Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (93 page)

“This job doesn’t afford the time for a dazzling social life, so video games it is. I have UNOS up on a screen right here.” As if responding to what must have been my baffled look, he continued. “The transplant list.”

“Ah. I heard someone came in...” I didn’t know if I should continue. It was surely privileged information, yet once I started talking, I could hardly stop. “He’s brain dead is what I heard. I don’t mean to be creepy, but—”

“I think that’s going to be a no-go.”

“You telling me more or Jonathan getting the heart?”

“Yes.”

I looked at my lap. Margie’s text had given me enough hope to get in the door. When it dropped out of me, nothing replaced it. We were back where we had been that morning, except I was one day closer to the end.

“How are you holding up?” Brad asked.

I shrugged. “I guess I’m all right.”

“You’re never home.”

“Doctor, my presence at home is hardly under your purview.”

“I’m not asking as a doctor. I’m asking as your friend. How are you doing?”

“Fine. I feel like I’m waiting for him to either die or be saved, so the regular events of my life aren’t so interesting right now.”

He leaned back in his chair, eyes glowing in the screens’ light. “I’ve lived next door to you for a couple of years.”

“Three, I think.”

“I wish I’d gone to your door with something besides the leaves falling on my car or the new fence. I should have known you better, sooner.” His hands were folded over his tie, and his feet pushed his office chair back until the corners of his white lab coat dragged on the floor. Besides the hands, it was an exposed position. Even if he didn’t intend to send the message he did, I understood the meaning in his heart.

“I’m too upset to give you a thoughtful response. I’m sorry.”

“I understand. If you want to go up, he should be back any minute. Irene’s at the desk. Check with her if he’s okay to see. I’m watching this screen.”

I stood up and touched the doorknob. “I’d give him my own heart if I could.”

He sat up straight and put his hand on the mouse. “I hear that all the time.” He glanced at me, his expression sucking the sarcasm out of the comment. He was just stating a fact. Death was hard, and people loved one another.

MONICA

P
olice milled around the hallways with radios squawking, belts laden with black leather geometry, swaying hips from the weight of the instrumentation. I leaned on the nurse’s desk, peering at Irene’s Russian newspaper.

“Hi,” I said. “What are all the cops about?”

She waved her meaty hand and shook her head. “Security. You feel safe? I feel safe. Like in middle of street.”

“I’m going in.” I stepped away.

“No, you don’t.” She picked up the phone and hit one of the buttons on the bottom of the keypad. “Wait.” The person on the other side must have answered because she muttered something in Russian, listened, and hung up. “Come with me.”

She shuffled from behind the desk and went toward Jonathan’s room. I didn’t know why I needed her to guide me. My world revolved around that room and going to and from it. The door was closed. She knocked. A deep, powerful voice that couldn’t have been Jonathan’s made some sort of affirmative noise. Irene opened the door.

One lamp was on, a warm one I hadn’t seen before. The room smelled nice, like salty sea air and clear water. I located a squat blue candle burning on the windowsill that must have been the source of the scent. A huge bald man stood by the doorway—one of the regular orderlies who didn’t talk much. His nametag said Gregory. Irene babbled something, and he babbled back in the same language. He stepped out of the way.

Jonathan sat on the edge of the bed. I hadn’t seen him actually sit up since the Collector’s Board show, and I must have gasped a little. He wore a suit jacket over his hospital gown. He also had on pants and shoes. Tubes stuck out of his sleeves, and the effort it took for him to sit up was visible once I got over the initial shock.

“Jonathan,” I said. “I—”

“You sit,” Gregory interrupted, pointing at a red antique chair in front of Jonathan that I recognized from his bedroom. I’d described that chair and its place under a sconce one night, back when I thought I’d have him back. I glanced from Gregory to Irene, and then to my lover, who waited patiently.

I sat. “What’s this about?”

No one answered. Gregory and Irene stood on either side of Jonathan, facing me.

“You ready, Mister Drazen?” Irene asked.

“For a long time now.”

They did something that made me hold my breath and clutch the arms of the chair. They put their hands under Jonathan’s arms, slid him off the bed, and lowered him to the floor.

