When they got to Emily’s hospital room, the little girl was fast asleep. Her brown hair straggled across the pillow, and her pink lips were parted as she breathed deeply.
Out of sheer force of habit, Andy checked the monitor hooked up to the bed. All the flashing numbers were beautifully in the normal ranges, and Andy sighed. Even though it had been over two weeks since the surgery, danger still lurked for Emily, mostly in the guise of rejection.
Again, Emily’s pink lips and creamy skin were Andy’s favorite part of her job. With care, with a lifelong regimen of immunosuppressants to keep Emily’s body from attacking her new liver, she might live a long life. At the very least, it would be a heck of a lot longer than if she hadn’t had the transplant.
And right now, Emily was sleeping normally, peacefully.
Essentially, Andy and Cadell were alone.
Cadell dragged two chairs close to each other and sat beside Andy, holding her hand. He turned her hand from one side to the other to look more closely at the red mehndi stains on her skin.
He said, “It was an awfully big step for you, leaving the wedding.”
Andy pursed her lips, but she always told the truth. “It was a relief. I’ve never been so relieved in my life.”
A line creased between his eyes. “It’s baffling that your parents might never speak to you again.”
“I think they won’t. They will send intermediates to try to drag me back to the wedding, but after that, it is done. I think that this is the kind of chance that my father has been dreaming of, and my mother will not go against him. His youngest brother Shrini married a Christian girl, but Shrini’s two older brothers, who were still younger than my dad, weren’t married yet. My father has not spoken to Shrini for thirty years. We don’t know if he is still alive.”
Cadell rubbed the side of his eye. “So, it was because she wasn’t Hindu?”
“That would have been enough, but he was out of order and should have been arranged. My father was the oldest male in the family because his father was dead, so he should have had the honor to arrange Shrini’s marriage when the time came. Shrini got married to someone that he chose, not a Hindu, and in the wrong order. Everyone has to get married in order. My sister can’t get married until I am.”
“I can’t imagine having so much family that you can just throw some of them away.”
A line of pain crossed Andy’s heart, but she had known exactly what she was doing when she had stood up and run. She had known it when she had given Raji her purse to hold before she had walked into the wedding. “If you put one foot out of line, you are out. No one will speak to you again.”
Cadell traced a teardrop of a paisley pattern on her palm. “To an outsider, it seems very rigid.”
“To an insider, it is rigid. Everything in my whole life has been prescribed. I’ve been told every step to take.”
“My dad always told me that I would be a famous musician, that he would make me a famous musician. I work pretty hard to avoid the famous part. Xan lets me get away with a lot of shit that the others can’t, like ducking out of publicity.” He hesitated and glanced at Emily when he cursed, obviously making sure that she was still asleep.
Andy said, “I’ve always wanted to be a doctor. That wasn’t my parents. They wanted me to be a high-powered surgeon, though. I wanted to be a pediatrician or something, but they insisted on something with a higher salary and more prestige. Maybe there is some part of me still alive in here, somewhere.”
“When you say things like that, it worries me.”
“It sounds pretty bad inside my head, too,” she admitted.
“I led a sheltered life like that. My dad put a guitar in my hands when I was four, and I didn’t go to school, ever, until I started taking classes at Juilliard. I was homeschooled my whole life. It wasn’t the good kind of homeschool, either, where your mom takes you hiking or you win first place at the science fair or the spelling bee. They taught me just enough academic stuff that they wouldn’t get caught and I wouldn’t get sent to foster care. I can read and do basic math and some algebra, but that’s it. All I can do is play the guitar.”
“That’s awful. I took AP calculus when I was fourteen.”
“When I was fourteen, I filled out workbooks for two hours a day, and I got half an hour to play online games with people I didn’t know. After that, I played the guitar, all day, every day, weekdays and weekends. When I went to Juilliard and met Xan, he told me that he was from Monaco. I didn’t know what that was. I didn’t know if it was a city somewhere in the United States or a settlement on Mars. I had to look it up. I had to look everything up. Thank God for smartphones.”
“Monaco is a very small European country, a city-state, located on the French Riviera in Western Europe. It’s a constitutional principality,” Andy said.
“I would’ve had to look up half those words.”
“That’s so sad.”
