She is the only thing worth living for.
It’s romantic, the sentiment, and it surprises him because romance has never been one of his strengths. And now he wishes he had thought it before this moment, said it to her out loud. Surely he has, though, right? He’s said so many words to her over the collection of their hours, days, months, years together. But for some reason, he can’t recall any of those words just now. All he can remember is the first time she told him she loved him. She didn’t mean to say it. It slipped out on the way back from that wedding they went to in Maine. When they were pulled off in the emergency lane of the highway and she was hanging her head out the door, vomiting bile because she had nothing left in her stomach. He was rubbing her back and it came out in a little groan. “OhIloveyou.” At first he thought she was still drunk and not sure what she was saying, but then she turned her head and looked directly at him, her face paler than usual, dark circles under her big round eyes. “I do. I love you.” She said it as though it were a simple fact she was stating, but it was one that amazed him. Like learning that ninety percent of the earth’s oceans haven’t yet been explored. Mind-boggling. Overwhelming.
He was too shocked to say it back. But he wishes he had. He wishes he could tell her now. “I love you, too.” But he’s tired and just wants to sleep. When he wakes up, he’ll say it. How he’d do anything for her. Give her anything she wanted. He thinks of his Ita when he was a boy and would ask for a pastelito, and she’d sneak several onto his plate when his mother wasn’t looking. That’s what he’ll say to Mia: You want a baby? I’ll give you ten!
But for now he smiles at her—the Mia from today with the wind-whipped cheeks—one last time, and hopes that she knows.
Chapter 30
I am sitting on a hard chair in the ER waiting room. Waiting. Caroline and her large belly wait beside me and we are holding hands, but we’re not speaking. The electronic doors keep sliding open, as people enter and leave, allowing gusts of cold air in. I hear snippets of conversation from other people milling around, clutching foam coffee cups, as I play a weird mind game trying to line up the number of gunshots I counted to their destinations.
One to Whitney.
One to Oliver.
Three to Harrison.
There are three unaccounted for but I don’t care because three to Harrison.
We’ve been there for hours, beneath the fluorescent lights, watching the night fall outside. I try to think of the last words Harrison said to me and I can’t, and that’s how I know he’ll be OK. Every time someone talks about a loved one dying, they repeat the last words that person said to them, and I can’t do that, so they weren’t the last words.
A woman in a police uniform approaches us, asking for a statement about what happened, and it’s the same question I’ve been asking over and over. What happened? Why didn’t I grab Harrison as soon as I saw the carousel? I could have said any number of things—I’m sleepy, I don’t feel good, I want to go home. We could be home, right now. Watching Wheel of Fortune and eating ice cream out of the carton.
Finally, a doctor in mint-green scrubs walks up to us and I know his name is Leong and I know someone is dead because Leong’s face is long and I think this is funny until I think it might be Harrison and then God help me I hope with everything in me that it’s Caroline who will be getting the bad news.
And I know she’s thinking the same about me, because she drops my hand. Leong comes to a stop in front of me.
“Harrison sustained gunshot wounds to the upper thigh, right arm and chest,” he says. His mouth keeps moving, but I cannot hear the words coming out of it. I can’t hear anything. And I wonder if I’m having a stroke.
Or no—maybe I’ve been shot.
Maybe that’s where the last three bullets went. I must have been shot, but for some reason I couldn’t feel it until just now. I open my mouth to tell Leong, to tell someone, but no words come out. And then I do hear something. One sentence. And then another.
We did everything we could. I’m sorry to tell you, he died.
And that’s when I know the weapon that has attacked me is not a gun.
It’s a cleaver, and it has split me wide open.
I am butterflied.
And everything goes silent once again.
* * *
I always thought grief was a loud, noisy affair of keening and wailing and sobbing. The way I rocked in the fetal position every time I lost a baby. But it’s not. At least not always.
It’s an empty stillness.
My memories of the moments, hours, days after that evening are a silent movie reel. I remember faces in the hospital, Caroline, Leong, Gabriel. But they were alive. Harrison’s looked like a mannequin spackled to the dimensions of himself.
I kissed it anyway. And then I put my hand gingerly on his shoulder and realized he was cold, even though he had a blanket pulled up to his armpits. So I crawled up on the metal tray that held his body and wrapped him up, as I’d done so many times in our life together, lending him my body heat. I tucked my head under his chin, feeling the bristles of his beard on my forehead, and closed my eyes. I slipped my hand in his and lay beside him and I wouldn’t leave. Not even when my sister showed up. I don’t remember vomiting, but I remember the putrid scent of it filling my nose, clinging to my shirt.
And I thought of the first time I told Harrison I loved him. And I vomited again.
* * *
I remember sitting on a pew of a church I’d never been inside. The air smelled a little bit musty like a retirement home and there were men in elaborate robes and I realized it was a Catholic church, even though Harrison wasn’t even Catholic anymore.
I remember seeing Oliver, his arm glued to his body by a white and navy sling. As he walked toward me outside, I thought vaguely I should say something to him for saving my life, but when he got close, all the fury I’d been saving up at myself, the world, came rushing forward and I lunged at him, screaming: “Why me? Why didn’t you save him?” I may have punched him, or tried to. Somebody grabbed my arm.
* * *
But mostly I remember the silence. As if when Harrison left this world, he packed sound in a suitcase and took it with him, tucked under his arm. And I wish he had packed me instead.
I sleep all day and lie awake all night, and though I know there are people in my house, none of the people are Harrison and I can’t be bothered to care. It occurs to me that after my outburst at the church I am probably on some kind of suicide watch and I want to tell them all it’s OK. I may want to die, but I don’t have the energy to kill myself.
One day I wake up, and I hear something. The pots and pans banging in the kitchen. Voices whisper-arguing. The television tuned to Daniel Tiger. And it’s too much. I need everything to be quiet again, but I’m not sure my voice will work.