Kace

They told me to go home.

They told me I needed to get out of there. Get some fresh clothes. A real shower. An actual meal. The nurses told me. The doctors told me.

They took her away from me.

She was gone.

I stood outside a set of doors that I wasn’t allowed to go through, a doctor who was my height, but a quarter of my size standing there, looking at me. His eyes seemed cold and maybe even a little dead. Then again, he had to shut his emotions off. I’m sure he gave out bad news every single day.

“We’re going to do everything…”

“Save it,” I said. “I’m tired of hearing that. Just say it straight. Please.”

“Okay,” the doctor said. “Kace, right?”

“Yeah. That’s my name.”

“It’s not as rare as you’d think. I won’t get into the specific medical terms here, but there was, say, a lot of stress on her heart. And a tear in an artery. That’s a really rough combination. That’s what happened. You did everything you could to save her. We got her stabilized here and then unfortunately, it happened again.”

“So what’s the end here?” I asked. “Surgery?”

“No. That’s too risky in this case. It could actually cause further damage and risk.”

“Is she going to survive?”

He didn’t answer right away. I looked down and pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Her best bet right now is being here with us,” the doctor said. “We’re going to closely monitor her heart and make sure that nothing happens again.”

“Then what?”

“We worry about that then. There’s plenty that she can do. You can help her, Kace. My opinion is that she was born with a heart condition that was topped by this event.”

“An event, huh? That’s what it is?”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “There’s nothing I can say to you that’s going to ease anything. I understand that.”

“Why now?”

“It can be a variety of things. Stress. Anxiety. A death in the family. Something big in life that can put a lot of pressure on someone’s body.”

I thought about everything that was me and Sienna together. In the span of a day, I had to drag my drunk father out of a bar, fight a guy to protect my father, then take Sienna to her dying grandmother, only to watch her read letters from her dead father to her dead mother. And I put the cherry on the cake by surprising her with an apartment.

“Christ,” I said, clearing my throat. “I did this. This whole…”

“Don’t look at it that way,” the doctor said. “It’s circumstantial. It could have happened at any time. Be thankful you were there when it did. You were there to help her. To get help to come. If you hadn’t…”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders again.

He gave a weak nod and turned, going beyond the doors I wasn’t allowed to go through.

I stood there for what felt like my entire life, staring and thinking.

I had been standing right there at the hospital bed when it happened for a second time. She tried so hard to turn her head and look at me. Her lips moved just a little before everything stopped. And when everything stopped was when everything got busy.

“Come on, man, let’s get out of here for a minute.”

Mack stood next to me, holding two coffees. He forced one into my hand.

“I can’t leave her here.”

“She’s not coming home today.”

“Maybe ever.”

“Nah. She loves you too much for that.”

I looked at Mack. “That’s not how this shit works.”

“I believe it does,” he said. “Come on. You can drive yourself home. I’ll follow you. Go and take a shower, change, eat, and we’ll come right back here.”

I didn’t say a word.

I walked away, each step putting distance between myself and the woman I loved. It was a cruel feeling that rippled through me. I didn’t know how people did it. How people came to the hospital and left with their lives changed. Some people left with babies, on a new and happy path. Other people left with a loved one left behind, knowing they’d never come home again.

When I got back to my apartment, the first thing I saw were the letters on the floor. The mess from that night. I stepped into the living room area and looked down at them. I wasn’t sure what her grandmother had been thinking. Maybe it was some sort of dark apology or a justification of things. Show Sienna that her mother and father were so messed up that it was best for her to be hidden by her grandmother.

I didn’t know. I would never know.

The answers I’d never know were weighing on me.

“You want a drink?” Mack called out.

“No,” I said.

I crouched and found the crumbled obituary.

It took me back to Andy.

I was never allowed to get involved. I wasn’t allowed to see the scene when the ambulances and firetrucks were there. I wasn’t allowed to go to her funeral. Well, she didn’t really have one. Just a memorial thing. I wasn’t even sure what happened to her. Where she was laid to rest. Where I could go and visit.

