After Forever by Jasinda Wilder

  Ever hadn't moved, of course. She was on her back in the bed, trailing a maze of tubes. Eyes closed. Bruised and broken. It hurt to look at her, every single time. I watched Cade. His eyes were closed as the nurse moved his bed in next to Ever's, locked the wheels, and left us alone. He didn't open his eyes right away. I could see the war on his face, needing to see her but not wanting to look.

  Finally, his eyes slid open, and his gaze landed on Ever. He shuddered, and his features twisted. "Oh, god," he choked. The fingers of his left hand curled into a fist, shaking violently as he white-knuckled the sheet.

  I looked away from him, then; the vulnerability in his eyes was far too private for me to witness.

  He reached for her with his left hand but fell short. His hand rested on the metal railing of Ever's bed, and he seemed to be straining, as if he needed simply to touch her hand. I leaned over him, far too close to him, smelling him, took Ever's hand and lifted it so he could brush her knuckles with his fingers. He sighed, a wretched, trembling sound, as he touched her. I held on, leaning over him, my eyes closed to avoid seeing him from so near. Their beds were too close together for me to fit between, no space at the head, too far away at the foot. I was conscious of my hair brushing his chest, an intimacy too great for the strangers that we were.

  When I couldn't hold the position any longer, I laid Ever's hand down on the bed and moved away, brushing my hair back over my ears. I was shaking from the bizarre tension of the moment, holding her hand so he could touch her.

  "Thank you." He whispered the words.

  "You're welcome."

  He just looked at her then. Watched her, his thoughts inscrutable. Unknowable, to me at least.

  "Want some time alone with her?"

  He turned his head to look at me. "Alone with her?"

  I shrugged. "To...to talk to her." He blinked, as if not understanding the idea. "I talk to her. They say people in comas might be able to hear you. That it helps. Somehow. So I talk to her."

  "Oh." He returned his gaze to Ever. "Yeah."

  I left the room, but not before I heard him clear his throat and start to speak, his voice barely audible. "Hey, Ever. It's...it's me. Caden. I'm here." His voice trailed off, broke, and then he tried again. "I'm--I'm so--so sorry, baby. I should--I shouldn't have--" But his voice broke again, and now I heard the choking, gasping sound of his struggle to contain his guilt, his tears.

  I closed the door behind me. He blamed himself. I couldn't listen to his grief.

  Not without giving in to my own.

  I fled to my car, sat in the frigid darkness and shook, felt tears trickle down, unable to stop them. I drove home in silence, through the thickly falling snow, with tears freezing on my cheeks, tears stuck in my chest, grief shut down and compressed and denied.

  Caden

  I heard Eden close the door. I was thankful she'd left, relieved. I couldn't stop myself from crying as I stared at Ever's broken body. My Ever. Barely breathing, so still. I willed her to move, to wake up. She had to wake up. She had to. She would wake up. Right? Tears slid down my face and I didn't care, didn't wipe them away, just watched her, willing her to wake up.

  "Baby. Please." I heard my voice. "Wake up. Please. Wake up. I need you. Please."

  She didn't move, didn't stir, didn't wake.

  I sat there, wishing I knew what to say, until the nurse returned and wheeled me back to my room, pretending not to see the tears. I didn't know her name, but I was grateful for her silence.

  Alone in my room once more, I sat with my eyes shut, the TV off, and tried to move my fingers, my right hand. Tried to ignore the way it hurt, the way my whole body hurt. My head throbbed. My leg ached. My arm was on fire.

  My heart was shattered.

  I fell asleep, and when I woke up, Gramps was in the visitor's chair, Grams beside him.

  "Hey there, kiddo." His voice was deep and gruff. "How are you?" He stood up, moved to stand by my bed. He was the same as ever: tall, commanding, whip-cord lean, silver hair and weather-lined face.

  I pushed the button to raise the upper part of the bed so I was sitting. I was so weak, I couldn't even sit up on my own. "Fine," I said.

  "Bullshit," Gramps said.

  "Connor!" Grams chided. Grams was much like Gramps, with silver hair and a slim, straight body, dark eyes.