“When a friend of mine came down with appendicitis when we were in college, I didn’t know what that was, what an appendix was other than a part of a book, or how to begin to spell it so that I could look it up.”
“That’s frightening.”
“During the last election, I had to look up what Democrats were, and Republicans, and what the House of Representatives was, as opposed to the Senate. I’d never heard of the Supreme Court.”
“But you are on the top of every journal’s list as rock’s best lead guitarist: Rolling Stone, Wired, Guitar, and Guitar Player. Juilliard lists you on their site as one of their most successful alumni.”
One of Cadell’s eyebrows dipped in disbelief above his liquid, dark eyes. “How did you know that?”
She shrugged. “I Googled.”
“Who were the other guitar players that Rolling Stone mentioned?”
Andy licked her lips. The wooden taste of lipstick coated her tongue. “I hadn’t heard of any of them.”
“And their bands?”
She shook her head.
“Because you are every bit as sheltered as I was. As much as I am dying to take you back to my house and into my bed, right now, I don’t think it’s the right thing to do. As much as I want to spend every minute with you, I think it’s wrong. You should live first. You should make your own decisions and have your own life. You shouldn’t go straight from your parents’ house to your husband’s.”
Andy straightened her spine. “You listen to me, Cadell Percival Glynn. I have just chopped my entire life away from me like hacking my way out of an Indian jungle with a machete. I feel like an amputated thumb. You can’t reject me, too.”
Cadell leaned over the sharp arms of the chair that separated them and wrapped his arms around her, tucking her head against his shoulder. “I’m not rejecting you. I want you. I want everything about you. I want you in my bed at night, and I want to see you first thing in the morning, and I want to live my whole life with you. I feel like an asshole for saying this while you’re wearing a wedding dress that was meant for you to marry some other man, but I love you, and I want to marry you. Here. Now. In this room or in the hospital chapel or under the sun on the roof. Or I’ll take you back to that Hindu thing that you had going on at the Plaza and marry you there, if you want. I just think it’s the wrong thing to do. You should have your own life, first.”
“I just gave up my whole family and community. Most of them will never talk to me again. I need to belong with people. I am used to hundreds of people attached to me. I want a family, and I want that family to be you and Emily.”
His arms tightened around her, and he pressed his cheek to the side of her head. “Then we should get married as soon as possible.”
“Today.”
“The only state nearby without a waiting period is Connecticut. If we went there, we could be married in the courthouse right away. Here in New York, there’s a twenty-four hour waiting period.”
“And in New Jersey?”
“Three days.”
“For someone who knows nothing, you sure had that at the tip of your tongue.”
He rubbed her upper arm and kissed the side of her head. “I looked it up while I was being driven to the Plaza this morning. I had this silly idea that we could get a license and get married right there, with your family. I thought maybe you could have the wedding that you’ve always dreamed of.”
“I never dreamed of that wedding. My parents did.” Andy untangled herself from him and leaned back to look at him. “My family will not be there when we get married. I’ve accepted it.”
“But what if I convert to Hinduism? I didn’t go to church as a kid. I don’t have strong beliefs or any formal religion. I would, if it would smooth things over with your parents.”
“It wouldn’t help in the slightest, Cadell.”
“But, you said that your uncle was disowned for marrying a woman who was a Christian.”
“Shrini was disowned because she wasn’t the girl that his parents, or his older brother in this case, had picked out for him. He went against custom. There is nothing that you can do to make yourself acceptable to them. That’s what all that namaskaraming was at my parents’ house, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “I thought they might like me.”
“They did, very much, but you will never be a suitable boy to them, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, because they didn’t pick you out. Don’t change yourself for them.” Andy touched the side of his face and smiled at him. “Please, don’t change yourself at all.”
He nodded. That crease of pain still formed a line between his eyes. “I hate that your family would do this to you. I hate that you have to give up your family to be with me, but I’m so grateful that you would. Come on. Let’s go get that license.”
“All right,” she said.
Cadell said, “If we go to Connecticut, we can be married this afternoon. You’re dressed for it.”
“If we get the license here in New York, today, we can be married in the hospital tomorrow, maybe in the atrium cafe. I wouldn’t want to leave Emily out.”
Cadell hugged her again. “You are perfect. Completely perfect. I’ve been waiting my whole life for you.”