The priest was banned from her bedside the day she died.
Lily mused to herself in a sleepless coma until the beeps of the heart monitor stopped its rhythmic march. She never saw the off-white walls around her hospital bed, the long artificial IV tubes growing out from her, or the nurses, Dr. Sanders, and strangers moving, hovering, frowning, whispering, dictating, thinking, and distressing all around her. She didn’t need to see any of them. The world wearied her eyes, and quite luckily, her used eyes rested because of the coma.
But the coma didn’t extricate her completely from the world. Even without her sight, she knew plenty. She remembered hearing some man making an urgent 911 call from his cell phone, the ambulance’s wail nearby just when her ears stopped straining for it, and the metal car door scraping against the concrete pavement. Life would be much better if she could forget gulping the stew of pinching smoky air and counting each and every throbbing pain pulsing to the beat of the paramedic equipment. Such knowledge was overrated. But she remembered every last detail, even the voices of the strangers and strangers and strangers, interrupted by some Mozart’s symphony and tiny surgical tools clinking near her.
When she finally recognized the familiar voice of her life-long friend, Cassie, volleying with another voice, the voice of Dr. Sanders, Lily understood that Dr. Sanders translated to the world, or maybe just to Cassie, what she already knew. Lily will not live long. The coma would last until Lily (and it will be she) decided to take her last breath.
With fifty-four years of life coming to an end, she preferred to rest peacefully until the end. This rest, though, lacked all the comforts of sleep. Lily wanted to absorb her life and remember everything – from the first time she laughed playing merry-go-round as a child with Cassie and David at the public park around the corner from where she lived, to the first breathless, awkward but heart-racing kiss with David under the artificial blanket of flashing lights at the high school prom night, to the unspoken pride gleaming from her parents’ eyes as she raised her college diploma high in the air, to the first toast she celebrated with her team after she nailed a multi-million dollar deal for her forever-changing-name company, to Cassie’s children, teenagers really, laughing at her as Lily told her funny (probably obsolete and cheesy) jokes at her 40th birthday party. People were supposed to see flashes of their years right before they almost die. She expected nothing less from herself. But Cassie’s voice distracted her from what she wanted to remember. Instead, her memory leaped from the scene of her accident to another scene of agony.
Agony. Lily stirred her black coffee rapidly. Sitting across from her in the popular downtown Skye Café, David towered over her as he leaned on his flaccid arms. A little bulge in the middle, like any happily married man, was the result of a decade of home-cooked meals. The white buttoned down shirt tucked under his black belt and carefully ironed spotless pants did only so much to hide it, unlike the layers of crisp biting blue blazer and wrinkled ivory silk blouse that masked what little curves Lily possessed. Lily ignored the ubiquitous chatter around them as she answered David.
“Kiddo, calm down. You are really making a big deal out of nothing.” Lily gulped her lukewarm coffee intensely, almost succeeding in hiding her nearly black eyes under her jet-black hair and trying desperately to focus on her coffee mug.
Grooves settled deep between David’s troubled green eyes, the eyes still unfailing to lose its tight grip on Lily’s eyes. “I know, I know. I’m imagining. I keep telling myself that, but I just need to hear it from you, I guess. I mean, you would tell me if Cassie said something, right?”
Cassie, David, Lily. The trio of friends never strayed far from each other. Same playground, same high school, same college. Plenty of silly fights marked the years of their friendship – when Lily wore Cassie’s brand new lipstick without asking in junior high school or when Cassie and Lily laughed at David’s spiked hair in college or when Lily snubbed Cassie’s friends from a sorority, who displayed nonsensical series of Greek letters like proud peacocks. But those silly fights couldn’t break their unconscious loyalty – like the times when David crowned the head of a boy, who made Lily cry, with a bowl of tomato soup in middle of a crowded cafeteria of their junior high school and when Cassie sneaked into Lily’s open bedroom during high school to tearfully recount her parents' fights and when Lily flew faithfully to Las Vegas with David and Cassie to witness their elopement after college graduation.
Lily silently cursed her favorite coffee for doing its job too well in hiding her jitters. “You know, actually, I forgot. Cassie did say something. She said she decided two smart rotten kids and a funny, generous, and devastatingly handsome man -- reeeeally not her idea of being happy. So she’s going to run far, far away with a fat, balding mailman, and they are going to write you postcards from Alaska. Or was that South Dakota? Damn. I’ll ask her tomorrow.”
David slouched back in his seat, chuckling. “Well, if she plans on running away, maybe I should go home and help her pack. I don’t wanna miss getting those postcards. ”
Lily glanced at her watch absentmindedly, the same watch she glanced so casually right before David and Cassie said their “I do’s.” A small knot in her stomach clawed itself up and threatened to tear her throat. “That’s my kiddo. Look, you know what would be great? Instead of you fretting all the time like an old geezer to a ruthless corporate ladder climber like me of all people, you should do something. You know, just because.”
“Do something. Like what?” David promptly started listing. “Flowers? Chocolates? Candle-lit dinner?”
Somehow, Lily managed to swallow the last sip of her cold, tasteless coffee and lightly spill out the words, even as a palpably churning knot inside threatened to betray her. “Well, I mean, the kids are in school during the day now, right? Take a longer lunch this Friday and surprise Cassie. Remember how much she loves surprises? It doesn’t take a whole lot…come home with flowers and take her out to lunch. She’ll love it, and you’ll stop badgering me.”
David nodded approvingly at the suggestion, and Lily noticed his brown hair falling slightly to his right, as it always does when he nodded. “Hey, that’s not a bad idea. I love my kids but Cassie and I haven’t done anything alone together for a long time. Maybe that’s just what we need.” David traded his frown for a smile and a wink, “Thanks. I knew all you ruthless corporate ladder climbers were good for something.”
“Gotta run. You know as much as I love you, I am married to conference calls and business meetings. And they get very jealous if I’m late.” Lily stood up quickly, nearly knocking over the chair backwards. After a hasty kiss on David’s cheek and a quick smile, Lily bolted from the café. Refusing to glance back at David, she fiercely told the knot pounding mercilessly inside that she did the right thing. But David’s “thanks” reverberated into a thousand echoes within her as she briskly walked back to her office, and her lean body strived to squeeze its thinness into nothingness.
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