Fierce (41 page)

But for now, all we could do was wait.

It wasn’t good, that long morning waiting with Hope for Karen’s surgery to be over. And the day following it was worse. Waiting, and wondering. About what the outcome would be for Karen, and what it would do to Hope if it wasn’t good. 

If I’d thought my heart had been ripped out before, I hadn’t known the half of it, because now, that heart had been wrung out and squeezed dry. I did my best to work, to take my mind off it, but I still found myself with heaps of time to contemplate exactly why I’d always avoided getting emotionally involved. Because it hurt like hell. 

We waited, and then we waited some more. All night in the critical care unit, because Hope wouldn’t leave, other than for brief fifteen-minute visits with her sister, and a dinner and breakfast I managed to persuade her into in the hospital cafeteria. She didn’t want to talk, but she seemed to want me there, so I stayed and held her hand, just as Eugene had told me to do. And when she finally fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion—I held her then, too. The only thing worse than being there, helpless to do anything but that, would have been
not
being there. So I stayed.

On Wednesday, they moved Karen into a regular room, and Hope lost a little of her frozen rigidity once she could see her sister, could talk to her and touch her. I came to join them in the afternoon, sitting in the corner of the room while Hope sat next to Karen and held her hand. 

Hour after hour of Karen lying with her eyes closed, half in and half out of consciousness. The nurses had told Hope that touch helped, and a bit of quiet talk did, too, so that was what she did. And I sat and watched them and thought how little I knew about love.

Just now, Karen’s eyes were open, then closing again, and Hope was talking. 

“Remember Mrs. Lee?” she asked her sister, her voice quiet, so sweet. “Remember reading the magazines? You never liked the fashion ones. You said they were boring. You liked the women’s ones best, especially once you got to be eight or nine and could really read them. Your favorites were the advice columns. ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?’ That was a good one. When the new
Ladies’ Home Journal
came out, you used to sit and read it to me while I stocked shelves. And you’d say, ‘No. This marriage cannot be saved. People are jerks.’ I remember how that used to make me laugh.”

Karen smiled, just a twitch of the mouth, and Hope smiled back, then broke off, because Dr. Feingold had come into the room. And just like that, all the rigidity was back. 

“Good,” he said when Karen opened her eyes. “You’re awake. How’re you feeling?”

“Pretty...good,” Karen managed to say, and I thought that Hope wasn’t the only woman in her family with courage to spare.

“We’re doing well here all the way around,” Dr. Feingold said. “You’re bouncing back just about as well as you could be. I’d like to say that’s me, but I’m afraid we’ve got to chalk at least a little bit of it up to you. Because you are one tough cookie, Miss Karen Sinclair.”

He got another little smile from Karen for that before her eyes drifted shut again.

“Yes,” Hope said. “She is. And thank you. The nurses all said that you were the best. I know we’re lucky. Thank you.”

“Always good to hear,” he said. “Remind me to pay them off later. And normally, I’d take you outside the room to talk about this next thing. But in this case, I think Karen gets to hear, too, because...” He did a little drumroll on the empty second bed. “We’ve got nothin’ but net here. The results are back, and we’ve got a big all-clear. ‘Benign’ all the way through. That bottle of champagne you’ve got under the bed? Time to haul that thing out and pop the cork.” 

Hope still had hold of Karen’s hand, and she was trying to stand up, and failing. “Oh,” she said. “Oh. Thank you.
Thank you.”
And then she was talking to Karen again, the tenderness on her face so devastating, it pierced the last fragile defenses around my heart. 

It happened just like that. Just like that, I was laid bare.

“You hear that, baby?” Hope asked her sister. “You hear that? You’re going to...” She had to stop and breathe. “Keep your tumor in...in a jar if you want. Because you needed that thing like a...a hole in your head.” 

Her voice was shaking, and she was looking around for me, but I was already there. Picking her up out of her chair and holding her. Holding on. 

“Hemi,” she said, wrapping her arms around me and burying her face in my chest. “Hemi. She’s going to be all right.” 

At last, the tears were coming. She was shaking again, but this time, it was with sobs. Hope was crying in my arms. Letting herself go, and letting me hold her while she did it.

“Yeh.” The hot tears were right there behind my own eyes, and my throat closed around the words, but I got them out anyway. “Yeh. I heard. She’s going to be all right. And you’re brilliant. You are the best sister in the world.”

On Saturday, Dr. Feingold told Hope that Karen would be released the next day. 

“She’s doing well,” he said. “It’s better for her to be out of the hospital, as long as she’s being cared for. Somebody needs to be with her all the time for the first week. Are you good with that?”

“Yes,” Hope said. “Yes. I’ll be there.”

“I’m guessing she shouldn’t walk up four flights of stairs,” I put in. “And that it’d be better if she could go outside, take a walk in the park, get a bit of exercise.” 

The nurses had had Karen up as soon as possible, had had her doing laps around the corridors with Hope by her side, so I was reasonably sure that was important. Bringing it up now was dirty play, and I knew it, but I needed ammunition.

