THAT MAN 5 (The Wedding Story-Part 2)

by Nelle L'Amour

  Dad and I walked slowly down the aisle, each step a small victory. With my constricting gown and his leg brace, we were a perfect match. In my other hand, I held my heavy bouquet, now missing some seashells and beads. And in his, his cane.

  As I took tiny steps down the aisle, I tried to acknowledge our guests. I looked left and right and then back at Blake, whose loving gaze gave me the courage to continue.

  I was an emotional and physical mess. A mixture of nerves, chills, and pain. My strapless mermaid gown was not suited for the chilly December air. Goose bumps popped along my bare arms and my teeth chattered.

  Just walk and breathe. And try to smile, I told myself. You can do it. I forced a small smile on my face and took in the sea of people in front of whom we were going to say our vows. But truthfully, I was treading water. Barely staying afloat. I was truly not sure I was going to make it to the altar. My father, God bless him, held me steady. I met Blake’s loving gaze once more, and a sudden rush of wet heat puddled between my legs. A rush like I’ve never felt before.

  The walk down the aisle felt like an eternity. But I made it. Dad proudly took his place beside my radiant mom, and Blake took me in his arms. I heard him whisper, “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I whispered back. We turned to face Rabbi Silverstein and Father Murphy.

  The ceremony began. Blake clasped my free hand. His so warm, mine so icy cold. It was difficult to hear what our officiants were saying. Helicopters were hovering overhead, and the chattering of my teeth filled my ears. And then halfway through it, Blake did something so unexpected. He took off his tux jacket and gently placed it over my shoulders. I heard our guests go “ooh.” Oh my Blake! My gallant Blake. But neither his hand nor his jacket could warm me up. Or make the excruciating pain go away.

  The alternating words of Rabbi Silverstein and Father Murphy drifted into one ear and out the other. Whatever viral infection I’d contracted was consuming me. Another sharp spasm ripped through my body. Of all days to fall ill! I squeezed Blake’s hand and bit down on my bottom lip to suppress a wince. And then another spasm and another. They grew relentless. Managing to hold on to the bouquet, I clutched my belly. A concerned Blake looked my way while our officiates continued the service.

  I should have been savoring every word, but they couldn’t come fast enough. We finally said our vows. With the loud chop-chop-chop of the helicopters above and my voice a mere whisper, I could barely hear myself. And Blake’s sacred words were likewise washed out.

  Lastly…finally… the exchange of our “I do’s” and wedding bands. The latter were tied to aqua velvet pillows Marcy’s eager twins were holding.

  “Do you, Blake Adam Burns, take Jennifer Leigh McCoy to be your lawful wedded wife?” were the words I was longing to hear. But to my surprise, old-fashioned Father Murphy turned to the attendants and thundered, “If anyone here has any objections to this couple getting married, let them speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  “Yes! I do,” a familiar sharp voice shouted out.

  Shocked, I pivoted around. Oh my God! It was Kat! Standing up in the back of the crowd in a high-necked white goddess gown. What was she doing here? Her venomous eyes met mine and then another sharp, unbearable pain stabbed me. I clasped my lower abdomen and warm wetness met my hand. I glanced down and gasped. A rapidly expanding crimson pool was seeping through my gown.

  I can’t really tell you what happened next. Just this.

  I heard my mother’s panicked voice. “Oh, dear Lord!”

  Then Grandma’s. “Oy vey iz mir!”

  And then, as I felt my knees buckle, I heard Blake shout out, “Someone call 911!”

  He caught me in his arms and then everything went black.

  Chapter 19

  Blake

  My father always said: “The only thing you can ever expect in life is the unexpected.” I just didn’t expect this.

  I was sitting in the back of a racing ambulance, the siren blaring in my ears. Thank God, my sister Marcy was with me or I think I would have totally lost it. My heart was in my throat and my breathing was shallow. My sister squeezed my hand while my eyes stayed locked on my beautiful unconscious bride. The paramedics had told us she’d lost a lot of blood and was likely still bleeding internally. Hooked up to a portable IV and an oxygen tank, she was wrapped in a heavy blanket, which at least spared me the agony of seeing her blood-soaked wedding gown.

