“I’m okay now that you’re here.” I labored to breathe, and I knew I had to get to a doctor, but I didn’t want him to leave, not even to get us back to shore.
“I told you I’d get you out of that storm. I told you I’d keep you safe.” He rocked me against his chest.
“I wasn’t worried about me,” I said in a thick voice, closing my eyes to savore the feel of his strength wrapped around me. “I was worried about you.”
“It was just a storm. I’m a little waterlogged. That’s it,” he said in a gentle voice. “Your breathing sounds worse. Lay down, sweetheart while I head the boat to land. We’ll be at the emergency room in a flash.” He pried my fingers from him. “Kelly, I’m not going anywhere besides the deck.”
“I don’t want you to. I want you to stay right here beside me where I can feel you.” The urgent need to be close to him almost outweighed the difficulty I was experiencing trying to keep breathing, but it just kept getting harder. I’d never wanted anything as much as I wanted each new gasp of air, but I felt so tired, so drained. It was like my body had known when to give up, but my heart couldn’t seem to agree with it.
“You can feel me all you want later, and maybe I’ll do some feeling of my own. Right now, you need to see a doctor, and it’s my job to get you there.” He kissed my forehead and gently pulled away. “Don’t worry. All you have to do is call and I’ll come running.”
I watched him fade into the light that spilled down through the stairs and once he’d disappeared, I shuddered from the cold, wet rain he’d left behind. Again, I thought about the fear and what feeling like I could lose Tyler would do to me.
I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around my chest, feeling no comfort in the soft bed beneath me or the resumed gentleness of the ocean. I knew he would never agree to stay away, and that no amount of talking would persuade him. And if he saw me in that hospital bed, it would haunt him forever. There was no amount of strength in his body that could save me. And there wouldn’t be anything left to save him once I was gone. A memory of Alicia’s face popped into my mind, and fresh fear weighed me down. What if he felt guilty after I was gone? I wouldn’t be able to tell him he had no reason to feel that way.
I’m nothing without him, I’d thought. What if he thought that, too? He’d been everything I’d loved, everything I’d needed—everything period. I knew I could face my own death. I just couldn’t face myself if I allowed him to watch it.
The pain exploded in my head with no warning, and I cried out, thrusting my hands to my temples, trying to make it go away. It ripped through me.
“Kelly?” Tyler exclaimed, kneeling before me. “What’s wrong? I heard you scream.”
“Head...hurts.” I closed my eyes, and blackness folded around me like a soft, black curtain.
* * *
“Kelly?” Tyler called my name. Gentle but strange hands touched me, lifting my body. Panicked, I tried to block them but couldn’t. Pain blossomed in my skull. “It’s okay, Kelly. They’re EMTs. Don’t fight them.” Everything started to move, and I felt disoriented.
“Tyler?” I called.
“I’m here.” A hand wrapped around mine and squeezed. “I told you I’d be here.”
I pushed past the blackness and opened my eyes. Tyler’s face came into focus first. Then I saw the EMTs. Finally, I realized that I was on a gurney being rolled toward an ambulance; the motion had caused my disorientation.
“What happened?” I asked while lifting my hand to my head, trying to get to the pain.
Tyler gently brushed my hands away. “You passed out, sweetheart. How’s your head?”
“Hurts,” I mumbled. “Bad.” I closed my eyes.
“Can’t you give her something for the pain?” Tyler asked in a rough voice that demanded an answer.
“Nope. Not without a doctor’s orders.”
Tyler squeezed my hand. “Hang in there, Kelly. Just hang in there.”
Chapter Seventeen
I’d been silent throughout the hell-bent ride in the ambulance, mostly because of the oxygen mask over my face that made talking difficult. The sirens wailed, stopping the traffic around us. Tyler sat next to me, holding my hand. His dark hair had dried in the usual wave upwards that he often raked his fingers through, brushing it from his face. As stale sunlight filtered in through the windows, it caressed his face, highlighting the stubble on his chin.
