KAYLA HURRIED through the spacious atrium of the hospital administration building, past registration and information, and out the side door near the bustling cafeteria, confident of where she headed. The newly built complex of vast buildings and open spaces at the edge of the enormous campus, part of the University – a teaching hospital where students and professors roamed between the medical buildings and the classrooms where they taught. The grounds shone brightly beneath bright sun, grass freshly mowed and flowers blooming in the spring air as she hastened toward the Dunn Building about half a block away.

“Ms. Turner?”

A familiar voice caught her attention, and Kayla turned toward it, wondering who from here would remember her.

“Dr. Wheeler.” She smiled, extending her hand. “How are you?”

He looked older than she remembered, shorter and with much less hair than he’d had at forty-four. Back then, she’d have had a terrible crush on him if it hadn’t been for mistakes she’d long since paid for. Now, he just looked…old.

“I’m fine,” he answered, shaking her hand, his skin dry and papery. “And you look well. What has it been, ten years? Eleven?”

The doctor fell into step with her, struggling to carry several books and an empty lunch tray. After pacing him for a moment, watching his awkwardness, Kayla reached for the tray.

“Let me take that,” she offered, grasping it firmly.

He let go of the tray and she balanced it carefully, not wanting to drop the empty dishes and silverware rattling uncomfortably on its plastic surface.

“It’s been almost ten years,” she answered his earlier question while they walked.

He smiled down at her then, and it made his face younger, more like the man she remembered. More like someone she’d want to get to know, had things been different.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said with a charming smile.

Kayla’s own mouth turned up in a bitter semblance of laughter. His flattery did no good, because she knew the truth.

“Oh, I’ve changed. Believe me.”

“Tell me about it.”

His smile gone now, he looked troubled by her tone. “Seriously, Kayla, how are you doing?”

With relief, she saw the Dunn Building just ahead, and to her left, an area where trays and trash could be left for cleanup. Coming here, facing the ghosts of the past, hadn’t been the best idea she’d had this decade, but she didn’t have to share the misery with anyone else.

Turning away from him, Kayla headed toward the trash area, purposely ignoring his question. She set the tray in the bin, and turned, pasting as realistic a smile on her face as she could come up with at such short notice.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Wheeler. I have to run, but it was great to see you again.”

“Kayla,” he said, putting his free hand on her arm. “Wait.”

Kayla stopped at his touch, but refused to look at him until his hand tightened. She raised her eyes to his face then, all at once overwhelmed by the pity she saw there as he looked over her shoulder at the building she’d come to visit.

“I’m so sorry,” he said softly. “Is it that time already?”

She shook free of him, her throat closing as tears surged upward, tears endlessly present since she’d gotten the phone call late last week.

“Yes.” She couldn’t bring herself to say anything else.

“If there’s anything you need…”

Dr. Wheeler reached down to brush the moisture from the outer corner of her left eye. “You know where to find me.”

“Thanks,” she said awkwardly. “I have to go.”

The steps of the Dunn Family Cancer Center seemed to go on forever, a long concrete trial guaranteed to steal the breath from the most fit person. Kayla climbed them slowly, hoping what she would face through the imposing front doors would be gone if she just moved slowly enough.

It didn’t help.

The nurse at the receptionist window looked up with an impersonal smile as Kayla approached, pen poised to write the visitor’s name, but suddenly Kayla knew where he was, could feel him as she’d always been able to all those years ago, by the tingling along the back of her neck, as if the hairs vibrated with the music of his presence.

Kayla shook her head at the nurse and moved past her, toward the long open room opposite the front door. Miles of sterile linoleum lined the path, and the cold stone granite interior of the building dulled the bright day outside, lowering the temperature almost beyond air conditioning cool.

Adrian sat with his back to her, silhouetted in a window, his black hair wildly curling and longer than she remembered. Kayla knew it was him, and wondered if he felt her, too, when his back straightened almost imperceptibly. He didn’t turn, though, and she felt sure the delicate woman who sat in the shadows clinging to his hands had no idea she was there. She passed them, her heart sinking, and moved to the upward stairs, as if she had some other purpose to be there.

The steps were darker, all color and warmth leached from them by their stone structure, and her footfalls were muffled by steps worn smooth by thousands of feet. Light beckoned from above, so she climbed until she came to the top, where the narrow column opened into a brilliant foyer full of light and colors reflecting from every window. Warmth reached through the shimmering panes, lighting up every corner with all the colors of the rainbow, almost overcoming the antiseptic hospital smell creeping down the two corridors feeding into the open space.

