“I’m feeling kind of okay today,” he lied, knowing that cuddling was the quickest way to get her to relax. He needed her to be calm and receptive, not rankled and belligerent. Above all, he missed her touch, missed simply dragging his fingertips over her skin, and tonight he didn’t care how much the tiny pleasures of the life he still held were paid for with pain.
He rolled to his side and twisted his face into a smile to mask the grimace, still holding back the covers for Kori. She eased into the bed and settled her back to his front; he drew her closer and dropped his head slightly to breathe her in. “I’ve missed this,” he murmured into her hair.
Kori sighed and let her face relax into a contented trace of a smile. “So have I, more than you know,” she replied.
After a long moment of quiet, Kori said softly, “I meant what I said before about going home. The traveling’s not helping you, these hotel beds are like boards, and the tour’s ending in a few weeks, so I’m really not all that necessary anymore.”
Mark knew from her tone that there would be no arguing. She’d made up her stubborn mind and that was that. I still don’t like this. I think she’s more motivated by wanting to flee than by specifically wanting to be home. Her entire future hinges on an impossible, stupid suspicion, and she carries Zach’s right alongside her own. I can’t let this go, if only for the sake of our son. But dammit! I don’t have the energy for a battle of wills tonight. All I can do now is watch them together on the tourbus until we head home, nudging and hinting whenever I can. And talking to JT to see if it’s making any difference. She’s wrong about JT and I don’t know what’s changed in her that she can’t see the truth.
I can’t believe I’m playing matchmaker for the woman who will soon be my widow.
****
The constant drone of the engines overrode Kori’s frayed nerves, sending her into a light doze. She’s slept very little the night before and wished for a more substantial rest but the turbulent flight wouldn’t allow anything deeper. Hoping she was far enough away now to be alone in her head, she allowed her thoughts to drift. And like grubby fingers to a scab, her mind kept returning to pick at the night before…
Mark had long since turned away, seeking another fleetingly comfortable position. Kori lay stiffly on a narrow strip on her side of the bed, trying to keep from brushing against her husband and waking him up from the pain. Her rigid posture compounded the overspill of the night and try as she might, she couldn’t shut down. She was awake deep into the wee hours, her mind twisting with conflicting emotions and doubt. Let down the wall, tear it down if need be, and see for yourself, you idiot.
But I can’t. That would mean admitting defeat, allowing myself once again to confirm instead of trust. And he has earned that faith, he deserves it from me. I can’t do it.
And if you don’t, you’ll never get any sleep.
And how would that make this night different from any other?
While she mentally chased her tail, she didn’t notice the hours-old wall of protection was slowly melting away and letting JT inside. Gentle and warm as the circle of his arms pulling her closer in sleep, his tentative thought-reach enfolded her in the deep rose and warm yellow tones of his relief and affection. Kori instinctively welcomed his comfort and continued to coast on the currents of semi-consciousness.
She picked up the indistinct background babble in JT’s mind and felt him trying furiously to quash it. Kori heard his mental mumble of I hope she didn’t understand any of that. Now that she’s let me through the last thing I want to do is argue again.
One corner of Kori’s mouth tugged languidly upward. He even ran off at the mouth in his own head.
I do love you, you know echoed clearly from his thoughts into hers.
I never doubted that, she responded, half awake. But I… never mind.
What, love? he prodded softly. Kori realized not only what she was doing but what she was about to tell him and retreated in a panic. Picking up his confusion, she felt as JT noticed the shift and she allowed a measure of sympathy for him at what she was about to convey, feeling guilty but knowing she had to do it.
I wish my feelings for you were enough, but they aren’t. You don’t deserve what I’m doing to you.
Kori sensed JT picking his words carefully and wondered which of his emotions would emerge the winner.
It was a misunderstanding, sweetheart. That’s all it was. I made the mistake of assuming you were aware of the situation I’d found in my room. I’m not upset with your reaction to what you saw.
