Lurlene McDaniel Read online

  He didn’t protest, and she hurried into the hall, where she discovered Rosa huddled in a discussion with a dark-haired man in a white lab coat. Rosa introduced April to Dr. Bejar as Mark’s fiancée, and the doctor greeted her cordially. “It’s good to meet you. I’m sorry it has to be under these conditions.”

  “How’s Mark? I mean how is he really?”

  Dr. Bejar glanced at Rosa, who gave him a silent nod of assent. Dr. Bejar said, “I’mi concerned about his CF. The smoke he inhaled is bad enough, but the broken ribs make it extremely difficult to maintain his daily therapy and break up the congestion.”

  April hadn’t even considered that Mark’s broken ribs could be a threat to his health. Suddenly frightened, she asked, “What are you going to do?”

  “That’s what Mrs. Gianni and I were just discussing. I can insert a drainage tube through his chest and into his lung and increase his decongestant and inhalant medications. I want to keep pneumonia at bay, because frankly, it’s a serious risk for him.”

  Pneumonia. April felt afraid. For Mark. For herself. For all their plans and dreams.

  “He’s a good doctor,” Rosa said once Dr. Bejar had gone. “We trust him completely to do what’s best for Mark.”

  “I just want him to get well.”

  Rosa touched her April’s arm. “Me too, April. Me too.”

  The minor surgery to insert the drainage tube was performed without complications, and Mark was moved into intensive care. April stayed with him as much as the hospital rules allowed and was astounded at how many hospital personnel stopped by to see him once word spread that he was there. Rosa explained, “Mark’s been a patient here off and on for many years. These people have come to know him and truly care about him.”

  Once news got around about Mark, he had a steady stream of visitors—nurses, health care professionals, friends he’d made in the hospital during his frequent stays over the years. April realized that to many of them, Mark was a CF patient who’d, so far, beaten the odds. She only hoped he could do it one more time.

  April’s mother continued with the wedding plans, partly to give April something else to occupy her mind. When she could pry April away from the hospital, they visited stationery stores and flipped through books of sample invitations. They checked out florists, listening to suggestions for flowers and greenery for the June date April and Mark had chosen. They sampled the wares of bakeries and caterers, and April became entranced by photos of elaborate cakes.

  April found herself caught between the dreamworld of a fantasy wedding and the harsh reality of the hospital and sickness. Mark always seemed heartened when she told him about the wedding plans, so she kept working on them. But after he had spent a week in the hospital with no obvious improvement, she began to see his enthusiasm fading and his hope crumbling.

  He said, “I’m never going to get out of here.”

  “Don’t talk that way. Of course you will. Dr. Bejar said you shouldn’t put a time limit on this stay. Your injuries—”

  “Aren’t getting better,” Mark finished. “I don’t want to be pushed down the aisle in a wheelchair, April.”

  “It’s only November. We have months until the wedding.” She fingered the chain around her neck, the half of a heart he’d given her. “Besides, my father will strangle you if you break off our engagement.”

  He managed a half smile. “That will never happen. But if you want to—”

  “Stop it!” Her voice was sharp. “I won’t listen to you say those things. I plan to marry you in June, so get used to the idea.”

  His expression turned grave. “April, I once told you I wasn’t afraid of dying. That’s a lie. I used to not be scared, but that was before I met you and made all these plans for living. No matter what happens, remember, I love you. And this past spring and summer have been the happiest of my life. All because of you.”

  “Mark, please, don’t give up.”

  “I can’t help it. I know how I feel physically. I know that somehow, this time, it’s different.”

  April tried to change the subject and make him laugh. But Mark was right. That night he developed a fever and pneumonia.

  He’s on the strongest antibiotic available.” Dr. Bejar was updating both families about Mark’s condition. “I’ve ordered a morphine infusion pump too. This way, whenever he’s in pain, he can administer a small dose himself.”

  “But he will get better,” April blurted out. “I mean, with this antibiotic, he will get over his pneumonia.”

  Mark’s mother added, “You’ve always been honest with us, Dr. Bejar. Please don’t hold anything back now. We want to know the truth.”

