3
The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the just-finished ICU at Greenwood Hospital was a black-tie affair.
I didn’t plan it, it was up to the PR Department of the hospital.
I wasn’t thrilled about showing up in my monkey suit, but if it did any good I could deal.
All the people were milling around in what was actually a waiting room done up to look ready for a fancy party.
They had brought a piano into the room, and a pianist was playing light jazz, which competed with the sounds of talk and laughter.
All of Greenwood’s movers and shakers were there.
It was hard for me to remember that I was one of them now, not some green kid just getting started.
They would come up to me and shake my hand, slap me on the back, congratulate me, all that kind of stuff.
And they would ask me questions, like about business, and then actually listen to the answer.
But it was kind of a boring party, if you want the truth.
When I saw Julia, though, I thought I would wear fifty tuxedos to fifty boring parties for the chance to see her dressed like she was that night.
Her dress was red, and strapless, held up by magic as far as I could tell.
It was made of some kind of material that had a sheen to it.
But the thing about it was the way it hugged that girl’s curves.
Good god.
She had her hair piled up on top of her head, with like a pearl pin in it, and pearls on her ears and around her neck.
If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never see anything that looks better.
In fact, I hope my memory lasts til the day I die, because I want my mental picture of Julia in the red gown to be the last memory I have on this earth.
When she walked in, she paused in the doorway like she didn’t know what to do.
I gave her a big wave and yelled out her name, which maybe isn’t how people act at black-tie affairs.
But Julia saw me, and her face lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning.
We started moving towards each other through the crowd.
I took both of her hands and leaned in to kiss her, and she turned her smooth cheek towards me so I kissed that. “Julia, you look…amazing. Stunning.”
She laughed, and I could tell she was pretty excited. “Check you out in the penguin outfit! Pretty slick, Nick!”
She used to say that little rhyme to me a lot, so it made me happy.
“Can I get you some champagne?”
I asked. She said yes, so I made my way over to the little makeshift bar they had set up and got us a couple glasses.
When I got back, she was talking with the doctor that I’d met in the meeting, the first day I’d seen Julia again.
When I came up, he shook my hand and thanked me again for donating, but then moved into the crowd, leaving me alone with Julia. We sipped our champagne. It was in those tall skinny glasses that are so narrow it’s hard to fit your nose in the glass.
Waiters were circulating with trays of canapes, and Julia and I took a couple.
“What are these?” she said.
They looked like fluffy piles of orangey foam on top of little skinny pieces of toast. “I have no idea,”
I said. “I’m pretty sure I’m paying for this party, and they’re serving me food I can’t identify.”
“Ha! The caterers were probably like, ‘He’s just some dumb kid with a billion dollars. Let’s see what crazy food we can make for this party!’”
“Oh, thanks a lot!”
I said. “The sad part is, you’re probably right. Well? You brave enough to try it?”
“Hell, yeah!”
We both bit down at the same time. The expression of bliss on her face was so extreme it was almost funny. “Oh my GOD,”
she finally said when she’d swallowed her bite. “I don’t care what they are, I just want more. Where did that waiter go?”
In that moment I wanted to grab her and kiss her. The whole Julia experience was too much to handle with her looking so beautiful. Being with her was the best, but it was also a kind of torture.
We were pretending. We were dancing around our feelings, acting like the stuff on the surface was all there was. At least I was. How did she feel? I had no idea. My hopes for how I wanted her to feel got in the way of being able to tell what was really going on with her.
I decided then that somehow I would get her alone and tell her everything. The hell with what she remembered or didn’t remember. I couldn’t go on just pretending it was okay to be casual friends with her.
“Julia, this party isn’t going to last very long. After we cut the ribbon, it will be over. I’d love to take you out someplace really nice. Seems a shame to waste that dress on these stuffy hospital people. Would you like to go to dinner at La Maison?”