  Foreboding thoughts bombarded me. At the top: Was I going to lose my tiger? If Kat had anything to with this, I was going to have her committed. The image of her smirking at me as I ran past her with my fallen bride in my arms flickered in my head. What the hell was she doing there? I could only surmise she flew back from Rio, and her equally mental, devious mother put her on the guest list. Without a doubt, she was still determined to stop me from marrying Jen. The sick bitch was out for blood, and I wouldn’t put it past her to go as far as murder. I shuddered.

  “Are you okay, Blake?” My sister’s soft words cut into my dark thoughts.

  I shook my head. “Marcy, I’m scared shitless.” I searched her eyes for a sign that everything would be all right.

  “Blake, I’m going to stay with her. We’re going to do a CAT scan and go from there. Stay calm.”

  A KAT scan was more like it. To make sure the psycho hadn’t laced my baby’s veins with poison. Or stabbed her.

  Fifteen agonizing minutes later, we pulled up to a private entrance to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. We were given special treatment partly because my sister was a respected doctor there, heading up the OB/GYN department, but mostly because my family had donated enough money to have a wing named for them. My breath hitched painfully in my throat as I watched the paramedics transfer my beauty to a gurney in record speed. To my absolute horror, she began to convulse. Her tiny body was bucking up and down.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, my voice pure panic.

  “Shit. She’s going into hypovolemic shock,” cried out my sister. “Someone lift up her legs. Move it! Move it!”

  Nausea rose to my chest. I was so close to vomiting I was afraid to open my mouth to ask what this meant. Whatever the hell it meant, it wasn’t good.

  Pushing the gurney, the team of paramedics and nurses raced through the automatic doors of the hospital, with Marcy and me holding on to the railings and keeping up pace. Everything was happening so fast it was a blur.

  We headed down a long corridor toward a set of double doors. The sign above them read: “MEDICAL PERSONNEL ONLY”

  “Blake, you’re going to have to stay here,” breathed my sister as the hospital team wheeled her through. “There’s a waiting room down the hall.”

  “No fucking way,” I blurted.

  “Blake, please. It’s hospital regulations.” Marcy looked at me imploringly.

  I felt like bashing a wall, but I fought my urge and gave in.

  Marcy squeezed one of my balled-up hands. “Blake, I’ll let you know what’s going on as soon as I can.”

  Five minutes later, I was slumped in an armchair in the nearby waiting room. I sunk my head between my hands and rubbed my throbbing temples. My heart was in my stomach, my breathing labored. Shit. What was taking so long? What was wrong with my tiger? Was she going to be okay? The sound of rapid footsteps cut into my mental ramblings. I looked up. Jen’s parents and mine. Like me, they were all still dressed in their wedding finery. Jen’s mother’s eyes were all red and puffy from crying, and her father looked like he’d aged a hundred years. Worry was etched deep in my parents’ faces.

  “Any word?” asked my father, the most composed among us.

  I could hear my jackrabbit pulse hammer in my ears. My lips pinched, I silently shook my head.

  “My little girl’s going to be okay,” murmured Jen’s father, but his words were not convincing. Tapping his cane, his arms tightened around Mrs. McCoy’s trembling shoulders. She held a hand to her mouth to muffle her sobs.

  I loosened my bow tie, and th
en squeezed my eyes shut, hoping I could make this nightmare disappear. My sister’s voice brought my moment of reprieve to an abrupt end. She was now out of her bridesmaid gown and clad in green scrubs.

  “We’re taking Jen to surgery,” she said solemnly.

  I leapt to my feet. “Surgery?”

  “Marcy, can you please be more specific?” asked Jen’s dad, his voice shaky.

  “We found a mass behind her uterus.”

  Still cupping her mouth, Mrs. McCoy could no longer contain herself. “Oh, dear Lord!” she sobbed. Her husband was quick to put a comforting arm around her while my mother, standing next to her, clasped her other hand.

  That ruled out Kat, but confusion mixed with fear. My voice faltered. “But she told me everything was okay after her visit with you.”

  Marcy pressed her lips thin. “Blake, she was. The ultrasound didn’t detect this.”