  The doctor looked serious. “Rosa, his lungs have been badly scarred by years of living with CF. I can’t make any predictions at this time. Let’s just take it day by day.”

  April felt sick to her stomach and didn’t dare look at Mark’s parents. If she did, she was certain she would crumble. She felt weary, like a swimmer treading water. Her life had been put on hold, and she’d become so caught up in Mark’s situation that she felt as if her whole existence revolved around the routine of the hospital. She had dropped her classes at NYU, telling her parents, “I can’t concentrate on college.”

  “How are you feeling?” her mother had asked. “Perhaps you should see Dr. Sorenson. All this stress—”

  April had glared at her. “This isn’t about me. I’m fine and I don’t want Mark thinking about anything except getting well. I’m not leaving this hospital until he does.”

  After Dr. Bejar left them, April found a quiet corner, took her father’s cell phone, and with trembling fingers dialed Kelli’s dorm room in Oregon. She’d talked to Kelli twice since Mark’s accident, but now more than ever, she wanted to hear her friend’s voice. With a three-hour time difference, it wasn’t always easy to catch her in but, miraculously, Kelli answered on the second ring. April poured out her story through tears. “He’s so sick, Kelli. He’s really bad.”

  “Hey, I have faith in medical science. And besides, I want to be your maid of honor.”

  She knew Kelli was trying to cheer her up by focusing on the wedding, but it wasn’t working. “There isn’t going to be any wedding if Mark …” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

  “Listen,” Kelli said, quickly covering the awkwardness. “I bought myself a beeper. That way you can reach me anytime.” She gave April her number.

  “I miss you, Kelli. I wish you were here.”

  “Me too, April. I’d be there in an instant, if I could.” April heard tears of regret in her friend’s voice. There was nothing Kelli could do, nothing any of them could do except wait. April hung up and returned to the ICU.

  The hospital kept several guest rooms for family members of patients in the ICU. April and Rosa moved into one, a cubicle with twin cots, a single dresser, and a bathroom. April’s parents kept their hotel suite. Mark’s father and sisters stayed at the family house. That way they could be near the hospital.

  Mark’s breathing became so labored that it hurt April physically to hear him struggle to breathe. Forming words, saying sentences was nearly a superhuman feat, and she tried as much as possible to keep him from speaking. But he struggled valiandy to talk to her, to his family. Every time he saw her, he rasped, “Love … you.”

  After four, days on antibiotics, he was no better. April longed to make time stand still, but realized that even if she had the power to make it happen, she didn’t have the heart to watch Mark continue to suffer. She took his hand, and when he urged her closer, she bent over his bed, placing her ear near his mouth. “I’m sorry … I … tried … but … I can’t …,” he rasped.

  Tears blurred her eyes. “What can I do for you?”

  “Live … for us. I … wish I … could have seen you … as my bride.”

  Mark’s parents came in his room to be with him, and April went to her father. “Daddy, I need your and Mom’s help.”

  “Anything.”


  “Please, go get my wedding dress. I know it’s not ready yet, but I don’t care. Just bring it to me.”

  April heard the serious tone of her own quavering voice. Her father hugged her quickly and left immediately. Her mother asked, “What can I do?”

  “Nothing just now,” April told her.

  April brooded and paced the floor, overcome with a sense of urgency. Rosa found her and said, “I’m calling our priest, April. I want Mark to have last rites.”

  April felt icy cold and numb with pain. “I understand,” she said.

  When her parents returned with a huge box, April took her mother into the tiny room she shared with Mark’s mother, and there, she tugged on crinolines, slip, and the gorgeous ivory satin gown. Working hurriedly, her mother tucked and pinned, fitting the dress to April’s slim body as best she could. “I have no veil,” April moaned as she looked in the mirror.

  Her mother left but soon returned with a makeshift wreath of baby’s breath and a hastily tied-together bouquet. “I swiped these from every floral arrangement I could get my hands on.” She handed April the bouquet and set-ded the wreath into her mane of thick red hair, pinning it securely.

