ROAR (8 page)

“No worries. I’m not as passionate about that as I am about the project you two are going to be working on, but leave the report with me, and I’ll give you instructions tomorrow on how to proceed.” He stood. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a conference call in fifteen minutes that I need to prepare for. Pamela, Kris, we’ll get together in a week to see how you’re progressing on the project.”

After exchanging goodbyes, Gunnar left the two of them alone. No time like the present to begin making plans, but he wanted to learn more about Pamela first. “Tell me more about your work at the hospital.”

Her emerald-green eyes sparkled with excitement. “It’s been rewarding beyond anything I’d ever imagined.” She shrugged, almost as if she should apologize.

“No doubt a lot of people are indebted to you.”

“I hope I’m helping. So many are doing incredible work there, but so much more could be done to save lives.” A shadow passed over her eyes, and Pamela glanced down.

“I’m sure it’s challenging to work in a Third World nation. You’ve probably seen horrific things.”

“I’m one of the lucky ones—healthy and relatively safe. But being able to ease the suffering of the patients, especially the young ones, has been enormously gratifying.”

Her selflessness was admirable. Still, she had been working in a war zone, whether she let that concern her or not.

“When would you like to meet to begin our work on the project?”

“No time like tomorrow, but if you’re busy—”

“Tomorrow’s perfect. How about eleven? Where shall we meet?”

“I know a quiet restaurant in Aurora that wouldn’t kick us out if we lingered a while. Why not make it eleven-thirty and call it lunch?”

“Sounds good.” It truly did. He hadn’t enjoyed a conversation this much in a long time. Listening to someone so full of hope and ideals pursuing her passion made him realize that the world had only stopped spinning for him. Everyone else continued to move forward with their lives.

As it should be.

Not that it would be possible for him at this point. He’d chosen his path and had no intention of changing anything.

K
ristoffer entered the darkened room. The scent of flowers assailed his senses.
Tori.
She loved stargazer lilies, so he made sure fresh ones were kept in her room at all times.

“How’s my sweetheart doing tonight?”

While facing in his direction, the woman who lay curled up on the bed bore little resemblance to his wife. She didn’t smile or acknowledge his presence.

No surprise
.

Her arm spasmed. Back when he was more optimistic, he might have interpreted that jerk of her arm as a wave.

Dream on.

Involuntary movement, the doctors told him over and over before it finally sank in after a couple of years. Despite a stream of experts in the first year she was hospitalized and intensive brain scans over the next three, no evidence had been found that she was aware of him or anything around her.

She’d been brought back to life four times in the first two hours after the accident. At the time, he’d wanted paramedics and emergency department staff to do everything possible to keep her alive. In retrospect, he wished she’d died instantly. Her brain damage due to the head trauma and lack of oxygen had been massive and irreparable. Tori had always been such a fighter, but even she couldn’t overcome those odds.

As he did every evening after work, he prepared to spend the next couple of hours talking with her as if she understood him. As if she knew he existed. As if she still loved him.

Even if she received nothing out of these visits,
he
needed to keep coming every single day. He’d never stop loving and protecting her as best he could. The horror stories he’d read when trying to find a place for her still burned his gut. Stories about how some unscrupulous staff members took advantage of patients like Tori who were unaware of their surroundings.

Good care for persistent vegetative state patients didn’t come cheaply; he’d never have been able to afford a place like this on a financial adviser’s salary. When she’d first been released to a long-term-care facility, he’d found one he could afford, but fear of abuse convinced him he needed to devote himself to her every waking minute. To that end, he’d shut off every other part of his life, including work, and stayed by her side almost day and night—six months in the hospital and the next year and a half at the first nursing home.

He’d changed more diapers than most parents did with their newborns. Flushed and replaced the feeding tube to her stomach. Put her through his own intense physical therapy regimen in an attempt to delay the inevitable atrophy of muscle and organ tissue.

Those first two years, his entire focus had been on her daily needs, because he’d promised to protect and provide for her on the day they married. But his determination to live up to his vows came at a hefty price to his sanity.

Kristoffer hadn’t seen that he had a problem dealing with everything until he woke up one morning at his new condo crying and unable to get out of bed to go see her. The feelings of hopelessness and helplessness overwhelmed him. When Gunnar called to check on him three days later, he begged him to take away the pain. His cousin had him in the office of a psychiatrist the next day.

“You need to let others manage her daily needs now, Kris,” Gunnar had advised him. “You won’t do her any good if you have to be confined in a padded room somewhere.”

Kristoffer had no choice, but his breakdown had been a blessing in disguise. His depression didn’t lift for months, even after finding the right meds and a psychologist who understood somewhat. During that time, Gunnar had Tori moved to this place in the Denver suburbs. He’d picked up all the costs saying that family looked out for each other. This facility was considered the best in the region, and she’d received better care during these past two years than even he could give her, easing some of Kristoffer’s guilt. In hindsight, he truly understood he couldn’t do it alone, although he’d been stubborn and depressed enough back then to think he was Superman.

Only with tunnel vision, not X-ray vision.

Gunnar loved Tori, sure, but loved and worried about Kristoffer even more. It was at that point two years after the accident that Kristoffer came to the realization he owed Gunnar not only for saving his life, but also for all he’d done for Tori. So Kristoffer had spent the next two years working as hard as he could to make money for Gunnar, knowing that a sizeable chunk of it went every month to paying for Tori’s astronomically expensive care. His investment efforts had more than quadrupled Gunnar’s assets, leaving Kristoffer feeling less of a burden to his cousin.

In this facility, Kristoffer didn’t have to provide for her physical needs, so he could simply spend time holding her, talking with her. He’d also gone back to daily visits, but now they were more for him than her. This was how his visits would be as long as they both lived.