“Four flights wouldn’t be my preference, no,” Dr. Feingold said. “And, yes. She needs to move.”

“Oh,” Hope said, looking so tired again. I put an arm around her and knew I needed to make that look go away. The long night in the waiting room, then three more on the extra bed in Karen’s room, waking every time the nurses came in to check on her sister. And who knew how many nights before that, sharing Karen’s bed, waking every time her sister did, and trying to work during the day. If she’d been a shell before, she was less than that now. I could do something about that, and I was going to.

“I’ve got a plan for that,” I said. “Got a better place for them to stay, where Karen can get out easily, can have everything taken care of. Only a mile away from the hospital,” I added hastily, “and a car ready to bring them straight back again. Just in case. For, what, a week?”

“A week would be good,” Dr. Feingold said while Hope was still opening her mouth. “And is that place ready for them now?”

“Yeh,” I said. “Since you ask.”

I’d known he’d ask, actually. As I’d had a bit of a chat about it with him beforehand.

“Then, Hope, I suggest you check it out tonight,” he said smoothly. “Karen’s in good hands here, but starting tomorrow, you’re going to be taking care of her. And frankly, I’m a little worried about you being able to do that.”

“Me?” She straightened with an obvious effort. “I’m fine. Of course I’m fine. And I can’t leave her. What if—”

“That’s why we have these things called nurses,” Dr. Feingold said. “And you know, I’ve got about, oh, ten years of medical training, as I recall, and a whole lot more years of practice that tell me you’re
not
fine. Sleep deprivation’s a dangerous thing. If I’m going to release my patient to you, you’re going to have to leave here and sleep first. Consider it a medical directive.”

“You know.” We all turned, because that was Karen, her speech still slow and a little slurred from the drugs. “I’m
alive
over here. I’ve got an
opinion.”

“Well, yes, you are,” Dr. Feingold said. “And what is it?”

“That Hope needs to
go,”
Karen said. “How’m I supposed to watch TV if I can’t sleep when I know I’ll be waking her up? I sleep with her every single night as it is. Could I get a break?”

Hope’s mouth was open, but I was grinning, and so was Dr. Feingold. I bent over and gave Karen a gentle kiss on the cheek, avoiding jostling her heavily bandaged head. “Sweetheart,” I told her, “I’m going to give you a break. I’m going to take your sister out of here until tomorrow morning. And then I’m going to give you your very own bedroom, and a bathroom as well. For a week, and longer than that, if I get my way.”

“Cool,” Karen said. “I
told
Hope she should grab you.” 

Hope was looking as if she wanted to say something and couldn’t think what, and Dr. Feingold was frankly laughing. 

“You know,” he said, “I actually have other patients. So as much as I’d like to hang around at this interesting juncture, I’m going to have to tear myself away. You—” he told Hope. “You’re out of here, and that’s an order. You’re leaving the premises and sleeping tonight, or I’m hanging onto your sister. Come back tomorrow and take Karen someplace where she doesn’t have to walk up four flights of stairs, and where she has her own bed and her own bathroom. That one’s not an order. It’s just a strong suggestion.” He turned to Karen. “And as for you, young lady?” He winked at her. “Glad to see I kept that brain of yours intact.” 

When Charles pulled the car up outside the Plaza, Hope blinked.

“Oh,” she said, looking at the hotel. She’d nearly fallen asleep in the car, was in some sort of zombie state where she seemed to be processing everything said to her a half-second later. “I thought it was your apartment.”

“I thought—” I cleared my throat. “That that might not be the best.”
That it might be too much of a commitment
, I didn’t say. “And this is closer to the hospital. Especially as I’ll be gone.”

Because I was leaving for Milan. There was no choice. I’d had the Italian knitwear acquisition in the works for six months, and the shareholders’ meeting had been scheduled for longer than that. Not going wasn’t an option, and it wasn’t going to be short. I wasn’t going to get out of there in less than a week. Takeovers took time.

I handed her two keycards for the room, and two more cards with Charles’s cell. Two, in case she lost one. “The Royal Terrace Suite,” I told her. “Twentieth floor. And Charles will take you to the hospital in the morning. That’s his number. D’you have that?”

“Royal...” She trailed off. “Twentieth floor. Yeah.”

What I wanted to do was go up there with her, see her settled, and hold her while she fell asleep, the way I had that final night in San Francisco. That night when I’d thought I’d been missing out on something, and had been so wrong. But I’d delayed as long as I could, and time had run out. I had a meeting at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, and I needed to leave now. 

I shoved the car door open, and Charles was there with Hope’s bag. I helped her out, looked at the bellman who’d appeared as well, and said, “Please take the lady up to her room. The Royal Terrace Suite.” 

“I can—” Hope said. 

“I’m sure you can,” I told her, even though I wasn’t sure at all. “But he’s going to do it anyway.” I passed him a fifty and said, “Whatever she needs.”

“Yes, sir.” He took the bag from Charles, and that was sorted. 

Hope looked up at me. “Good luck,” she said. “And thank you.” And I took her in my arms, held her for just a moment and felt her lean into me, and, somehow, let her go.