  “Fuck.” Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Marcy continued. “I’m heading up to surgery now.”

  “Can we see her before she goes?” spluttered Jen’s mom through her tears.

  “I’m afraid not. She’s already in transit. The operation will likely last three hours. I suggest you all get some rest.”

  Three hours? I wasn’t sure if I was going to last that long.

  Her eyes soaked, Jennifer’s mom asked if there was a chapel in the hospital. She and her husband wanted to go there to pray.

  Pray. That’s all we could do. I was going there too.

  Chapter 20

  Blake

  “No, no, stop! Please don’t hurt me!”

  My eyes snapped open. Jen was screaming in her sleep. All hooked up to tubes and monitors, she writhed in her hospital bed, her voice a hoarse whimper.

  Alarmed, I bolted from the bedside chair where I’d fallen asleep. I was still in my tux shirt, though I’d unbuttoned it and chucked the bow tie. In a frightened heartbeat, I was by her side. She must be having one of her Springer nightmares. I smoothed her damp hair, my fingertips grazing her forehead. Her skin burnt beneath my touch. She was hot. I hoped she didn’t have a fever. A sign of infection. Sweat beads laced her pale skin. She looked as if all her blood had been drained from her. My poor tiger. She’d been through so much.

  Sunlight filtered into the room. It was morning, so I thought. I was dazed myself. Last night’s events whirled around in my head, but clarity quickly filled my mind. My baby had had surgery. The lengthy operation had gone well, my sister said. With no complications. Both my parents and Jen’s had anxiously hung out at the hospital until they could see her in recovery. It was going on midnight. Once they saw her resting peacefully, despite all the tubes and monitors she was hooked up to, my sister insisted everyone go home. There was nothing we could do at this point. Jen’s tearful mom didn’t want to leave, but Harold convinced her it was in everyone’s best interest. My parents drove the McCoys to our house where they were staying. Only I stayed behind. I needed to be here for my Jen when she came to. She was transferred to her own private room—a slick suite that looked more like it belonged in a five-star hotel than a hospital. My baby deserved the best. The hospital staff was kind enough to provide me a cot, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Despite being hooked up to all sorts of gizmos, she looked so peaceful. Like an angel with her long satin curls fanned out across the fluffy pillow. I was mesmerized by her beauty, the rise and fall of her chest, and every soft breath. Leaning over her, I gently traced a finger over her warm silky lips—those lips that had set my heart and soul on fire. I relived that first kiss—a kiss from a spunky, blindfolded girl that had forever changed my life. A kiss that had made me love and need someone more than the air I breathed. Memories of all our good times together danced in my head. Our wedding was not among them.

  As I watched her breathe into the wee hours of the morning, the fragility of life hit me like a plane going down. How fast and suddenly it could be taken away. Though she’d pulled through the operation, there was one big unanswered question. I tried to force it to the back of mind, but it weighed on my heart until sleep finally took hold of me.

  Her hallucinatory screams catapulted me back to the moment. I was expecting to awaken to my sleeping beauty. Not this. She continued to twist and turn. I caressed her tortured face as she feverishly shook it side to side.

  “Jen, Jen, it’s me. It’s okay. I’m here. Do you hear me?” I tried to sound calm but inside panic gripped me. With my free hand, I pushed the call button for a nurse or doctor.

  I continued to say her name, my voice desperate, and stroke her hair. Finally, her eyes fluttered opened and met mine. Oh, those beautiful green orbs! I was so happy to see them. She calmed, but a mixture of terror and confusion was still etched deep on her face.

  “Blake,” she whispered, her voice a mere rasp. “Where am I? What happened?”

  It was so good to hear her voice as faint as it was. It took all I had not to shed a tear. I tenderly kissed her warm forehead, my lips on fire from the mere touch of her flesh. I gazed at her lovingly and reverently. Her bewildered eyes stayed fixed on mine.

  “Tiger, you’re at Cedars. You were hemorrhaging. You had to have an operation.”

  “Surgery?” Fear flickered in her eyes.

  I nodded.

  “What did they do?” Her voice was so small.

  My heart was splintering. Should I tell her? My father always said the truth is the best medicine. I swallowed hard.

