Heart on a Chain (24 page)

“
Kate? What’s wrong?” There’s an edge of panic in his voice now.

“
Police…call police,” my voice is wet and torn.

“
Kate! Katy, hold on.” I can hear Henry talking frantically to his father, who immediately guesses what has happened. He takes the phone from Henry.

“
Kate? Are you still at home?” his voice is calm and authoritative.

“
Help…me,” I whisper.

“
Get the police on the phone, Henry, and give them Kate’s address,” I can hear him telling Henry.

“
Kate, are you hurt?” he says into the phone to me, his voice concerned but strong.

“
Help me,” I whisper again.

“
Kate, help is on the way. Try to get into a closet or somewhere safe if you can,” I can hear the worry beginning to creep into his words.

His words are fading. I want to tell him to tell Henry that I love him, that I will miss him. Because I’m dying—I can feel it. But there aren’t any words left. A soft, warm darkness enfolds me and I give myself to it.

Chapter Seventeen

There’s white all around
me as I slowly blink my eyes open.
Well,
I think foggily,
everyone talks about the white light.
There’s also a steady beeping sound, and a rhythmic whoosh of air with a clicking sound. Something is pulling heavily on one side of my mouth, and I feel bound, as if I couldn’t move if I tried.

“
Well, well, look who finally woke up.”

A woman comes into view with a kind face, and I’m surprised that angels dress like…nurses? I try to speak and am unable to form any words, only making sounds in my throat.

“
You won’t be able to speak, sweetie. You have a tube down your throat that’s helping you to breathe.” I have to breathe in heaven? I move an arm and feel pain shoot up into my shoulder. I wince, beginning to suspect that I’m not in heaven at all; which means either I’m in hell, or I’m not dead at all—neither one a pleasant prospect.

“
I can give you something for the pain if you’d like,” she tells me. “But it will probably make you sleep again, and there’s someone here who would like to see you.”

She looks meaningfully across me, and I turn my head slightly. There’s Henry, sitting in an uncomfortable looking chair in the corner, asleep. His face is unshaven, several days worth of whisker growth there, making him look older. I realize I’ve never seen him any way but clean shaven.

Tears form in my eyes and run from the corners of my eyes at the sight of him there. I look back at the nurse, who looks concerned that I’m in too much pain, but she sees something else in my eyes and smiles.

“
He hasn’t moved the whole time you’ve been here. It’s been all we could do to get him to leave the room while we were doing the things we needed to. Even then, he only went outside the door. Quite a devoted young man you have there.”

She walks across the room, which I now recognize as a hospital room that is inexplicably filled with flowers. She shakes him gently on the shoulder, calling his name.

“
Henry, there’s something you should see.”

Henry shoots straight up, body tense as if he’s expecting something bad, eyes immediately flying to me. I stare back at him, and confusion passes across his face as he sees my eyes, then disbelief. He looks at the nurse, and she nods. His eyes come back to mine as he stands. He slowly walks toward me, as if afraid that any fast movement will change what he thinks he’s seeing.

He comes near, his own eyes shiny with tears as he reaches out a finger, catching my tears on his fingertip. He rubs his thumb and fingertip together as if to reassure himself that the tears are real.

“
Kate?” My name is a question. His hand caresses my cheek and I lean into it. He bends down, laying his forehead against mine, his eyes inches from mine.

“
Kate,” he breathes, relief evident in his voice. He closes his eyes and swallows loudly. “Please be okay,” he whispers, opening his eyes to look into mine again, and there I see love mixed with the relief, and something else, too. Guilt?

“
I’ll just go call the doctor, let him know you’re awake,” the nurse says. We both hear her but neither of us looks away, absorbed in each other.

“
I didn’t think…I thought you might not ever wake up, Katy.” He swallows, blinking as he reaches down blindly for my hand with his free hand, enfolding it in his own, gently. “I would have died.” I try to shake my head fiercely at the thought of Henry dead, impeded by the tube in my throat. I can’t begin to imagine him dead—beautiful, vibrant, kind, caring, very
alive
Henry.

The nurse comes back into the room, trailed by a respiratory therapist, and the doctor who had just been coming in to see me anyway. Henry stands up, stepping slightly back, but keeping hold of my hand.

“
You gave us quite a scare, young lady,” the doctor tells me. I don’t know him, have never seen him before, wonder if he’s as good a doctor as Dr. Jamison, though he probably wouldn’t appreciate being compared to a veterinarian.

“
Let’s try to get that tube out of your throat, huh?” I nod, wanting to talk to Henry. “We’ll pull it out, but you’ve been dependent on it for a while so it might be difficult for your body to breathe on its own. We might have to put it back in,” he warns.

