More Wild West

The Visitor Has Company (Visitor #7)-4

“Violet, damn it!”

“—that I didn’t tell you and your brother long ago.” She took a shaky breath. “Lea, dear, the Supreme Court ruled same-s*x marriage legal today. It is… the law of the land.”

Suddenly, Andy was standing behind Violet, his hand on her shoulder. His wide brown eyes caught Lea’s.

She slipped her hand out of Robert’s grip, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Violet,” he said, his voice trembling, “don’t you dare try to share your —”

“Papa,” Kirsten said, standing now next to Andy behind her mother. Robert scowled. “I’m bisexual. So is Sean. If you cared so much about how we turned out, I think you should have been more a part of our lives than a card at our birthdays and Christmas, and a card with a check on my graduation.” When her father gaped at her, open-mouthed, Kirsten squeezed her mother’s shoulder. “Mama, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. Sean and I didn’t even come out to each other until this year. But I’m so glad you told me. And I know Sean —”

“Excuse me.” A very tired looking woman at the entrance to the ICU stood in a white coat, a clipboard dangling from her fingers. “Are you all here for Sean O’Connell?”

Any emotion that might have been washing through the waiting room was swept away by the doctor’s thin voice. The five of them all nodded.

“Well, I’ve got the best news possible at this point, which is no real news. We’ve just done an MRI on Mr. O’Connell, and there doesn’t seem to be any sign of cerebral hemorrhage. He has had a severe concussion, however, and so we are keeping him in an induced coma. Hopefully, once the swelling has gone down, we’ll be able to take him off the sedative. We won’t know anything for certain until he’s woken, but for right now, there doesn’t seem to be anything to indicate that Sean is in imminent danger.”

The five gave a collective sigh.

“Now, we’ve got a bit of a full house tonight, and so I’m afraid I can only bring one of you back there. Perhaps one of Sean’s parents?”

Lea could feel Violet and Robert both begin to bristle, but before they could say anything, Andy said, “I… don’t think Mr. and Mrs. O’Connell would be comfortable with that. Miss Lea here is… Sean’s fiancée. Would you mind going back with the doctor, Lea-honey?”

“I…” Lea blinked at the three O’Connells, who stared, square-jawed back at her. “If that’s okay with everyone else?”

Robert and Violet gave stiff nods. Kirsten mirrored them, shooting Lea a pleading look that reminded her disconcertingly of earlier in the evening.

Lea walked over to the doctor, who said, “We’ll be right back.”

The doctor led the way through the door, into a room that seemed to contain more monitors and cables than air. There were beds, each bearing an occupant, each wreathed in a rainbow of —

“Oh, the lights out front,” Lea found herself muttering. When the doctor turned her head toward Lea, Lea said, “Sorry. The front of the building. Was that because of the Supreme Court?”

The doctor’s eyes, red-rimmed as they were, sharpened their focus. “Yes.” She leaned toward Lea, bringing a whiff of a medicinal scent that momentarily returned Lea to the office of her childhood pediatrician. “Hmm. So Mr. and Mrs. O’Connell are divorced?”

“Uh, no. Separated. For twenty-five years or so.”

“Hmm.” The doctor led Lea to a bed that looked like all the others, but the occupant was larger.

Sean. With a tube down his throat. One leg elevated, splinted, and heavily bandaged. Looking very pale, what little of him wasn’t covered in gauze, plastic, or bruises.

Lea felt her knees begin to go; the doctor’s surprisingly firm grip held her up.

“Well,” the doctor said, “that answers that.”

“What?”

“Do Sean’s parents know he’s queer?”

“What?” Though it was difficult to stop looking at Sean, trapped there on the bed, Lea couldn’t help but snap her head around to look at the doctor. There was no judgement on her face, just the same air of knowing fatigue. Lea scratched her ear. “Um. Bi. They do now. I think they don’t exactly agree about it.”

“I bet,” the doctor said, giving a sad shake of her head. “Coming out to your folks is hard enough — having it happen like this isn’t fun. My folks found out I was a lesbian because me and my…” The woman shook her head and wrote down some notes on Sean’s chart. “My wife. Wow. It’s going to be nice actually being able to say that down here. Anyway, the night I graduated from med school, we went out to celebrate, kind of tested our own limits and things got a bit out of hand. Had to call home for bail. Hard to explain what we were doing at a place that called itself a Bar and Girl.” She replaced Sean’s chart and gave Lea a weary smile. “So, Lea, I had assumed, based on some physical evidence and on the behavior of the young man who brought Sean here in —”

“Andy.”

“Yes. He had to be dragged out of here, wouldn’t let go of Sean. Anyway, I had assumed that Sean was gay. But you’re his fiancée?”

“It’s…” The regular path of Sean’s heartbeat on the monitor was mesmerizing: reassuring and terrifying, both at once. “It’s complicated.”

“I bet. Look, it’s none of my business one way or another, but I need one person I can list here as the responsible party. And it sounds as if going to his parents would be a mess. And Andy seemed a bit distraught.”

Lea nodded, still watching Sean’s pulse on the monitor because it somehow seemed more real than his very still body.