His unblinking eyes focused on the equipment around us. The I.V. The oxygen mask. His eyelids clenched together as though trying to shut it out, and a pained frown lined his face. He clenched his jaw so tightly I could feel the pressure of it in his grip. Although he sat close, his back was braced against a wall, his shoulders squared sharply.
With the oxygen, breathing became much easier, but it didn’t take away the fatigue that tugged at me. I doubted anything could take that. Despite the weakness, I squeezed Tyler’s hand reassuringly. His eyes quickly opened and focused on me.
“How are you feeling?” he asked slowly. His shoulders rounded out as he leaned closer.
“Better,” I said, holding onto the calmness of the painkillers.
He smiled, but the lines etched deeply into his forehead remained. “That’s good, Kelly. We’ve still got lots of things to do. I’ve got lots of things to show you.” He squeezed my hand, carefully avoiding the I.V. tube taped to the top of it.
With my free hand, I reached out and felt his chest, searching. Once my fingers had touched the sand dollar, I smiled. “Another good day thanks to your lucky charm. I didn’t fall overboard or anything.”
Tyler reached into his shirt and pulled it out. The shell gleamed white against his palm and then, when he’d set it against his t-shirt, faded into the white fabric. Only the black leather thong tied around it stood out.
“Yeah,” He agreed. “It was a good day. Any day with you is a good one.”
I opened my mouth, intending to tell him that he should go home, but he never gave me the chance. “So how do you feel about hang gliding?” He touched my cheek with his hand while speaking in a faltering voice that threatened to completely break down. “Rappeling? Horseback riding? What’s your passion?”
I took a deep breath. So tired. I traced the scar on his hand, knowing that were I were strong enough to paint, I could have stroked that image onto the canvas with perfection. His hands. The strength and gentleness. Hands that knew I would never be able to do any of those things but still held onto me. “I’ve been horseback riding. The horse won, Tyler.”
“Best two out of three, then.”
The ambulance pulled up to the hospital and stopped. The back doors opened, and the sunlight poured from the storm-washed sky down through Tyler’s golden hair. “I love you, Kelly.” He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “I always will.”
The EMT’s rolled the gurney out. He started to walk with me, but one of the EMT’s held up his hand, stopped him, promising, “We’ll take good care of her.”
Tyler took another step toward me, and the EMT latched onto his arm. “Sir, stand back.” Inches from me, I traced the outline of his body against the muted background, and every muscle in his body sang with a forced stillness.
“I love you, Kelly,” he said, kissing my forehead before stepping back to the ambulance.
“I love you, too,” I whispered. One last glance at Tyler revealed him standing just outside the vehicle, leaning on the doors. His eyebrows tugged downward, and his lips parted as though he were struggling to breathe. One hand reached up and raked through his hair, and his whole body moved stiffly, as though his joints had rusted inside that white t-shirt and stonewashed jeans. His hand came down and touched the sand dollar. Then I was wheeled through the doors and lost sight of him.
I wondered what he’d been thinking at that moment, watching me being rolled down the hall. I reached to my neck and touched the necklace he’d made, tracing the shells one by one. A doctor came into the room and examined me, but I barely heard what he said and gave all the
right answers even though my mind wandered far away to the first time I’d really noticed Tyler standing in his doorway after the first sailing trip.
His skin had glistened gold in the dying afternoon light, and everything about him had seemed ethereal. Streaks of light reddish hair sparkled against the darker strands. Funny that I should’ve noticed his hands, his arms, his body only after memorizing the patterns of his soul. There is so much about a person the body cannot describe, that a face cannot foreshadow.
I forced myself not to think of him, and the rest of the world melted into the sterility of hospital walls. It’s time, a voice said in my mind, and I wanted to shake my head and deny the truth. The EMT’s rolled me into a small room, and I touched the man who stood closest to me. “I need you to call my husband, please.” My words sounded fuzzy and distorted, and I closed my eyes, thinking I needed to rest for just a few seconds.
“Ma’am, what’s the number?” He had pulled out a pad, and as I spoke, he jotted down Gary’s name and phone number while promising he’d take care of it.
