The Kiss (12 page)

“I think you girls should stay here,” Cynthia said as she threw back the covers and got out of bed. She had to call the airlines and pack. She was hoping to get a noon flight, and it would just complicate things to take
Olivia with her. And she didn't want them upset. From everything the woman at the hospital had said, it sounded very bad.

“I'm coming with you, Mom.” Olivia raised her voice to her, which was rare. “If I have to, I'll buy the ticket and go by myself.”

“What's going on?” Jane asked sleepily as she wandered into the room. She was small and blond with a tantalizing figure, and she looked almost exactly the way Cindy had at her age. She had just finished her freshman year at NYU, and was turning nineteen. She had heard their voices, and she could see that Olivia was angry at their mother, from the look on her face. “What are you two fighting about at this hour?” Cynthia and her elder child had always had battles about everything. It was Jane who was the peacemaker and the easygoing one. And as she yawned, she climbed into her mother's bed.

“Dad had an accident,” Olivia told her younger sister, as Jane's eyes grew wide, and her mother got on the phone to call the airlines.

“Is he okay?” It was hard for her to imagine that he might not be. Olivia was much more high-strung than she was, and could have been exaggerating. Jane couldn't be sure.

“It doesn't sound good,” Olivia said, choking on a sob, and then sat down on their mother's bed to put her arms around Jane, as she started to cry. “He fractured his neck, and his spine is hurt. Mom says they're not sure he'll ever walk again. He just had a surgery. His car got hit by a bus.”

“Oh shit,” Jane said, clinging to the older sister she
had always comforted, rather than the reverse. But Jane had always been the calm, competent one, even as a very young child. She could take care of herself anywhere, or anyone else who needed her help. She had Cindy's cool unemotional side, but this time she looked panicked as she started to cry.

“Mom's flying to London, and I'm going too,” Olivia said through her tears.

“I'm coming too,” Jane said, and then hopped out of bed, to tell her mother her plans. She stood right in front of her, as Cindy made her flight arrangements on the phone. “We're both going with you,” Jane spoke right over her, and Cindy waved her away. She could hardly hear, they were talking so loud. And then she put her hand on the phone, and spoke to Jane.

“I think you should both stay here. I'll call you if I think you should come.”

“Either we go with you, or we'll go on our own,” Jane said purposefully, and her mother knew from experience, it was futile arguing with her. Olivia could be talked out of things, but once Jane made up her mind, she had the flexibility of a rock. “What time do we leave?”

“There's an eleven-forty flight,” Cindy answered, and then changed her reservations on the phone. She told the agent she'd need three seats in business class. And a moment later, she hung up, and told the girls they had to leave the house at nine. They had two hours to get organized, dress, and pack. There wasn't even time for Bill's plane to come back to New York for them.

“I'll make breakfast,” Jane volunteered, as Olivia
sat on the bed and cried. “Go pack,” she told her older sister, and then looked at her mother, as Cindy opened her closet and took a suitcase off a shelf. “Is Dad going to make it, Mom?” Jane asked quietly. Ever the sensible one, she was fighting to stay calm, as her mother turned and looked at her with troubled eyes.

“I don't know, sweetheart. It sounds like it's too soon to tell. But he's hanging in, and he came through the surgery.” She didn't tell her that the clerk in the ICU had told her he had almost died twice, and it had taken them two hours to pry him out of the car. “He's healthy and strong, and he's in great shape. That can't hurt.”

“How did it happen?” Jane asked, dabbing at her eyes.

“I don't know. All I know is that his limousine was hit by a bus. It must have been a terrible accident, eleven people were killed. Let's be grateful your father wasn't one of them,” she said as Jane left the room, and she tried to figure out what to pack.

