Forever Loved (The Forever Series) (15 page)

“Can we get you anything?” one of the men asked.

I shook my head.

“Your nurse will check in with you soon.” He glanced at the whiteboard. “Looks like you’re getting Suzie. She’s a good one.”

After they left, the room was quiet and still. I didn’t have any books. No one to talk to. Not even my phone to check. Solitude I was familiar with, but having no type of diversion was going to kill me.

A bouncy young nurse in scrubs emblazoned with ducks breezed in. “Hello, Corabelle,” she said as she checked all the tubes and wires. “I’m Suzie. I’ll be with you until evening.”

I stared at her ducks, my throat thick. The cartoon images were either the same brand as the ones I had put on Finn that last time, or remarkably similar. I had avoided prints like that ever since, but here they were, leaning over my hospital bed. Maybe they were a sign that he was watching, like the butterfly by the ambulance door.

“Is Gavin coming?” I asked.

Suzie’s face puckered. “I’m not sure. Is that your…husband?” She hesitated, I knew, because I didn’t seem old enough to be married.

“Yes,” I said. Why not? “He was in the ICU waiting room.”

“I can buzz over there and make sure they tell him you’ve moved.”

“Thank you.”

But all that was unnecessary, as after a quick knock, his dark head peered through the doorway.

“We’re here,” Suzie said. “You must be the husband.”

His eyebrows shot up and a mischievous grin crossed his face. My heart caught, and I caught a brief flash of what it had been like to be in high school, without any doubts about him at all, just reveling in the harmony we always found when we were together.

“I am indeed.” He strode into the room and dragged a chair next to the bed. “You’re looking better,” he said to me. The back of his hand brushed my cheek. “You’re pink again.”

The nurse picked up her iPad. “You’re allowed water, so I’ll get you some. And a soft breakfast will come in a few hours.” She flicked through several screens. “Pain meds are in your IV for now.” She looked up. “I think you’re all set. Is the bed in a good position?”

“Can I go a little higher?”

She nodded and reached for the button. “Just don’t tire yourself out.”

My head came up a few inches, and breathing was a lot easier again.

“Thank you,” Gavin said.

She headed for the door. “Buzz me if you need anything.”

He waited for her to disappear, then said, “Alone at last.”

“Next time I try to be all dramatic, just tie me to something until I calm down.” I felt a cough coming on and gripped the sides of the beds. The gurgle in my chest was something I could not get used to, and as the tickle grew into a full-on expulsion, I could tell goo was going to come out.

I pointed at the sink area of the room. “Paper towel,” I wheezed, trying not to suck the gunk back into my throat.

Gavin jumped up and snatched several sheets, hurtling back to me with a spryness I remembered seeing on the track field, back when he’d been forced to do a sport by his father. He’d been great, except that doing it for his dad was a huge demotivator.

“Turn around,” I told him, and when he was looking the other way, spat the gunk into the paper towel. This had been going on since midnight, when I woke up with the urge to expel the contents of my chest. I balled up the towel and shoved it under the sheets. “Okay.”

When he settled back in the chair, his face was distressed. “You all right?”

“It’s got to come out.” I shrugged. “Hospitals are not sexy.”

He grabbed my hand. “You’ll get out.”

“I was hoping to be in class this morning. It’s Monday. Astronomy.”

“No chance of that.”

I sank back against the pillow, watching him. I couldn’t get enough of that black mop, those sideburns, his jaw. Sometimes I felt I was seeing him for the first time.

He played with my fingers, working up to something. “So, what happened? Why were you out of your room?”

I figured he’d get to that. “Parents. Dad.”

He nodded. “He’s definitely holding a grudge.” He shifted to one side and tugged a key ring from his pocket. My keys. “I gave him these back, but then he returned them, saying I was doing a good job watching your place.”

“That’s progress.” I had planned to let his disappearance go, but the keys had been a big factor in everything that happened. “So, Friday? Where did you go?”

His expression never wavered. He had always been better at holding in his feelings than I was, but normally he didn’t keep things from me. This time, though, I could see he had something to hide.

“Elbows in a grease pit.”

