Seeing Julia (4 page)

“Are you okay?” I hear him ask me from this faraway place. “Julia! Are you okay?” He sounds worried and I struggle to open my eyes to see why that is, even as he shakes me.

“I’m fine. Not … starting over,” I whisper. The sweet darkness engulfing me is interrupted by this roiling sensation in the pit of my stomach. “Oh…God.”

I push myself away from him and stagger toward the master bath. I’m dizzy from the sudden movement and clutch the furniture as I go. On some level, with swift clarity I know I’m going to be sick. Just in time, I lean over the toilet basin and vomit up all the food and drink I’ve ingested in the past two hours. I sink to the floor.

Water is running. I turn my head and spy him at the sink holding a hand towel under the faucet with shaking hands. He looks scared and I wonder why.

“Just go,” I say from my resting place at the toilet. Moving my head side-to-side causes me to feel nauseous again. Then, Jake’s there, pulling me up. He towels off my face with the wet cloth and grabs my chin and looks into my eyes.

“How much did you take?” He shakes the vial of Oxycodone at me.

“Enough.” I pull away from his grasp and violently vomit again and slink further down to the floor. My world of cognizance continues to shrink. I hear the shower water running. I’m suddenly pulled up again and shoved into it, still clothed in my black silk dress. I shriek at the cold and feel as though I’m drowning as water runs over me.

“You’ve got stay awake!” Jake yells over the din of the shower and adjusts the water temperature, until it runs ice cold. “How many pills did you take?”

“I don’t remember.” I shiver from the coldness of the water, while the narcotic chases through me at an ever increasing velocity.

“Try,” he commands.

“Eight or ten. I don’t remember. Maybe twelve. Enough,” I say with hostility. “I’m
not
starting over.”

“Jesus!” He props me up against the tiled wall and steps away from the shower. Dully, I watch him go. From the open doorway, I gaze at him as he gets on his cell phone. Snippets of his conversation resonate with me. “Emergency…Peninsula Hotel…Possible drug overdose… Oxycodone…Ambulance…19
^th
floor.”

Uncontrollable shivering takes over and I lean against the wall and give myself over to the cold. It numbs me further. I close my eyes unable to keep them open.

“Does your friend Kimberley
know
that you took the Oxycodone? Open your eyes.” When I don’t answer, he grasps my chin through the open shower door.

“No.” Like a child in trouble, I squeeze my eyes tighter and tremble even more. I blindly reach for the nozzle, but he slaps my hand away.

“You have to stay awake, Mrs. Hamilton.” The frigid water temperature causes me to shake violently now and he keeps a firm grip on me by forcefully holding my head under the water.

“I hate you.”

“I didn’t get that impression.” I open my eyes to look at him.

“I…hate…you,” I enunciate slowly, as if teaching him English. This inexplicable wounded look crosses his face and then it’s gone.

“You’re sure you’re the real deal?” His implication cuts across my soul.

“I’m not…what you think I am. I…loved Evan. He loved me.”

I finally start to cry. Jake eventually lets go of me. I stare at him through my tears and glimpse the same haunted look from earlier. Two incongruent thoughts assault me at the same time:
Evan is dead. I’ve just kissed and almost had sex with someone else, another man.
The grief returns in full force at my own admission. I slide down the marble wall of the shower and let the water all but drown me. My cries of sorrow and this endless pain come from deep inside. The bathroom door opens and then closes. I’m thankful for the privacy in which to bear this horrible resounding heartbreak alone. The pain is worse than ever.

≈ ≈

Indeterminable time goes by. I struggle to come to a stand and finally reach the faucet and turn the temperature from cold to hot. I wash the residue of vomit from my hair and face with a mixture of water, soap, and shampoo. Eventually, I regain enough sense of self to turn the water off. The black silk dress clings to me now, in ruins. Like me.

I emerge from the shower, dripping water everywhere, just as he returns to the bathroom suite. He holds on to me and strips off my dress. Naked, I stand before him and tremble uncontrollably as tears stream down my face. I can’t stop crying now.

Dispassionate, he wraps me up in a bath-size spa towel and pulls me along into the bedroom. I sit on the edge of the bed and dazed, watching him search through my suitcase and the dresser for clothing.

Tears still stream down my face. He returns to me a few minutes later, takes the towel away and pulls a black Van Halen t-shirt of Evan’s over my head and helps me shimmy into underwear and black jeans and coaxes shoes on my feet. Then, he towel-dries my hair and combs it through with his fingers. This ritual is done in complete silence and I close my eyes to avoid looking at him. I feel his hands on my face, wiping away my tears. With reluctance and this rising shame, I open my eyes, but avoid looking directly at him. Instead, I try to concentrate on the Monet replica on the wall behind him, while the room still shimmers.

“I called an ambulance,” he says. “The vomiting probably helped, but you need to get checked out at a hospital.” With a resigned sigh, he sits down next to me on the bed. From the faraway recesses of my mind, I experience surprise at his conciliatory tone.

