A Time to Die (13 page)

Kara watched them work, loving them and wishing she could be helping. There had been times that she’d been in the hospital when she had been able to get up and around, but not this time. She was confined to her bed, attached to a flexible oxygen tube.

“Do you like these doodads?” Eric asked, holding up a garish display of glass ornaments.

“They’re perfect.”

He turned to Vince. “See. I told you she’d like them.” He turned back to Kara. “He said all my taste was in my mouth.”

Vince shook his head. “No—I said
if
you had taste, it would be in your mouth.”

By the time the trio finished, lights twinkled, tinsel glittered, and the whole room looked like Christmas. “Wait a minute,” Vince said, stepping forward with another bag and handing it to Kara. “This is for the top.”

Carefully Kara opened the sack and extracted a breathtakingly lovely angel. Her face was fine hand-painted porcelain, her hair a swirl of golden curls, and her gown a cloud of white satin. “My guardian angel,” Kara whispered.

Everyone watched while Vince perched the ornament atop the tree and stepped back. “Put this on the tree, too,” Kara said, handing Eric the red satin pillow he had won for her at the arcade. “On the branch right below her.”

He did and stepped aside. “You did great
work,” Kara told them, wiping away a mist that had crept into her eyes. “Just wonderful.”

“It looks okay,” Eric mumbled.

Kara glanced from one to the other. “You’re the best friends a person could ever have.”

Elyse hugged Kara. Vince stooped and kissed her tenderly. Eric did the same, but more quickly, as if the public show of affection embarrassed him. “Merry Christmas.”

Kara’s eyelids were growing heavy, and a listlessness had stolen over her like a thief. “Until tomorrow,” she told them, wishing she weren’t so tired. Once they left, in spite of feeling tired, she couldn’t sleep. She gazed lovingly at the tree. Its beauty caused a lump to lodge in her throat. She fixed her gaze on the angel and whispered, “Watch over us all, Guardian Angel.”

E
RIC HEARD THE
persistent ringing of the phone. His bedroom was pitch-black, and the digits from the clock radio on his dresser glowed three
A.M
. He buried his face in his pillow and groaned. Finally, he heard the ringing stop and the muffled, sleepy voice of his sister. As he snuggled contentedly under his covers and sleep began to steal over him, his tranquillity was disrupted. Christy flipped on the overhead light and shook his shoulder.

“Eric! It’s Kara! I’m going to the hospital. Do you want to come with me?”

Instantly, he was awake. “What about her?”

“We’re losing her.” Christy’s voice shook. “She’s bleeding severely from her lungs, and her heartbeat’s
erratic.” Eric stared, unable to comprehend the message.
Losing her?
“I don’t understand—”

Christy sat on his bed and took his hand, as one might a small child’s. “I asked Kara’s parents to call me if Kara took a downward turn. We’re all so close …” Tears filled Christy’s eyes, and it took her a moment to regain her composure. “Kara’s lungs are too weak to keep working, and now with her heart failing, there’s nothing they can do …”

“She’s worse? But I was just with her when we decorated a Christmas tree for her room. She seemed fine.”

“Eric, each day brings complications. Medically, there’s just so much that can be done.”

“But all those doctors—”

“They’re not miracle workers. She’s just too sick this time.”

“She pulled out before. She will again,” he insisted stubbornly, and jerked away. Eric refused to accept what she was saying.

“I’m worried about Vince, too,” Christy added.

“Is Vince sick?” Eric had seen him at school that day, and he’d looked fine. Had the phone call divulged more than bad news about Kara’s condition?

“He’s not sick, but if something happens to Kara, he could be.”

“What do you mean?”

Christy sighed. “When one of the community with a mutual illness dies, the others in the circle—especially those closest to the victim—get
sicker. They give up hope. Sometimes, we lose more than one within months of each other.”

Eric recoiled in horror. “But Kara won’t die. She can’t. This is some false alarm.”

“Are you coming?” Christy gazed down at him, an urgency in her voice.

“I’ll follow in my car.”

“Be careful,” Christy said. “There’s ice on the roads.”

Once she was gone, Eric got out of bed and moved around his room feeling empty and confused. He kept telling himself that there was some mistake. By the time he drove to the hospital, he’d convinced himself that Kara’s crisis was a stupid error. But when he stepped off the elevator, a sickening sensation settled in the pit of his stomach.

Kara’s parents were huddled together outside the door of her room. Christy stood with them, and to one side, Vince stood against the wall. Eric came up on them slowly, hearing snatches of conversation about the prognosis, as they waited for doctors who were at Kara’s bedside.

Eric approached a haggard-looking Vince. “I came as soon as I could.” Eric felt a need to explain himself. “What’s going on?”

Slowly Vince raised his head and focused his red-rimmed eyes. “Kara’s dying.”

The directness of Vince’s words fell on Eric like blows. He backed off. “How can you know that for sure?”

“I know.”

“But I just saw her. She seemed kind of groggy, but she was talking to me.”

“She was groggy because carbon dioxide’s been building up in her blood. Her lungs are so shot, they can’t make use of the oxygen she’s breathing. Kara’s suffocating to death.”

Eric shuddered and felt sick to his stomach. Christy approached them and quietly said, “I’ve asked Kara’s parents if you two can go in and see her when the doctors leave. They agreed it would be all right.”

Eric felt hot and cold all over. He wasn’t sure he could face seeing her in this condition. The moment the team of doctors emerged from Kara’s room, Vince pushed away from the wall and headed through the doorway. Torn between staying and going, Eric looked away. Christy patted his shoulder. “Go on.”