But as she threw slacks and T-shirts and sweaters into a suitcase, all she could think of were the implications for Bill. She was absolutely certain that if he was going to be severely impaired, he would prefer not to live. She wasn't sure what she wished for him now, it all depended on how badly damaged he was. But she didn't want to say any of that to the girls. As she packed underwear and shoes into her bag, she realized that she wasn't even sure what she felt herself. She had been married to him for more than half her life, and she wasn't in love with him anymore, but if nothing else they were friends. He was the father of her children,
and had been her husband for thirty years. There had been other men in her life, and their marriage had run out of gas a long time ago, she had even thought about divorcing him once or twice, when she was involved with other men. But it had never once in all these years occurred to her that he might die. Just thinking of that now changed everything.

All Cynthia could think of suddenly was what he had been like when they were kids, how desperately in love with him she had been, how happy they were when they were first married. It was like seeing thirty years of history race before her eyes as she walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. And as she stood beneath the spray of hot water, and thought of him never walking again, all she could do was cry.

They left for the airport shortly after nine, Cynthia drove, and the girls were quiet in the backseat. Cynthia never said a word, and both girls stared out the window and were lost in thought. They were all wearing jeans and T-shirts and Nikes, and had brought very little with them. Cynthia figured they probably wouldn't leave the hospital much, and none of them cared how they looked. The girls had barely taken the time to comb their hair. And when Jane made them breakfast before they left, no one ate. All they could think of was Bill in a hospital in London, fighting for his life. And as their plane took off, Gordon Forrester was in the air, on a flight that had just left Charles de Gaulle. He was due to touch down at Heathrow in less than an hour.

At the hospital in London, nothing had changed. Isabelle and Bill had been put in separate private
rooms in the intensive care ward. Both of them were covered with monitors, had their own separate teams, and were in such dire straits that they were being kept apart from the ward. Isabelle had been running a high fever since three o'clock that afternoon. Her heart was beating irregularly, her liver had been badly damaged, her kidneys were threatening to fail, and they knew, from the trauma and the surgery, that she had some slight swelling of her brain. But at least an EEG had determined that her brain was functioning. The doctors were fairly sure there would be no permanent brain damage, if she survived. It would have been hard to determine which of her many injuries was causing her temperature to rise, and she was still in a deep coma, as much from the trauma as from the anesthetic and the drugs. Looking at her clinically, it was hard to believe she was going to live.

And Bill was faring only slightly better than she. His neck was set in a torturous-looking apparatus with steel bolts and pins, he had an iron brace on his back, and he was on a board that allowed them to move him, although he was unaware of it. He was still in a coma too.

“His family is arriving from the States around midnight,” one of the nurses said at six o'clock that night when they changed shifts. “His wife called from the plane. They're on their way.” The other nurse nodded and adjusted a beeping sound on one of the monitors. At least his vital signs were good, better than Isabelle's, who seemed to be fluttering between life and death constantly. Her survival seemed even more
unsure than his. And one of the nurses asked if anyone was coming to see Isabelle too.

“I don't know. I think they called Paris this morning, and spoke to her husband, but he didn't say when he'd come. Katherine said he sounded very cool. I guess he was in shock.”

“Poor man. This is one of those calls you have nightmares about,” one of Bill's nurses said sympathetically. “I wonder if she has kids.” They knew almost nothing about either of them, no medical history, no personal details, just their nationalities and the names of their next of kin, and what had happened in the accident. No one even knew the relationship between the two of them, if they were business associates, related in any way, or just friends. And there was no point guessing at any of it. Right now all they were were two patients in the intensive care ward, fighting for their lives. They were talking about operating on Isabelle again, to relieve the pressure on her brain. The surgeon was due back at any moment to make a decision about it. And when he came shortly after six, he checked the monitors and, with a grim look, decided to wait. He didn't think she'd survive another surgery, and might not anyway. It seemed unreasonable to him to challenge her more at this point.

It was after seven, and the doctor had just left, when Gordon arrived. He walked into the intensive care ward quietly, spoke to a male clerk at the desk, and told him who he was. The clerk looked up at him, nodded, and asked a passing nurse to take him to Isabelle's room. And without a word, Gordon followed her with a somber expression. He had had all
day to prepare himself for this, and as he stepped into her room, he had expected to find her looking very ill. But nothing he had imagined had prepared him for this. To him, she seemed like an almost unrecognizable hunk of flesh, there were bandages and wires and tubes and monitors everywhere, even her head was swathed with gauze, and the arm with the severed artery was heavily bandaged as well. The only thing familiar about her was her deathly pale face peeking out of the gauze. It was the only part of her that seemed untouched.

