When she cried, she wasn’t sure who hugged her. Her chest hurt.

  And then it didn’t. The next day, when Rose woke up, the sun was shining, and her chest didn’t hurt at all. Well, maybe a little—the nurse helped her sit up, and then she washed her, and then the doctor came to look at her stitches.

  Her mother and Liam stood back while the nurses got her ready to take her first walk. She knew that it was less than a day since her surgery, but she was used to being the wonder girl when it came to getting out of bed fast. She knew that walking and pooping were the big events. They were like getting an A+ on a book report or math test. Once you had them, you were on your way home.

  Or at least out of ICU, to the normal floor.

  “How’s the pain, Rose?” the nurse asked.

  “Not so bad. Mom, did you tell Jessica I’m coming home in a week?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Dr. Neill, what’s wrong?” She looked up, and he had a funny look on his face—as if he was frozen between wanting to stand back and trying to catch her. The nurse gave him a teacherly smile, as if he had a lot to learn.

  “Children heal much faster than adults from open-heart surgery,” the nurse said. “They experience much less pain in the chest wall. We’re going to get Rose up and walking, so we can move her down to the pediatric floor.”

  “Okay,” Dr. Neill said, holding his arms out, the way Rose remembered him doing when she was really tiny, learning to walk. The sight of him doing that made her laugh, which made her chest hurt. “Rose? What?” he asked.

  “I can do it,” she told him. “Watch.”

  “Ready when you are, honey,” her mother said.

  All the adults stood close by her side, and Rose inched to the edge of the bed. She reached her toes down to the floor, in her fuzzy slippers. The ground felt so solid. Rose hadn’t wanted to tell her mother, but it had felt tippy for a long while, almost like the deck of the Tecumseh II at her birthday party. A boat, tilting fore and aft, sideways, all around. Rose had felt dizzy, and she knew it was because she hadn’t been getting enough oxygen.

  But that had changed. Already, just half a day after her operation, she felt ten, a hundred, a thousand times better than she had. She breathed in—and she actually felt her lungs expand and her strength return.

  “I feel good,” she said.

  Everyone smiled, and her mother held out her hand.

  “Walk with me?” her mother asked.

  Rose nodded, but she didn’t move her feet. She just kept waiting, staring up.

  “Rose?” Dr. Neill asked.

  She just reached out her hand, waiting for him to take it. He slid his fingers into hers, and then Rose was ready. She, her mother, and Dr. Neill took their first steps together. Through the ICU, around the nurses’ station. She realized that in all the ICUs she had been in before, Dr. Neill had been there too.

  Only family were allowed in ICU. Rose grinned, keeping her head down, afraid to let everyone know how happy that made her feel. Because she didn’t know what it meant, and over the last nine years she had learned that she needed to take care of her heart, keep it from getting broken. But he squeezed her hand, and she decided to allow herself to hope.

  Lily and Liam had started going down to Boston Harbor after leaving the hospital. They would cut through Faneuil Hall and end up on Long Wharf. People enjoying the summer night strolled by, but for Lily and Liam it was much more urgent: they were both sustained by the sea, and they needed to see it and feel the salt air of home.

  Liam brought binoculars so they could scan the blue water, searching for Nanny. But she never came close enough to the shore, seeming to stay out beyond the harbor islands, just hovering in the area.

  That night, when they’d had their fill of sea breezes, they walked back toward the hotel. Lily stared down at the cobblestones, tension building inside. There was so much she wanted to say to him, but she felt shy and tongue-tied, as if all the words were bound in thick rope. He hadn’t taken her hand once tonight—not once on their whole walk.

  “Life is funny,” he said as they walked along.

  “In what way?”

  “You can think you know what’s best, what’s right for you, and then all of a sudden something happens and turns your plans upside down.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. Was he thinking of his summer? He had given up so much of it to be with Lily and Rose; perhaps he was starting to resent the time, and the loss of research time.

  “Just, bad things happen, but they sometimes turn out to be … good.”

  She tilted her head, curious about what he meant, but he just walked in silence. The space between them seemed so great, but Lily was afraid to close it; he seemed to need some distance.

  “I was thinking of the shark,” he said after a few minutes.

  “Nothing good came of the shark, I know,” she said. “You lost Connor, and a part of yourself. Liam, you don’t have to pretend anything about that is okay.” He did
n’t reply.