Oh, wow,”
she said. Her eyes traveled over my face for long, long moment, and then she smiled and said, “Yes. That sounds really nice.”
I took her hand and tried to draw her a little closer, but she backed off and let go of my hand. She said, “Where’s that guy with the little orange thingies? Do you want another one?”
Before we could locate the waiter, the hospital administrator came up to us and said, “Okay kids! It’s ribbon-cutting time. Just keep your speeches short, less than five minutes is fine.”
“Speeches?”
Julia’s face turned white, her red lipstick standing out like a slash against her face.
I took her hand and squeezed it. “It’s going to be okay. You just have to say a couple of things, smile, keep looking beautiful.”
I took a chance and put my arms around her, and felt her relax into them. “That part should be easy, Jule. You’ve got this,”
I whispered.
She nodded and looked up at me. “I’ll be okay, I guess. Will you talk first?”
“Sure. And I’ll be right beside you the whole time.”
She exhaled and straightened her shoulders. “Okay. I’m ready.”
She kept hold of my hand as we walked to the front of the room.
Someone had taped a wide red ribbon across a door that people had been passing through all this time. The administrator stood beside us holding a comically huge pair of scissors. He nodded at me to let me know I should start talking. I hadn’t thought much about what to say.
“Ladies and gentleman,”
I started. “It will be three years ago this August that this young woman here, Julia Winthrop, was brought to Greenwood Hospital in an ambulance. She had suffered extensive injuries in an auto accident. She was transferred from the ER to the ICU, where for three weeks she fought for her life. The amazing doctors and nursing staff of Greenwood brought her from a critical condition, in a coma, to stability and good health. Today, after more surgery, she is the vision of loveliness you see before you.”
People clapped, surprising me. “When I left Greenwood, I was just a college kid, and through some events almost as miraculous as Julia’s recovery, I earned a lot of money. I decided to give to the hospital that saved the life of a woman who is very dear to me. Thank you.”
People clapped again, harder this time. I turned to Julia, who was giving me a strange look from the corner of her eye.
She stepped forward and said, “I don’t remember much about my time here in the ICU, but I know that if it hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t be here right now. The care I received here inspired me to enter the medical field myself, and I am currently a nursing student at the university, doing my clinicals at Greenwood.”
This got scattered applause too. “I don’t know how to express my gratitude, but I hope the staff here knows how much I feel. I also want to thank Nicholas Cochran for his gift of the new ICU. I know that many more people will be helped here because of it. Thank you.”
The crowd kind of went nuts with clapping and I heard a long wolf-whistle too.
Julia was all smiles, probably relieved that the speeches were over.
The administrator handed me the giant scissors.
Julia and I both held them, each of us taking one handle, and slowly pinched the red ribbon between the blades.
Flashbulbs went off all around us.
Finally the ribbon was cut all the way through, and I turned to Julia and kissed her cheek to the sound of applause as more cameras flashed.
She didn’t object, but smiled at me. Her eyes sparkled in their green depths, and I wished we were alone. But we would be soon enough.
There was the usual confusion and hubbub of a bunch of people suddenly talking and moving around at once.
Most of them seemed to be heading for the exits, and I thought it would be a good time for Julia and me to go, too.
Just then, I got a text from my new assistant, Mark.
“The letter got here,”
it read. “Should I open it?”
My stomach dropped. I had told him to get in touch with me the instant the letter from the university arrived. “Open it,”
I texted back.
At this point Julia noticed my texting, and said, “What’s up?”
“I don’t know yet,”
I said. “Hang on.”
She frowned a bit and turned away to talk to another well-wisher, this time the wife of a former mayor of Greenwood.
It took forever for the answering text to come in, but when it did, it read, “It’s a GO.”
I couldn’t help it, I said, “Awesome!”
Heads turned, including Julia’s.
“What’s awesome?”
she said with a smile.
“It’s a brand new project for me. Whew! I can’t wait to get going!”
