Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“I need you to make me a promise.”
“Anything,” I said, brushing a lock of hair off his forehead.
“Two promises. First, my lawyer is on the way. I put everything in writing so there’s no confusion.
I want you to handle my music career. All final decisions are yours.
I don’t want any of the new music to be released.
It all sounds like shit. So make sure they don’t release it.
If anything happens to me, you’re in charge.
No one else is allowed to make decisions on my behalf.
No one . Not my lawyer. Not the record label?—"
“Nothing is going to happen to you.” I was trying not to hyperventilate. “After you heal from your surgery, you’ll be able to take care of all this yourself.”
“I need you to promise me.”
I swallowed. “I promise.”
“This new label I signed with is going to push for this album to be released but don’t let them bully you?—”
“Gabriel. Please stop talking like this.” I buried my face in the crook of his neck. “You promised me you would live?—”
“Cleo. Look at me.”
I released a shaky breath and propped my head on my hand and mustered a smile. “I could look at you forever.”
He smiled. “Good. I’ll hold you to it. But if I wake up from this and I’m not the same man, I still need you to do this, okay?”
God. This was all too much. I wanted to break down and cry like a baby, but I had to stay strong for him. I’d have plenty of time to cry later so I nodded. “Okay. I promise.”
“Now for the most important thing. Marry me.”
I traced his eyebrows, his nose, his mouth then leaned over and kissed his lips. “I already said yes. We’re getting married in May.”
“Not May. Now. Today. Right here. Marry me, Cleo.”
“Gabriel.” My voice cracked. “We don’t have time for this. The doctor said you have two hours…” I released a shaky breath. “I’m going to marry you in May and we’re going on a romantic honeymoon. We’ll feed each other fruit and laze around in a hammock with the sea breezes?—”
“I want to do it now. Just in case?—”
I put my fingers over his lips. “Shh. Don’t say it. Please don’t say it,” I pleaded.
“I’m not having surgery until you marry me.” He pressed his lips together and got that obstinate look on his face that I knew so well.
It was the same look he had when he fought with the record label executives over the cover for his first album and won. The same look he had on his face when he told his A&R guy to go to hell and signed with a new label after fulfilling his contract obligations.
I’d seen him go into battle to protect his artistic vision so many times.
On a personal level, I knew that for as stubborn as we both were, we’d learned to choose our battles.
This was the hill he’d chosen to die on. Not literally. Dear Lord, please no.
“We’re here now, together, and if anything does happen to me, I want to make sure you’re taken care of,” he continued.
“Everything I have is yours and there will be a lot less red tape if we’re married.
And I know you’re big on giving away all your money to charity but this time, I need you to keep the money.
I need to know that you’ll have enough to take care of yourself and that you’ll have the freedom to do whatever you want and live the way you want?—”
“I can’t believe you’re talking about money right now,” I cried. “You don’t care about money. I don’t care about money. I don’t want your money.”
“There are only two things I care about in this world. My music and you, and not in that order.” He traced my lips with his index finger, not caring one bit about the IVs hooked up to his right arm. His non-dominant side. Gabriel was a leftie.
“You are the love of my life and no matter what happens, you will always be my first love and my last. I want to marry you because I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you because you are my home. My only home. Please marry me, Cleo.”
“Yes,” I whispered, then louder, “yes, of course I will.”
How could I deny him anything? When I looked into his deep brown eyes, I saw our whole future.
This would not be the end for us.
He was going to pull through this surgery and when he woke up, he would still be the man I fell in love with.
I refused to face any other possibility. Clinging to that hope gave me the strength to put a smile on my face.
I didn’t want him to go into surgery seeing anything but my smile.
We were married by the hospital chaplain.
Eddie showed up with two rings. Tyler brought flowers from the gift shop and a Polaroid camera. Devin was in charge of music. They’d all been sent on the errands while Gabriel had been discussing his wishes so the whole thing came together quickly.
Devin joked that it was like a scavenger hunt. I guess Gabriel was pretty confident that I’d say yes.
When the chaplain declared us husband and wife, “Wonderwall” played from the boombox. I grabbed Gabriel’s face and kissed his lips.
“I love you. Now and forever,” I said.
Then, in the spirit of the occasion, I tossed my bouquet. The guys all ducked and dodged, so it ended up in the hands of one of the nurses who informed us she was already married but thought our wedding was so romantic that she was going to take the flowers home and dry them to have as a keepsake.
I wish I’d thought of that, but it was too late now. I couldn’t ask for the flowers back. Besides, I’d gotten the ring and the husband and a stack of photos that I would cherish forever.
When the others departed to give us a few minutes of privacy, we just lay on the hospital bed together without speaking. There were so many things I wanted to say but just being next to him, holding his hand, was enough.
All too soon, the nurse told me it was time to go so they could prep Gabriel for surgery.
“I love you.” I gave him a final kiss and climbed off the bed. “I’ll see you soon.”