Kori wondered how much more she should reveal. The very last thing she needed tonight was JT at her door and she was sure he’d beat it down if he knew what she intended. I should trust you, JT. You deserve it. But I can’t.
She could almost see the sad expression on his face, the wounded look in his eyes as she felt him flinch. She was afraid to offer anything more.
His response tore into her gut.
I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done to make you lose faith in me. Whatever it is, just tell me and I won’t let it happen again.
It’s not you, JT, she quickly answered. It’s me. I’ve come to the realization that I’ve never trusted anyone at all. I’ve never had to. It’s pure reflex that I dip into people and verify their truth and you deserve better. I’m the one who’s sorry, JT.
JT was exhausted and irritable and afraid of making any more assumptions. I don’t want to misunderstand, Kori. What is the point you’re trying to wedge into my thick skull?
Kori sighed. He wasn’t making this any easier. It’s all too easy and tempting to just slip into you and until I’m not doing it in lie-detector mode, I’ll be leaving you and your thick skull alone with your thoughts. The resulting stunned silence proved he’d heard; whether or not he understood her reasons didn’t matter. Kori broke their link and closed him out.
Her mind tried to dwell on the rest of the morning’s events but Kori pushed them all back out again. Somehow the physical act of leaving was infinitely more painful than walling herself off had been.
Images zipped in and were dismissed just as fast, a rapid-fire slide show: locating airline tickets just before sunrise using her laptop; her uneasy satisfaction at securing a nonstop flight home at midday today; a bewildered Mark and Zach who had no real option but to follow her lead; packing and giving the tourbus a thorough once-over to collect all their day-to-day belongings; bittersweet farewells to the crew and band, minus JT; JT looking poleaxed and then bulldozed and livid at her goodbye; the angry shouting and even angrier silence when he discovered she meant what she’d said and he was shut out; the freedom of being the only voice inside her head.
The aloneness that was Kori’s to own. And louder than the dull roar of the jet’s engines, deep in her mind’s ear, the silence. The blessed, sanity-saving, eternal interminable silence.
Twenty-Five
“She’s been gone less than a week, and I’m about ready to strangle the shit out of him,” Rafe said to nobody in particular. “Another soundcheck drags on like this last one and somebody’s gonna have to pull me off his grouchy ass.”
“And if you don’t quit complaining about JT, somebody’s gonna have to pull me off of you,” Clay mumbled. Paul was sitting nearby and nodded his head in agreement.
“Hey, now,” Ian piped in with an optimistic stab at reason, “the soundcheck was perfect, even though JT wasn’t happy with it. And we all know that by showtime, he’ll have his head on straight again and he’ll be back to his usual smiling self.”
“Yeah, that may very well be true, but what about the other twenty-two hours in the day? He’s become insufferable.” Rafe sat heavily on the worn sofa in the stuffy backstage prep room.
“You know,” Paul finally spoke up, “before she left, I’d had this suspicion that there was something going on between her and JT, and this verifies it.” He glanced around the room and noticed two of his bandmates’ heads nodding in slow confirmation. Rafe looked down at the floor,
neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
“You know something about this, don’t you, Rafe?” Paul prodded. Rafe didn’t respond.
“Come on, mate, spill. I see you and JT thick as thieves constantly and you always shut up whenever one of you notices that one of us has walked into the room. We know you know more than we do and have somehow managed to not say boo about it. That’s gotta be tough, considering your track record. So, come on, out with it already.”
Rafe looked at his mates’ tense faces, then glanced uneasily at the open door. “I really can’t say.”
“But you’re the one who blamed it on Kori’s absence, not us. Although I think we all noticed when Goodfellow Moodswing arrived and took over JT’s body.” Paul sighed, then tried another tack. “We’re coming unglued at the seams every minute we’re not onstage, and it’s only been since she left. It’s that fucking obvious, Rafe. But JT’d come completely unhinged if any of us asked him about the two of them. We just want to help if we can.”
“Separation’s hard, we’ve all dealt with it when we’re on tour and we all support each other to work through it. We just want to make it easier to live with,” Clay threw in.
