Undying Love (19 page)

Dr. Goulding took a deep breath. “It’s a very aggressive type. I’m afraid there is no cure.”

My mind was in thick fog. It took me several long minutes to register his words. Nausea rose to my chest. The rest of me was paralyzed.

“How long do I have?” Allee asked stoically after several more long minutes of silence. Her face was as white as chalk.

Dr. Goulding pressed his lips into a thin, grim line. “We’ll have to schedule a biopsy and bone marrow test. It could be a few months.” He paused. “Or it could be a few weeks. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this.”

Reality speared into me. Allee had cancer. She was going to die.

Her head against my chest, Allee sat cradled in my arms in the back seat of the Escalade. Despite the mild summer-like weather, her body was as cold as ice. We were steeped in silence and sorrow. From the blank expressions on our faces, Marcus knew something was wrong but dared not to say a word.

I stroked Allee’s hair and kept my lips glued to her head. I couldn’t understand why my baby hadn’t shed a tear. Perhaps like me, the heart-breaking, gut-wrenching pain had made her numb. My eyes and ears shut out the world around me. The rush of midday traffic and sights of the city were just a blur. Why was this happening? Allee didn’t deserve this. Christ. She wasn’t even twenty-five yet—that birthday just a few weeks away. Why was God taking her away from me? Why did bad things happen to good people? Allee was good. Too good. Was the fault on her shoulders, something she’d done or not done? Or was it mine?

The doctor had explained to us that there was not much that could done at this late stage of the disease. Any therapy was purely palliative—it could relieve pain, but it couldn’t stop the progression. The end. It would be up to us—to her—what we wanted to do.

When we reached the loft, Allee broke away from me and barreled out of the elevator. I watched with wide-eyed shock as she bolted to the bookshelf where she kept all her treasured art books. One by one, she tore them out and madly hurled them across the room.

“Allee, what are you doing?” I cried out. I ran up to her and tried to stop her.

“Leave me alone!” she screamed back at me, twisting her arms free of my grip.

She yanked out the thick book of Musée D’Orsay paintings that I’d given her for Christmas. Expecting to see it go flying across the room, I was surprised when she held it to her heart and fell to her knees. The dam of tears she’d been holding back broke, and she began to sob uncontrollably.

“God dammit. I was supposed to be in remission.”

I instantly stooped down and wrapped my arms around her frail, trembling body. She was still clutching the oversized book like a pillow.

“Baby, what do you mean?”

Her tear-soaked eyes met mine. “Oh, my Superman,” she bawled. “I had lymphoma my junior year in college. They said they got it. They said I was cured. That it wouldn’t come back. The fucking liars!”

It hit me then why she couldn’t go to Paris that year. Why she was infertile and couldn’t conceive. And why she had to do that other job—to pay off medical bills in addition to her college loans.

“Oh, my baby. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought that—”

“Shh.” I put a finger to her lips, soaked and swollen from her runny nose and tears. “I don’t want to know.”

She gazed up me and sniffled, “Can you forgive me, Madewell?”

I brushed away her tears. “Baby, there’s nothing to forgive. I would have fallen in love with you and married you no matter what.” The truth. That’s how much I loved her.

“Tell me, you’re not bullshitting me, Madewell,” she stammered through her tears.

I framed her face in my hands and looked straight at her. “Allee Adair Madewell, I can’t bullshit you. You know that.” I was close to shedding tears of my own. So damn close it hurt
. Don’t cry, Ryan. Madewells don’t cry.

Not letting go of my gaze, she slowly lowered the Musée D’Orsay book to the floor, setting it beside her. She wrapped her thin arms around my neck and buried her head against my chest. I just let her cry. For as hard and long as she needed. I stroked her tousled hair, relishing the silkiness of each strand. Finally, her sobbing let up a little, dissolving into hoarse, erratic whimpers.

“What do you want to do, Allee?” I asked softly.

She gazed up at me, tears streaming from her eyes. “I want to dance with you, Ryan Madewell IV.”

For the first time that day, a ghost of a smile crossed my face. It dawned on me that we had never danced together before. It was odd but true. Lifting her into my arms as I rose, I crossed the room to the coffee table between the leather couches. Reaching for a remote, I clicked a button, and “I Won’t Give Up,” our favorite song, filtered into the room. I tenderly set Allee down and pressed her close to me. She rested her head on my shoulder and let me lead the way. She followed me with ease—as if we had danced this way forever. We were again chest to chest, organ to organ, heart to heart. The mound of flesh between my legs wedged into her warm center while her breasts crushed against my pecs. We took small steps, swaying from side to side as if were sewn together. As if we were one.

Outside, thunder clapped, and rain began to pound on the skylight above us. We had weathered rough skies before and had gotten through. Now, our love was all we had to get us through the fatal storm we faced ahead.

She gazed up at me with those soulful espresso eyes. I warmed her lips with mine and closed my eyes with hers. The song played on. No, Allee Adair Madewell, I wasn’t about to give up on us.

That night, we never stopped making slow passionate love—our own form of palliative therapy. It was all we could do to keep the pain away. Maybe I couldn’t prolong her life, but I could prolong our love.

