Chapter 25 Victoria #2
Victoria’s gaze traveled from Liz’s sincere expression to Ace’s frozen state.
She reflected upon the friendships she had gained, and the family she had created, and the people she had taken under her wing.
She thought about the joy and satisfaction these relationships had brought her and how her life had changed as a result, how her world had grown, how it had become infused with the kind of meaning that a balance sheet could never reflect.
“If not for you, I’d probably still be working for The Catch and on the verge of a mental breakdown,” Liz said. “I’d probably still be with Preston, ignoring all the reasons we shouldn’t be together. I’d be sleepwalking through my life instead of living it.”
Victoria looked at Liz; she could detect apprehension in her friend’s eyes—fear of the future and of the unknown—but she also saw bravery and determination shining through.
“You broke up with Preston?” Victoria asked.
Liz nodded. “I might need to lean on you, but you can also count on me. Because you’re my best friend and my stepmom and that’s so insane, but maybe there’s also something perfect about it, because you’re the family I’d choose, and as it turns out, you’re my actual family too.”
“You are the family I choose, always,” Victoria said.
Victoria reached out for Liz, who buried her head in Victoria’s shoulder. The comfort was short-lived. An alarm cut through the air like a siren and shattered any semblance of calm. Victoria’s head shot to the monitor at the right of Ace’s bedside, which was flaring like a strobe light.
“What’s happening?” Liz said, panic clogging her voice.
Victoria knew the answer, but she couldn’t summon the words. Code blue.
The curtain was flung aside and doctors and nurses streamed in. Janine came over to Victoria and Liz. “It’s best if you wait outside and give the doctors space to work.”
Victoria shook her head—she couldn’t leave Ace.
She couldn’t even move. But Liz stood up obediently, wide-eyed with terror, and held out her hand to Victoria.
Janine nodded and Victoria knew she had no choice but to comply.
Victoria quickly removed the breast pump—the weight of her feelings was so heavy she couldn’t bear to be encumbered by anything else.
Janine reached for the bottles of milk and indicated that she would take care of them. Victoria put her hand in Liz’s.
As Victoria allowed Liz to lead her out, feeling like her limbs belonged to someone else, she heard the doctor counting, “One, two, three—clear,” and then the sickening sound of the defibrillator sizzling against Ace’s chest, trying to shock him back to life.
“Still in A-fib.”
“Resume compressions.”
Another nurse appeared and gently led them to the ICU waiting room, a windowless ten-by-ten space that didn’t even attempt to muster cheer.
Victoria took one look at the clumps of people sitting there quietly—loved ones under siege.
She glimpsed their ravaged expressions, their cell phones juicing up with chargers plugged into the walls, their cans of soda and bags of chips from the vending machine, and she couldn’t take it.
She shook her head, backtracking to the hallway.
Liz followed her, a ghastly pallor on her face.
The nurse told Victoria and Liz that she would report back with any updates, then briskly walked away. Back into the melee.
Victoria leaned against the wall for support.
Liz put her hands up to her eyes as if she could manually shove the tears that threatened back to their point of origin.
Victoria shook her head again in disbelief, then found that she couldn’t stop.
Air-conditioning cycled through industrial vents.
Shoes tapped against the floor as people walked by.
Elevators arrived in the bank down the hall, their doors opening with a ding.
Orderlies pushed carts. Monitors beeped.
Victoria had thought that the hovering between life and death might be the end of her, that the not knowing would be her undoing, but now that she was here, on the precipice of a gruesome finality, she would do anything to reverse course and bob in the turbulent waters of limbo. Anything but this.
Victoria’s and Liz’s gazes connected. Victoria felt her breathing quicken and she choked, trying to get enough air.
“He can’t—” Victoria gasped. She couldn’t finish the sentence.
“I know,” Liz said, squeezing her eyes shut.
Victoria leaned over and tried to put her head between her legs, but panic had overtaken the muscle memory of breath.
Victoria thought she had known how much she loved her husband.
She thought she had known when she slipped her hand into his at the hotel bar and said yes, they could move forward.
She thought she had known when she swam in the relief of reconciliation and basked in the blissful delirium of life with their newborn son.
She thought she had known any of the hundreds of times she had watched Ace putter around their kitchen with precision, performing that special alchemy of turning ingredients into a meal to nourish and please someone because you cared for them, because your heart was inextricably tied to theirs, your fate bound to their well-being.
She thought she had known any of the dozens of times when she had gazed into Ace’s eyes in the throes of passion and felt a hunger she thought would never abate.
She thought she had known when she said yes to a relationship, to marriage, to a life together, even though it was everything she had steeled herself to avoid.
She thought she had known any of the hundreds of times she tossed the words out at the end of a phone call or as their heads hit the pillow, sealing in the day with the declaration as a matter of course.
But she hadn’t known. Victoria only knew how much she loved her husband as she collapsed into his daughter’s arms, her core a molten pit of terror, her entire being paralyzed with the fear of losing him.