Why did the time matter to him? All of a sudden, it did, urgently. His heart sped up. He leaned forward, reaching over the guardrail on Kate’s bed to take her hand. He suddenly had the strongest feeling that if she made it until midnight, she would make it one more day. Time would add up, minutes and hours would accumulate, and she would keep healing, and she would get well, she would be okay.
All she had to do was make it until midnight.
The machines kept her breathing, kept her blood flowing to her organs, and Conor held tightly to her hand. He didn’t let go. He leaned over and kissed her. He whispered her name. He had things to say, and he needed for her to hear them.
Come on, Kate, he said.One more day. Ten more minutes until midnight. Nine. Eight.
One more day, Kate. Just make it until midnight ...We’re almost there. I love you, I love you, Kate. Will you marry me?
Seven, six.
Please live for another day.
Five, four.
Four minutes until midnight, Kate. Just make it until then, and we’ll have forever.
Conor looked at his watch, at the second hand sweeping around the dial. The machines beeped. Kate’s chest rose and fell, and Conor breathed in the same rhythm.
Three, two.
One.
Midnight.
43
Friday, December 24; 7:00 p.m.
This time, there was no tent.
Instead of bowers of hydrangeas, there would be laurel garlands and Christmas trees and fires in the fireplaces. There would be no calligraphed place cards, because at an almost-elopement, Kate knew exactly who everyone was and where she wanted them to sit. Besides, she wouldn’t mind if she never saw calligraphed anything ever again.
There would definitely not be a rehearsal dinner.
At first, they really had planned to elope. No guests, just them. The talk had started on September 25.
Kate had stayed in the ICU for six weeks. She’d had cardiothoracic surgery, to repair a left ventricular tear and damage to blood vessels around the heart. She had needed other surgeries to repair lung and nerve damage and to address the other stab wounds. Just as she was about to move to a regular floor, a systemic infection set in. Sepsis razed through her body, causing her to spike a fever of 103 degrees. She needed another two weeks in the ICU withIvantibiotics to get the staph and strep infections under control.
She had been in a medically induced coma for part of her hospital stay, enough so that she remembered almost nothing of the first two months. Doctors told her that she had been close to death, flown by helicopter from Maynard-King to Rhode Island Hospital. They saidthat she had had surgery immediately upon arrival and several other operations in quick succession. They told her that she had been repeatedly stabbed and that she was very lucky that the knife had nicked her heart but missed a direct hit.
Visitors were limited in the ICU. She’d been told that Sam, Hadley, Tom, Jackie, Mike, Anne, and Tallulah had visited her; that even though CeCe was officially too young, she had been allowed one quick visit so she could leave Star with Kate. Star was the last fragment of CeCe’s baby blanket, a four-inch square of threadbare flannel, and even though CeCe was now seven, she kept it close at all times—until tucking it into Kate’s hand while Kate slept.
Kate remembered none of those visits from the people she loved so much.
Doctors told her that Conor had stayed with her almost twenty-four seven since she was admitted. They told her that he had taken indefinite leave from his detective job at the Connecticut State Police and been with her night and day.
The nurses told her that he had learned how to do many of the things they did: check her IVs, watch her O2 level and call them if he was alarmed, put salve on her bedsores and turn her body to relieve pressure on the worst ones, massage her legs to make sure she was getting good circulation, check her catheter and the color of urine flowing into the bag to make sure there wasn’t blood in there.
Mostly he had just sat there, in a chair pulled close to Kate’s bed, looking at her. He always had a book with him, but the nurses said he hardly ever seemed to read it. Sometimes he held Kate’s hand. The nurses said that patients who stay in the hospital for a long time often get “helmet head”—where the hair gets so matted from having their head flat against the pillow. But Kate never did have that issue. Conor brushed her hair every day, and he made sure it never got tangled.
Even though Kate was in a coma and didn’t remember her friends’ and family’s visits, she knew that Conor had been there every minute. She had felt him with her, as if he had been lying in the bed with her.She remembered all the words he said to her—how much he loved her, how when she got better they would go to Baffin Island and see narwhals and the northern lights, how he would learn the guitar so he could write her songs, how they would elope.
Every single day, she heard him ask the same question:Kate, will you marry me?
And every single day, she answered:Yes, Conor. I love you, I will marry you.
The problem was, she was in a coma and couldn’t form words or make her voice heard. But she believed that he knew what she was saying. Of course he did.