“All day?”

His jaw tensed. “One of the women — the paid ones — tried to take advantage of me. I had to deal with it.”

Bitterness that he’d ever been with women like that burned in my belly. “How?”

“Just got me tangled up in her family business. I got out of it. It’s fine now.”

I noticed now a nick on his chin, a cut surrounded by a bruise. “Come here,” I said.

He leaned in, expecting I might want to kiss him, but I ran my fingers across the injury. “Were you in a fight?”

“I get in a few scrapes here and there.”

“Since when?”

“It’s in the past, Corabelle. I play pool. I place bets. Sometimes drunk people get pissy.” He sounded exasperated with me.

“This is not the past. This is now.” The extra volume in my voice caused another coughing fit to begin and I sucked in air, pointing back to the paper towels.

This time he pulled the whole metal container off the wall and set it on the rolling table by the bed. Typical Gavin.

I snatched a couple from the bottom and scraped my tongue with the rough paper to extract the goo. God, this was too much.

He sat in the chair, looking at the floor, waiting for the spell to pass. I balled up yet another round and shoved it in my stash.

Gavin must have seen that movement, as he hopped up and snagged a trash can from the corner.

“Thanks.” I dumped the balled-up paper into the bin.

He stared at the plastic container for a moment as if he wanted to comment on it, then set it back down. As much as I wanted to ask him what was on his mind, if the whole towel thing was too disgusting for him, I didn’t want to know. Probably the same as he didn’t want to know how I felt about what happened Friday.

Before I could prompt him again about the bruise, he changed the subject. “Jenny came to see you.” He reached around for his jacket on the back of his chair. “She brought you this.” He passed over a packet of chocolate-covered espresso beans. “I didn’t even know you liked them.”

“I do.” I held the packet on my belly and lay back. I was so tired. Maybe it was best to just let it go for now. “Remember how you came over that night, the first night, and just talked to me?”

He leaned forward on the bed, running his fingers up and down my arm. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget anything about that night.”

“Can you do it again?” I closed my eyes. “Elementary school. That would be good.” The past was easier. Simple times.

His voice was smooth and exactly the tonic it had always been. “So remember Mrs. Grady?”

I smiled. “Yes.”

“She had a bottle of cough syrup in her drawer, and back then we thought that’s what it really was. One time, Michael Rollins decided to steal it and take it on the playground.”

His words rolled over me like the sea sounds on the white-noise machine we once had. I didn’t think I was tired, but his story kept skipping parts, and I realized that it wasn’t him, but me, and that sleep was going to snatch me away.

~*´♥`*~

Gavin was still on the chair, looking at his phone, when I woke up.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

“No word from my parents?” I tried to prop myself up, but it was too much effort.

“It’s only eight a.m.”

“Oh, so I didn’t sleep long.”

“Nope.”

“I’m used to waking up and having days pass.”

He laughed. “I wish I could do that.”

“I guess they have my phone still.”

“They have all your things. But I would expect to see them anytime now.”

I fumbled for the button to the bed and buzzed the head up a little so it was easier to breathe. “I did get loose of the social worker, at least.”

“Really?” A dark expression crossed his face.

“You think I should talk to her?”

“No, no. I mean, not unless you want to.” He stuffed his phone back in his pocket.

“I just want to get out of here.”

“Me too.”

A knock at the door made us both tense up. “Playtime’s over,” I said.

But the face that peeked in wasn’t my mother or father, but surrounded by tiny sprigged-out pigtails.

“Tina?” I pushed the button to sit up even more. “You’re here already?”

“They flew me in for a thirty-day contract. If it works out, they’ll keep me on.”

“Really?”

“Yup. I set up the art room yesterday, but you were in ICU, so I couldn’t see you.” She stood at the end of the bed, all respectable looking in a blue ribbed sweater and long black skirt. Only when I saw her legs did I see her personality in her outfit — black-and-blue-striped leggings.

She turned to Gavin. “You must be the boy.”

“Tina, this is Gavin.”

She extended a hand and they shook. “Nice to meet you.” She turned back to me. “So what’s all this?” She swirled her hand in the air.