  April’s hands shook, and she bit her lip hard to keep tears back. “I can’t go into that room crying,” she explained.

  Her mother fluffed April’s long dress and through her own tears said, “You look beautiful.”

  April left the small room. Nurses, lab technicians, and even office personnel had formed a line down the corridor. She questioned her father with her eyes and he shrugged, saying, “I don’t know how word spread, but it did.”

  She walked toward Mark’s cubicle, the exquisite train of the gown sweeping the floor behind her while the onlookers quietly watched. “You are perfectly beautiful,” said one of Mark’s favorite nurses. “And what you’re doing is wonderful.”

  At the door, April saw the priest leaning over Mark, his prayer book open. Her knees almost buckled. She felt her father take her arm. “I think it’s customary for a bride to be given away by her father,” he said.

  Together they entered the room. Startled, the priest and Mark’s parents looked up, and upon seeing April, Rosa’s expression passed from grief to gratitude. They stepped aside, and April moved to the bed. Softly she called Mark’s name. She was dry-eyed now, and calm.

  She saw his eyelids flutter open, his brown eyes widen, and his mouth turn up in a smile. “Beautiful …”

  She smiled back, laid aside her bouquet, and took his unbandaged hand. “‘Until death do us part,’” she whispered.

  “Until … paradise,” he answered.

  “I love you.”

  But Mark was beyond hearing.

  April passed trancelike through the next few days. At the funeral home viewing, her parents stood on either side of her, supporting her while she stood over Mark’s satin-lined casket and looked down at his body. Not Mark, she told herself. Only a waxen shell. He wore his racing suit, and April realized how much strength it had taken for Rosa to allow it. Rosary beads were wrapped around his hand, and dangling from a chain around his neck was the half heart he’d carried on his key chain since the day he’d given April hers. She unfastened from her neck the chain that held her matching half of the heart and dropped it into the casket.

  The day of the funeral was cold, and the sun played hide-and-seek with the clouds, casting dappled shadows over the cemetery. After the mass at Mark’s church, April rode with Mark’s family in a black limousine to the graveside, telling herself that it would all be over soon. That she only had to make it one more minute, then the next minute, and then the one after that. Exactly how Mark had taught her to live her life.

  Afterward she went to Mark’s parents’ home, where family and friends gathered to eat and reminisce about Mark. She thought about the first time Mark had brought her here to meet his family. And about the last time for his birthday party.

  She returned home with her parents and, once in her room, stripped and crept beneath the covers. There, in the quiet darkness, she called Kelli out in Oregon. “It’s over,” April said.

  “I wanted to be with you so bad.”

  April could hear that Kelli had been crying. “It’s okay, Kelli. You’ll be home for Christmas and maybe I’ll be better company by then.”

  “I just want you to be all right.”

  “I don’t know how to be ‘all right,’ Kelli. Mark was everything to me. And now he’s gone. Now, I’m alone. All alone.”

  Darkness as heavy as New York’s winter snow setded over April. All around her the city dressed up for the holidays. Store windows bloomed with festive Christmas scenes. Lights, glittery trees, and bell-ringing Santas were everywhere. But April found no joy or peace or comfort in any of it. Wherever she went, wherever she looked, she was bombarded with memories of Mark.

  When she went for her checkup with Dr. Sorenson, it took every ounce of strength and courage to walk back inside the hospital. He took X rays and told her, “You’re holding your own. The tumor’s dormant. If you continue to feel good, I’ll see you in three months.”

  The good news didn’t mean anything to her. Her head was all right, but her heart was broken. It wasn’t fair.

  She went to her father one December afternoon and spread out travel brochures on the desk in front of him. “Daddy, remember these?”

  “Yes, from when you graduated.”

  “Well, now I want to go away. I want us to take that trip you promised.”

  “Where would you like to go?”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Someplace where it isn’t winter.”

  He pondered her request. “It will take a litde time for your mother and me to get things organized here.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Are you sure you don’t have a destination in mind?”