He and the nurse step forward, forcing Henry to step back. He moves to the end of the bed where he can see me. They pull the tube out, me coughing and gagging at the sensation. The respiratory therapist steps forward and places a mask over my face, pumping a big bulbous thing on the end, forcing air into my lungs. For a moment I feel as if I’m suffocating, then my body’s instincts kick in and my lungs pull in a small breath of air on their own, then another and another.

The three medical people beam, looking like proud parents. A canula is placed in my nose and oxygen begins flowing.

“
Henry,” my voice comes out thick and raspy, barely above a whisper. Henry smiles his wide smile that I love so much.

“
It’s going to take a few days for your voice to work right,” the nurse tells me.

Henry comes back to my side, leaning down to kiss me softly on my freed lips.

“
I love you,” I mouth.

“
I love you so much,” he returns.

It’s a slow, painful recovery to even get to the point that I can get out of bed. I have respiratory and physical therapists every day. My lungs seem well on their way to recovery. I’m informed that one lung had been punctured by a broken rib and the other collapsed when it filled with fluid. My body is weak from disuse, so the physical therapy is harder, especially since I still have many broken bones.

It was two weeks from the time of the attack to when I woke from the coma. There are scans and tests performed by an occupational therapist that determine there’s no obvious brain damage.

Henry never leaves my side.

His parents, Claire and Amy have all come in to see me, Emma and Claire crying when they see me. Claire promises to make me a special outfit to wear when I leave the hospital, and Amy silently slips a four-leaf clover into my hand. Emma later tells me she had found it the year before and has been keeping it for luck. I’m touched that she would want me to have it; I need all the luck I can get.

I see the way Emma looks at Henry, concern etched in her face.

“
Henry,” my voice is still scratchy, but he hurries to my side when I call. “Go home, Henry. Take a real shower and shave,” I reach up, no small accomplishment, rubbing my hand on his bristly cheek. “Get a good night’s sleep in your own bed. I’m not going anywhere; I’ll still be here in the morning.”

Emma joins her voice with mine.

“
Go, honey, I’ll stay here.”

He looks about to protest, but then he nods his head wearily. I can see the toll it’s taking on him to be here all the time. He agrees to go shower and shave, but insists on coming back later this evening.

A week later I’m going stir crazy. I want some privacy from all of the doctors, nurses and therapists that are constantly in the room. I’m also afraid, because I can’t go home.

I haven’t asked yet about my mother. Neither she, nor my father, has been in to see me. It’s gotten to the point where the not knowing is worse than asking, so when Henry and I have a rare few minutes alone together, in the deep of the night while he sits in his chair and tries to get comfortable next to my bed, I ask.

“
What happened to my mother, Henry?”

He stills where he’s sitting, looking down at his feet. Finally he exhales a loud breath and looks up at me.

“
I’m not sure it’s my place to tell you, Kate.”

I laugh scornfully.

“
You’re the
only
one who should tell me, Henry.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“
Are you mad at me, Henry? For not telling you, I mean.”

He looks at me, confused.

“
For not telling me what?”

“
About…
her
. You know, for not telling you what was going on at home.”

He comes over and takes my hand, pressing it to his mouth.

“
Of course not.”

I look up at him. “Not at all?” I ask.

He shrugs and grins sadly.

“
Maybe a little, because I could have helped, maybe. Because I hoped you trusted me enough to know that you could tell me anything.”

“
I do trust you, Henry, more than anyone. It wasn’t that at all.”

“
What was it then?”

“
I couldn’t have stood it if you pitied me. I knew you did a little anyway, because of the kids at school. But if you had known about her, I would always have wondered if you really loved me, or if it was sympathy.”

“
How could you wonder that? Don’t you know how much I love you?”

I smile at him. “It’s a little hard to fathom, because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that I don’t deserve you.”

“
Don’t say that,” he looks pained at my words. “
I
don’t deserve
you
, especially now.” The last two words are muttered low.

“
What do you mean, ‘especially now’?”

His face is anguished as he squeezes my hand.

“
This is my fault,” he says, his hand sweeping the length of my body, which has been mostly freed from its various tubes and straps.

“
What? Henry, by what stretch of the imagination do you think this is your fault?”

“
Because I took you home. I had the feeling that I needed to come in with you, but I let you talk me out of it. If I had come in…” he breaks off, tormented.

“
Henry, look at me,” I say, waiting until his eyes meet mine. “If it hadn’t been then, it would have been later, after you left. Or the next day. Or the next week. It’s not your fault, and for the first time in my life, I know it wasn’t mine either. I won’t let you blame yourself. Besides that, it’s over. I won’t ever let her touch me again.”

He looks away at my words.

“
Thanksgiving? Was that her?” he asks.

“
Yes.”

“
And all the other times, when you had black eyes, or other bruises?”

“
Yes.”