He tried to envision the once vivacious woman he’d known before, but despite filling her room with framed photos of blissful times together, too often now he couldn’t bring himself to look at them. Those memories had faded over the years.

At first, in the hospital, he couldn’t see the reality of what she’d become. Nowadays, all he
could
see was the shriveled, distorted woman suffering from years of atrophy. Hands drawn inward at the wrists, almost in a fetal position as her body’s muscles contracted from lack of use. Face contorted, mouth open as if in a silent scream.

He’d stopped putting her through agonizing physical therapy after a while, too, hating to hear her groaning as if in pain. Again, the doctors said her brain couldn’t register feelings, but the sound nearly killed him.

Her lack of awareness made it futile for him to share what he’d been doing today, but he did so anyway. This was the last connection they had, even if only one of them was aware that they had once been a loving couple. This had been his ritual every night she’d been here.

What would he talk with her about this evening? He couldn’t tell her about last night, even though that had been in the forefront of his mind since the tour.

Pamela.

Guilt washed over him for thinking the name of another woman while here with his wife, although nothing had happened between the two of them. Why did a few inappropriate thoughts and a brief conversation with her make him feel as though he had cheated on Tori? His wife hadn’t known he existed for the past four years.

He’d done nothing to dishonor his vows since he’d spoken them so many years ago, although last night his mind had wandered into unsafe territory.

If not for his inattentive driving, Tori wouldn’t have been left in this state. Tamping down the familiar anger, Kristoffer pulled a chair closer to the bed and placed his hand on Tori’s cool arm. Her mouth drew up as if in pain, and her breathing grew louder. At times like this, he still wished she recognized him, but the doctors and nurses cautioned him there was no hope of a reversal at this point.

How they could be certain, he didn’t know, but had to admit there’d never been even a spark of awareness from her since the night of the wreck.

“It’s okay, Tori. I’m here now.” The NG feeding tube from her nose to her stomach that she’d depended on during those early months in the hospital had long since been replaced by the percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube inserted directly into her stomach and well-hidden under her gown. Seeing her once-unblemished skin marred by the PEG tube or any other medical apparatus pained him, but she’d have died without it. The question became whether this, too, had been extraordinary means. Putting her on dialysis or a ventilator clearly crossed the line of what measures he would impose upon her. However, the thought of withdrawing nourishment from her body—despite the fact there was no hope of recovery—had been out of the question early on. Feeding her and providing water hadn’t seemed like an extraordinary act to him.

Although if he knew then what he knew now, he might have reconsidered.

As her legal guardian, he worried every day whether he’d correctly determined what her wishes would be. They’d never really discussed end-of-life preferences. Who wanted to talk about such horrific eventualities when they were happily married and going about their lives with no inkling of what horrors the future held?

All right, in retrospect, that sounded irresponsible. If he could do it over again, he’d have made sure they talked about it. Fortunately, her parents agreed with everything he’d done and supported his decision to insert the feeding tube when she’d come out of the coma. While she’d been raised Catholic, neither he nor Tori had been particularly religious, so the situation hadn’t encouraged him to seek out religious answers, either. Since the night Tori had been taken from him in that crash, he’d seen no evidence of a benevolent God. What kind of deity would leave her in this state, lost somewhere between the here and hereafter the way she’d been for four goddamned years?

In hindsight, he should have pulled the plug within the first six months when she was deep in a coma and still on the ventilator. The physicians had told him there was no hope and encouraged him to pull the plug. But when she started breathing on her own, he hadn’t been able to remove the feeding tube. People woke up from comas every day. Look at the police officer in Tennessee who woke up after eleven years. Reports said he even spoke.

Never give up hope. Believe in miracles.

But the media failed to tell people that the man died a few months later with zero quality of life after his “miraculous” awakening.

Kristoffer continued to hold out hope and kept reading about miracles happening to others who had suffered severe traumatic brain injuries. Why not expect one for Tori? She’d been a kind, benevolent person who was loved by many. Why had her life been destroyed and his spared when both had been involved in the same accident? If he’d been paying attention to the traffic in front of him, he wouldn’t have swerved and caused the accident.

Hope didn’t always spring eternal, though. Eventually, one had to face reality.

And here they were. He could take comfort in the fact she appeared to have moments of wakefulness and sleeping, as close to normal as she’d ever be again. But when her body jerked and twitched as if in response to his voice as it had done a few moments ago, he no longer pretended she knew who he was or had heard his words.

He brushed a strand of hair away from her face. Realizing he hadn’t kissed her yet—something he normally did the moment he entered the room—he stood and bent over her, placing his lips against her cool cheek.

“How’s my sweetheart doing tonight?” he repeated.

No response.

No change.

No surprise.

He settled back into the chair with a sigh. What could he talk about?
Ah, yes
. “You won’t believe what Gunnar’s up to.” No need to wait for any acknowledging murmur like she once had given when he recounted news from his workday. “He’s looking into buying a school to train Dominants and submissives in the lifestyle.” For the next ten minutes, he told her about his tour—well, most of it. Again, no mention of Pamela. He reminded her how Gunnar had mentored the two of them when they became interested in the lifestyle. Thoughts of those times caused his throat to close off, and the silence closed in on him.

Was a monologue still considered a conversation? At least in a play or stand-up comedy routine, an audience was aware and able to listen and provide feedback.

Tori never would again.

Why so maudlin tonight? What else should he tell her about? “Oh, I almost forgot!” He reached inside his suit coat. “I brought you some of your favorite music.” He stood, went to the stereo in the corner of the room, and inserted the CD. Soon, the smooth Mangione piece streamed throughout the speaker system he’d installed in her room. A memory of one of the many times he’d danced with Tori to that very CD flashed across his mind’s eye, hitting him like a battering ram to the solar plexus.