I always hated rush hour. John’s and Carlos’s tuxedos were getting crushed, but none of the straphangers came near me. They all took one look at my damaged face, and took four steps back. The homeless couldn’t even look at me.
We finally arrived at eight o’clock, sweating in the sweltering June heat. John met Helen at the entrance. She was upset that John was late, and had left her to come to the prom alone. John pointed to my face, and Helen almost fainted. She apologized to John for being upset. Then she apologized to me for my face.
We were in the courtyard of the Word Trade Center’s Twin Towers. I looked up at the large bronze sphere in the center of the fountain. I had walked by this sculpture so many times, and had even sat under the statue with Christine once. It was supposed to symbolize world peace, and resemble the Grand Mosque at Mecca. It was the best outdoor sculpture in all of New York City. I gazed upon it, in awe of its magnitude and perfection. But there was something eerie as well, and it felt as if the sphere was an omen of something bad to come.
I found a payphone, put a dime in, and tried calling Christine. There was no answer. I put another dime in the phone, and called again. Still no answer. I remembered Bruce’s cellular phone and thought it may actually come in handy one day.
I decided to take the subway to Chinatown. I told Carlos and John that I would join them later. “Tell Delancey I’m running late.” They took the elevator up to the Windows on the Worlds restaurant.
The subway ride was about ten minutes to Chinatown. I hurried, limping a few blocks to her place. Christine was all dressed up and waiting for me outside.
“What happened to you? I’ve been waiting here for two hours in the heat!” she asked.
“I’ll explain on the way there.”
“You look awful!” she shouted.
Our cab quickly became stuck in rush hour traffic, and by the time we arrived, it was almost nine o’clock. I told Christine my entire ordeal, and how, of all days, this had to be the day that I was attacked by the hoodlums. She was wearing a sexy red dress, with five metallic gold stars across the top.
“You look ravishing,” I said. Christine did not answer. She sat as far away from me as she could.
“What? No corsage?” she asked.
“The Deceptors have it by now.”
We went upstairs by elevator to the 107
th
floor. When I finally arrived to the prom, everyone had just finished eating. Christine and I sat down at a table with Carlos and John. I went into the kitchen and was able to get us two plates.
Carlos, John, and Helen were getting ready to go dance, and I introduced them to Christine.
“I have to find someone; I’ll be back,” I said. My pain medication was starting to wear off. I took a double dose of the painkillers from the hospital.
As I walked around looking for Delancey, everyone was staring at me. Some were pointing. A few were laughing. My appearance was worse than I had thought. I saw Jacob and Sandra; they were dancing and looked so happy and sad at the same time. Natalie was dancing with another girl. She waved hello.
I saw Mr. Mash, and still no sign of Delancey. Penny was dancing alone. I asked her if she had seen Delancey.
“She’s in the ladies room.”
I limped over to the ladies room, and waited outside for her.
Everyone was dancing. The girls looked really good, so different from how they looked at school. Even Doreen was having a good time. She was finally at a party.
Delancey walked out of the bathroom, and nearly fainted when she saw me. Sam laughed in the background.
“I bumped into some old friends. Are you ashamed of the way I look?” I asked her.
“I know you will heal. But you should get to a hospital.”
“I’ve already been, and this is the best that they could do. How about that dance wife?” I asked her, smiling.
“I thought you’d never ask, hubby,” she said.
“Where’s your date?” I asked.
“Juan? Oh…he’s around…letting everyone know he’s here with me.”
How many girls would have wanted to be seen with me tonight? I was grotesque, but she was still happy to be with me. We were married, I still couldn’t believe it. I fought back tears of joy as we slow danced.
“I have a surprise for you at graduation.” I wasn’t sure if I should tell her about my performance.
“Oh! What is it? I love surprises.”
“That’s why I won’t tell you,” I laughed.
“Come on, give me a hint!” she demanded.
“Well, I am doing a special performance. And I selected a song with you in mind.” I laughed again, having fun keeping the secret.
Sam interrupted to tell me that my hideous appearance was causing some people to vomit. He asked if he could cut in.
“No, you can’t. I’ll take my time dancing with my new wife.”
Sam instantly noticed our wedding rings and his blood started to boil. Rage took over and the veins in his neck and forehead started to protrude. Sam ran back to Juan Perez and whispered in his ear. Juan, clearly inebriated, now shared the same infuriated expression as Sam.
Juan threw his glass to the floor, shattering it, and then overturned a table with engraved champagne glass party favors. Broken glass covered the dance floor. Juan yelled and screamed at me and Delancey. Sam stood by his side.
“So let me get this right! I chase after Delancey for a year; she agrees to go the prom with me, I buy her ticket, get a limo, get us into the after party, and you marry her? Are you trying to make me look like a fool?” Juan had lost all self control. He took a swing at me, missing. He was so drunk he slipped and fell to the ground, which only made him angrier.
“Mr. Zoose isn’t here to save you this time!” Juan shouted. My suspicions had been correct. Juan was a Deceptor.
Juan, drunk, angry, and jealous, pulled a gun out of his pocket, a jeweled handgun. Delancey’s gun. Sam had sold the gun to Juan the Deceptor.
The gun shimmered in the light. The senior class cleared out of the way trying not to be in the cross fire. He aimed it directly at me with a sinister look filling his eyes.
The music stopped. Everything went silent. I could only hear my heavy breathing and Juan’s rapid heartbeat. “You have ruined everything!” shouted Juan. I was standing about ten feet away from him; Delancey was behind me. The pain medication was making me delirious and I laughed.
“What is so funny!” yelled Juan.