  She glanced over. His brown hair was wavy, with strands of silver in the streetlights. His blue eyes looked sad. They got to the Charles River Hotel, just behind the hospital, and went to the elevator. As it clicked up to their floors, Lily wished she knew what to say. She was on the fourteenth floor, and Liam was on the sixteenth. When the door opened at 14, he looked at her.

  “Good night,” she said.

  “Good night, Lily,” he said.

  She walked to her room, feeling upset and churned up. Not just because he hadn’t touched her at all, not once, on their walk—but because he had looked so troubled, and made that comment about the shark, and she hadn’t comforted him.

  Lily felt torment inside. She paced her hotel room. She had been so hurt by her husband, her trust had been shattered. She had sacrificed everything leaving him. She had swallowed an iceberg. It had frozen her, cell by cell, until she was brittle and hard; she had learned, over time, how to guard herself—be tough, never let any man get close to her. The Nanouks had been her only friends. But Liam …

  Over these last weeks, she had felt herself melting.

  “Welcome to the thaw,” she had said to Marisa, at Rose’s birthday party. What Marisa couldn’t know was that Lily had never really believed those words for herself. She had thought she was too glacial, too long frozen, too trapped by winter, to ever really experience anything like internal springtime.

  She thought of Liam—the look in his eyes when he’d mentioned the shark. After all he’d done for her these years—and, especially, this summer—why couldn’t she have reached up, put her arms around him? Why couldn’t she have told him she was there to listen if he felt like talking?

  Lily was shaking inside. She grabbed her key and left the room. Not wanting to wait for the elevator, she took the stairs. With every step, she felt more and more afraid. What if she was making a mistake? She hadn’t reached out to a man in so long—she had stopped believing that she ever would again. Liam’s kindness, the way Rose adored him, Lily’s own growing feelings for him all seemed insignificant in the face of her old, terrible, very real fears. But she pushed through them and just kept going.

  She found his room, 1625. Took a deep breath and knocked.

  Liam opened the door. He stood there, surprise in his blue eyes. He was wearing jeans and a blue oxford shirt. His left sleeve hung there, empty. Lily had never seen him that way before. She gasped.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, glancing down, patting his empty sleeve as if he could will his arm to appear there. “I should have—”

  “No—don’t be sorry,” she said. “I’m the one—I’m sorry, Liam.”

  “If it makes you uncomfortable, I can put my prosthesis back on.”

  Lily smiled and shook her head. “Uncomfortable? No. Liam, you just spent two days sitting in the ICU with Rose. You saw her stitches, her incision… . I’m not uncomfortable with anything like that.”

  “Most people are.”

  “I’m not most people,” she said.

  They walked over to the small table with two chairs, right by the window. The room lights were dim, so they could see the river, dancing with city lights. It was such a different water view than the one they loved in Cape Hawk. But it was still water, and Lily felt things starting to flow.

  “When you said that about the shark,” she said, “I wanted to hear more.”

  “Really? It was nothing—just some philosophizing.”

  “So, philosophize,” she said, leaning back in her chair.

  “I guess, what I was thinking was, sometimes it seems that my life ended with that shark,” he said. “Other times, it seems it began.”

  “How?”

  “You don’t know how close I was to Connor,” he said. “We were inseparable. Even though he was three years younger, there was no one I’d rather hang around with. He was so funny. He’d swim up to whales while they were sleeping, and climb up on their backs. We used to dare him all the time.”

  “Is that what he was doing that day?”

  “Yes,” he said. “He was trying to get close to this one beluga. The whale was there, feeding on krill and herring. We didn’t see the shark, until it was pulling Connor down.”

  “You saw?”

  Liam nodded. “I did. Connor reached out both arms for me. I swam as fast as I could—I was pulling him, trying to get him away from the shark. And then he just … wasn’t there anymore. I was there in my brother’s blood, diving and diving for him. And the shark got me too.”

  Lily was silent, listening.

  “He just—he grabbed my arm. It didn’t hurt—I couldn’t feel his teeth or anything. Later I learned they’re so sharp, like razors, they just slice through skin and bone. It felt more like the most violent tug I’d ever felt. All I could think of was Connor—I tried to beat the shark with my other arm, pounding him, gouging his eyes. I dug my fingers into his eye socket—and that’s what got him to let go.”

  Lily was so clenched, she felt like a closed fist. She knew what it was like to fight for her life. Liam’s description of the teeth going in—so sharp and smooth, you almost don’t know you’re being eaten alive. She thought of the last day, pregnant with Rose, when her husband had knocked her to the ground—and pretended it was an accident.