“No.” My body sways against him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes … you are. How do you feel?” His attempt at a clinical bedside manner saves my dignity.

“Tired. I haven’t cried. Afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop. I was right about that.” He just nods.

There’s an out of control resurgence in the sharp edges of grief that’s plagued me for the past week and a half. An endless supply of pain killers or kissing a stranger can’t take it away for long. He puts his arm around me and I lean into him and just sob. He strokes my hair, over and over, and I take solace in this simple gesture.

“I used your cell phone to call Kimberley,” he says after a time. “She’s on her way.

“Okay.” I look over his shoulder and vaguely note he’s hung up my ruined silk dress over the shower door and draped my bra and panties over the desk chair. His unexpected optimism and act of kindness almost make me smile.

“Julia,” he drawls. “I’m sorry. I…I wasn’t thinking clearly before. I’m so sorry. I loved Evan like a brother. I … there’s no excuse for … I’m so sorry.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly either.” I close my eyes, but experience this spinning sensation so I open them again. “I just wanted him back.” I swallow. “Holding you … felt like him … I just want him back.”

“I know.”

“Too much sadness. Too much grief. Just like Bobby,” I whisper.

The blackness begins to surface again. I can’t follow what he’s saying. I lean against his chest confused by the rhythm of his heart beat and strain to hear what he’s asking me.

“Who’s Bobby?” Jake asks in this guarded voice.

“My fiancé, Bobby Turner. Killed in Afghanistan. Almost four years ago.”

“Bobby was killed? Oh God.” Remorse and this profound sorrow emanate from him now. “Who are you? Tell me.”

“I’m Julia Hamilton.” Blackness drifts closer. “Mrs. Evan Hamilton.”

“Before that,” Jake says. “Who were you,
before
Bobby? Do I
know
you?”

“I don’t talk about
before
.”

I can feel myself slipping away. He seems distant now. I can’t hear him anymore. I attempt to smile, but the narcotic takes all control.

≈ ≈

“Hold on, Julia. Stay with us,” a voice interrupts the dark tranquility invading me. I try to open my eyes, but I’m too tired. I’m lifted up. My arms sting from the urgent movements. I cannot feel my hands and my feet feel unbelievably heavy. I’m beyond cold.

“Julia, can you hear me? Oh, God, Julia, don’t do this to me.” I feel the fall and rise of the elevator. I hear slamming doors and feel the rush of speed. “It’s going to be okay.”

I don’t believe you
. I try to say out loud, but no words come out.
I don’t believe you. It’s not going to be okay, ever again.
I try to open my eyes, but there are too many lights, too bright, too much.

All these voices calling my name, over and over. “Julia! Wake up! Stay with us!” I wish they would stop saying my name. I don’t want to wake up. I don’t want to stay here, wherever here is. Something is shoved down my throat and I feel myself gagging from this faraway place. “Mrs. Hamilton, can you hear me?” A voice whispers voice near my face.

I am Mrs. Hamilton. I was Mrs. Hamilton. Now, Evan is dead. I am no one, now. I am no more. The pain is too much, the loss too great. There is no more
before
and the
after
is too devastating. There isn’t enough of me left to go on. Grief has stolen too much of me, now.

≈*≈*≈

“Well, thank you, Mr. Winston, is it? For all of that,” says the voice I don’t recognize. “We’ll see what psyche has to say. We take these kinds of situations very seriously.”

“I’m sure you do. I’m the executor of the estate and her lawyer in charge of all her domestic affairs. The family would like to keep this quiet. Evan Hamilton was quite well known. His death has been publicized all over Manhattan and throughout the states of New York and Connecticut. We just want to ensure Mrs. Hamilton’s privacy and allow her to grieve in peace.

“Of course.”

“I’m staying,” Kimberley announces as her final answer. The sweet scent of her expensive French perfume drifts over me as she grips my hand. Desperate to see my best friend, I struggle to open my eyes, but they don’t move. The door clicks shut.

I feel the weird high from drugs surf through my system and try to fight the inevitability of unconsciousness.

“You just making it up as you go, Winston?” Kimberley hisses. “What the fuck happened?”

“She took an overdose of pain killers. Did you even
know
that?” Jake asks. “You want her to lose custody of her baby?”

“Jesus, you think they’ll try to take away Reid?”

“If they don’t think she is capable of taking care of him. Yes. And, they will, if we’re not three steps ahead of them. As her
family
, we can show them how much support she has around her, while we try and get this situation under control. Get the checkbook out. Get a press release ready because we’re going to bury this whole thing so far under; it will be a faint reference in the footnotes of all that’s happened to Mr. and Mrs. Evan Hamilton.”

“Where did she get the pills?” I hear Kimberley take a jagged breath. “Oh God. Julia, what have you done, baby?” Her hand brushes at my face. “How did you find her?”

“I followed her up to her hotel suite. I…I upset her with some things I said and wanted to apologize. We let things get…She started to pass out and it was pretty clear she was in trouble.”