Abandon (17 page)

The shock was still there, and he began thinking about the past three weeks.  He hadn’t touched Katy sexually since they got here, and he instantly regretted it.  He should have done more to comfort her out here.  He should have let her know he was there for her in whatever way possible.  He had recognized that he had let his feelings for Annalise color his behavior toward Katy, but as he thought about Katy laying on the bed outside the bathroom fighting for her life, he realized exactly how bad he had fucked up.

He thought of everything he had done in his life, and all the pain he had probably inadvertently caused people through his actions.  He had always prided himself in the fact there had never been a time when he had actually done something which would put another persons life at risk.  He had never been a drunk driver and he had never used a gun except in the most safe way possible.  

Katy had to survive, he thought as he pressed his head against the wall in the shower.  He couldn’t have her death on his conscience.

Chapter 23:  Annalise

Deep Creek Lake, Western Maryland
December 25, 2012

It had been two days since the accident on the lake.  Two long days since the morning Katy had fled from the house in tears after discovering Cort’s betrayal.  Two long days since Annalise and Cort had heard the crack and the scream.  Since that day, Annalise hadn’t slept for more than an hour at a time.  Her dreams were plagued by images of her walking on the lake.  If Cort hadn’t come out the night before, would it have been her falling through the thin ice into the cold depths of the lake?  Would anyone have heard her screams over the sound of the storm?  Looking at the bed in front of her, she watched Katy struggle with every shallow breath she took.  She hadn’t woken up in two days, and Annalise wondered if behind those closed eyes she was tortured by images of what she walked in on that morning.  In her heart, Annalise knew she would never know.  She knew Katy would probably never wake up.  The water had been too cold, and it had taken them too long to release her from the icy fingertips of death.  At this point there was nothing to do but wait for a miracle, or wait for Katy to give up the fight and succomb to the pain Annalise knew her body was feeling.  

The door next to Annalise creaked open slowly and Kevin shuffled in, taking the seat across from Annalise.  Annalise didn’t raise her face from Katy’s to look him in the eyes.  She couldn’t - because Kevin would know.  Since the accident, no one had asked any questions.  No one had pressured Annalise and Cort as to why Katy was out on the lake alone that early.  Not a single person had asked why Annalise and Cort had been the only other ones up.  If any of them were going to put it together though, it would be Kevin, and she couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t look into her eyes and immediately know the truth.  

“How’s she doing?” he asked, reaching out to put a cool cloth on Katy’s forehead and another behind her neck.  The fever had been raging for a day and none of them had any power to stop it.  They had tried getting her to swallow some aspirin, but all it had done was blocked her airway, so they had been taking turns replacing the cloths on her neck and forehead hoping to cool her body temperature.

“Same as earlier,” Annalise whispered softly.

“You know, you should probably go lay down in your room.  One of us can watch her for a while,” Kevin suggested.  She imagined he probably had a concerned face, his gentle brown eyes were probably urging her to take his suggestion.  Unfortunately, it was all conjecture because Annalise still couldn’t look at him in the eyes.  

“Annalise.  Look at me.” Kevin said.  Slowly, Annalise raised her eyes to meet his.  They were filled with concern and it made Annalise hate herself even more.  Kevin was sitting there concerned for her, when she was the reason that Katy was in the state she was in.  He put a free hand on hers, covering it with a gentle squeeze.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

Feeling his hand on hers, and seeing his brown eyes with so much concern, she felt the guilt start to assail her in fresh waves.  For the first time since Katy had run out of the room that morning, she started crying.  At first, it was just a tear in the corner of her eye, but it quickly progressed into gut wrenching sobs.  “It’s my fault,” she managed to get out between gasps for breath.

Kevin moved from his place beside the bed and put his arm around her.  “How is it your fault ‘Lise, you didn’t push her onto the ice.”

She didn’t know if she could do this.  She didn’t know if she could explain to Kevin the morning that Katy had discovered her and Cort.  She was almost positive he would hate her.  Hell, she hated herself.  “Not physically, no, but I might as well have.”

Kevin stiffened beside her.  “What do you mean?”

“The reason she was out there, the reason she didn’t notice she was on the lake, she walked in on Cort and I in the morning Kev. She saw us in bed together.”  A heavy silence descended upon the room after she spoke the words out loud.  She knew that Kevin was processing the information trying to figure out what to say next.  “He came to my room to talk me out of leaving the night before and it just happened; I should have stopped it.  It’s my fault; if she dies, it’s my fault, and I hate myself so much right now.”

Kevin rubbed her shoulder slowly, “Cort is a grown man ‘Lise.  He was in your bed because he wanted to be.  And what happened to Katy, that isn’t your fault.  That’s just shitty luck, shitty blind luck that the storm covered the lake with snow and that she didn’t see it was thin ice.”

Annalise sniffled, moving her eyes to looking at Katy on the bed.  She was so pale, so fragile, and so weak.  It should have been her, and here Kevin was, trying to comfort her.  “She wouldn’t have been out there if it weren’t for me,” she argued weakly.

“You don’t know that anymore than I do,” Kevin replied taking his arm off her shoulder.  “She could have gone out there looking for the dog, she could have decided to take a walk.  There’s any number of scenarios that would have ended exactly the same way.  Besides, she already knew about you and Cort.”

“I know, because I blabbed it the night before,” Annalise responded, shaking her head so her long locks fell over her eyes.  Maybe if she hid her face, if Kevin couldn’t see her eyes, she would be protected from the pain in her soul somehow.