The swell inside my chest crested and I lost it.

I scooped up the letters and threw them into the air. I flipped the coffee table so hard that it flew into the couch and bounced back, smashing against my leg.

“Fuck!” I screamed and charged toward the wall.

I made a fist and punched, cracking the drywall, but not putting a hole in the wall thanks to my knuckles smashing against a stud.

I brought my fist back again and then someone was holding it.

Mack mustered up enough balls and strength to turn me around, knowing the risk of me knocking his ass out.

“Stay here, man,” Mack yelled in my face. “She’s going to be okay.”

Another feeling washed over me.

Grief.

Instead of punching Mack, I put my arms around him. He was suddenly holding me, my face against his shoulder as I started to cry. Years of that shit waiting to come out. My grandfather. My father. My mother. That fucking house. The house next door. Andy. Washing money off in the sink because it had puke on it or dripped with piss from my father. Trying to find a sense of normal. Meeting Sienna in a way that had a flirty and fun notion to it, only to have it ripped away and thrust into a world of sadness that matched everything I knew.

“I’ve got you, man,” Mack said. He made fists and hit my back as he hugged me. “I’ve fucking got you.”

I quickly cleared my throat and broke away from him. I shook my head. I kept a hand on his shoulder and looked at him.

“You’re my brother,” I said. “I’ve never said it before to you. But you’re my fucking brother, man. I love you, Mack. I can’t lose her. I can’t think about this… my life without…”

“Then don’t think it,” he said.

I turned my head again and hurried to wipe my eyes.

“If you love her, make that love stronger than anything that wants to drag you both down,” Mack said.

I saw something on the couch and an idea came to me.

“Let that lift you…”

“Hey, Mack?” I asked, turning my head.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

He smiled. “Right.”

I found the notebook on the couch and knew what I had to do.

I had to save Sienna one more time.

* * *

“The clouds are changing, dancing, their candy edges drip but never touch the ground. The airplanes fly through them, the sweetness of their hearts know no true bound. Like lollipop smiles and helicopter kisses, dropping droplets of everything I miss. The casual we said was real, the colors we don’t see but feel…”

I stopped reading and looked at the next page and the scribbled drawings of an airplane in the sky, a helicopter upside down, clouds that were different colors. The bottom of the page had a drawing of a person on their back, eyes and mouth open, watching the scene above.

I had read everything in the book three times now. Most of the time it was to myself because Sienna didn’t like it when I read out loud when she was awake.

She was asleep, taking deep and full breaths. Breath that proved that she was alive. She was well. Or at least well enough. The damage to her heart may never repair itself, but I would do anything to give her the life she deserved to have. It seemed like a sick and twisted sense of irony that after years of getting your heart beaten up, it could actually become messed up for good. It made me wish that I could go back in time and find her when she was young. The young Kace and the young Sienna, holding hands together in our cheap and dirty clothes, looking at peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as the greatest meal of all time, playing in a sandbox at the corner park where everyone dealt drugs and smoked, but it would have been our world. And we could have just started walking and left it all behind before anything truly bad happened to us.

I flipped the page.

“Oh, this is a good one,” I said. “The one about the pig that mails a letter. I swear, darlin’, you must have had the most beautiful imagination ever as a kid.”

“Don’t read it.”

I looked up and Sienna had half a smile on her face.

“You’re awake.”

I quickly shut the book and put it next to me.

She turned her head and looked at me. “I’m awake. Yeah.”

“I was really looking forward to the pig with the stamp that stuck to his foot.”

“Stop it,” she said. “I should have never told you about that book.”

“Too late, darlin’,” I said. I stood and leaned over the bed and kissed her. “Too late for everything.”

Sienna touched my hand. “Hey. Serious talk for a second?”

“Yeah. What’s up? Are you hungry? I can call…”

“Kace. You should probably leave soon.”

“Leave? It’s not even dark out yet. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Kace. Not that kind of leave. I’m talking… leave.”

“Leave?”