He snagged my hand like he never wanted to let me go. “We’ll do this again in May and we’ll go on that honeymoon. Anywhere you want to go. Sky’s the limit, baby.”
I smiled. “Sky’s the limit.”
On my way out the door, I passed an orderly with a razor in his hand and my knees buckled.
Please don’t shave off all his hair . Such a stupid thing to care about.
Outside his room, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes, my thumb spinning the smooth metal on my ring finger.
Then I stumbled down the hall to a pay phone and called my mom.
When she answered, I broke.
I was crying so hard she had to ask me to repeat what I’d said. “Please come.”
“I’m on my way.”
We all milled around in the waiting room, playing musical chairs. Tyler, Devin, Eddie, Annika who had arrived shortly after my mom and Sean. Normally, I would have questioned why my mom and Sean came together, but I was just glad they were here, so I didn’t ask.
A hospital waiting room has a strange vibe. A mixture of the mundane and the macabre.
The fluorescent lighting was unforgiving. The air smelled like stale coffee, wet dog, and Lysol, and the hours ticked by so slowly that every time I checked the clock on the wall, I was astonished to see that the big hand had only moved an inch.
We alternated between sitting on hard plastic chairs and roaming the halls aimlessly. We took bathroom breaks and made coffee runs. We lived in our little bubble, separated from the outside world.
“I thought Monks was bad enough, but you one-upped yourself and got married in a hospital room,” Annika joked.
“Shame you missed it,” Eddie said with a smirk. “It was a beautiful ceremony.”
She scowled at him. “That’s just rude.”
“When you have your second wedding at Monks,” Sean said. “I’ll get the good wine.”
“I knew you were holding out on us,” Devin said.
Sean pointed at him. “You’re not getting any.”
Everyone laughed, including me. This is what people did in times of crisis. They rallied around and tried to instil humor and lighthearted banter to diffuse a tense situation.
But there was a fine line between laughing and crying. One minute, I was laughing at everyone’s jokes and the next I was sobbing.
My mom moved to the seat next to mine and wrapped her arms around me. “I know, baby, I know.” She stroked my hair and held me while I cried.
When I was all cried out, I sat back in my seat and stared blankly into space. “This doesn’t feel real. Just this morning, he was fine and now…” I swallowed. “I’m so scared. He’s in an operating room right now and they’re performing brain surgery on that big, beautiful brain of his.”
My eyes filled with tears again, but I blinked them back and gave her a watery smile. “He’s such a wonder. The way he sees the world and the way he lives so fully with all this enthusiasm, it’s contagious. He brings so much color into my life. We drive each other nuts too,” I laughed.
“Like when he brushes his teeth, he squeezes the toothpaste from the middle. And then the tube bends in half and falls out of the cup all the time and I’m always trying to fix it and squeeze it from the bottom. You ingrained that in me.”
My mom laughed. “Nothing worse than a wonky toothpaste tube.”
“Right? And when he shaves he leaves all the little hairs in the sink. It drives me nuts. And he always, always puts milk or juice back in the fridge when there’s only like a tiny sip left.
Last week, I woke up in the middle of the night because he was yanking the quilt away from me.
He said I’m a cover hog and I had them all, but he had nothing.
“But you know when it’s hot out and it’s too hot to sleep?
He’ll flip his pillow over and give me the cool side.
And he’s always the one who cleans the shower drain even though my long hair is always blocking it.
One time when he was away, I called the plumber and told him my drain was blocked.
It was just my hair. And when Gabriel was teaching me to drive, he kept hitting an imaginary brake and slamming his head against the headrest like my driving was giving him whiplash. He’s so dramatic but it made me laugh.
“And I just think…that’s what love is, you know?
The stupid, little everyday things when you annoy each other and get on each other’s nerves but then you make each other laugh and you think, I could never love anyone as much as I love you .
No one makes me laugh the way he does. I don’t want to fight over the covers with anyone but him.
I don’t want to clean anyone else’s stubble from the sink.
I don’t want to squabble over who ate the last bagel with anyone but him.
I don’t want to do any of this without him. ”
“You won’t have to,” my mom said.
She sounded so certain that I believed her. Gabriel would come through this like a champ. He was going to be okay, and fifty years from now, we’ll be celebrating our golden anniversary.
I knew we would make it, I’ll say.
I never doubted it for a minute, he’ll reply . You’re the love of my life. My once in a lifetime. Not only in this life, but in the next, too.
I’ll nod, fully convinced that nothing could ever keep us apart. We’ll find each other in every lifetime, I’ll say.
And then we’ll dance in the rain. Two lovers whose hearts beat in sync. Whose smiles hold all the secrets of the universe.
We’ll still be living like Bohemian artists. I’ll still think he’s sexy, and he’ll still read me poetry and serve me coffee in bed.
What a beautiful life we’ll have.
What incredible memories we’ll share.