  "I'm your family, boy. Don't lie to me." His eyes reflected his love, even if his way of showing it was very much his own unique brand.

  I sighed. "It hurts, Gramps." I looked away, out the window, where all I could see was snow and more windows. "So bad."

  "You'll heal."

  "Not what I meant."

  "I know. Still the truth."

  I met his eyes. "No, I won't. Not without her."

  "You really love her, huh?"

  I nodded. "More than I can say. God...I feel like I can't breathe. She's in that room, and she's not gonna wake up. But she has to. She--she has to. She can't leave me. She promised me."

  Gramps could hear what I wasn't saying. He didn't speak, just stood at my side and nodded.

  Grams came to stand next him. "Talk to her, Cade. Be there with her. That's the best thing you can do."

  "It's not enough. And...it hurts. To see her. To talk to her and not hear her voice."

  "I know," Grams said. "But you'll be there for her. And you'll be there when she wakes up." She seemed to be struggling, fighting some emotion I didn't understand. She'd always been just like Gramps, steady and solid. Now it seemed like she was near tears herself. "Excuse me." She turned abruptly and left the room.

  I looked up at Gramps in confusion.

  "She spent nearly every day for two years in a hospital room," Gramps said, his voice low. "Her ma. Got sick, real sick. Went into a coma, just like your Ever. Grams was real close with her ma, so it was...the hardest thing for your Grams."

  "Did she get better? Great-grandma, I mean?"

  Gramps wobbled his head to one side and the other. "For a while. Point is, bein' in a hospital is hard for her."

  "Yeah," I said. "I know how that feels."

  I'd spent hours, days, weeks in the hospital when Mom got sick. I hated hospitals. I hated being in one, and I knew each and every day, every moment would be torture. But I'd stay here with Ever, no matter what.

  "I just want you to know, son, that we'll be here for you. We're here for you."

  Gramps was restless, though. I could see it. He hated being inside, hated sitting in the chair, hated the close walls and the smell of sickness.

  "You should go back to the ranch." I picked at the thin, scratchy white blanket, tugging on a loose thread.

  "Gerry and Miguel can handle it."

  "There's nothing for you to do here, Gramps. I'll be out of here before long, and then it'll...it'll just be me sitting in Ever's room." I was tired suddenly. Again. So tired. A broken heart was tiring. "For real, Gramps. I'll be fine."

  "We'll stay a few days." He said this in a way that made it final. I nodded, and felt myself drifting.

  solace in the strings

  Eden

  I pulled the bow across the strings, eyes closed. It was off, a raw note, and I brought the bow away. Sighed, drew a deep breath, and tried again, stilled the shaking in my hands and the ache in my chest.

  Perfect.

  I started slowly, playing one note, a second, a third, and then I was into the prelude to "Suite No. 1 in G Major, " as played by Yo-Yo Ma. His Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites was a masterpiece, and when I didn't know what else to play, what else to do, I would find myself playing that. Bach, yes, but Yo-Yo Ma's interpretation specifically. There was something about his tone, the way he emoted through his instrument, that spoke to the core of my soul.

  I floated away, then sank into the rise and fall of the notes, the sweep of the bow and the voice of my Apollo, my cello. I let the music pull me under its spell, made it mine and let it take hold and erase all the thoughts within me, all the hurt and the confusion. It was my solace, this cel
lo, the music, the sonorous voice singing to me, appealing to the notes of my blood, the eloquence in my hands. It could soothe me, shelter me, for a few moments, from the hurt and the darkness and horrors of being alive and so, so alone.

  I moved and breathed in a lonely world, and Apollo alone knew my tears, felt them fall upon his shoulders. He scoured them from me, took them and allowed them to fall, and never judged me. When my heart broke, he comforted me.

  "Suite No. 2 in D Minor" rippled from the strings, and I poured myself into it, let it flow like a river. Let the grief go with it, the pain.

  I found myself playing the allemande to "Suite No. 6 in D Major" and I cried then. It was Ever's favorite piece to listen to me play. I'd auditioned to Cranbrook with it. I faltered near the end, my bow slipping on the strings as I sobbed. I played through it, played through the shivering, shuddering, wracking sobs, playing through it for Ever, because this was the only way I could grieve.