  “Jen, baby, you had a partial hysterectomy.”

  Her eyes blinked several times. “Meaning what?”

  I chewed my lip. I fucking didn’t want to tell her. “Meaning they found a mass on your uterus and had to remove part of it along with one of your ovaries.”

  Silence. I was expecting tears, but none materialized.

  “Does that mean I can’t have babies?”

  My lips pressed together in a thin dismal line. “I don’t know.” While I knew how much my tiger wanted to give me a den full of little cubs, I’d always love her whether we had children or not. And that wasn’t what was eating at my heart. She read my anxious face.

  “Do I have cancer?” Her tiny voice was stoic. Oh, my brave tiger.

  My heart was shredding. I was so close to shedding tears. “I don’t know. They’re doing a biopsy. The results should be back in the afternoon.”

  “Okay,” she murmured.

  No, it was so not fucking okay. What had I done wrong to deserve this fate? It shouldn’t have been her. My angel. No way.

  Sparing me from saying another word, a nurse walked into the room. Petite, she looked Filipino and was wearing a cheery pink smock.

  “Ah!” she said brightly. “You’re awake, Ms. McCoy.”

  Ms. McCoy. My heart stuttered. Damn it. She was supposed to be Mrs. Burns this morning. And I was supposed to be fucking her brains out on our honeymoon, though right now that didn’t matter. My tiger was alive. And that’s all that counted.

  Without wasting a second, the nurse, whose name was Wanda, plunged one of those high-tech thermometers into her ear, took her pulse, and checked her charts. I held my breath.

  “She has a slight fever; nothing to be alarmed about. All her other vitals seem normal.”

  I blew out a sharp breath of relief. Now, if only her biopsy came back normal. I silently prayed to God.

  “I’d like to sponge her down,” said the sweet nurse, cranking up her bed so my tiger was in a semi-sitting position. Her locks of hair curled like ribbons along the pillow.

  “May I do that? I implored while she ambled to the bathroom.

  “I don’t see why not,” she replied, a slight chuckle in her accented voice.

  She returned from the lavatory with a wet washcloth in her hand. She handed it to me. “Here you go,” she said with a smile. “Just be careful around her incision. I’ll be back soon with something for Ms. McCoy to eat.”

  I thanked the sweet nurse and began to wash my tiger, beginning with her face. Gently, I traced the warm wet
cloth around it. She closed her eyes.

  “Are you okay, baby?”

  She replied with a weak nod.

  “Do you hurt?”

  “Just a little. But I feel so weak and nauseous.”

  The pain meds were doing their job, but I was concerned about her queasiness.

  “You lost a lot of blood. Marcy had to give you a transfusion.”

  As I made my way down her slender arms, she blinked open her eyes. “Marcy?”

  “Yeah. My sister was the surgeon. She’s the best there is. She saved your life.”

  A small smile curled on her lips. The first since she’d regained consciousness. “Blake, I need to thank her.”

  I smiled back at her. “I’m sure she’ll be here shortly.”

  I lowered her thin blanket down to her ankles. She looked so thin. So frail. Gingerly, I lifted her hospital gown, and for the first time, I saw where the incision was. A large thick bandage covered the area—just below her abdomen. My tiger’s beautiful breasts quivered. She managed to take a peek.

  “Guess I won’t be wearing a bikini again.”

  I laughed. Only my tiger could make me do that when I wanted to fucking cry.

  “I hear one-pieces are ‘in’ this year. And truthfully, tiger, I’d rather see you wearing nothing.”

  She squeezed my free hand. “Oh, Blake. I love you so much.” And then the floodgates broke loose. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Baby, what’s the matter?” Panic gripped me by my balls.

  “Oh, Blake, what if I have cancer? I don’t want to leave you.”

  I dabbed her tears away with the cloth. “Stop it, baby. You’re a tiger. You’re going to get through this.” I paused. “We’re going to get through this, do you understand?”

  Thank fucking God, I had some acting skills. On the outside, I stayed calm, but inside I was cracking. I felt so fucking powerless. I was that man who was supposed to protect her and save her from the evils of the world, but this time her superhero couldn’t save her from the uncontrollable and unknown.