She stiffened. “Oh really?”
she said, and her eyes were suddenly blazing with anger. “I knew it. I knew that you wouldn’t stay. Sooner or later you would turn your back and walk away again.”
That’s exactly what she did then, turned and walked through the doorway where we had just cut the ribbon.
I chased after her. “Wait! Julia, let me explain!”
She was walking fast through a hallway, the skirt of her dress a red silk flag behind her, but now she turned and faced me in the empty hall. “There is no explanation for this. You did it before, you’re doing it again. At least now I can stand on my own two feet, at least now I don’t have to start my whole life over from scratch.”
I was stunned. All this fury because she thought I was leaving town? “This is what I’ve been—”
“Look. Nick. I’m done. I did this thing for the hospital like you wanted, I even started to let you…. But I’m done. You’re not getting the chance to do this to me again. Do me a favor.”
She took a deep breath. “Do not ever try to see me again. Don’t call, don’t email…of course what am I worried about? It’s not like you did any of those things the last time you bailed on me. But understand this: I don’t ever. Ever. Want to lay eyes on you again.”
I grabbed her arm before she could turn away. “Julia stop! You have no idea what this is. You don’t even know why I left!”
“What difference does it make? What I knew was that when I got out of the ICU, you were gone.”
“It matters! My god, Julia, you have no idea what I went through.”
“What YOU went though? Oh, right. I was in a coma, had spinal injuries and everything else. I ended up in a wheelchair for two years —you came out with not a scratch on you, but you are the one who suffered?”
“See? I knew you blamed me! When they said you wouldn’t remember anything, I felt such guilt. You had all these problems; I had none. I was driving. I was sure you would hate me for ruining your life. It was wrong to run away, I know that now, but at the time…. I almost drove off a bridge, I was such a mess.”
She grabbed my arms then, and looked at me intently, but then let go of me.
“Julia, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bear it, after seeing you in all that pain, to know you would wake up and hate me. I was going to come back about a month later, but that’s when Dad told me you didn’t want him or Lucy to tell me anything about you. You cut off all contact. So I knew you didn’t want to see me. Of course you thought the accident was all my fault.”
“The hell I did! I never blamed you for the accident! What we were doing was dangerous as hell and it was my fault as much as yours!”
For a minute I just stared at her, thinking about what she’d said. “Wait,”
I said. “You remember the accident?”
~ ~
Did you ever ask someone to marry you? It’s like you’ve just jumped off a cliff, not knowing whether you’ll land in deep, welcoming water, or a field of boulders. My heart was going like mad. Julia is a kind person, and she didn’t make me wait.
She pulled my hand up until I stood and then threw her arms around me. I could feel her jumping up and down a little bit. “Yes, yes, yes!”
she said. She was laughing, I was laughing. I touched that delicious little mole beside her mouth, and then I kissed her. We were both gasping with joyful laughter, so it wasn’t a long kiss, but what it lacked in length it made up for in sweetness.
“Nick, I have always wished…. I mean I always hoped that somehow, someday, we’d be together, but I never thought it would come true!”
“Me too! I thought I was just the big brother who drove you crazy.”
“Ugh,”
she said. “Don’t say that brother stuff. And yes, you did drive me crazy. Still do.”
She pulled my head down to hers, and this time our kiss left nothing to be desired.
“Let’s go home, Jule. I want to get the conversation with Dad and Lucy over with, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I don’t want to keep my mom in the dark about this. And now she’ll have a wedding to plan!”
A wedding! This was all happening so suddenly that I felt disoriented for a minute as Julia and I ran to the car.
But then I looked over at her on the front seat, and she gave me the most beautiful smile, and I knew that wherever that girl was, that was where I wanted to be.
We were young to get married, it was true, but Julia was my home and that was all there was to it.
We’d been driving for about five minutes when Julia unbuckled her seatbelt so she could slide over next to me on the front seat of the ancient sedan I had then.
“Julia, that’s dangerous. You should put your seatbelt back on.”