I touched his hand again and asked, “Will you do me another favor? Will you tell the man who came with me to go home? To find the dolphins?”
The EMT nodded slowly. His hunched eyebrows suggested he thought the painkillers had made me delusional. “Sure,” he said in a deliberately slow voice. “And what’s his name?”
“Tyler. Tyler Adams.” My voice came out as little more than breath. I plucked at the sheet swathed around me. “Please tell him. He’ll know what the message means.” I touched his hand. “Promise me you’ll tell him.”
He squeezed my hand and set it back on the gurney. “Sure. I’ll find him and tell him exactly what you said.”
Satisfied with his promise, I allowed myself to slip toward the river of darkness that rushed around me. Tyler would know this meant goodbye and that I just didn’t have enough strength to say the word. Besides, I didn’t believe it. We would find each other again someday. And it would last far longer than the temporary station of our bodies on this planet.
Look for the dolphins, Tyler, I thought. That’s where you’ll find me.
* * *
“Kelly, can you hear me?” Tyler’s voice broke through the thick haze of sleep coating my brain. Images of swimming dolphins danced in my head. I felt myself skimming through the cool ocean water. I looked around the green sea world, searching for him. We were together at last.
“Kelly?” Tyler said again. I felt fingers on my arm lightly shaking.
The jarring motion stole the spell of sleep from me, and I opened my eyes to find him sitting in the chair beside the bed, holding a large vase in his trembling hands filled with red roses. He noticed me staring at them and said, “I never did ask you what kind of flowers you liked.” He set them on the nightstand beside the bed. “Guess I should have, huh?”
“They’re perfect,” I finally managed. I reached out and touched one of the petals, carefully moving the I.V. so as not to tangle it on the bed rail. As my fingers traced the soft curve of the flower, I turned to face him. The stubble his face had thickened, shadowing his cheekbones and jaw with dark hair. His hair was rumpled as it fell into his eyes. “How long have you been here?” I finally asked in a whisper-fine voice.
He looked at the clock and squinted. “Several hours.” His hand crept up and rubbed his eyes. “The time just seems to melt away here.”
I peered at the sterile white clock hanging on the wall. 7:30. “Did the EMT find you? I told him to give you a message from me.”
Tyler sat on the bed next to me. “Yeah, he found me. But when he started to tell me what you’d said, I told him I’d hang around and ask you what you wanted to say.” He picked up my right hand, the one without the I.V. tube, and stroked it across his face. “I didn’t want a message. I wanted to hear it from you.” He closed his eyes and rested against my hand.
“You have to go, Tyler.” I said, feeling as though the weight of the world rested on my hand. “It’s time.”
His ocean-colored eyes fluttered open and peered at me. “No, I want to stay here with you.”
I slowly pulled my hand away and laid it back on my stomach. “Gary’s coming. I sent for him.”
Tyler swiftly rose from the bed and walked to the window. HIs shoulders slumped, and his head tilted toward the ground as he leaned on the sill. “And why should he be here? He doesn’t love you, Kelly. We both know that.”
I closed my eyes, trying not to remember the faltering timbre of his accusatory voice. “That’s why, Tyler.”
He whirled and crossed the room, laying his head on my stomach and wrapping his arms around my body so tightly it hurt. “I don’t understand.”
“Death only hurts you if you love the person who’s dying. Gary’s stronger than I’ve ever been, Tyler. He can get through this and keep going.” I reached under his chin and lifted his face to me. “And that’s what you have to do, too. So I’m asking you to go. Find the dolphins for me; that’s where I’ll be waiting.”
He quickly stood and paced. His arms swung through the air as though a breeze had whirled through the room and lifted them. With each step, he shook his head. “No. I’m not ready to go.”
“You’re not ready for me to die, either, but I am.”
He whirled. Paleness washed his normally dark skin. “Damn it, Kelly. You can’t ask me to leave. I love you.” He picked up the plastic cup from the tray and squeezed it tightly in his hands as though trying to break it.