“What—?” When they let him go, I was too stunned to finish the sentence. He kneeled before me. I heard his labored breathing, the rattle of the IV pole, and glanced at Irene and Gregory. “What are you doing? This is crazy.”

I was ignored. Gregory said something to Jonathan in Russian, and he answered in kind, along with a wave of his hand that indicated, “I got it.”

Jonathan, with great effort, pulled up a knee until he was on just one and glanced at me. “I’m going to lean on you a little.”

“Sure?” He put a forearm on my knee and reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a small black box. “Oh, Jonathan...”

He opened the box and handed it to me. It had a ridiculously huge square-cut diamond. “Thank Theresa if you see her. I’ll get you one that suits you when we’re up to it.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

“Shh. Behave, would you? For once?”

I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. One side of his mouth curled in a smile, and then he laughed gingerly. I wanted to kiss him deeply and for a long time. I wanted to breathe him into me, but I knew he didn’t have the breath to spare. I settled for a fraction of the kiss I wanted, just brushing my lips against his. The softest parts of our faces melted together for a second, half a gasp, a tease of desire.

“Goddess,” he said, his breath on my mouth, “have me, please. I was wrong. You’re not the sea under my sky. You are the sun I revolve around, the stars that mark me, the moon rising through me. I’m lost without you. If you won’t have me, I’ll break, I swear to God. I know it’s selfish, and I’m sorry. Let me serve you. Have me as yours. Let me live under you.”

I held his face, running my fingers over his stubble, his jaw in the heel of my hand. I felt him leaning into me as if this had taken everything out of him. What could I say? What could I say to being loved enough for that monumental an effort? Did I ever, in my wildest imaginings, think I deserved that level of devotion after I’d rejected him the first time?

After I’d left him, cursed him, and denied him? After lying to him, drugging him, disobeying him, using him, could I justify letting him make such a mistake even if it was the last mistake he made? I was ambitious, venal, antagonistic, impoverished, and arrogant. I was unworthy by a mile and overcome by the circumstances that would lead such a man to beg to be bound to such a woman.

So I said the only thing I could.

“Yes.”

JONATHAN

H
er hair fell across our fists, which were balled together around a found box holding my sister’s ring. My hands shook as I removed the ring. My rib cage ached as if it was being stretched by an ever-expanding balloon. With the tube out my chest, it was filling with blood, drop by drop. I was sure the feeling of expansion was air or my imagination, but fear made it hard to get the garish thing on her finger. The size was right, but the stone was wrong. All wrong. I wanted something else for her, something more original, a ring that could only belong to a goddess.

“I won’t disappoint you,” I said.

“I’m not worried about you being the disappointment.”

Irene’s voice cut in. “I declare you engaged. Time to go.” She put her hand on my shoulder.

“I want to tell you what you do to me the night I agree to marry you,” Monica whispered.

“They have to put me back in. I don’t want you to see it.”

“Jonathan, please—”

“Time to go,” Irene said more firmly.

“Go,” I said to my fiancée. “Please. Come back in an hour. Then you can tell me about our wedding night.”

Her head tilted a little, and her eyes widened. Yes, it was quick, but wasn’t that the point? She kissed me a second too long. When we ended, I was grimacing. She must have known it wasn’t about her because she got up and walked out without looking back. Good woman.

I submitted myself to Irene and Gregory, who had broken a hundred rules or more to give me five minutes to ask properly for Monica’s hand. Rules were good. They were there for a reason. I couldn’t handle five minutes of kneeling. I felt as if I’d just run a marathon that ended in a dark alley where I’d been beaten with baseball bats and cut into small pieces with a serrated knife. Or something that made me too weak, too pained, too outside myself to manage my own body.

They got me out of my clothes, then reinserted, realigned, and recalibrated the devices attached to me. They accepted my gratitude for as long as I had the wherewithal to express it, which was an eternity but probably about five minutes in the real world. Then I fell off the cliff of consciousness. It might have been because of the drugs or just my body giving out like it did a few times a day. Even then, I didn’t have the energy to feel angry, though there was a cord of that in my spine. Mostly, I felt fear. I was responsible for her now. Though the unknown was bad enough to face alone, in the dark and unprepared, I felt as though I had something to live for tomorrow.

