: Chapter 41

“Oh, honey.”

I wake to my mother, brushing my hair from my face.

“Mom?” My voice sounds croaky, and my throat is really sore. “What are you doing here?” But then a sinking sensation fills all the spaces in my brain and my aching body, where I feel hollow. I try to move, pushing up on one elbow only to lower myself back again. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. I hope that’s not the case.

Wasn’t it morning? Afternoon, maybe, last time my eyes were open? How is it dark?

“Hush now.” My mother fusses with the blanket. Why is she here? She lives in Florida, and I live …

“Mom, where is here?” I swallow audibly, and Mom brings a tumbler of water to my lips. Her expression. I know before she says it. I’m in the hospital. My brain supplies the rest. I’m in a hospital in London. And it happened.

“You gave us all such a fright, but you’re okay now.”

“Oh.” She means okay for now. This much I know. Hey, but at least I’m not dead. I want to laugh before a black thought ripples through my head. Maybe I was dead, but I’m still here. Everything seems to fade into the distance. It happened. The thing I’ve been trying to ignore while living my life happened—and I came out on the other side.

“Mom, where is—”

“Dad?”

No. The other one. Daddy. Whit. The man I love. The man I tried to make go away. But I nod, because that’s what she expects. “He’s gone with Whit to get some of your things. Why didn’t you tell us you were staying with him?”

“I didn’t want to worry you,” I say, pressing my head into the pillows. I don’t want to talk about it, but I feel like there’s a lot to be said. A lot of questions to answer as I lift my hand and press it to my chest.

“When he told me about the unexploded bomb. How crazy, sweetheart. You might’ve been hurt.”

I ball my hand into a fist. Which ticking time bomb are we talking about? I survived the first and the second. The third, I guess we’ll see.

“Well,” she whispers, covering her hand with mine. “It’s safe to say we haven’t stopped worrying about you since you left.”

“I know.” Old habits are hard to lay down.

“The doctor will be coming around in a little while. They want to fit the ICD before you leave.” Though her voice is strong, her eyes plead.

An ICD. An implantable cardioverter defibrillator. A machine that could shock my heart into a rhythm should I suffer… well, what just happened, I guess. But it could also shock the hell out of me whether I need it or not. In other words, my heart is the first ticking time bomb, an ICD the second.

But getting away was never just about that.

I sigh as, under my fingers, my heart beats like it should. For now. How long did it not beat for, I wonder. And who found me?

“Will you? Now?” My mother reaches for my hands. “Please, Mimi.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t have it fitted. I just said I needed time.”

“We nearly lost you,” she whispers, turning her face from mine. She shouldn’t spare me her tears. I know she should make me watch as I turn my hand under hers, my turn to offer her reassurance.

I’m here. It happened before I was ready for it. “I’ll do it.” Because really, what other choice do I have?

Doctors come and go, nurses, too. You’re not allowed to sleep in a hospital, it seems. I’m told that, while in a coma, my parents and Whit were told it wasn’t certain whether I’d survive the experience. I’m also informed I’m very fortunate because not only did I live but it seems I don’t bear the scars. Neurologically, at least.

Almost two days in a coma. Where did I go because I have no memory of it?

How they must’ve suffered, my parents and Whit. How they must’ve worried.

It’s safe to say I feel that guilt.

Given the choice, I’d still do it again. I’d still leave.

Sometime later, hours, I think—it’s hard to judge when you’re in the hospital—I open my eyes. It’s still dark, but Whit is seated in a faux leather chair at the left of my bed. His sweater looks wrinkled, and his jeans look less than pristine. His jaw is covered in a thick rasp of stubble, and his hair is a mess.

“Hey,” I whisper, reaching to rub the sleep from my eyes.

“How are you feeling?” His ankle slides from its place of rest on the opposite knee when he sits forward.

“Like I died, and someone shocked me back to living, I guess.” I try to laugh, but it comes out more like a hacking cough. My throat, I think, pressing my hand to it. “I hope I look better than you do.”

Something that looks like dark amusement skitters across his face as one of his beautiful hands lifts, sliding across the bristles. “I haven’t seen a mirror for a while, so I can’t comment.”

“Jeez. Kick a girl when she’s down, why don’t you?”

“Sorry.” As his gaze dips, I experience a pang of regret. Why did I have to hurt him? And then I remember. He wants children. He wants children, and I have a genetic condition that killed my brother and my grandfather, and Lord only knows how many people before him. I have a genetic condition that could kill a child of mine with no advent of science to prevent it. That’s ultimately why I had to let him go.

“No, I’m sorry,” I whisper. “About everything.” Because he knows my secret now. He knows about this thing I’m carrying. The rest he won’t understand. No one ever does. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

He doesn’t lift his head, and he doesn’t immediately answer. But when he does, I feel incredibly small. “Your parents filled in the blanks when I called to tell them you were in a coma.”