There were three people standing next to her when he walked in. One of them was changing an IV, another was checking the monitors, and a third was checking her pupils as they did constantly, but just looking at her, Gordon felt ill. He didn't feel anything for her except horror at what he saw. It was as though she were no longer there, and the shell of what was left meant nothing to him. She was a broken body, nothing more. He said nothing, and did not approach, as one of the nurses spoke softly to him.

“Mr. Forrester?” He nodded his head and cleared his throat, but he didn't know what to say. And it embarrassed him to have to see her with an audience focused on him. He wasn't sure what they expected of him. To throw himself on the foot of her bed perhaps, kiss her fingers, touch her lips. But he couldn't bring himself to come any closer. Watching her was like staring at the angel of death, and it frightened him.

“How is she?” he asked in a gruff voice.

“She has a fever. The doctor just left. They were considering another surgery to relieve the pressure on
her brain, but he thinks she's too compromised to tolerate it. He wants to wait. He said he'd be back at ten o'clock.”

“And if he doesn't do the surgery? Will she be braindamaged?” He couldn't imagine anything worse than her surviving with almost no brain function, or even severely impaired, and he wanted to tell the surgeon that. If she was going to be anything less than she had been, he thought their efforts to save her were a travesty. She had been beautiful and intelligent and talented, and whatever their differences, she had been a good wife to him, and a good mother to their children. To save her in order to lie in a bed like a living corpse was abhorrent to him, and he was prepared to fight to see that that didn't happen to either of them. He didn't want their children to remember her that way. Or to live with it himself.

“It's impossible to tell at this point what the prognosis is, Mr. Forrester. But the brain scans have been encouraging. It's too soon for anyone to know.” It was impossible to believe that she would survive hours, let alone months, in the condition she was in.

“Is there a physician here that I can talk to?” Gordon asked one of the nurses, without any visible sign of emotion. The nurse thought he looked like a distant friend, or a remote member of her family who had come to the hospital dutifully. He kept his emotions to himself.

“I'll let the surgeon on duty know that you're here,” the nurse said as she slipped past him into the hall, leaving the remaining two nurses with Isabelle. Gordon Forrester made her acutely uncomfortable. Looking at Isabelle tore at her heart. She was so beautiful and so
young. But the man who had flown from Paris to see his wife seemed to feel nothing at all. She had never met anyone as cold.

Gordon stepped out of the room, and walked slowly down the hall, waiting for someone to come and talk to him. It was another ten minutes before a young surgeon appeared. He confirmed to Gordon what he already knew, more or less, and acknowledged the grave danger she was in. He said they were debating performing another surgery on her, but were hoping to avoid it if they could. All they could do was wait and see how her own body responded to the trauma it had endured. And in his estimation, it was going to be a long wait before they had good news. But he felt that the fact that she had come this far was a hopeful sign, the only one they had. Hope for Isabelle was still slim.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Forrester,” he said finally. “Given the nature of the accident, it's a miracle that they survived at all.” Gordon nodded, and then his attention caught on something the younger man had said, in direct conflict to what he'd heard earlier in the day.

“I thought the driver was killed.”

“He was, instantly, as was the driver of the bus, and nine passengers.”

“I thought I just understood you to say that ‘they’ had survived.” It made Gordon pause.

“Yes, I did. There was another passenger with her. He survived as well, though he's not in any better shape than your wife. His injuries are different than hers, but they're equally grave. He's listed in very critical condition too.” Gordon had an eerie feeling as he
listened to him, and couldn't imagine what she'd been doing in a limousine with another man, particularly at that hour of night. He knew she had come to London to see an exhibit at the Tate and to go to some other museums and galleries, and he'd seen no harm in it, but now this all seemed very strange.