The Offer (35 page)

“Oh, shit,” I
cry out, getting out of the booth just as she tips toward the
ground. Bram is there, catching her in time and I fall down to my
knees beside her as he holds her up.

“What’s
wrong?” he asks.

I grab her
hand and squeeze it. It’s clammy. Her eyes are unfocused, glazed,
and that familiar fruit odor permeates from her breath.

“Oh, fuck, no
not now,” I say as she starts to lose consciousness right there in
front of me. “Ava!” I yell at her and her eyes briefly flutter open
before closing.

Bram gingerly
lowers her to the ground while I crawl over her, tapping on her
face. He brings out his phone. “I’m calling the ambulance.” I hear
him place the call and I’m not about to argue over this one.

“I think it’s
DKA. Diabetic shock.”

“That same
thing she had before?” he asks, voice high.

I nod and then
he relays the information to the agent. Ava’s been great lately, so
good. The diet, the readings, everything has been working out well.
But the last time she got like this was when Bram left and now that
he’s here, the emotions are just too much.

“I think it
can be brought on by stress and emotional upheaval,” I tell him
without looking at him. I’m trying my hardest to keep her awake and
keep myself calm. I’ve learned a lot. I can do this. I can get her
through this.

But I can’t do
it alone right now. I finally meet Bram’s eyes and see that he
looks on the verge of breaking himself. “I need you to get my bag,
the large purple one in the booth, and bring it here,” I tell
him.

He nods and
swiftly does as I ask. Now people are gathered around us and James
is asking if I need anything and I don’t know what to say, I just
know what to do. I inject her with the insulin, right into her
stomach and she doesn’t even flinch.

“That will
work, right?” he asks me.

“I hope so,” I
tell him, not wanting to think about what would happen if it
didn’t. The last time, she didn’t lose consciousness she didn’t
have that fruit breath. Last time the shot brought her around but
this time…this time I’m so afraid it won’t.

Thankfully
it’s not long before the ambulance roars up to the doors, even
though to me it felt like hours, and they get Ava on a stretcher
and into the ambulance. The EMTs are asking me questions and I’m
rattling off everything about her disease and our routine, like
it’s textbook formula.

But when I try
to make my way into the back of the ambulance, they tell me I can’t
be there with her. It’s then that I break down, that I lose it.
That I scream and I cry, while they tell me it’s their policy not
to when the sirens are going.

Bram holds me
back, his hands on both my arms, keeping me from lashing out at
them in anger. I feel crazed and feral, the worry and panic and
unfairness of it all ripping me at the seams. Finally, the
ambulance pulls away and I feel like all my hope goes with it.

I lean into
Bram and try to catch my breath, to gain back my control. I wish he
wasn’t the one holding me and at the same time I’m glad he’s
here.

The only
person who really seemed to care about the both of us so much.

You were a charity case
, a wicked voice says to me inside my head and I ignore it
because what had happened between us has no bearing now, not while
my baby girl is on the verge of dying. Nothing else matters
anymore.

Bram puts me
in his car and then we speed off after the ambulance and to the
hospital, the same one as last time. With any luck, I’ll have the
same doctor and that thought, this little bit of familiarity,
brings me a tiny shred of calm.

This time
there is no waiting in the emergency room. Bram and I are ushered
down the hall toward the room Ava is in, and when a nurse asks if
we are her parents, I feel myself nodding. Bram seemed ready to
leave but the truth is too sticky to explain and at this moment I
need someone like him here to hold my own hand when I need to be
holding Ava’s.

It’s the
same doctor as before but the news isn’t the same. He says her
insulin levels are so off the charts that it’s becoming difficult
to keep them where they need to be. His words dig deep and now I’m
really afraid there won’t be a happy ending. There will be no out.
It will be one of those ironic ones, the type in a film noir where
the mother loses the daughter but gains a husband. But the loss she
feels is one that can never, ever,
ever
be replaced.

