by Sara Daniel
The mirage lifted his head, and she stared into Colin’s blue eyes, shadowed with concern and not a bit of the annoyance that should have been there for her interrupting whatever business deal consumed his concentration.
“Best drink in days, I bet,” Dad said, indicating the cup of ice.
Days? If she was waking up after surgery, it should be Wednesday, and the juice from the café breakfast she’d shared with Colin the day before certainly trumped anything her parents forcibly pushed between her lips.
“Today is Saturday, 10:37 in the morning,” the Colin look-alike told her, not getting out of his chair.
Yes, definitely Colin, and he’d read her mind. And he seemed to have relocated his office to her hospital room.
He didn’t come to her, not surprising since he was working, which took priority, of course. She yearned to cross the room and touch his hand, but her parents hovered over her, Dad closing in until he blocked her view. Seeing Colin outside the office had to be a mirage, anyway. Too tired to separate reality from hallucinations, she closed her eyes to dream about him for a little while….
Someone paced near her bed, silhouetted against the fading daylight from the window—Peter, probably, bored and impatient as ever, stuck doing another unending vigil no one gave him a choice about. Mom sat knitting in the chair where Willow had imagined Colin earlier, and Dad studied his crossword puzzle.
Stupid. Colin would be the last person to twiddle his thumbs while she slept. His important business didn’t allow him to take time away from his office to go out for dinner, let alone hang out with her unconscious self. She turned her head away from everyone.
And stared straight into his intense blue eyes. Two feet away from the side of the bed, he picked up a cup with a bendy straw and held it toward her. The moment she lifted her hand, pain shot up her arm from the tube inserted in her inner elbow.
“Don’t move your arm. They’ve stuck you with an arterial line, and they’re very protective of it.” Leaning forward, he touched the straw to her chapped lips.
Desperate for the liquid, she opened her mouth before considering the dreadful state of her breath. If he needed a reason to run in the opposite direction, her disgusting hygiene provided one.
But he smiled without the tiniest flinch. “Can you suck?”
Wouldn’t you like to know?
Not that she could speak the flirty words because her voice box still wouldn’t cooperate. Even if the multitude of tubes and wires didn’t tie her down, she lacked the strength to follow through with the suggestive thought. But the fantasy gave her the energy to suck a little water through the straw.
Swallowing was another matter entirely. Her throat couldn’t have hurt more if it had been lined with razor blades. Rewarded with heavenly ice cold water against the dry, bruised lining, she sipped some more.
“That’s enough,” Mom called from across the room. “Let your stomach adjust. You’ll puke if you drink too much right now.”
Yeah, thanks Mom. That’s what I want a guy I like to hear. But she obeyed. The agony from the water’s return appearance wouldn’t even be soothed by a double kick from the morphine drip.
Resting her head on the pillow again, she kept her eyes locked on Colin, soaking in his presence before he returned to his office and left her alone. Smiling, she stared at him until her eyes grew too heavy and sleep overtook her.
When she opened her eyes, he was gone.
Chapter Seven
Despite his reputation for spending hours hunched over his desk without a break, Colin hit a wall if he tried to go more than three hours in the hospital chair without stretching his legs. Although his productivity came in lower than a normal weekend, he accomplished more than if he’d sat in his office trying to ignore the fact that Willow lay in a hospital bed across town.
After cancelling a couple of calls, he delegated some smaller jobs to his vice-president of operations, who seemed shocked and flustered—and almost happy—with the assignments. When the company continued to function, and calls didn’t stream in needing to him to rectify a mess, he handed off more projects, turned off his cell phone, and wandered the halls. Everywhere he turned were kids in need, parents stretched to the breaking point, doctors and nurses employing all their training and skills, and volunteers and social workers filling in the gaps.
At the end of the cardiac floor, he meandered into the waiting room where a teenage volunteer played Chutes and Ladders with a girl wearing jeans and a sweater, rather than a hospital gown. The volunteer smiled at him in welcome, and the girl turned luminous brown eyes on him.
“Want to play?”
“Love to. What do we do?”
“You haven’t played this before?”
He didn’t remember, but he doubted it, so he shook his head. His grandparents, consumed with running their hardware store, didn’t spare time for games.
“I’ll teach you. I can teach you every game here.”
He glanced at the open cabinet, stuffed with at least two dozen brightly-colored boxes. “You come here a lot?”
The girl nodded. “My brother’s sick and needs a new heart.”
A sudden lump prevented him from swallowing. A new heart. Did Willow have that in her future, or had her surgery solved her problems? He didn’t know. Every day the medical staff discussed the amount of fluid draining from every orifice and tube, her temperature, heart rate, oxygen saturations, and a dozen more incomprehensible things. But a simple overview of her condition and future prognosis never became part of the discourse.
After playing games and being gone longer than intended, he returned to Willow’s room, where her mother leaned over the bed, combing her clean, wet hair.
“As soon as you get these last two chest tubes out, you can walk around. Then I can wash your hair while you sit in the shower stall.”
Despite her mother’s excitement, Willow didn’t crack a smile.
