Home Again

She covered her eyes with her hand, then slowly, slowly drew her hand away and looked at Angel. “It wasn’t right. The heart wasn’t in good enough shape. I’m sorry.”

“No surgery?” He tried to draw a good breath, couldn’t, heard himself wheezing. “I—” Before he could get the words out, he felt his heart seize up. Pain erupted in his chest. He tried to breathe, but he couldn’t.

I’m dying, he thought suddenly, and he knew it was the truth. He reached out blindly.

Madelaine took hold of his hand, squeezed it hard. Dimly he heard her click a button, heard her yell, Code blue Cardiac ICU 264 west. Stat. Get the cart. Then he felt her hands at his chest, wrenching the cotton gown aside.

Don’t you die on me, Angel. God damn you, don’t you die on me.

He heard her voice through the fog in his mind, through the pain shoving through his chest, shredding his muscles. He wanted to answer, but he couldn’t.

The pain twisted, turned into fire, and exploded in his heart.

Chapter Twelve

Rain drummed on the city streets, splashed on the asphalt roof of the building next door, and formed murky puddles in the loose gravel. Madelaine stood at the window, staring at the misty gray city two floors below her. Down there, it was such an ordinary October day. Nothing different, nothing new.

The Madison Street stoplight blipped from red to green to yellow. Multicolored umbrellas moved down the slick sidewalks, weaving in and out among each other. Cars started and stopped and turned down corners, disappearing beneath green canopies of the neighborhood trees.

Life went on.

But not for Madelaine. Even now, as she stood there, looking at the sights she’d seen a million times, she saw things she’d never seen before. She noticed how the pigeons that perched on the windowsill stuck together, cooing softly to one another; how the leaves that every so often blew from the trees and stuck to the glass were steeped in color—red, gold, green, and brown—how the sunlight could break through the clouds in a spear of butter-yellow light that seemed to shoot from Heaven itself.

Slowly she turned away from the window and moved toward the bed.

Angel lay as still as death, his skin ashen, his lips pale as chalk. He was breathing—finally—without the help of a ventilator. Beside him, the cardiac monitor clicked away, spewing out a second-by-second account of the heart that was failing.

Failing. Had failed.

She plucked up the seamless, narrow sheet of paper and studied the graphlike analysis of his heartbeat, then she leaned over him, brushed the damp hair from his forehead. Her fingers lingered against his warm, sweaty skin. Come on, Angel. Come on.

His eyelids fluttered, but he didn’t waken.

She pressed her hand to the side of his face and closed her eyes. Quietly the memories tiptoed into her mind. She remembered the day she’d met Angel DeMarco. The mousy candy striper and the hell-raiser.

That first day, she meant nothing to him; she’d known that, of course. She could see the falseness in his smile—the way it was just a fraction too calculated to be truly welcoming.

Yes, she saw from the beginning that it was a lie, but she didn’t care. Even a fake smile was so much more than she was used to, and if she closed her eyes and listened only to his words, it was all so painfully sweet….

With the distance of time, she knew what had happened in that moment when he’d first smiled at her. She’d been desperately lonely, and it had never occurred to her that someone would smile at her with genuine affection. Her father had trampled her fragile girl’s self-esteem until she expected much too little.

Angel had come to her when he was discharged, come to her and held out his hand and whispered, “Come with me….

Even now, all these years later, the memory was a current of electricity. She’d been afraid to reach out, but more afraid not to, and so she’d stood there, paralyzed by her own inability to decide.

Come with me….

The second time he said it, it was like a gift. She felt herself go hot, then cold. Words bubbled in her throat and slipped out, unspoken, on a giggling laugh.

She knew he would turn away then in disgust and blow out of her life on the same wind that had brought him, and the panic of that realization made her heart hammer in her chest and her throat go dry. But he didn’t move, he just stood there, his hand reaching toward her. He looked at her, really looked this time, and for a split second the false smile faded and a real one took its place. She knew then, in that instant, that she would do anything—anything—to see him smile at her like that again….

Angel coughed, and the sound caught Madelaine’s attention. She looked down at him.

He blinked, coughed again. She waited for him to waken, and when he didn’t, she pulled up a chair and sat beside him, quietly reading aloud a passage from The Hobbit, which she’d begun an hour ago.

Halfway into the second chapter, he opened his eyes. She waited, not even realizing that she was holding her breath. She closed the book and set it on the bedside table.

“I’m gonna die, aren’t I?” He gave her a quirky, fleeting smile, and for a second he was the old Angel again, and she was the girl who’d loved him with all her heart.