The doctor
wants privacy and has brought in someone else, so Bram and I wait
out in the hall, stuck in uncomfortable chairs and I’m rocking in
it back and forth, my brain wanting to latch onto the horrid
impossible. I keep imagining what it would feel like if they came
out with bad news and it’s akin to free-falling into Hell. It’s so
brutal and unbearable that I get dizzy even thinking about it.

Bram rubs my
back as I curl up into a ball and try to breathe and stay in the
moment and stop panicking. It’s so damn hard. But his presence, his
comfort, is relentless.

And all this
time, he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t apologize, he doesn’t try
to win me over – he doesn’t even tell me that everything’s going to
be all right. Because he knows, as much as I do, that it’s not all
right. She’s in there and it’s not all right and no amount of
saying it is ever going to make it true.

All Bram does
is be there. It’s simple.

He’s just
there.

And it’s all I
will need to get through.

I just hope
that Ava, wherever she is in her head, her mind locked down by her
betraying body, can feel him too.

***

“Nicola.”
Bram’s voice breaks through the haze. “I got you a coffee.”

I open my eyes
and see him holding out a chipped Styrofoam cup filled with inky
brown liquid.

“It tastes
like bloody petrol,” he says apologetically. “But it will
help.”

I straighten
up in my seat and gingerly take it from him, shooting him a quick
smile of thanks. I look over at Ava who is lying in the hospital
bed, IVs everywhere and eyes closed. She looks more angelic than
ever.

“How is
she?”

He sits down
next to me with a tired sigh. “She hasn’t woken up. I think she had
a funny dream because she was smiling at one point. The nurses say
it’s best to let her sleep. Her little system has undergone so
much.”

That it has.
It was about 1am when the doctors were finally able to pull Ava out
of her quasi-coma. She wasn’t entirely with it at the time, but she
recognized me and Bram and thank God she was too doped up she
couldn’t get emotional over him again.

After that, I
pretty much stood vigil at her side, making up stories and telling
them to her as she slept. Finally, I must have fallen asleep in the
chair, utterly exhausted.

All the while,
Bram was here, just like that first time, when I didn’t know him at
all.

He was there
for us then.

He’s there for
us now.

But still,
there’s just so much time, space and distance between us, all that
messy past to hold us down, that I’m not really sure how to make
things right again.

I just think
that I want to.

“Bram,” I say
softly.

He rubs his
hand over his face and looks at me. His white dress shirt has the
sleeves rolled up, a spot of coffee near the buttons. His hair is
disheveled. His eyes are wide but red, his skin tired and grey. He
looks like he hasn’t gotten any sleep at all and I know he hasn’t
because of her.

And maybe
me.

“Yeah,” he
says.

I take in a
breath for courage. “I know this probably isn’t the right time to
be bringing this up but…I’m still mad at you.”

A small, sad
smile flashes on his face. “I know. And you have every right to be
mad with me for as long as you want to.”

“But I don’t
want to,” I say and look at my hands because it’s easier. “Being
mad takes so much out of me. It’s crippling…I don’t want to regret
you. That’s not how I want to live, with regrets, even if it pains
me.”

“I don’t want
you to regret me either,” he says and he puts his hand on my arm. I
can feel his eyes on me, searching my face, searching for answers
that I may not know myself. “Sweetheart. I’m sorry. Unbelievably
sorry. I know there is nothing I can say or do to make you believe
it, but just hear me out. Just know that it’s true. I never meant
to keep Taylor and Matthew from you, I wanted to tell you…I was
just a coward and so bloody afraid that you’d leave me. No one
wants to admit to someone that they were once a terrible person who
did terrible things. I was afraid that if I showed that truth to
you, it would scare you away for good. That you would forget about
the person I became, the person I am.”

I nod,
wondering what I would have done if he had told me on his own time.
It’s impossible to know. I might have been okay with it. I might
not have been. We might have been strong enough to handle it. Or
maybe not.

I think
back to what he had said when I told him I loved him. How
everything happens in due time. But I think it’s more about
the
right
time.

“Just please
listen to me when I say that you were never ever a charity case,
okay?”