“You are. You have money, a family, Harvard, you’re even the class president. You get to take the girl of my dreams to the prom, and now you want to shoot me. I have nothing. No mother. No money. Nothing, except for Delancey. You want to shoot me, go ahead.”
I calmly walked up to Juan. My chest was inches away from the barrel of the gun; my heart pounded like a drum. I was close enough to feel Juan’s panting, and could see the beads of perspiration forming on his forehead. Delancey pleaded with Juan not to shoot.
Juan pulled the trigger, as I knew that he would.
Nothing happened. The gun still did not have bullets.
Security immediately leaped on top of him and threw him out of the party.
I walked over to the far corner, and stood in the shadows, away from the crowd of seniors. I wiped the sweat from my face. I was drained and relieved.
Christine was in a corner talking to a well dressed young man. She was flirting with him. My medication was probably too strong, and I must have been delusional, because I thought the guy bore a strong resemblance to Eddie Lo. On further inspection, I saw it was Wing King.
Delancey was yelling at Sam. Sam furiously shouted back at her. Sam pushed her out of the way, and came charging towards me. I was focused on Sam, who held one of the iron table settings in his left hand, and barely saw Delancey falling on the floor, on the broken glass. I darted over to pick her up. Sam hit me on the head with the heavy metallic table setting, and I fell unconscious.
Several minutes later, Christine and Carlos were helping me up. I could barely walk. My legs and knees were stiff.
Maurice asked if I knew about Delancey. He reminded me that Delancey had fallen on broken glass and described how she was cut all over. “She was bleeding profusely. An ambulance took her to the hospital.”
“Glass had entered deep into her heel, and torso,” John said, “She was
bleeding pints of blood.”
Carlos said, “Large shards of glass went into her foot, maybe four or five inches. She’s at Downtown New York Hospital.”
I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I needed to go to the hospital. I could barely walk.
“Where’s Sam?” I asked.
“Sam was thrown out by Mr. Mash. He was gone before the police came. You were out a long time,” John said.
Carlos agreed to take Christine home, and then meet me at the hospital. John also insisted on going to the hospital.
“Fine, let’s go,” I said.
“Count me in,” said Helen.
This was so unbelievable. Worst case scenarios played through my head. Of all nights for this to happen, it happened the night of the prom, and the day we got married. As we headed toward the exit sign, I was handed a party favor. It was a tall champagne glass, one of the few that were unbroken, engraved with the words “Stanton Serpents.” I was furious with Sam.
The five of us tried to hail a cab, but the entire senior class was doing the same thing. Cab after cab filled up with kids from the prom, all headed to an after party at the Limelight Club. We finally found a cab about a half hour later. “Downtown New York Hospital,” I said to the cabdriver.
“Strange place for an after party,” the driver said. I could only blame myself. I should’ve stopped Sam before he pushed Delancey. The entire evening was being second guessed in my head.
We arrived at the hospital nearly twenty minutes later, after midnight. We went to the emergency room and asked for Delancey. They didn’t know who she was.
“A girl came in here from the prom, bleeding? With broken glass in her foot? She was probably dressed like she was at her prom,” I said. “Like us.” The person behind the desk finally found a record of her, and said she was having surgery in the emergency operating room downstairs.
When we exited the elevator, there was no one to point us in the right direction. We roamed the empty hallways for fifteen minutes. Finally, I saw a sign for “Emergency Operating Room.”
Medical professionals wearing scrubs told us to wait until the surgery was complete. An hour passed. Helen had to go home, and John, being a gentleman, decided to take her back to Queens.
Carlos had arrived from dropping off Christine. He stayed, and waited with me for Delancey to come out of surgery. Another hour passed. A nurse commented that it had been nearly three hours. “It’s pretty serious. Several veins and arteries in the foot were severed,” the nurse said.
Another hour passed, and then Carlos left to go home. It was after three in the morning. A doctor came out of the operating room.
“How is she?” I asked. I could barely see out of my swollen eyes. Everything was blurry and dim. All I saw was a tall, shadowy figure in scrubs.
“Not good. Her main foot artery was severed, and so was her dorsalis pedis. She came by ambulance, but they could not treat the severed artery on the way here. I’m afraid she lost a lot of blood, and by the time we operated on the foot…well, I’m not sure we were successful. She fell on a lot of broken glass. We managed to pull all of the glass out of her body, including one that pierced into her stomach, but there was a lot of damage. I’m not sure she will make it. She’s awake. You can talk to her for a few minutes.”
That was as morbid a discussion as I’d ever had. I put on a set of scrubs, and a surgical mask, and went into the operating room. Delancey was barely lucid. She seemed ethereal.
“Hey, Delancey,” I said. Her face was pale, tubes were in her arms and she could barely breathe. I now realized the severity of the situation. It was much worse than I had thought. She was barely in the room with me, her consciousness fading, hardly able to speak. I had hoped this was caused by the anesthesia. I started to cry, unable to find the words I wanted to say to her. I held her hand, and she tried to squeeze it.
“We didn’t get to finish our dance,” she said. Her voice was faint. She was speaking below a whisper. “I’m so glad we were married, if only for a few hours. I’ll always love you, David. What was the surprise for me at graduation?”
“I’m doing a song, Separate Ways…”
“My favorite…you’ll be great.”
I told her she looked beautiful. She said she was embarrassed to be seen like that. A white sheet covered her legs. The heart monitor was beating slowly, with beats every other second. She turned her head and motioned for a nearby glass of water. The nurse placed a spoonful of water into her mouth.
“Don’t remember me this way,” she whispered.
“What? No honeymoon?” I mumbled. She coughed until she coughed up blood. I grew more fearful.
“You’ve never looked better,” she said as she tried to smile.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“Very funny.” She smiled.