  When the piece was done, I let the bow slip from my fingers and rested my face against Apollo's neck, struggling to breathe through the pressure of grief in my chest and the ten-ton weight of misery in my soul.

  Ever was, truly, my only friend. I'd never made many friends in high school, and none here at Cranbrook Academy of Art. I was too wrapped up in my cello, in mastering each new piece, in my classes and homework. There'd been a few brief forays into friendship, usually with guys from the music department, and those always devolved into the friendship-sex-Eden-gets-dumped cycle. And every time, Ever was there to eat junk food with me and force me to work it off at the gym and listen to me bitch about men and how stupid I was to think anything would ever change.

  More recently, I'd been consumed with my attempts to compose my own cello solo. It was a project that was quickly beginning to take over my entire life--getting each note right, each movement and section. I didn't dare work on the concerto now, though. It required absolute focus, complete internal composure. I lacked those things, lacked any sense of self. I could barely see through the tears, even as they slowed, as I forced them to slow.

  I still couldn't seem to stop crying.

  I kept playing. A different piece, something that struck my memory, something Mom used to play. The notes wavered in the air, hung, and were joined by the rest, all nine minutes of it rising from the depths of my heart.

  When I opened my eyes, now mostly dry, Daddy was standing in the doorway of my studio space, which I'd left open in my desperation to get to my cello, to exorcize my demons. He was crying, fist at his mouth, watching me intently. It had been three days since I'd seen him at the hospital. He'd vanished again, back into the void of workaholic escapism.

  "That--" He paused to clear his throat and take a deep breath. "That was your mother's favorite piece. She told me the name of it a thousand times, but I could never remember. She would listen to it while painting, and she'd play it over and over again."

  "It's the 'Sonata For Solo Cello,'" I said. "Zoltan Kodaly."

  "Yeah." He blinked hard, and stepped into the room. "God, you play it just like her. You sound...the way you play, especially those vibratos...you sound so much like her."

  I'd never heard that. I had a vivid memory of sitting on the floor of the formal living room where she used to practice, watching her long black hair shimmer and wave and sway as she moved with the arc of her bow. I remember being enraptured by the sound, by the way she seemed to get lost in the music, the way the essence that made her Mom, that made her her, would be swallowed whole and she would just be gone and in some other land. I wanted to be just like her. I would sit on a chair and pretend to sway the way she did. What I don't remember is the way she sounded, not with my adult ear.

  "I do?" I choked on the two words. They hurt to expel.

  He nodded. "It's...eerie. If I close my eyes and listen to you play, I hear--I hear her." He pointed at my cello. "And that...that instrument. She loved it. So much. It's a family heirloom, you know. It belonged to her grandfather, and now you're playing it. Seeing you with it, hearing you play it, sounding so much like her, it's...it's so bittersweet."

  "She was good, wasn't she?" I asked.

  He threw his head back and breathed deeply. "Yes. Very. She played for the DSO, you know. Before we had you and Ever. That's how we met. One of my friends from college had a crush on a bassoon player named Marnie, and he dragged me to a concert so he could ask her out. Turns out Marnie was one of your mother's friends, and I couldn't take my eyes off your mom from that moment on. I went to every concert I could, eventually got her to go out with me." He glanced around the room, found the extra chair and sat down in it. "She was this exotic thing, this incredible cellist with these strong, delicate hands. She took me to a showing of her art as our second date. She neglected to tell me it was her work that was on display, just that she wanted me to go with her as her date. I was...so ignorant. I was a business and finance major, and knew nothing about music or art. She was so cultured. Me? All I had going on was looking good in a three-piece suit. I still--still don't know why she fell in love with me. I never deserved her, but I was grateful for her, every single moment of our lives together."

  It took me a moment to process that, to figure out how to respond. "Wow. I never knew any of that. I knew that you loved her, I mean, I saw that in the way you were together, but I've never heard you talk about her that way."

  He shrugged, staring down and scratching at the knee of his suit slacks. He swiped at his eye with a thumb, discreet. "I haven't talked about her. Not since she died. Not like that."