  “You got away,” she whispered.

  “I did,” he said. “I was swimming on pure adrenaline—still diving for Connor, even though my arm was gone. I don’t think I even knew. Jude was screaming—he had climbed up on the shore. He got someone’s attention, and a boat came over. They had to haul me out—everyone was surprised I survived. The shark had severed an artery—I was bleeding out, right there in the spot where Connor went down.”

  “Oh, Liam.” She jumped up, unable to withstand what he was telling her. Liam stood beside her; she was shaking so hard, she backed into the desk. Liam reached out to steady her—he surprised her, looking so calm. Beyond him, in the corner of the room, his artificial arm leaned against the wall.

  “How do you do it?” she asked. “How do you go on, having lived through that?”

  “How do you, Lily Malone?” he asked. “You encountered a shark too.”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” she said.

  “Good comes from bad,” he said. “That’s how. You got Rose out of it.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “But what about you?”

  “Here I am with you,” he said.

  “That’s …” she began.

  “Something brought us together,” he said. “To me, that’s the good that came from bad.”

  Lily stood on tiptoes to reach up and slide her arms around his neck. She caressed the back of his head, looking into his eyes. She felt so much emotion, all of it just swirling around. She wanted to comfort him, but even more, she wanted to kiss him.

  Liam took care of it. He held her tight, she tipped her head, and they kissed. It was so long and tender, as if the feelings had been building up forever, just like the last one. His touch was gentle, but so strong. Lily had come up to comfort him, but he was bringing tears to her eyes. She grabbed him, holding on, and with one arm he picked her up and carried her to the bed.

  “I wanted to tell you,” she said, lying beside him, eye to eye. “I think you’re wonderful. You’ve been wonderful to me and Rose, and I’m sorry I didn’t ask you before, when you—”

  He put his finger to her lips.

  “You don’t have to be sorry for anything,” he said.

  And then it seemed that words were beside the point. They had nine years to make up for. Lily lay back, her hand on Liam’s chest. He rolled over, on top of her, hiked up on his elbow, kissing her cheek, lips, the whole length of her neck, making her squirm and ache. She kept that arm between them, hand on his chest, and they both knew she was ready to push him away—she was always ready to push someone away.

  It was now or never—she was sweating for his kisses, she needed them, but she was ready to fight. Tension coiled in her spine like
a spring. Liam’s eyes were bluer than any sea. They looked at her with such openness, all the while he was kissing her, slowly, one kiss at a time, and she felt the fight just go out of her.

  She must have sighed, and Liam took it as a sign. He lay on his left side and, with his right arm, reached around her, stroking her back as he kissed her long and hard. His tongue was so hot, and she bit it—just lightly, but the unexpectedness of it just sent them both over the edge.

  Their clothes came off. Lily wasn’t sure who unbuttoned or unzipped what—but their shirts, and his pants, and then her pants, and all that underwear, all got thrown on the floor, and then they were on the bed again. The only light came from the small table lamp, warm and dim. Lily had never seen Liam with his shirt off. She wanted to look but was afraid.

  Liam lay on his back, staring up at her. She let her eyes travel from his strong, broad chest to his left shoulder. It looked powerful, and extended down to his upper arm, which ended about six inches below the shoulder bone.

  She saw his left side—it looked raw and scraped, crisscrossed with scars and old stitches. His arm looked healed, but his side was a reminder of the shark’s ravages, of old surgery. Lily leaned over and gently kissed the side of his body.

  They held each other, kissing. Liam ran his fingers the length of her torso, making her arch her back. He kissed her harder, and she got lost in the moment. She lifted her hips, wanting him inside her more than she’d ever wanted anything.

  His kiss held her steady, but his touch made her lose her mind. Lily shivered, and felt everything about his body: the curve of his spine, the narrowness of his hips, his broad shoulders, his strong legs. He held her and rocked her, even when she cried out, letting go of everything old and cold and frozen, and even when she trembled and cried again, afterwards, because she hadn’t realized that she could still feel and still love.

  They fell asleep together, holding each other tight. Lily woke up a few times, but she didn’t want to move—she never wanted to let go of Liam. Lying beside him, she felt reckless joy. He had shifted in his sleep; his right arm grazed her chest. They embraced, as if it was the most normal and familiar thing in the world. As if they had loved each other for years, and had been just waiting for the perfect time for their lives together to start.