“Oh.”

“When you were on a ventilator, a machine that did your breathing for you.”

“I know what a ventilator is.” My answer sounds harsher than it should. Harsher than I’d like it to.

“Then I told the doctors, which seemed to help them. Brugada Syndrome is genetic, right?

“Yes. It’s what killed Connor, though we didn’t know at the time.”

“You’ve known for a couple of years. Had regular testing and watched for the symptoms.”

“I see my parents have been very chatty.”

He stands abruptly, and my unreliable little heart does a jig, settling again when he lowers himself on the bed, taking my hand between his. “What on earth were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I didn’t want to live my live with a sword hanging over my head.”

“So you thought you’d just take your chances. Dice with death?”

“It’s not so cut-and-dried when you’re looking at it from this side.”

“If you’d had the surgery—”

“I see you’ve read the literature,” I mutter, pulling my hand away. “But just the parts that spoke to you. The same parts my parents liked. How it’d save my life. Shock my heart when it stopped. But do you know how?” Before he can answer, I rush on. “By sending eight hundred volts of power into me. Worse than being kicked by a horse, apparently.”

“A horse kick that would make sure you lived.”

That’s why I came to London. To live. Before I gave in to fear because that’s what having an ICD represents to me. Living in fear that I might die.”

“News flash, sweetheart. You already did.”

“I know—it wasn’t supposed to happen. I’ve lived with this for years, and the symptoms only started to appear a few months ago. I figured I’d have time, and I was going to use that time to experience freedom for the first time in my life.

“I didn’t mean for it to touch you. I didn’t come here with the idea of seducing you. I thought you’d be way beyond the touch of a girl like me—and you were. You asked me if I believed in magic that afternoon at your mom’s house.” I feel the tears begin to fall, batting them away with my hands. “I didn’t. Not anymore.”

I don’t know how it happened, but I was already falling for you when I left your apartment with my scrunched résumé in my hand, my insides still pulsing in time with your words.

“Stop. Calm down.” I can see he wants to press me back against the pillows but restrains himself from doing so.

“Why? It’s not like I’m going to die now.” I’m behaving like a child, I know. I have to. I can’t let this go on.

“Isn’t it?” His voice is so arch as he watches me tap my fingers over my chest.

“No, because I’m in the hospital. I won’t be leaving until I’ve had the device fitted.” My fingers close over my chest and swallow over the ache of loss. I won’t regret having the operation. I’ve found I have too much to live for. Even if I can’t have him.

“I’ll never understand it,” he says, dropping his head.

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“I’ll never understand how you could make that choice,” he says, his head coming up, his gaze sharp and unforgiving. “You of all people. You lost your brother to this illness, and you decided to play fucking Russian roulette?”

“It wasn’t like—”

“I’m not finished!” he bellows. My gaze slides to the door, expecting a nurse to come running. Maybe he already warned them. “All that bullshit about going back to Florida. Were you really going to go back to live? Or were you set to die? To rob those who love you of your life.”

“I’ve been living my life for other people since Connor died,” I retort, my tone low and obstinate. “And you want the truth? I wasn’t sure when I left home.” God forgive me for my lie. The worst I’m guilty of is recklessness. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I was just frightened for the longest time. We’re all dying, Whit, from the moment we take our first breath.”

“A nihilist to boot,” he says with an unhappy laugh.

“I could’ve died without ever knowing I had Brugada, just like Connor. A death not chosen. The result out of my hands.”

“Here one minute and gone the next?” he demands with a snap of his fingers. “Well, that nearly fucking happened.” I hate that his hands are shaking. I hate that I’ve put him in this position and made him this angry. But I don’t hate that he was there to save me. To give me another chance. Just because I can’t have him doesn’t mean I don’t want to live.

“I know it might seem strange to you—”

“Doesn’t seem strange at all,” he retorts. “You weren’t thinking of anyone but yourself.”

His words land like a knife to the stomach. They are no more than I deserve.

“So what if I was?” My fear turns physical, a cold lump now in my stomach, my tears running freely now. “Dying or living with the threat of death? Living with the danger of eight hundred indiscriminate volts through my chest? Do you know how anxious I’ve been? No, you wouldn’t know. How could you?”

“Exactly my point. I couldn’t know because you never told me.”

“I just wanted to be an ordinary person,” I almost whisper.

“I won’t pretend I can even imagine I have one iota of that understanding,” he says, his voice softer. Even if he can barely stand to look at me.

“ICDs fail. They save lives, yeah. But they’re not without their own problems.” Not that I’ll go into it with him. They can shock you into a cardiac arrest for no reason. Parts of the device can be recalled; other parts just outright fail. Batteries need replacing and don’t let your iPhone get anywhere near it! I shake my head. Like my phone was even a consideration given the severity of the circumstances. Getting an ICD is signing up to a lifetime of operations—heart surgeries, possible infections. Those kill, too.