“You saved me,” she said with a weak smile. “So many times now. And someone out there deserves you more than I do. What if this is the rest of my life?”

“It’s not, darlin’,” I said. “You heard the doctor. He thinks you got through the worst.”

“So I went from hours to live to this?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “You want this more than the alternative. Your body fought. You fought.”

“I’m not out of the clear and never will be.”

“I can look into your beautiful eyes and see your beautiful face, Sienna. That’s all I need.”

“For now. I’ll grow on you. I’ll be a burden. You don’t have to be here anymore, Kace.”

I rubbed my jaw. “Right. So that’s how you want it? I just walk out and you go along with your life? That’s not going to happen here. It’s you or nothing.”

“What if I had died? What if I die next week?”

I gently touched her face. “And what if you don’t?”

She blinked fast, fighting back tears.

I let a few seconds pass.

“What if you fucking don’t die? What if I don’t fucking die? What if the world doesn’t fucking end? All we have are the seconds in our hands. I know damn well that every second I have is going to be spent with you, loving you, taking care of you.”

“It’s crazy though.”

“What is?”

“This whole thing. My parents left me with nothing but bad memories and a bad heart…”

“And I’m going to take care of that heart.”

Sienna stared forward for a few seconds. “When was the last time you showered?”

“Do I smell?”

“A little.”

I grinned. “I don’t even know what day of the week it is right now, darlin’.”

“Seriously?” She rolled her eyes at me.

“Yeah. I’m captivated by this book.”

“You’re a jerk.”

“Hey, this is really impressive.”

“Kace… did you tell my grandmother everything that happened?”

I swallowed hard. “You don’t need anything in your life but good thoughts right now.”

“So she really doesn’t give a damn?”

“I give a damn. Your friends from work do too. They called your phone and I talked to them. Hope you don’t mind. Told them what happened and they want to come and visit.”

“They can visit me at home,” she said. “I need to get out of here.”

“Soon,” I said. I ran a hand into her hair. “I promise, darlin’. Really soon.”

Sienna turned her head and body a little like she wanted to curl off the bed into my arms. It ripped my heart into pieces. I got as close as I could to her, damn near climbing into the hospital bed next to her. She didn’t quite grasp how close she came to leaving me for good. I didn’t get involved with all the medical terms and bullshit, I just went with the reality of it all. Her heart was just a few seconds away from calling it quits for good. But the doctors all felt that she was going to be okay. It was just one of those things. Born with an issue that nobody ever knew about, not even Sienna. And it mixed with the boulder of everything that had been dumped on her.

She put her head onto my chest and the position was so damn uncomfortable. My right foot on the floor, my leg starting to fall asleep, feeling like it was on fire. My left arm wrapped around her, my hand tingling from being bent in a weird position. But I wasn’t going to move a fucking inch from her. No way in hell. This was my everything in my arms. I would stay there for the rest of my life if it meant I got to hold her, feel her breathe, talk to her when she was awake, and do everything possible to get a smile and eye roll from her.

I kissed her head and took a deep breath.

“You’re not getting away that easily, darlin’,” I whispered.

“Damn,” she said. “I thought you would’ve taken the hint by now.”

I laughed.

I looked around the hospital and swallowed hard. I wanted to keep laughing, even when I felt the tears creeping up on me.

“I want to go home, Kace,” Sienna whispered. “To our home. The one you worked so hard on for us.”

“Soon enough,” I said. “Just think about all the shit you want to put in there.”

“Careful, you might go broke.”

“As long as I have you, I can never be broke.”

Sienna lifted her head and looked at me. “That was kind of cheesy.”

“Yeah, it was,” I said and smiled.

She touched my face, her middle fingertip near the corner of my eye to catch a tear before it fell.

I put my fingers under her chin and lifted her head a little more.

I kissed her.

I wasn’t sure if our forever was going to last a day or a hundred years. But I knew one thing… there wasn’t going to be a second wasted where I wasn’t going to be trying to kiss her and tell her how beautiful she was…