We were worth it.

TWENTY-TWO

T
he next morning I was up before the sun rose. After making myself a cup of coffee, I scoured the Internet and then made a couple of phone calls. In the middle of the night, while Allee had briefly fallen asleep in my arms, it came to me what we had to do. Maybe it wouldn’t cure her disease, but it would make it more bearable. For both of us. With Allee still sleeping, I stealthily left the loft.

When I returned a few hours later, Allee was awake. She was sitting at the dining table, nursing some tea. She actually looked a little better than she had in a while. There was a twinkle in her eyes, and color rose to her sallow cheeks.

“Pack your bags,” I told her.

She leaped up from the table. A mixture of terror and rage filled her eyes. “I’m not going to the hospital yet, Madewell!”

I didn’t expect her to have this reaction, and I immediately felt terrible. I ran over to her and cradled her in my arms. “No, no, baby, of course not.”

I pulled out an envelope from my back jeans pocket and slapped it onto the table. “Open it, baby.”

Perplexed, Allee reached for the envelope and lifted up the unsealed flap. She removed the contents and gasped.

Inside were two first-class, round-trip tickets to Paris.

Tears flooded her eyes. “Oh, Madewell, you shouldn’t have.”

I squeezed her frail body. Allee Adair Madewell was going to have her Paris. I owed her that. Life owed her that. Her flight was departing in the early evening after her other medical tests. Tomorrow morning, we would be in the City of Light.

While I spent a good deal of the flight writing on my laptop, Allee spent most of it dozing with her head on my shoulder. Every few hours she would wake up and ask me with the eagerness of a child, “Are we there yet?” Finally, just after the sun rose, one of the flight attendants gave her “final destination” speech, in both French and English, as we were about to land at Paris’s Charles De Gaulle Airport. I gently woke Allee up. This was Allee’s first plane trip. A little nervous, she squeezed my hand, keeping her face literally glued to the window.

“I don’t see Paris,” she said, her voice a little despondent.

I kissed her lightly on her head. “Don’t worry, baby. You will soon.”

We passed through customs quickly. Both of us marked “pleasure” on our customs forms in response to the question about the nature of our trip. Deep in my heart, I prayed that this trip would give Allee the most pleasure she’d ever had.

Marcus met us at the arrivals gate. Allee was both shocked and overjoyed to see him. I had purchased a roundtrip ticket that had gotten him to Paris six hours earlier. I needed Marcus to be here for me. For us. When I broke down and told him about Allee’s condition, I swear, beneath his shades, he shed tears. Allee had become as close to him as a daughter.

“I’m sorry, Mr. M,” he’d choked. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Pray,” I’d simply told him.
Yes, pray.

Taking our bags, Marcus escorted us to the limo he’d rented. Though Paris was more of a walking city, I had a feeling we would need the limo more often than not, due to Allee’s health. I helped her fasten her seatbelt, and in no time, we were speeding down the A1 en route to Paris.

I kept my arm wrapped around Allee as she kept her face glued to the tinted window. I knew her heart was racing. Mine was too. Thirty minutes into the ride, Paris came into came into view. “Oh my God!! Paris!” she screamed out. She turned her head and smacked a wet, delicious kiss on my lips.

I’ll never forget the expression on her face as our limo cruised through the streets of Paris en route to our hotel. She was speechless and wide-eyed, like a child in a candy store. When she finally saw the Eiffel Tower, she shrieked and bounced up and down on the car seat as though it was a trampoline.

I had told our family travel agent, who arranged the entire last-minute trip, that there was only one hotel I wanted to stay at—the Hôtel Ritz on the Place Vendôme. While my parents now always stayed at the swanky Crillon, I preferred The Ritz because of its location between Paris’s Left and Right Banks; it was walking distance to everything. And, because this is where my literary hero, Ernest Hemingway, had hung out. When I told Allee that this is where he held court with all the famous artists of the 20’s including Picasso, she freaked out.

Allee’s eyes widened again when we checked into the hotel. I knew she had never seen such grandeur in her life. She studied it like it was a painting, taking in and analyzing every fine detail—from the gilded wall fixtures to the silk-fringed rugs. When I told her I had booked a suite where supposedly Picasso and one of his muses took refuge, she practically had a fit right in front of the check-in clerk.

The amused clerk smiled as he handed me our key. “Enjoy your stay, Monsieur and Madame Madewell.” His words sent a chill down my spine. Our time as “Mr. and Mrs.” was finite. The reality that Allee might die right here in Paris set in. I tried not to think about it.

To say our room was luxurious was an understatement. The hotel, which was about to undergo a multi-million renovation, was nonetheless in top form. A Louis XIV four-poster bed occupied our suite along with many other fine antique furnishings. While she was in awe, Allee was more taken with the fact that Picasso, her idol, had slept here.

“Let’s go to the Musée D’Orsay!” Allee said eagerly after unpacking her bag.

Though neither of us was particularly jet-lagged, I told Allee that we should take a nap, thinking only of her best interest. “We can go there tomorrow.”

“No fucking way, Madewell,” she snapped. “We’re in Paris. We’re going there
tout de
suite! Maintenant!”