They had moved Stan to a room by the time Celia got back to the hospital, and she hurried up to his floor. Hannah and Bart, her in-laws, were in there with him, watching a television set with the sound turned low. It was as if they watched out of politeness, since it was there and they didn’t know what else to do with themselves. Hannah’s mouse-brown hair was mashed flat on one side, as if she hadn’t teased it back into shape since being awakened in the middle of the night. Bart hadn’t shaved.
Hannah sprang up when Celia came through the door. As if she’d been holding back her tears just for Celia, her mother-in-law began to cry and hugged her fiercely. “How is he?” Celia asked.
“There’s been no change, Celia. Where have you been? Allie said you were filling out a police report, but we didn’t know it would take all night.”
A police report. Good for Allie, Celia thought. “I didn’t expect it to, either.” She went to the bed and leaned tentatively over Stan. “Has he been awake at all?”
“No,” Bart said. “Celia, if they kept you that long at the police station, you must know something. Do you know who could have poisoned Stan?”
Her eyes were misty as she looked up at him across the bed. “Bart, if I knew…oh, if I only knew…but I don’t have a clue.” She touched Stan’s face gently. His stubble was thick. It surprised her. It seemed to her that all of his body functions should have stopped out of respect for his state. Hair growth had no place on a face as pale as death.
Tears came to her eyes. “He’s not doing well, is he?”
“No, he’s not. Tell us what happened,” Bart said. “Last night, before they brought him in.”
She raked her hair back from her face, wishing for a shower. “He was just really sick. Throwing up, his throat was hurting, he was really weak. I thought he just had a virus or something. But then he got really sick, and he passed out, and I called an ambulance…” Her voice trailed off in fatigued defeat.
“Stan, wake up, honey,” she said close to his ear. “Wake up. Please, honey. It’s my birthday. All I want is for you to open your eyes.”
Hannah was still weeping, and she pulled a tissue out of the box on the table. “Happy birthday, Celia,” she said softly.
Celia wiped her eyes. “Thanks.” Distressed, she breathed in a sob. “Why won’t he wake up? Haven’t they done anything for him? Shouldn’t it be working by now?”
Bart came around the bed and pulled both women into a strong hug. “We don’t know,” he whispered. “The doctor isn’t sure how bad this is. It may have been a lethal dose.”
“He’s not gonna die,” Celia said, pulling back and looking into her father-in-law’s face. “Bart, he’s not. They caught it in time. They just had to.”
They all held each other and wept for a long time, until finally Celia urged them to go to the cafeteria and eat breakfast. They hadn’t left Stan’s side since he’d been brought to the room. Reluctantly, they agreed and left her alone with him.
When they had left, she sat beside Stan on his bed, talking to him and praying over him, stroking his chest and his face. But there was no response.
She tried to imagine his eyelashes fluttering, his eyelids opening, color coming back into his face. But the image was elusive. The fear of his death was so great that it couldn’t be overridden. She thought of Nathan lying dead on an emergency room gurney, how she’d flown into hysterics until they’d had to sedate her. Finally, before the coroner had taken him, they had allowed her a few moments alone with him.
People said it was easier to cope when you had closure—when you could see the death and experience the finality of it. But it had all come too soon, too unexpectedly. There was no such thing as closure. Even the shock and the sedatives hadn’t helped.
Now she clung to the sound of the heart monitor testifying to the life still left in Stan’s body, to the stubble that felt like sandpaper under her palm, to the feverish heat of his skin against her lips…heat that was so much better than cold.
She dropped her forehead on his chest and sank into her sobs, feeling the comfort of him even though he didn’t move. If he’d awakened, he would have held her while she cried, as he’d done so many times since he’d met her, when she’d been trapped by grief over Nathan, or her parents, or the fear of some evil still out there without name or face.
But now that evil had descended once again, claiming Stan as its next casualty. She couldn’t fathom how this could happen again.
After a while, Bart and Hannah burst into the room, startling her. Their faces had changed, and their eyes shone with rage. “Why didn’t you tell us?” Bart demanded.
She looked up at them, confused. “Tell you what?”
“About your first husband.” The words were uttered with horror. “That he died this way.”
Her face drained of all its color, and she felt the heart-deep fatigue from crying buckets of tears. “I was going to tell you.”
“Then it’s true?” Hannah asked. “We didn’t even know that you’d been married before. Did you lie to Stan, too?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t lie to anyone. Stan knew the truth. I just didn’t think it needed to be broadcast all over the place. I came here to escape the gossip.” She left Stan’s bedside and faced them with teary eyes. “But gossip has a way of regenerating, doesn’t it? Who told you?”
“Simone, the 911 dispatcher,” Bart said. “We called to see if they had a suspect yet, and she said you were the only one!”
Celia sank onto the vinyl couch.
“We were good to you,” Hannah cried. “We treated you like our own daughter. How could you—” Her voice broke off, and she stepped closer to the bed. “I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”
“Leave? Hannah, he’s my husband. I’m not going anywhere.” She got up and walked toward them, intent on making them understand. “Yes, I was married before. Nathan was murdered, this same way. Hannah, Bart, you have to understand that the same person who did that must have done this, too. They set me up last time, and now it’s happening again. You have to believe me. I didn’t do it.”
They both looked horror-stricken and confused. “I don’t know what to believe,” Hannah said. “Someone tried to murder my son. Simone says that you were charged with the first murder.”
“Charged but not convicted. Hannah, you know me! You know what kind of person I am! Have I ever given you reason to think I’m a killer?”
“We didn’t have all the facts,” Bart said. “If we’d known that you’d been accused of murdering your first husband…”
“What?” she cut in. “You would have stood in the way of our marriage? That’s why Stan decided not to tell you. You would have judged me unfairly. I’m innocent.”
“We can’t know that for sure,” Hannah whispered through her tears. “All we know is that our son is fighting for his life, and we just…we don’t know what to think about you anymore.”
“But Hannah!”
“Go home,” Bart said. “It isn’t good for you to be here.”
“I’m his wife! I need to be here.”
“But if you’re involved…” Hannah looked so distraught that Celia felt sorry for her. She was a tigress protecting her offspring. “Celia, we need for you to go home. Just…keep your distance for a while. Until we understand…everything.”
“I don’t want to leave him!” Celia cried. “Please, don’t make me do this! He needs me. When he wakes up, he’s going to look for me. He loves me, Hannah. Bart? Don’t you know that he loves me?”
“We’ve never questioned that,” Bart said, his lips trembling. “It’s just that…these secrets, Celia. We have to sort them all out.”
She suddenly felt nauseous, and her head hurt…and her heart ached.
She didn’t know how much more she could take. Part of her felt that if she left Stan now, he would just fade away, and she’d never see him again. The other part felt that her very presence created strife and grief and angst. Her in-laws were not judgmental people. They weren’t vindictive fault-finders.
They were just scared, and she couldn’t say she blamed them. If she’d had reason to think that either of them had hurt Stan, she would have reacted the same way.
Finally, she kissed her husband good-bye, and wept as she left the room.