  "Maybe you should? I mean...maybe we should."

  "Maybe." He gestured at my cello. "Play something else? Please?"

  I settled the cello in place, adjusted my grip on the bow, closed my eyes and summoned the muse. "Song VI" by Philip Glass and Wendy Sutter.

  With the last note quavering in the air between us, he seemed to be struggling against tears, against the welter of emotions I knew I was feeling, and god knows he had to be feeling more, other things. His wife and now his daughter, gone. I mean, yeah, maybe Ever would wake up and be fine. Maybe she wouldn't wake up. Maybe she would wake up in two months or two years or even twenty years, but she'd be about the same as a bunch of asparagus. There were a thousand maybes, a thousand possibilities, but right then, in that moment, all we knew was that she was gone from us.

  "I don't know what to do, Eden." Dad's voice was thin, stretched. "I'm no good at this. At being there for you. I can run a company. I can make numbers make sense and make multimillion-dollar decisions, but...how do I fix this between us? I'm sorry, Eden. I'm so sorry. Forgive me."

  I couldn't take the cracking strain in his voice, the grief and the guilt. "Just...try, Dad. This is a good start."

  "I was in my office, but I just couldn't think of anything but Ever, and you. And even that poor boy. What's his name? I don't even know his name."

  "Cade," I said. "His name is Cade."

  "Cade what?"

  "Monroe."

  He nodded. "So Ever, she's Ever Monroe now?"

  "Yep."

  "What's he do?"

  I glanced up at him as I put my cello back in his case. "Find out from him. He's your son-in-law now. And he's gonna need support. He doesn't have anyone."

  "No one?" Dad asked.

  I shook my head. "Just Ever and his grandparents, I guess. But they're old and live in Colorado or Wyoming or something. I think they're only here for a few days."

  He hugged me, and it was awkward. I hadn't hugged my father in...years. The smell of him was a shock, a throwback to being a little girl sitting on his lap. His stubble scratched my cheek as he pulled away, and the scent of his cologne and his proximity, it all made me feel like a child all over again, reminded me how lonely and scared I was.

  I had to fight it off, the heat behind my eyes, the thickness in my chest and the burning in my heart. I fought it off until he left, and then I sat on my chair and tried to rein in the onslaught of fresh tears.

&
nbsp; I couldn't function without Ever. I just didn't know how. She was me, half of me. The thought of waking up and not being able to call her, talk to her, visit her, flip through her paintings while we talked, while she painted, it made me want to crawl into bed and never come out. I didn't talk to her every day, but just knowing I could was comforting. Now...I didn't have that. And I didn't know what to do.

  So I went back to the hospital. And I had to focus on not crying the whole time. I wasn't sure why, but I brought my cello with me.

  Caden

  Gramps had brought me some things from our--from my condo. Our. Our condo. She might not have been awake, but it was still her home. He'd brought me books to read, sketchbooks and pencils, which I couldn't use yet, my phone charger and my earbuds. In one of those freak outcomes, my phone had survived the crash without a scratch. The truck was completely totaled, a mangled wreck. Ever was in a coma, my arm was shredded and my leg broken so badly I'd need physical therapy to use it again, and I'd suffered a cracked skull plate and a severe concussion. But my phone, plugged into the USB port so I could listen to my Pandora station, was untouched. Not even dinged.

  They'd left yesterday, my grandparents. It had been a difficult goodbye, for reasons I couldn't fathom. As if I wasn't saying simply "see you later," but truly "goodbye." The entire time Grams and Gramps had been here with me, Eden had stayed away, stayed in Ever's room. When I got a nurse to wheel me down there, she'd leave me alone with Ever.

  That was good. Her absence relieved me, although a part of me ached with the loneliness washing through me all over again. Ever had banished the loneliness for a short time, such a brief, blissful time. But now she was gone, and I was alone. And Eden, she was...there. Even when she wasn't in the room, I could feel her presence. She was part of Ever, as much as I was, and I could see Ever in her face, in her eyes, and in the timbre of her voice, the soft music in her words.