“No, I mean she knew about you and Cort.  She asked me about the history when you guys were out on the dock the night before,” he began to explain.  Annalise, shook her head, cursing herself.  Of course Katy would ask Kevin for the sordid details of her and Cort’s initial relationship.  Annalise felt a new source of guilt, if she had been able to control her temper at dinner, Katy never would have asked Kevin.  Annalise’s thoughts must have been pretty transparent because Kevin continued his story.  “She could tell after the argument at dinner that something was off and she wanted the details so I told her the truth.”

“And what truth was that?”

“That you were the only girl Cort had ever really loved, and Cort would always find a way to be with you,”  Annalise stared at him in disbelief.  Before Katy had fallen through the ice, Cort had told her that she was the one, but after, they had barely spoken.  She didn’t know if their new budding relationship would be able to survive considering the effects it seemed to have on those around them.  Kevin moved a piece of hair out of her face in a fatherly gesture that gave her a small amount of comfort.  “I don’t know if you knew this but after you guys broke up, he was in pretty bad shape.  He spent months battling his own insecurities and trying to figure out ways to get you back.”

Annalise couldn’t help herself, she scoffed.  The idea that Cort spent any time pining over her was ridiculous.  That just wasn’t who Cort was as a person.

“I know it’s hard to believe because he hardly ever shows his emotion, but it’s true.  There was this one night early in the fall, we went camping and he got drunk off an entire bottle of rum.  All he could do was talk about you and how you were the only person he was instantly comfortable with.  He said you were the one person besides me he could share everything with.  He waxed poetic for hours about how the greatest tragedy in his life was the fact that he lost you, and he’d never find anyone who could replace you.  You would always be the standard that every other girl was measured against.  He fell asleep outside his tent clutching the empty bottle of rum and when I woke him up the next morning he told me in the most serious voice I had ever heard come out of his mouth that he would never get over you.”

That story, she could believe.  Cort had always been a sort of lightweight and whenever he got drunk he had tended to turn to self evaluation.  She groaned, recognizing the situation for what it was.  He had loved her which is why he brought her here.  What she didn’t understand, still, was why he had brought Katy.  If he hadn’t brought Katy, they could have avoided all of this.  “Then why was he with her?”

“I think he just got to the point where he needed someone to dull the pain.  It was eating him alive ‘Lise.  I don’t think Katy was ever meant to be anything but a placeholder until he could figure out how to deal with his insecurities and could get you back again.  Then DC happened, and here we are.”

Kevin didn’t say anything after that, and Annalise didn’t feel the need to respond.  In truth, everything that Kevin was saying she had already known somewhere deep in the recesses of her heart.  Maybe part of that was the reason she never thought to stop his advances that night.  She had recognized there had been something different about his kiss, a desperation she rarely saw in him.  Somewhere in the back of her brain she had known he was trying to express an emotion that was difficult for him to speak out loud.  He had been trying to express his need for her without words.  

She watched Kevin as his eyes scanned Katy’s body looking for any sign of life in the silence.  Whatever the reasons for their indiscretion, it didn’t absolve them of their part of Katy’s current state.  Cort and Annalise’s passion for each other wasn’t supposed to be a tool to hurt those around them, yet here they were, with Katy teetering on the edge of life and death, and guilt plaguing Annalise’s every breath.  

Annalise’s thoughts were interrupted by Kevin jumping from the chair beside her, “Katy, Katy, can you hear me?”  Katy’s body shifted slightly, and a barely audible moan escaped her lips. “Katy, you have to wake up, you have to come back to us,” Kevin said shaking her body gently.  “Someone!  Bring me more cold towels!” he yelled outside of the room.

Annalise stood up and backed herself toward the door.  She wasn’t sure what Katy would remember of that morning, but she was damn sure that if it was her, she wouldn’t want the see the woman who was in bed with her boyfriend first thing after waking up.  

Chapter 24:  Cort

Deep Creek Lake, Western Maryland
December 25, 2012

Kevin was leaning over Katy, feeling her forehead and checking her pulse while the rest of the room was staring in silence from somewhere along the wall.  Jenna had her hands clasped in a prayer towards the heavens and he thought it ironic that someone who had never been that religious before the events of the past month had somehow found their way to God.  If anything, the past two days had caused him to realize that God hadn’t been listening for a time.  

Annalise was standing next to him, still as a statue watching the events in the room.  They hadn’t talked in the two days since the incident.  Part of it was that Annalise had been keeping a quiet vigil by Katy’s bedside, barely moving to eat or sleep herself.  Even when they passed in the halls for brief moments they were like gunslingers from old Westerns waiting to see who would flinch first.  As much as the guilt tugged at his heartstrings, he knew it was probably a crushing weight on Annalise’s soul.  The truth was, Cort didn’t know what to say to her to make the pain lighter because he agreed with what she was thinking.  They were at fault for Katy’s current state and until her ultimate fate was decided he would have no way of knowing exactly how deep Annalise’s guilt would go.  

Really, he didn’t know how deep his own guilt would go.  With Katy barely hanging on, he could pretend somehow that she was just going to wake up and forgive them both.  With each hour that she remained feverish and out though, it looked unlikely.  Watching Kevin’s gentle ministrations on her body, he began to accept it was unlikely she would ever wake up.  

“She’s out again,” Kevin stated, pulling back from the bed.  “I guess we just have to keep watching.  I’ll take the next shift so you can sleep Annalise. It won’t do to have two sick girls on our hands.”

Annalise nodded and moved away from the doorway to her bedroom across the hall.  Cort seriously doubted she’d sleep even being locked in the room by herself.  Her guilt would keep her awake for hours, and she’d replay the situation in her head a million times over wishing there could be another outcome.  Jenna and Jake scooted past Cort moving back to the living room where they had been putting together a 1000 piece puzzle.  He guessed that people dealt with their grief in different ways but the puzzle seemed like an odd way to pass the time while the life of someone they had been living with hung in the balance.