Almost against his will, Eric stepped inside. Kara was connected to machines and looked so frail. Her pulse fluttered visibly in her throat, making him think of a captive sparrow. He edged closer.

Vince was bending over her, pressing her slender hand to his lips. Her nails and lips were bluish, starved for oxygen. Eric saw that her eyes were open. Her gaze rested tenderly on Vince’s face. She was unable to speak. Her gaze drifted to Eric, and she held his eyes with hers. Her face held no fear. With her gaze, she seemed to tell him, “I love you, Eric.”

The unspoken words sent shivers down Eric’s
spine, and his knees went weak. He felt woozy, and numbness snaked through him. For a moment, he thought he might black out. Eric stepped backward, toward the door. At the doorway, he turned and ran, brushing past his startled sister and Kara’s parents.

“Eric! Wait!” he heard Christy call.

He continued down the hall, past the elevator, to the stairwell. He hit the door with a bang and half ran, half stumbled down the stairs, past landing after landing until he emerged, breathless, in the lobby. People stared as he darted past them and out into the icy cold night.

    Kara felt herself drifting in and out of wakefulness. She knew Vince was holding her hand. Eric had been there, but he was gone. Handsome, strong Eric. She loved him so. Her parents stood alongside her bed and took her other hand. She felt light and airy, as if she could float right off the bed. Their hands seemed to be holding her down, anchoring her to earth.

She wanted to speak to all of them, but she couldn’t. She wished they could read her mind. She would have told them, “I’m all right. Let me go.” She wished for peace—for them, and for herself. She knew how lucky she was to have such wonderful people in her life. Even her mysterious friend, the benefactor who had allowed her the joy of giving back what others had given to her.

On the other side of her room, the lights on her Christmas tree glittered, piercing the darkened
gloom with shimmering color. The delicate tree-top angel ornament appeared to be standing on the red heart-shaped pillow, and seemed to be beckoning to her. Kara watched the angel and felt peace settle over her spirit.

E
RIC REFUSED TO
attend Kara’s funeral. “How can you expect me to stand by and watch them put Kara into a dark hole?” he asked his grieving sister. “Funerals are barbaric.”

Christy begged him to go. “Listen, you’re wrong. Funerals give a person a sense of closure. They’re a way to say good-bye one last time, a way for all of us who loved her to be together and remember her.”

Remember her!
Eric knew that if he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget Kara Fischer. But he couldn’t stand around a cemetery and cry like a baby, either. “I won’t go,” Eric insisted. “I don’t care if you think it’s wrong. I have my own memories, and I don’t want to share them.”

Christy left directions to the cemetery, anyway.
“In case you change your mind,” she said. “It’s okay if you arrive a little late.” She tried to hug her brother, but he turned away.

“I’m not going,” he insisted stubbornly.

Christy went alone. Eric sat alone in the apartment feeling cold and empty. He refused to let his tears flow. He told himself he was too old to cry. Girls cried. Babies cried. He wasn’t going to feel better no matter what he did.

Two days before Christmas, Christy put up a tree. “Decorating one tree this year was enough for me,” he said, remembering the time he, Vince, and Elyse had set up the one in Kara’s room. “I just don’t feel like helping you, Christy.”

“I don’t feel much like it, either, but I know Kara would have wanted us to go on with the holidays. What a lousy time of year to have to bury someone you love. I feel so sorry for her parents. She was everything to them.”

Eric struggled to blot out the memory of their grief-stricken faces in the hospital. Suddenly, he felt as if the walls were closing in on him. “I’m going for a drive,” he said.

Christy paused from draping silver icicles on the tree. “Be careful.”

“Don’t keep saying that,” he snapped. “I’m not a kid. What do you think I’m going to do? Explode?”

“I know that keeping your feelings bottled up inside isn’t good.”

“Get off my case.” Eric felt angry. He knew he shouldn’t be yelling at Christy, but he couldn’t
stop himself. “I can handle it. Life goes on, remember?”

Eric slammed out of the house, got in his car, and drove. The December day was cold and gray. Eric shivered and turned on his car’s heater, then remembered it had stopped working. “Piece of junk,” he snarled, and smacked the dashboard with his fist. After New Year’s, he promised himself, he’d dump the car and look for another, more reliable one.

He drove past the mall where he and Vince had taken Kara the day she’d been given a pass from the hospital. He’d give anything to see her again. The desire to see her overwhelmed him. It made no sense. She was dead and buried. Gone forever.

Eric wasn’t sure how he ended up at the cemetery where Kara was buried, but he did. He slowly got out of his car, zipped up his sheepskin jacket, and walked through the open iron gate. Visitors ambled along footpaths, looking at headstones and grave markers and laying flowers. He had no idea where to go to look for her. He had no flowers to leave. Nothing to give.

At the entrance was a gatehouse where an attendant was stationed to give directions to visitors. Eric’s lips felt stiff as he gave the man Kara’s name. He found the grave easily—the ground looked fresh and unsettled. Her marker held her name and the dates of her life span, along with the words: “And God will wipe away every tear.”

Sadness swept through Eric, and he fought for composure. He sat on the cold ground, wrapped
his arms around his pulled-up knees. He was startled by a voice that said, “I was wondering if you’d ever show up.”

Eric turned, and faced Vince, then went back to staring at Kara’s grave. “What are you doing here?” he asked, wishing he could be alone, embarrassed because he’d been discovered.