“Oh, it’ll be okay. I can’t do this from way over there.”
She put her arm around me and started to kiss my neck. It made it hard to want her to go back to the passenger side. She had one hand in my hair and one on my chest.
I had put a loose shirt on over my bathing trunks, and now she unbuttoned the shirt and slipped her hand inside, onto my chest. It made me wonder about something.
“Hey Jule. This is maybe none of my business, but have you…. Have you ever had a serious boyfriend before?”
“No, not really.”
She kissed my ear. “I kind of had a crush on this totally hot, unattainable guy. No other guy could come close.”
I laughed. She really knew how to make me feel good. I don’t know why I had to know this, but I did. I said, “So, you’ve never been with anyone else?”
“Well, I dated of course. I mean I tried to stop thinking about you all the time, but— Wait. Are you asking me if I’ve had sex?”
“Uh, yeah, is that too personal?”
She laughed. “You do remember asking me to marry you, right? I’ll tell you anything. No, I have not had sex. I managed to graduate from high school still a virgin. Probably the only one.”
“No way are you the only one. And Jule? I’m glad. I’m glad you didn’t find someone.”
“What about you?”
I was afraid she would ask that. “Uh, I have. I haven’t been really serious about anyone, but in college…. It’s like everybody hooks up. It’s expected.”
“That’s cool,”
she said. “At least one of us will know what to do. I’ve never even…seen one.”
“We’ll have to do something about that,”
I said, and gave her a big fake leer and a wink.
Julia’s hand, the one on my chest, was moving lower. She kissed my neck again, and her hand reached my still-damp bathing suit. Slowly, her fingers grazed my cock outside the fabric. I felt the blood slam into my cock, making it rise to attention. She increased the pressure of her fingers, and gripped me lightly. “Is this right?”
she whispered.
I could barely breathe. “It’s great, Jule.”
I turned a bit to kiss her, trying to keep one eye on the road.
She gave my cock a squeeze, then let go and turned around on the seat. She arched her back and reach behind herself with both hands to unhook her bikini top.
“What are you doing?”
I said, alarmed, though of course I knew what she was doing. “Anyone driving by will be able to see you.”
“Eh, this road’s pretty deserted.”
With that she removed the swimsuit top and put it on the seat. Her breasts were creamy white, in contrast to the light tan she had. Their shape was perfect, and they moved a bit with the motion of the car.
“My god, Julia. You’re so beautiful,”
I breathed.
She leaned towards me and caressed her own breasts, lifting them and pushing them together. She brushed her pale pink nipples with her fingers.
I couldn’t resist. I reached towards her, anticipating the smoothness on my hand.
Just then, the car started to jolt. I’d let the car drift off the road. Too fast, we were approaching a huge tree. I didn’t even have time to brake or turn the wheel.
Everything ended in the sound of shattered glass and the scream of twisted metal.
Julia
“Yes, I remember the accident!”
I shouted in Nick’s face.
“How much of that day do you remember?”
“All of it, as far as I know.”
“But…the doctors said you couldn’t. That after the trauma and being unconscious you wouldn’t.”
“They were wrong! Doctors don’t know everything, Nick.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it didn’t matter.”
“Of COURSE it matters! What could possibly matter more?”
“What you did matters more. What you didn’t do matters more. I woke up in the ICU, and my fiance had disappeared. I’d loved you for years; I finally found out you loved me too—or you said you did; and right away you abandoned me when I needed you most.”
“But they said you would forget the whole day! I thought you would wake up and discover that your life was ruined and it was all my fault. Not the fault of the man who loved you, because you would forget all that--your stepbrother’s fault. How could you stand to look at me every day? How could you not hate me?”
“How could you not have stuck around to find out what I remembered? Would it have cut into your busy life to wait another day or two? I’ll tell you what I think, Nick, I think that’s all bullshit! It’s a justification. You didn’t want a wife who was disabled.”