CHAPTER 39

RUNNING, they were running through the hospital entrance, Cassie in the lead, st umbling along in her black sheath and heels. It was two-thirty in the afternoon. Outpatients, doctors, staff, visitors crowded the lobby. Cassie was panting, weeping. All the betrayals were too much, just too much.

Mark had told her that the Mitch they all knew and loved had gone the day of his stroke. As they had prepared for his end, Mark had assured her, cool as could be, that Mitch's spirit was at peace and no one was home inside of him anymore. But the truth was, Mitch had never had the slack appearance of serenity. With the tubes in his mouth and nose, one eye at half-mast, the grimace on his face, and finger scrabbling desperately at the sheet as if he had something urgent to impart, Mitch had been all along the picture of a tortured man.

Cassie stumbled through the halls to save him. Why should he be released and find peace so easily when she had to live on? Correctly assuming that a catastrophe had occurred, people moved aside as she plowed through. Marsha came next in her prison garb, with a backpack hanging open over one shoulder. Teddy shuffled along after them, looking embarrassed. Cassie had given him quite the tongue-lashing for not having told her about the life insurance before, weeks before.

"It's not my fault," he was talking to himself, getting more agitated the more he said it. They crossed the lobby and entered the glass corridor, passed the contemplation garden with its rocks and pebbles and evergreens that remained exactly the same in every season.

"Mom," Marsha cried, trying to catch Cassie's arm. "Mom, you're going to fall."

"This is crazy," Teddy muttered to himself. "I didn't do anything wrong."

"Teddy, shut up," Marsha flung over her shoulder.

Cassie was the first to pass through the arch to the wing that housed the Head Trauma Intensive Care Unit. She charged on, then stopped short, clutching her chest when she saw the curtains drawn over Mitch's picture window.

"Oh God, Marsha. It's over."

Marsha caught her mother's arm, but Cassie's knees gave way. Her body twisted as she fell, and her whole side convulsed with excruciating pain. She was lying on the floor again and didn't know how she'd gotten there. Startled, she saw the ceiling. Then she began to cry.

"Mom!" Marsha dropped to her knees.

Cassie had tried to protect her face when she'd gone down. And now her hands clenched over her eyes to halt the deluge of tears. "Oh God, oh God. It's over."

"Mom, are you all right?"

Cassie's body curled into a fetal position around her pain, and a deeper, keening wail rose from her chest. She heard the sound, a wild animal's cry, and was unaware that her grief had turned into a primal scream. The stress of the last month's revelations and her struggle for balance after a lifetime of denial finally felled her. Her vigil and fight with Mona for control of Mitch's mind and body was finally over, and she collapsed. Mitch was gone, and Cassie was overwhelmed with grief.

She'd shown her children his sins against them, proven all the lies, if not to the lawyers at least to them. In the end, he'd won all the little battles and lost the big one. And now Cassie felt as if she'd been gutted. She was a widow, but not the way she'd hoped. Not a widow with honor-a widow who'd been adored in life and respected in death. She was a middle-aged woman crushed by the loss of love she'd never dared to acknowledge.

Marsha was on her knees, crooning to her softly. "It's okay. I'm here."

Teddy joined her. "I'm sorry, Mom," he said. "I'm really sorry."

Cassie couldn't respond. She wanted to be there on the bed, instead of Mitch, with a sheet over her head. Dead not for a few minutes, but dead for all time. "I don't give a shit anymore," she muttered.

"Oh, come on, Mom, don't say that."

The head nurse rushed out of the monitoring station, calling two orderlies over. The three of them pushed Marsha and Teddy out of the way. Cassie was sobbing again. Down the corridor, sailing in like a massive ship's prow, was Aunt Edith.

"Oh my God, am I too late?" Edith screamed. She was dressed in a black and gold caftan with large jet beads bouncing around the neck. In the crook of her arm she carried a large round black patent leather pocketbook from the fifties that banged against her knees as she hurried along. Up to her elbows were long black cotton evening gloves, also from the postwar period. She was dressed to the nines to watch her hated nephew-in-law meet his maker.

"You okay, Mrs. Sales?" the nurse asked Cassie.

"Oh no." Cassie groaned at the sight of her aunt hurrying toward them.

"Take a minute. It's fine. How about some water?"

Cassie shook her head. No water. She could see Aunt Edith running toward her, sliding on the polished floor. She could see Aunt Edith slipping, going down like an elephant, breaking an arm and shattering a hip. She could see her moving in and needing many fat-filled meals a day brought to her on trays. She could see herself wheeling Edith around in a wheelchair and Edith never leaving the premises for the rest of her life. She could see the two of them having their little treats-a cheap cruise to the Bahamas, a fancy dinner out at Bryant and Cooper. Two old women trying to enjoy themselves on a tiny budget.

"Can you sit up?" The head nurse was talking to her.

Cassie clutched her side, deep in her fantasy of a disastrous future and a terrible death of her own. She couldn't say, "Quick, catch my aunt, she's going to fall." Couldn't say a word.

The nurse and two orderlies had her out of her fetal position and sitting up before she knew it. They quieted her in seconds and got her to her feet in a way that indicated they'd done this kind of thing a thousand times before.

Aunt Edith covered the distance on the slippery floor without mishap. She enveloped Cassie in a massive hug, then gave her the kind of big, smacking wet kisses on the cheek that over the decades had always made Cassie and Mitch and the kids cringe whenever she approached.

"My condolences, sweetheart," she said, wetting Cassie's face some more like some big, overfriendly dog that wouldn't get off one's lap.

Marsha put an arm around her mother's shoulder and handed over a package of tissues.

"No, no, don't-" turn off that machine, Cassie tried to say.

"It's okay, he's not alone. The doctor is with him," the nurse interrupted her.

"Dr. Wellfleet?" Marsha asked hopefully, putting a hand to her hair.

"No, Dr. Cohen."

"Mark?" Cassie was stunned. "Mark is in there?" Mark, who just ordered tests and read results and never did a single thing that was wet or doctorly. Mark was in there, participating in an actual procedure. A termination of life? Inconceivable.

"Yes. They're working on your husband now."

"What! No, no." It was then that Cassie realized it wasn't done. It wasn't too late. They were killing her husband now. They were doing it now. "I have to talk to him. I need to go in!" she cried. "Wait!"

"Just one moment, Mrs. Sales. They're working on him."

"You don't understand. I changed my mind."

"Wait a second, honey, let them get him cleaned up."

"No, no."

"Please, I must insist."

Cassie wouldn't be stopped. She pushed past them and opened the door of the room. Then she couldn't grasp what she was seeing.

"Don't come in, please," Mark said without turning around.

Mark, another doctor in a white coat, and two nurses were standing around Mitch's bed. They were watching him intently. In a room that used to be filled with many sounds, it was now eerily quiet. But they hadn't pulled up the sheet.

Cassie stepped closer and almost fell down again when she realized what had happened. The bed was tilted up. Mitch was in a sitting position. The tubes were out of his nose and throat. There was vomit on his hospital gown. A crooked grin on his face. He was very much alive and breathing on his own. When Cassie entered the circle around him, one of Mitch's eyes made a distinct motion. It was one that she'd begged for that very first day but hadn't seen before. She was horrified to see it now. Mitch winked at her.