“Yeah, easier for JT and easier for us to live with him without decking him,” Ian added. “We’ve only two weeks left before we can all head home, recuperate, and remember what our women and children look like. We’re just trying to not fall apart here.”
Rafe scanned their frowning faces again. He thought about how drawn Mark looked when they’d left for the airport, how gaunt and almost gray he seemed under the strange orangey-yellow tint of his skin. His liver was fading fast. Mark wasn’t going to last much longer, and they’d all find out soon anyway.
He got up and went to the door, poking his head outside for a quick look around before closing it and turning back to face his bandmates.
****
Screeeeeeee… The oxygen monitor was howling for the third time this morning. The fluid retention was making it more and more difficult for Mark to take in enough air, especially upon their return to the mile-high altitude of home. Through Mark’s protests, she had trundled him off to the doctor’s office a week earlier, on their second day back, and he was immediately put on supplemental oxygen. He didn’t like it and said that the air smelled funny, the tubing under his nose was aggravating, and the sensor clamp on his finger was annoying, but he kept both the tube and the clamp on most of the time anyway.
The very first time she’d heard the monitor’s alarm, Kori felt her heart actually halt in her chest for a long moment before setting off again at a gallop. She ran into their bedroom with the vision of a pallid and unconscious husband blossoming in her brain. She skidded to a stop, holding the doorjamb for support, and found Mark looking up at her sheepishly as he tried to simultaneously put the sensor clamp back over his fingertip and find the switch to turn the alarm off.
“I had an itch that I could only reach with my left hand,” he said in his defense. “And the wire from this thing wouldn’t let me get to it, and I can’t scratch with the cap over the end of my finger. So I took it off.”
Kori stared at him with one brow raised.
Mark looked down at the comforter to escape her disbelieving glare, then turned to the monitor, which was still blaring shrilly, and located the reset button. The room fell silent again save for the low, regular hiss of the oxygen machine delivering its goods. “Anyway, it was bugging me. I didn’t know the alarm would go off.”
Every time the monitor had sounded since then was due to the sensor breaking contact with Mark’s skin. Most times it was purely innocent; he had knocked it loose reaching for something or satisfying an itch, or it had worked itself sideways in his sleep. Mark had learned to turn off the monitor first when he needed to remove the fingercap for some reason, such as when he showered or was trying to open a can of the nutrition-supplement drinks that had become the mainstay of his diet. “Old people’s nasty-ass milkshakes,” he called them and hated the taste but he drank them down anyway, knowing that there was very little anymore which wouldn’t overtax his system to digest (or that he could keep down long enough to even begin to).
Kori groaned and took a swallow of her second cup of coffee, wondering what he’d done to remove the oxygen-sensor this time. Several sips later the alarm was still blasting and she got up from the kitchen table to find out why he hadn’t reset it yet and turned it off.
“Honey,” she called loudly as she neared the bedroom doorway, “why haven’t you shut that thing —” The remaining words strangled in her throat and she lost the rest of her air in a constricted rush. Mark was sitting twisted sideways in the bed, his skin gone pale gray under the jaundice. His stupefied eyes rolled listlessly to hers while his hand pawed ineffectively at the alarm monitor.
Terror and bile rose in her throat; she swallowed hard and forced herself to breathe. “Oh God, no,” she choked. She grabbed for the monitor and hit the reset button to end the noise, looking at the little screen while she did so. The red numbers flashed off and then back on as the monitor rebooted, and the alarm began to scree again. The readout hadn’t changed upon reset; they still glared an accusing red-on-black forty-nine-point-two and Kori’s brain scrambled to remember the normal values and what she was told to do if the readout fell too low.
Eighty-five to ninety-one? or was it eighty-five to ninety? Shit, maybe it was eighty-five’s a little low… what’s it matter anyway, a number with a four in front of it is obviously not high enough. If it falls… what? Think, dammit, think!