Ugh. That part
still burns.

“Please,” he
repeats and I can feel his conviction. “Everything I did for you
and Ava is because I wanted to. Because I liked you…a lot. Both of
you. I just wanted to be with you. Maybe subconsciously I was
trying to make amends for the things I’ve done or maybe it was the
matter of properly helping someone when I finally had the means to
do it. I just wanted to make you smile. That’s it. That’s really
all there ever was. I wanted to make you smile because it seemed
like such a hard thing to do. And if I could take care of you both,
two girls who deserved it more than anyone I knew, then I would do
that too.”

“You took very
good care of us,” I tell him, sounding small.

“And I hope I
made you smile.”

Of course I
have to smile at that. “You did that too. Always.”

A fuzzy, warm
kind of silence settles between us and I can’t stop comparing the
then and the now and how so much has changed, and so little at the
same time.

“Nicola,” he
whispers and his voice melts my bones. I can’t help but meet his
eyes and in them I see everything I’ve always wanted to see and not
because I want to, because it’s there.

“I love you,”
he says and at that moment I know it’s true.

Because I can
feel it. Because my heart is trying to fly. And I want to let go.
Because I know it’s going to boomerang right back to him.

“I am just
simply in love with you,” he says, his fingers stroking my jawline,
down to my chin. “And there’s not much more that I can say than
that. I hope the words are enough because I know them here.” He
puts his hand at his chest. “And I had to know that first.”

My eyes water
just when I think I can’t possibly have any tears left. My heart
swells and swells and swells, threatening to spill over, to drown
me, to wash me away.

I welcome it.
Because having a heart full of his love, and my love for him, is
the best feeling in the world.

“I still love
you,” I manage to tell him, my voice breaking. “I couldn’t stop
even if I tried. And I tried. I kept wanting to forget you but you
were always still in me, no matter what I did.” I swallow hard and
he leans forward, kissing me as the tears slide down my cheeks.

I’d dreamed
about these lips again and again. Even when I didn’t want to, even
when it hurt more than it did me good. I’d dreamed about them.

Now, they were
here, kissing me, shedding my skin, making me wild and free.

Making love to
my soul.

Suddenly the
bed creaks stirring me out of Bram’s warm embrace and we break
apart to see Ava staring at us in confusion. For a moment, I think
she’s going to lose her mind again, though who knows which way this
time.

But she just
smiles, brighter than the sun that’s streaming in through her
window.

“Are you two
boyfriend and girlfriend now?” she asks, her voice a bit groggy but
upbeat.

Bram squeezes
my arm. “Would you like that?” he asks her.

She nods
slowly. “Yes. Because you’ll take me to Disneyland again.”

I laugh and
look at Bram. “Well, it looks like you owe this kid another
trip.”

“I owe this
kid another trip,” he jerks his thumb at himself. His smile turns
wistful as he stares at me. “We’re going to be okay,” he says to
me. “I promise. Me, you, her. We’ll be great.”

“Great,” Ava
says softly.

I kiss Bram on
the forehead and get up, walking over to Ava.

“How are you
feeling?” I ask her, putting my hand over her impossibly small
one.

“Tired,” she
says. “Sleepy.”

“No pain? You
know where you are?”

She nods once.
“Hospital. Something went wrong with my special disease, didn’t
it?”

I squeeze her
hand. “It did. You got a bit excited when you saw Bram again.
Sometimes if you get too excited, it becomes too much. But the
doctors were able to help you, and from now on, I have to watch you
a little closer, maybe try some new ouchies. But you’ll be
okay.”

“I’ll be
great,” she says sleepily. “Just like you and Bram.”

She closes her
eyes and drifts off again.

Bram comes up
behind me, putting his strong, supportive arm around my waist and
the two of us watch Ava as she dreams.

The next few
days speed on like a rocket. Whereas everything in my life seemed
to slog by in slow motion before, now it was blasting forward.
There’s been some bumps along the way but that’s to be expected
when everything around you does a 180, even if it’s for the
better.