I glanced over at Gavin as he shifted in his chair.

Tina missed nothing. “Something happened.”

“I had a mishap,” I said.

She glanced down at my wrists, a movement neither Gavin nor I missed.

“No, not like that. I mean, I ended up in the ocean, and I caught pneumonia.”

Tina looked back and forth between us. “Interesting timing.”

I didn’t know what else to say. I had only met Tina once. She was the one who had convinced me to come clean to Gavin.

“We’re good,” I said. “I told him everything.”

“And he’s still here. That’s a promising sign.”

We stared awkwardly at each other for another minute.

“Well,” Tina said, “I have to go set up for my first art therapy. I just wanted to come by and say, ‘Thank you.’ It’s a career move I didn’t see coming.”

“I think you’ll be great,” I said. “Who knows, I might end up in your class.”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “That might not be a bad thing, you know. Sometimes we have to admit that we can’t do everything on our own.”

Gavin stiffened, and I could see he was taking this all wrong. “I’m here now,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”

Tina turned to him. “I believe you. Just — just don’t take anything for granted. It’s a slippery slope.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

She held his gaze for a moment, challenging him. I could see she knew all the ways men could fail and expected him to do the same. “I’ll drop by again later.” She waved and slipped through the door.

“What’s the story with her?” Gavin asked.

“I met her a week ago, after she did a suicide talk.”

Gavin snapped his fingers. “I remember her. She’s come before. I’ve seen posters.”

“Yeah.”

His forehead creased. “So you went to a suicide talk?”

“No, I just drove her to the airport after.” I realized I was giving him the same runaround I’d done with the social worker. It shouldn’t be that way. “The doctor thought it would be a good idea. She lost a baby too. He lived three hours.”

Gavin looked at the door as if he could see the pain in her wake. “She had a tragic air about her.”

“She’s been some bad places.”

“Suicide, obviously, if she does talks.”

“Yeah.”

The muscle in his jaw started to twitch, and I braced myself for what he might say next. After a lengthy pause, he asked, “Do you — do you think about that?”

“No,” I said reflexively. “I mean, not really. I guess I do things that are probably…not…typical.” He didn’t know about the black, my escape. It was in my past, and I had planned to leave it there. But then I had just done it two days ago.

“Corabelle, when I was at your apartment,” he paused, trying to find the words.

My brain raced. What might he have found? I didn’t keep a journal. I never left any clues about what I did.

“I took out your trash.”

I knew where this was going. “You found the bags.”

“With holes in them.”

I pictured my moment in the dorm, the sack on my head, throwing up into the plastic. “It’s a quirk I have.”

“Why do you do it?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Try.”

“I had a rough time, a year ago, after the professor.” I stopped, squeezing my eyes shut.

He reached for my hand. “You can tell me anything.”

No secrets. We’d agreed. “I had been doing this thing when I got distressed, where I hyperventilate until I sort of…black out.”

“Like pass out? All the way? Unconscious?”

I nodded.

He expelled his breath in a rush. “Okay.”

“And one night, that night, I guess I thought I would take it a step further, with the bag.”

“Corabelle…”

I turned to him, seeing the distress all over his face. “It was okay. My body saved itself. But since then, I just didn’t want the temptation. The risk.”
 

He brought my fingers to his lips, warm against the chill of my skin. “I’m going to be here from now on.”

“I know. I’ll be fine.”

“When was the last time you did it?”

“The bags? Not since that one time.”

“The blacking out.”

My chest hurt so much more with his question. To lie? Or tell the truth? “Friday.”

“Here? In the hospital?”

“Yes.”

He held my hand in both of his now, his head bowed as if he couldn’t bear to look at me.

“I’m sorry if I seem too crazy. I get it if it’s too much for you.”

His grip on me was so tight, like he was hanging on to the last rope before being cast out to sea. “You’re not too crazy. Whatever there is about you, I accept it. We’ll work it out. We’ll figure it out.”

My belly heaved with the release of all the emotion I’d held so tightly inside. “I love you, Gavin. I don’t know how I got through those years without you. I should have looked for you. I should have known where you’d be.”