Colin bit back the urge to volunteer to shower with her, comb shampoo through her wet hair, and ensure her medical device connections weren’t disturbed. The shared shower wouldn’t be of the sexual variety, not for a very long time, anyway. That didn’t matter.
Doing nothing for her day after day, killed him. He had no medical training, and he sure wasn’t God. No matter how much money he saved, and every future contingency he planned for, he couldn’t buy a miracle.
“Bob and Linda are organizing a benefit dinner,” Peter announced from across the room, looking up from his iPad. “They want to know if a month from now is a good time, or if it’s too soon.”
“For God’s sake, Peter, we’re not going to think about that now,” their mother said, warning lacing her tone. “Our focus is on Willow’s health.”
“Studies show looking forward to a party improves patient health,” he argued.
“We will not discuss medical bills at all in this room. Period.”
“I like parties,” Willow croaked, her voice scratchy with disuse.
“Do you need more water? Another pillow? How about more blankets?” Her mother barraged her with questions.
Peter grinned, giving her a thumbs-up sign behind their mother’s back.
“What’s a six-letter word for surgeon?” Their father waved his puzzle book.
“Sadist,” Willow muttered, and her family laughed.
Colin leaned against the wall, smiling at their affection and protectiveness. Cocooned in the unconditional support of a loving family, she needed nothing from him that they hadn’t already given her a hundred times over.
Instead, he needed love in his life. He needed her. His long hours in the office were supposed to fulfill his future needs. But closed off from others with the narrow focus of financial planning at the exclusion of everything else, he ensured his real future needs would never be filled.
***
At first, Willow feared she’d lose Colin’s presence the moment she closed her eyes, but he always seemed to be around. Sometimes he slipped away for a few
hours, but without fail he returned. The times he consulted his phone or computer became both rarer and briefer.
The doctors removed the last of the chest tubes. After she proved her ability to shuffle all of six steps to the bathroom, they saved her from the ignominy of the catheter, too. Encouraged to walk longer distances, she tried, but moving hurt like hell. Crossing the room exhausted her to the point she needed a long nap to recover, but proving her strength would earn her the coveted discharge.
Peter and her parents no longer spent nights in the hospital with her, and her brother returned to work, so he didn’t use all his vacation time on this horrible non-vacation.
After tipping her bed into a full, sitting position, she swung her legs over the edge. Colin materialized at her side. “Going somewhere?”
“A walk.” Her voice still sounded scratchy, but didn’t hurt as long as she didn’t overuse it.
“Hang on. Your IV is twisted with your blood pressure cuff.” With the patience of a veteran nurse, he unraveled the devices and consolidated the poles for travel. “How far are you planning to go?”
“How far do you think I could get before they stopped me?”
“If security doesn’t stop you for running off with their monitors,” he deadpanned, “the city police will arrest you for letting your ass hang out of that gown.”
Good God, surely he had better options for female companionship than a woman forced to wear a hospital gown, and whose most ambitious goal involved walking down the hall and back. She battled the depressing thought and attempted to maintain levity. “I bet I’m the flashiest date you’ve ever had.”
A smile flirted around his lips. “You make every day an adventure.”
“I recommend skydiving. It’s a helluva lot better as far as adventures go.” She snorted then clutched her side, her amusement dying in the onslaught of pain. “Don’t make me laugh. Someone rearranged my insides while I slept, and every time I do, they shift around again.”
Colin steadied her with a hand on her elbow, toting along her train of tubes and wires during her walk to the doorway. Despite the necessity of the surgery, the pain and discomfort were a million times worse after the fact.
“Your mom tells me this is your fifth open-heart surgery, plus some other hospitalizations and procedures.”
“Nah, Mom exaggerates.” The automatic attempt to downplay it slipped from her lips, but hiding the truth from him at that point seemed futile. “Only four open-hearts. On my first surgery as a baby, they went in from the side.” Lifting her left arm, she let him look down her sleeve below her armpit to the scar between her ribs. If he wanted to ogle her boob, too, the hospital stripped her of her modesty—and, sadly, her sex drive.
“So, is tricuspid atresia a genetic thing you could pass on to your kids?”
“My kids?” Downplaying her health concerns proved too successful. Once she outlined the seriousness of her condition, she had to free him to find the full, healthy life he deserved. “Genetic, no. The statistical risk is slightly higher. Regardless, I’ll never have children. The chances of me surviving pregnancy are worse than me surviving this last surgery. My body can’t handle the increased strain pregnancy would place on my circulatory system.” At the moment, her body could hardly handle putting one foot in front of the other.
“That makes sense.” Understanding and concern infiltrated both his tone and the touch of his thumb skimming the bare skin of her arm. “I’m glad you’re smart enough not to risk it.”
Shocked by his lack of horror or even disappointment, she stopped walking in the middle of the hall. The distance, combined with the effort of carrying on a conversation and sorting through her roiling emotions, left her breathless.
If she’d crushed some happy family fantasy, he showed no sign. Of course, with his future planned out long before he met her, maybe she’d read too much into his continual hospital presence.