“That’s why I’m asking you to go. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have.” I plucked at the covers, trying to keep the tears blurring my eyes from falling. “Just because you love me doesn’t mean you have to watch me die.”
He placed the cup back on the dresser and walked toward me.
He moved slowly as though he were having to tell each part of his body to move. Finally, he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. A breath of air caressed me, and as he leaned over I could feel pain shackled in every muscle, and each movement demonstrated he could snap any second.
Tears spilled down his face as he forced himself to rise. All the while he stared at me, never once looking away as though he expected me to change my mind. God help me, I wanted to. But I knew he didn’t deserve that degree of pain. What loving me must have cost him. The breath I held ached for freedom, and I was afraid if I let it go, I would start crying.
His hands hung limply at his side and he slowly walked to the door, his fingers grasping the knob as though it would keep them still. “There won’t be a day that goes by I don’t think of you, Kelly.” The grit of tears thickened his voice. “Not a day.”
He stared at me with unblinking eyes, and once again I felt the ocean in his pupils wash over me, renewing my strength. I wanted to reach to him and lose myself in his arms. Instead, I gripped the covers in my palm and watched him walk out the door for the last time. With each step, I felt the pressure building in my chest, erasing the calm I’d worked so damned hard to find.
I forced myself to turn away from the doorway, as though that would keep me from half-expecting his return. In the frightening stillness of the room, I stared at the only movement there, the medication dripping down my I.V. tube toward the vein in my hand. The flow was endless and precise in its mechanical fogging of my brain. I’d always hated the drugs, the doctors.
Thank you for teaching me to live, Tyler. I could never have died peacefully without love. Never.
A movement in the doorway caught my attention, and I found Gary standing there. His charcoal suit contrasted with the cream-colored walls. He walked toward me stiffly and kept his hands thrust into his pants pockets as though he wouldn’t have known what else to do with them otherwise.
“I got your message, and came as quickly as I could,” he offered, sitting in the chair Tyler had just occupied. Instead of resting against the back, he leaned toward me, and I looked at his clean-shaven face, studying features that seemed so distant. “They didn’t tell me mu
ch about your condition over the phone, just that you wanted me to come.” He stumbled over his words and looked away. “This is a nice room.”
If you like hospitals, I thought, wrapping my arms over my chest. Tyler’s face appeared in the blackness. There won’t be a day I don’t think of you, he’d said. And there hadn’t been a day since the two of us had met I could have forgotten him. The soul knows the reason it’s created, even if the body forgets.
“How long have you been here?” he asked, standing, pacing the room. His nervous gaze settled more than once on the oxygen mask covering my face.
“Since they called you.” I watched every movement he made as though he were acting out a role and the gestures were trappings of something he’d never known. He couldn’t even remember how to speak to me about anything but this illness.
He nodded numbly and braced his back against me. “I worried about you when you never called. I’d stopped expecting you to.” He pulled at the blinds and peered out the window. “God, what a flight.” He tugged at his tie, loosening the knot.
“You always did hate planes; I used to think that was strange, considering how much time you spent on them.” Images of my life without Gary bounced into focus. The biplane flying over the ocean—the dolphins swimming side by side, arching, diving, and Tyler as he sat on the tramp of the boat, the line threaded through his fingers.
“So what’s next, Kelly?”
I reached up and touched the shell necklace that Tyler made. “Dr. Martinez said I could probably go...home...in a day or so, but I’ll have to take a portable oxygen tank to help make breathing easier.” I struggled over the word ‘home’ because it felt like such an inadequate word to describe the house where Gary and I had once lived. Another seam showing in our ill-fated marriage.
Gary finally sat in the chair again. “So how have you been these past few months?” His fingers touched my arm. “Looks like you’ve had a lot of sun. You’ve gotten tanned.”
I flinched at his touch, and he quickly withdrew his hand. “I’ve been fine. Happy.” I looked down at his left hand and saw I wasn’t the only one who’d stopped wearing a wedding band. “How’s Debra?”