She laughed, and I could tell she was pretty excited. “Check you out in the penguin outfit! Pretty slick, Nick!” She used to say that little rhyme to me a lot, so it made me happy.
“Can I get you some champagne?” I asked. She said yes, so I made my way over to the little makeshift bar they had set up and got us a couple glasses. When I got back, she was talking with the doctor that I’d met in the meeting, the first day I’d seen Julia again. When I came up, he shook my hand and thanked me again for donating, but then moved into the crowd, leaving me alone with Julia. We sipped our champagne. It was in those tall skinny glasses that are so narrow it’s hard to fit your nose in the glass.
Waiters were circulating with trays of canapes, and Julia and I took a couple.
“What are these?” she said.
They looked like fluffy piles of orangey foam on top of little skinny pieces of toast. “I have no idea,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I’m paying for this party, and they’re serving me food I can’t identify.”
“Ha! The caterers were probably like, ‘He’s just some dumb kid with a billion dollars. Let’s see what crazy food we can make for this party!’”
“Oh, thanks a lot!” I said. “The sad part is, you’re probably right. Well? You brave enough to try it?”
“Hell, yeah!” We both bit down at the same time. The expression of bliss on her face was so extreme it was almost funny. “Oh my GOD,” she finally said when she’d swallowed her bite. “I don’t care what they are, I just want more. Where did that waiter go?”
In that moment I wanted to grab her and kiss her. The whole Julia experience was too much to handle with her looking so beautiful. Being with her was the best, but it was also a kind of torture. We were pretending. We were dancing around our feelings, acting like the stuff on the surface was all there was. At least I was. How did she feel? I had no idea. My hopes for how I wanted her to feel got in the way of being able to tell what was really going on with her.
I decided then that somehow I would get her alone and tell her everything. The hell with what she remembered or didn’t remember. I couldn’t go on just pretending it was okay to be casual friends with her.
“Julia, this party isn’t going to last very long. After we cut the ribbon, it will be over. I’d love to take you out someplace really nice. Seems a shame to waste that dress on these stuffy hospital people. Would you like to go to dinner at La Maison?”
Oh, wo
w,” she said. Her eyes traveled over my face for long, long moment, and then she smiled and said, “Yes. That sounds really nice.”
I took her hand and tried to draw her a little closer, but she backed off and let go of my hand. She said, “Where’s that guy with the little orange thingies? Do you want another one?”
Before we could locate the waiter, the hospital administrator came up to us and said, “Okay kids! It’s ribbon-cutting time. Just keep your speeches short, less than five minutes is fine.”
“Speeches?” Julia’s face turned white, her red lipstick standing out like a slash against her face.
I took her hand and squeezed it. “It’s going to be okay. You just have to say a couple of things, smile, keep looking beautiful.” I took a chance and put my arms around her, and felt her relax into them. “That part should be easy, Jule. You’ve got this,” I whispered.
She nodded and looked up at me. “I’ll be okay, I guess. Will you talk first?”
“Sure. And I’ll be right beside you the whole time.”
She exhaled and straightened her shoulders. “Okay. I’m ready.” She kept hold of my hand as we walked to the front of the room.
Someone had taped a wide red ribbon across a door that people had been passing through all this time. The administrator stood beside us holding a comically huge pair of scissors. He nodded at me to let me know I should start talking. I hadn’t thought much about what to say.
“Ladies and gentleman,” I started. “It will be three years ago this August that this young woman here, Julia Winthrop, was brought to Greenwood Hospital in an ambulance. She had suffered extensive injuries in an auto accident. She was transferred from the ER to the ICU, where for three weeks she fought for her life. The amazing doctors and nursing staff of Greenwood brought her from a critical condition, in a coma, to stability and good health. Today, after more surgery, she is the vision of loveliness you see before you.” People clapped, surprising me. “When I left Greenwood, I was just a college kid, and through some events almost as miraculous as Julia’s recovery, I earned a lot of money. I decided to give to the hospital that saved the life of a woman who is very dear to me. Thank you.” People clapped again, harder this time. I turned to Julia, who was giving me a strange look from the corner of her eye.
She stepped forward and said, “I don’t remember much about my time here in the ICU, but I know that if it hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t be here right now. The care I received here inspired me to enter the medical field myself, and I am currently a nursing student at the university, doing my clinicals at Greenwood.” This got scattered applause too. “I don’t know how to express my gratitude, but I hope the staff here knows how much I feel. I also want to thank Nicholas Cochran for his gift of the new ICU. I know that many more people will be helped here because of it. Thank you.”
The crowd kind of went nuts with clapping and I heard a long wolf-whistle too. Julia was all smiles, probably relieved that the speeches were over. The administrator handed me the giant scissors. Julia and I both held them, each of us taking one handle, and slowly pinched the red ribbon between the blades. Flashbulbs went off all around us. Finally the ribbon was cut all the way through, and I turned to Julia and kissed her cheek to the sound of applause as more cameras flashed. She didn’t object, but smiled at me. Her eyes sparkled in their green depths, and I wished we were alone. But we would be soon enough.
There was the usual confusion and hubbub of a bunch of people suddenly talking and moving around at once. Most of them seemed to be heading for the exits, and I thought it would be a good time for Julia and me to go, too. Just then, I got a text from my new assistant, Mark. “The letter got here,” it read. “Should I open it?”
My stomach dropped. I had told him to get in touch with me the instant the letter from the university arrived. “Open it,” I texted back.
At this point Julia noticed my texting, and said, “What’s up?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “Hang on.”
She frowned a bit and turned away to talk to another well-wisher, this time the wife of a former mayor of Greenwood.
It took forever for the answering text to come in, but when it did, it read, “It’s a GO.”
I couldn’t help it, I said, “Awesome!” Heads turned, including Julia’s.
“What’s awesome?” she said with a smile.
“It’s a brand new project for me. Whew! I can’t wait to get going!”
She stiffened. “Oh really?” she said, and her eyes were suddenly blazing with anger. “I knew it. I knew that you wouldn’t stay. Sooner or later you would turn your back and walk away again.” That’s exactly what she did then, turned and walked through the doorway where we had just cut the ribbon.
I chased after her. “Wait! Julia, let me explain!”
She was walking fast through a hallway, the skirt of her dress a red silk flag behind her, but now she turned and faced me in the empty hall. “There is no explanation for this. You did it before, you’re doing it again. At least now I can stand on my own two feet, at least now I don’t have to start my whole life over from scratch.”
I was stunned. All this fury because she thought I was leaving town? “This is what I’ve been—”
“Look. Nick. I’m done. I did this thing for the hospital like you wanted, I even started to let you…. But I’m done. You’re not getting the chance to do this to me again. Do me a favor.” She took a deep breath. “Do not ever try to see me again. Don’t call, don’t email…of course what am I worried about? It’s not like you did any of those things the last time you bailed on me. But understand this: I don’t ever. Ever. Want to lay eyes on you again.”
I grabbed her arm before she could turn away. “Julia stop! You have no idea what this is. You don’t even know why I left!”
“What difference does it make? What I knew was that when I got out of the ICU, you were gone.”
“It matters! My god, Julia, you have no idea what I went through.”