  She shook her head. “You and Mom pick. Just make sure it’s warm. I miss the summer, Daddy. I’m so tired of being cold.”

  The villa, nestled high above a cove on a hill on the island of St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, faced the ocean. Cool tropical breezes, fragrant with the aromas of exotic flowers and tangy ocean air, stirred through the wide-open doors and windows. April’s bedroom faced west, toward the water, so that the first and last things she saw morning and night were the vivid turquoise waters of the Caribbean and a sweep of blue sky. Sunsets painted the sky coral and red, pink and lavender. Sometimes, when she woke in the middle of the night, moonlight cut a path across the dark face of the sea. Under the spell of the water’s eternal beauty, April felt the winter cold inside her slowly begin to thaw.

  Surrounding the villa were gardens, lush with thick tropical foliage with wondrous names like hibiscus, bougainvillea, oleander. The house was isolated, the only road to it narrow and winding. Weathered wooden stairs led down from the house to the white sandy cove. April went down to the beach every day, and there she read or simply sat staring out at the sea, remembering. Sometimes she cried. More often, she simply marveled at the way the sound and smell of the island eased the tightness in her chest and soothed the pain in her heart. St. Croix had been the perfect choice.

  “I’ve taken the house for six months,” her father had told her while they were still in New York. “And I can get an extension.”

  “That’s so long!” April exclaimed. “How can you and Mom take the time?”

  “I told Caroline I’d do some island-hopping and exploring,” her mother said with a smile. “Who knows what treasures I’ll find?”

  April’s father insisted, “I can keep in touch with my office via fax, phone, and modem. If I have to go back, I can fly out and be in New York in hours.”

  April was grateful. She loved St. Croix and decided that when she felt up to it, she’d go scouting. The island had originally been settled by the Danish. It was twenty-three miles long, with the old city of Christiansted on one end and Frederiksted at the other, and a tropical rain forest between them. St. Croix would have been the perf
ect place for a honeymoon.

  One day April awoke and the sea stretched out glassy calm below her window, the sun sparkled brilliantly, and puffy white clouds floated like cotton candy pillows in the sky. She knew the time had come.

  She pulled on shorts and hiking boots and started up the green hill behind the house. The going was rough, but she made it to the top and stood, gazing out at the water, which was dotted with an occasional sailboat. She lifted her face skyward and spun in a circle, her arms flung open as if to hug the breeze. Up on this hill, she felt closer to heaven, and closer to Mark. Remembering her mission, she stopped.

  She reached into her pocket, brought out a single red balloon, put it to her lips, and began to puff. Slowly it filled and rounded out. She tied it, reached again into her pocket, and removed a long strand of yellow ribbon. She tied it securely to the balloon and waited for a breeze.

  When the breeze blew, soft and balmy from the sea, April flung the balloon upward, shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare, and held her breath. She watched as the air current caught it and pulled it upward. Inside the balloon she’d placed her breath, her kiss of life, as Mark had done for her. She wondered if he could see it, sailing toward him in heaven. April watched until it became no more than a red dot, rising ever higher, as if to touch the sun.

  a cognizant v5 original release september 20 2010

  An excerpt from For Better, for Worse, Forever by Lurlene McDaniel:

  April downshifted, and the Jeep wound its way along the coastal highway. Armed with maps of St. Croix and caution from her parents, she’d headed east, repeating to herself her mother’s anxious warning, “Remember, stay left. Stay left.”

  Wind whipped through her hair as she bounced along the curving highway. As she rounded bends in the road, she glimpsed sight of the jewel-blue Caribbean, an occasional rocky cliff, and lush green distant hills. Sun beat down on her arms and shoulders, and the intoxicating smell of salt air mingled with the sweet aroma of flowers. The roads were few in the island, and now, in the height of tourist season, not heavy with traffic. She gripped the wheel and stepped on the accelerator, as she remembered when Dr. Sorenson said that despite weeks of radiation treatments, the tumor entrenched in her cerebellum and brain stem had not shrunk as hoped. He was so, so sorry. There was litde else medical science could do for her.