MONICA

I
 crouched on the stairwell. It was late. Jonathan couldn’t see me for an hour after he’d given me the ring, or the hour after that. Sheila had come and gone, her lips pressed together in a line of rage. Eileen called to see if I was there, and if I was, was he lucid enough to see anyone. I didn’t tell her we’d gotten engaged. I figured if Jonathan had wanted his family involved, they would have been involved.

I called Darren. “Do you have something blue?”

“Technically, yes.” He stepped out of the studio to finish the sentence, and I heard the rain and traffic behind him.

“Something pretty and blue?”

“Okay, what the fuck?”

“I’m getting married, and I have this ring that’s borrowed and this belt is, like, a hundred years old.”

“What?”

“Can you just bring me something blue, please?” I asked. He started a sentence but didn’t finish it. He took a breath, started to say something else, and stopped again. “Darren?”

“Jesus. I didn’t...I don’t know what to say. I haven’t been there for you, have I?”

“Be here for me tonight. Something reasonably attractive. And blue. And new, if possible. I’m stretching the definition with what I have here.”

MONICA

D
arren arrived just as Irene was telling me to do something with my hair then come in. He handed me a CVS bag with four blue hair clips.

“Thank you,” I said. He grabbed me and hugged me. It was the only real hug I’d gotten all week. It was warm and perfect, without expectation or promise. I chose a little rhinestone hairpin the color of the autumn sky and let Darren put it in. “You’re the maid of honor and the best man.”

“I’m not making a toast.”

“He won’t have the energy. He barely had it in him to ask me to marry him in the first place.” We walked down the hall.

“I wish you’d told me...asked me for something,” he said.

“You never pick up. I feel like I’m bothering you.”

He shrugged, and we turned into Jonathan’s room. It was lit only by the reading lamp over his bed. I felt Darren stiffen. Jonathan was halfway sitting up but bedridden and pale, connected to machines and IV bags of medicine and blood. The last time they’d seen each other, Jonathan was hale and Darren was threatening to send out wedding invitations if we had another breakup.

“Hi,” Darren said. Jonathan held his hand up in greeting. “You look like fucking hell, man.”

“Darren!” I cried.

“And I can still get a knockout wife,” Jonathan said.

“Tough to be you,” Darren said.

People came in behind me. I didn’t see them; I only saw Jonathan. I kissed his lips for the last time as his lover and turned around. Irene and Gregory were at the foot of the bed. On the opposite side of the bed from me, in the chair I usually occupied, was a short woman in horn-rimmed glasses and clerical collar. She was a few years older than me and had a mop of curly hair held in place with a vintage clip. Darren stood behind her.

“Hi,” she said brightly.

“Hi,” Jonathan and I chanted. I straightened and held his hand. It was cold.

“My name is Sona, and let me tell you, this is not the kind of call I usually get when I do the hospital chaplaincy. I had to dig around for the right prayer book. But happy occasions are worth the trouble. So what do we have? Both Catholic, I hear?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“I hear the groom has a big family? They aren’t here?”

“I’ll tell them tomorrow,” Jonathan said. My sigh of relief must have been audible because he squeezed my hand.

“Sona,” I said, “Jonathan isn’t up for anything long and involved if that’s okay. I don’t mean to be disrespectful.”

“Nope!” She smiled with big, white teeth. “You have rings?”

“Crap.” I didn’t. I glanced at Darren. He shrugged, holding up his palms.

“Can we make do with something?” she asked. “People do like the rings.”

“Yes! I have it.” I rummaged through my bag and came up with my keys. Car. House. Front gate. Locker at work. I clicked through them.

“Clever goddess,” he said. “I owe your fingers some jewelry.”

My eyes hurt again. The odds of him repaying that debt got smaller with each day. I focused on loosening as many keys as possible into the bottom of my bag.

“Let’s do some paperwork while Monica does that, okay?” Sona smiled again, extracting a little clipboard from a leather case. She asked our full names, dates of birth, addresses, and had us sign on the dotted lines while I untwisted as many silver rings as I could. Darren showed his ID and cracked a joke about being licensed to witness weddings. By the time she was done, I’d released two smallish key rings. I adjusted one for Jonathan’s hand and found another for myself. I pressed it into his palm.