Kori closed her eyes and tried to shut out the blaring monitor. Turn up the oxygen delivery rate and… and… fuck! Lay him flat? Give him room enough to breathe? I think that was it…
Be calm, be cool, don’t get Mark more worried than he already is… Kori forced her gait into a fast walk (instead of the run her brain called out for) to the far side of the bed where the oxygen machine sat in its cart in the narrow space between the mattress and the wall and bent over it to adjust the flow. How much is enough? Fuck it, just turn it all the way up… can there be such a thing as too much? She looked up while she slowly turned the valve control, watching Mark for any reaction. He’d swiveled his head to follow her and his mouth had dropped open. She saw his lips were trembling and he looked like he might be trying to tell her something.
“Shh, it’s okay, honey,” she soothed. “I’ll fix it and you’ll feel better in just a minute.” Kori turned the valve until it wouldn’t turn any further and the hiss of the flow was competing with the alarm for King of the Din. She backed it off one full rotation and turned to face him.
“We need to get you laying down just a bit, okay?” Kori noted the pleading in his droopy eyes and attempted to make her voice sound more reassuring than she felt. “I know it’s harder to take a full breath when you’re flat on your back, so I’m going to adjust the pillows and I want you to lay into them. You’ll still be sitting, just not as upright as you are now.”
The pile of pillows had canted every which-way when he’d tried to silence the alarm. Kori moved them back with an efficiency she did not feel, then hazarded a glance to the ever-blaring monitor. Sixty-one-point-six stared back at her. Better but still not good enough. She braced one knee on the mattress and leaned forward to slip her hands under Mark’s arms.
“This might be a little painful from the pressure, but I’ve got to move you so that your body’s straighter. If you can help me, maybe lean forward or slide upright somehow, it might be a bit easier on you.” Kori wrapped her arms around his back and locked her fingers together for a good hold (God, when did he get so narrow in the chest? My fingertips used to barely touch when I hugged him) then pulled him toward her body slowly.
“Ooowwff.” It was the first sound Mark had made on purpose since her arrival and while she wasn’t sure if it was a groan of pain or a sigh, it beat the sound of his labored breathing and she took it as a positive sign.
Her hope didn’t last long. Mark couldn’t
do anything to help himself move, his body was suffering from too much oxygen debt, and the change in position triggered a fit of coughing. Somewhat alarmed but knowing he had to stop crumpling and squishing his diaphragm, she finished moving his torso into line with his legs.
Instead of laying back, Mark clung to Kori as his hacking turned violent and he started to gag. Kori kept her arms around his back, tight enough to hold him but loose enough to give his heaving ribcage the space it so desperately needed.
She pushed aside her own worry to murmur soothing words near his ear. She didn’t think he could understand her over his labored breathing and coughing, but she made sure her voice was loud enough so he would hear that she was speaking. As always, but never soon enough, the hacking calmed to coughing and then the coughing slowed to let him hitch in most of a breath before attacking with another short burst.
Kori felt the warm trickle of sweat running down one side of her back and knew the panic was returning. She squeezed it right back out. The terror could wash over her later, as it did more and more often this last week, in a fit of tremors and full-body cold, once Mark was fitfully asleep again.
When he’d reached the point where the breathing stretched on longer than the coughing, she eased him back to recline against the pile of pillows. He had the usual trail of blood coming down from his nose and this time it seemed to be more profuse than ever before. Mark’s lower lip and chin were blanketed in red, but thankfully his eyes had drifted closed so he didn’t see the flash of fear on her face.
Kori grabbed several tissues from the headboard and swiped gently at his chin. A stain of red remained on his skin and she got up to fetch a washcloth to finish the job. “I’ll be right back,” she said softly before leaving the room. Mark nodded slightly.
Kori turned on the hot water tap before pulling a cloth from the cupboard beneath the bathroom sink. She tossed it into the basin and passed her fingers through the spray to test the temperature. Still icy cold. I hate how long it takes for hot water to move through this house.
Dream Me Off My Feet (Sex, Love, And Rock & Roll) Page 55