“I don’t think there’s going to be any need, but Lea, if there are any decisions that have to be made about Sean’s care, are you comfortable making them?”

The enormity of that question made Lea’s own pulse skip a beat, but she nodded again.

“Thank you. I’ll need you to sign a bunch of forms before you leave.”

“Sure.” Lea’s hand reached out of its own accord and touched Sean’s shoulder. It was one of the few parts of him that wasn’t swathed in bandages or medical equipment. “Is he…? I mean, I know you can’t tell me, but is he going to be okay?” By the time she got to the end of the sentence, she was snivelling. Tears flowing. Snot flowing.

The doctor held out a tissue. “Good job. I don’t think I could have made it this far without turning into an absolute mess. Look, I don’t know. And like you said, it would be wrong of me to pretend that I did. But he’s a healthy, strong man. He’ll hurt like hell when he wakes up, but there’s nothing to make me think he won’t be waking up. That’s as much as I can say. Okay?”

“Okay.” She stroked Sean’s shoulder again. “You hear that, Sean? You’re going to wake up. We need that, me and Andy. And Kirsten. And your mom and dad. Your dad came. So you need to come back to us. Okay?” She placed a kiss on the small patch of his cheek that was showing. It was frighteningly cool.

They walked back to the waiting room to find Andy, Kirsten, and Violet sitting together, hands clasped and heads bowed. Lea might have thought they were praying, but for Kirsten muttering “Son of a b***h” over and over.

“Where’s your dad, K?” Lea asked.

Violet answered, “Robert had to go. He didn’t feel terribly comfortable staying.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Don’t say that, Kirsten, dear. Your grandmother was a very lovely lady.”

Improbably, the doctor snorted, which made Lea laugh through her tears.

Once the laughter had settled, the doctor said, “Well, I need Lea here to sign some forms. But then I’d like all of you to head home. Sean’s stable and we’ve made sure he won’t be waking up. There really isn’t anything for you to do here, and he’s going to need your help for quite a while.”

“Children,” said Violet, “I doubt very much that I am going to sleep tonight, so I am going to stay here. Why don’t you head home and I’ll call you if anything changes.”

Kirsten and Andy both began to object, but Lea could see the logic in what both the doctor and Violet had said. “Come on guys, I’ll sign the damned forms, and then let’s get home. We’ll be back here soon enough.”

When they got back to the apartment, Lea looked at Kirsten and Andy, both of whom stood, hollow-eyed, in the kitchen. “Do you guys want a drink?”

They both gazed at her owlishly and shook their heads.

“You want to take a shower, Andy?”

He looked up, and Lea felt as if she could truly see his eyes for the first time that night — desperate, feral, frightened.

Lea ran over and threw her arms around him.

Startled for a second, Andy gasped her name, and then began once more to sob, as Lea held him tight.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lea saw Kirsten shift, saw her begin to move away. Lea was about to tell her to stay, but Andy’s huge hand reached out and pulled Kirsten into the embrace. “Please don’t go,” he blubbed. “All in this together.”

And so Kirsten folded herself into the embrace, and for a good, long time, the three of them just stood there together, vibrating. Nothing s****l — just three people trying to reassure themselves that they were alive, and Sean was alive, and that things were going to be, if not okay, at least not absolutely horrific.

Of course, twenty or thirty minutes in, Lea wasn’t exactly surprised when two hands found her breasts: one with long fingers and short nails, the other with shorter fingers but long, purple nails.

She looked up at the two of them, very aware of the four-inch difference between her own height and Kirsten’s, which somehow made Andy seem even taller.

They were both looking down at her, blue eyes and brown, and as soon as she saw them she knew that what she needed — what they all needed — was touch. Lots and lots and lots of touch. “Guys?”

Their eyes were wide, brown and sky blue, and focussed on her. It was her call. Her lead. Lea’s California Jewish roots made her want to talk first, to hem in whatever they were about to do with words.

But Lea wasn’t up for words. She unzipped the hoodie she’d thrown on and pulled it aside so that those fingers closed around her naked breasts.

Fuck it. Sean had asked Lea to sleep with his sister. Andy had said how much the idea of that turned him on. Sean would understand why they needed this.

Sean…

Desperate to shut out the image of Sean — big, strong, invincible Sean — with a tube down his throat, wrapped in gauze and plastic, his skin so pale that the freckles on his visible cheek seemed to have been picked out in pen… Desperate to shut out the ghostly feeling of his cool flesh on her lips…

Lea pressed herself against them, trapping their trembling hands against her t**s, and pushed up on her toes to kiss Andy.

As soon as their lips touched, it felt as if they had broken some cold film that was covering the world like ice on a pond. Heat flowed between them. Andy moaned and Lea, relieved, answered him.

Then, before Kirsten could pull away, Lea turned and pressed her lips to her friend’s, and it was Kirsten’s turn to moan.

Not the same as kissing Andy, exactly, but not the same as the quick smooch Lea had given her friend before they drove to the hospital, nor the same as the play-make-out kiss Lea had shared with Cherry that very weird night before Prior and Cherry’s wedding. There was heat here too, and it made Lea feel a bit drunk, though she was as sober as she could ever be on a night like tonight.