“Don’t you want kids?”
“I never planned for them in my future, but after the better part of a week in this environment, I think I’d like to volunteer with the ones here.” Grasping her arm, he shifted her pole of assorted paraphernalia. “We should walk back.”
Too unsteady and exhausted to argue, she allowed him to lead her toward her room. Somehow, she had to find a way to let Colin go. He didn’t realize how much he’d be giving up to stay with her. He wouldn’t even be able to count on a lifelong partner, and he deserved much better than a woman who would die on him and leave him with a broken heart.
***
“My parents plan to stay with me for a few weeks,” Willow told the discharge nurse.
Behind the nurse, Colin tried to catch her eye to remind her she had him as an available resource, too.
“Our main concern is you have someone to help out who will keep you from overexerting yourself.”
“No chance of that with Mom around, even if I wanted to,” Willow assured her. “And Peter lives in town. He’ll drop by whenever I need something, and check in with me every day.”
Colin’s frustration mounted. He’d thought she didn’t want to formalize anything he would feel bound to, but with every passing day she excluded him more, shutting him out of her life despite his continual presence.
Worse, she used the ploy of not upsetting and antagonizing the girl recovering from heart surgery as a shield.
After the liaison left them alone, her brother at work, and her parents out grocery shopping in preparation for her homecoming, he said, “I can help you, too.”
“No need. Everything’s taken care of.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“I have free time to do whatever you need. I’m not chained to my desk like before. You changed me. You’re the reason I can’t miss out on the present while I’m preparing for the future. I have to live now.”
“I’m glad.” Tears filled her eyes, contradicting her words. “I really am. But I’m focusing on the future now—your future.”
“My future?” Why would she worry about his future when she knew he’d prepared for every financial contingency?
“Colin, my heart condition won’t go away or get better on its own. This repair might last another ten years. Or, I may have issues again in six months. They might be able to do another repair, or I might need a heart transplant. Then again, I might go into heart failure and die before the doctors recognize a problem. I can’t plan for the future because I have no idea if I’ll have one or not.”
The unpredictability didn’t scare him away. In fact, the prognosis spurred him not to waste whatever time they did have, apart. “Then I choose to share whatever future you do have. Maybe I’ll get hit by a cab when I walk out of here and die before you. Maybe I’ll get cancer, and you’ll have to nurse me back to health.”
“Yes, anything can happen. But the odds are, I’m going to leave you first, and if you’re with me up until then, chances are you’re going to love me, and my death will break your heart. I don’t want you to go through that.”
He opened his mouth, but she didn’t give him an opportunity to speak.
“Years ago, in the hospital, I met someone who became a close friend. Over time, our relationship evolved into love. We shared a similar medical history, which gave us a special bond. I sat with him through his last surgery and hospital stay at the age twenty-one, like you’re doing with me now. Two weeks after surgery, as they were preparing him for discharge, he developed a lung infection and died the next day. I thought we’d go home and live happily ever after, and he was gone. Losing him hurt more than any chest tube, intubation, or catheter you can imagine. I love you, Colin, and I’m not going to put you through that.”
With his heart aching for the guilt and burden her heart condition forced her to carry, he reached for her hand. “If you love me, why are you hurting me, and yourself?”
“I told you why.” Fat teardrops glistened in her eyes, and she tried to shift away.
Without disturbing the IV line, he continued to hold her,
to show her he wouldn’t let go and allow her to push him aside. “Do you really think my heart will break any less if something happens to you when I’m not around? Life isn’t perfect. I’ve walked this floor enough this week to realize some people have gotten a pretty shitty draw. I’ve also spent enough time in this building to know that compared to a lot of kids, you have a helluva lot to be thankful for and a damn good chance of a healthy future. I love you, and I want to share that future with you for however long we have.”
Somehow, an insistence that she acknowledge his offer to help had grown into a confession of love, and an almost-proposal. Why stop at halfway? If their years or days together were short, he didn’t want to waste any of them. Because of her, he’d learned to live in the moment.
“Willow, will you marry me?”
She stared at him, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I can’t do that to you. I’m sorry.”
The curtain pushed back, and Peter entered the room. Freezing at the sight of his sister’s face, he rounded on Colin. “What the hell did you say to her? Get out. You’re not welcome here.”
Willing her to reconsider, Colin squeezed her hand one more time. But she pulled it free and faced the wall. Blinking away his own emotion, he stepped back, determined not to make her miserable when she needed her emotional strength and good spirits to heal.
“Look me up if you change your mind, even if it’s when you’re eighty and you only do it because you’ve outlived your money.”
Chapter Eight
Willow scanned the restaurant, hoping her friends and family were having a wonderful time, enjoying the meal they’d paid too much for, knowing the proceeds would help pay her medical bills. After itching to get out of the house and away from her parents’ month-long coddling, she didn’t know where to go, or who to talk to first. Dr. Marshall still wanted to keep her off work for a few more weeks, so she didn’t overdo anything, but she feared she’d go crazy if she had to wait any longer to resume her normal life.