“It sounds like you were already weighing up your options for the best way to die when you arrived.”

And now I lie.

“Maybe I was. Maybe you’re right about playing Russian roulette. I considered that I might live a normal life without an ICD, bow out when it’s time.”

“You mean like last week,” he asks, “at the age of twenty-four? Did that time seem right to you?” Anger chases through his second question.

“I thought, hoped when I’d considered that an option, that I would be older. Or else I thought I might have the device fitted and have it kill me early anyway. I don’t know how to explain it.”

I won’t say I never thought these things, but the thoughts were only fleeting and now seem like distant memories, no longer relevant in the current scheme of things. I was working from a place of extreme fear. My fear, my parents fear. Fear of what happened to Connor.

“And you thought running away might help?”

I shake my head. “It felt like buying time. One last hurrah before I gave in.” I wasn’t giving in to death. I was giving in to fear of what life with an ICD would mean.

“Gave in to what?” he asks angrily. “A life where you wouldn’t drop dead without a second’s notice?”

“To terror!” Weakness trembles through my body, but anger chases it much more forcefully. “I bore the burden of my family’s fear for years, can’t you see that? That’s why I lived at home. Why I didn’t visit the gym, drink, or party with my friends. As long as I wasn’t suffering symptoms, I was okay. I wasn’t frightened. Everything was okay. But then at my last cardiology appointment, they repeated the stress test, then laid out the news. I was at risk now. It was real—it was happening.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you’d put your family through the worry of a six-month wait.”

“I wasn’t sure I wanted the ICD.” This is so true, but want didn’t come into it. “Aren’t you listening? It was like being placed between the devil and the deep blue sea. I couldn’t think of their fears anymore because I had too many of my own. That’s why I left. I wanted time to myself. Time to live, to experience life like other girls do. But then there was you.”

“Me,” he repeats gravely. “Another person you couldn’t tell.”

“I didn’t want your pity.” My gaze ducks to the hospital bedding. The crisp, white sheet and the blue-green blanket I run my fingertips over.

“Not even when I said I loved you?”

“Especially not then,” I whisper and watch as a fat teardrop soaks into the cotton. “You deserve someone better than me.”

“Someone who isn’t selfish, you mean.”

His words cut like a knife. I begin to understand that there’s no coming back from this for him. Panic begins to swell inside me. I thought I could explain—I thought I could make him understand. To live or not to live doesn’t seem too difficult now that I’ve had that choice taken away from me. And him along with it because he deserves better than me. Someone who can give him children. Someone far braver than me.

“I was trying not to be selfish.” The words are choked and halting, but I don’t want his sympathy.

It’s just my heart, that troublesome, hurtful muscle, well now it feels like it’s breaking. Typical. I lived for months worried what it might do, and now that it’s breaking in two, it won’t even have the decency of skipping a one solitary beat. I hiccup a sob as a black thought hits: it’s just as well. Better to worry what being shocked back to life feels like than actually experiencing it.

That’s why I lied. Why I said I wasn’t in love with you. Because I am. I really do love you. I love you so much, I still need to let you go.

One hiccuping sob becomes two. I begin to sob quietly. It comforts me that his instinct is to come to me, to hold me. I see it in his aborted movement and how he balls his hands into fists as though to stop himself. I force myself to be strong, to choke back the tears and not fall apart. I can’t quite manage it but try, swiping the meat of my palms under my eyes.

“People who love don’t treat someone like you have treated me.” He looks up, his golden eyes dim. “You were unresponsive, Mimi. Dead in my arms. I will never not see that image or feel that pain. And I will never understand how you could put another human in that position, let alone someone you profess to love.”

“I’m sorry. So, so sorry.” I run the wet back of my hand under my running nose. I must look such a mess. Dirty, straggled hair and a red, blotched face.

“I thought I knew you, but you only let me see what you wanted me to. You’re not all sunshine. That was an act. You have depths you refused to show me, and the thing is, I would’ve still loved you if you had. But you couldn’t see that because you’re no more mature than Lavender or Primrose.” The knife, it twists. “I have enough on my hands looking after them. I have no desire to add another to the burden.”

“I’m sorry,” I say again. Maybe if I say it enough, he’ll believe me. Maybe he’ll understand and see through my tears and my hurtful words. See how he’s become my whole world.

I don’t kid myself for very long as he stands, his next words cutting to the brutal truth of it.

“I’m sorry too, but I’m not looking for someone else to look after.” Through the haze of my tears, I see him by the side of the bed, watch in slow motion as he lowers his head. “Goodbye, Mimi.” He presses a kiss to my head. “I truly hope you find what you’re looking for.”

I already have, I want to say as I watch him walk out of the door with my love.