Silence. Nothing. No one.

Kayla felt loneliness reach out for her as it had ten years ago, as it had ten minutes ago when she saw Adrian’s wife still firmly separating Kayla from the only man she’d ever loved. Beth hadn’t changed in all these years. She still looked perfect, slender in her beautifully tailored summer dress, only a small shadow under her large blue eyes indicating any pain at all.

Still the perfect woman.

I can’t do this, she thought. I’m leaving.

She turned back to the stairs, ready to run from his need, his call, but stopped at a sound below. Footsteps echoed up to her. Someone approached. Kayla just wanted to be gone from there. Now. She moved to the opening and set her foot on the step just as Beth came into view. Beth, who knew nothing of Kayla’s secret. Beth, who had everything a woman could ask for. Kayla wanted to hate her, but she couldn’t.

She moved to one side of the stairwell and reached for the smooth metal rail, her feet moving of their own accord. Run. It’s all she’d ever done, and the tears came again, harder this time, seeping past her defenses.

Kayla lowered her head and kept moving, but as Beth approached her from the other direction, she heard gulping sobs. She didn’t have it in her to ignore them, painful as they were. A wide-brimmed hat now covered Beth’s head and a scarf hid her grief, but her shoulders were bent and shook as if she had the hiccups. Kayla knew those tears, had cried thousands of them in the last ten years, but her heart swelled and, without thinking, she reached out to the other woman.

“Are you all right?”

Her hand stopped before it reached Beth’s slender shoulder, but she paused on the stairs, hoping for a quick assurance so she could get away.

Beth looked up, and only her wide blue eyes were visible, awash with an ocean of tears. They trickled from the corners of her eyes as if carefully avoiding mussing her mascara. Wispy dark hair escaped the scarf around her heart-shaped face, and she looked more like a heartbroken orphan than the forty-year-old woman Kayla knew her to be.

“What?” Beth whispered. And when she saw Kayla’s concern, she added, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“You didn’t, and there’s no need to be sorry,” Kayla said quietly. “I just wondered if you were okay.”

The other woman nodded, and then shook her head quickly, her tears welling again.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, her eyes haunted. “I can’t talk right now. Excuse me.”

With a rustle of her flowered dress, she moved past Kayla and almost ran down the long hallway to the left, toward where the bathroom sign pointed. Kayla watched her go, and then resumed her descent. As she reached the bottom step, he looked at her, and every other thought vanished.

Adrian. He’d changed, his face thinner and full of sharp angles, the flesh molded so tightly to his skull he almost looked dead. He extended a hand, and suddenly she stood before him without the memory of movement, her hand gently held in his.

“Kayla. You came.”

His voice did not have the deep velvety quality of her memories; it, too, sounded weaker and less sure. “I didn’t know if you would.”

He indicated the other side of the window seat, and she sat, leaving her hand in his a moment longer.

“I wasn’t sure I would.” Kayla paused, then added, “Or should. You didn’t mention Beth would be here when I came.”

Hard as she tried, Kayla couldn’t keep the accusation inside.

“I didn’t think you’d come if you knew she was here, but I needed you.”

His brown eyes, faded-looking and tired, met her searching gaze. “Kayla, I’m dying.”

The words lay between them, blunt and cold.

“No,” she whispered, and shook her head, pulling her hand free of his skeletal grip. “You can’t.”

Adrian shook his head. “I wish you were right. The cancer’s back, and there’s no chance to save me now. It’s in my organs, inoperable.”

His eyes flickered toward the stairs. “Beth is having trouble handling it.”

“Why should I care about Beth?” Kayla snapped, still keeping her voice low. “What about how it makes me feel? I lost you once, dammit. I don’t know if I could stand to lose you again.”

The tears she’d kept at bay pushed against her eyes, but she clenched her hands tightly to hold them back, so tightly she felt the flesh give and blood well beneath her nails. Somehow the pain helped.

She glared at him, holding her anger firm. “You shouldn’t have called me, Adrian. I can’t do this again.”

“You’re a strong woman, Kayla,” he told her with a sad smile. “I knew that when I met you, and I need your strength now.”

Adrian reached out to her again, but she moved away. If he touched her, she wouldn’t be able to get free, and she had to leave. She couldn’t stay and watch him die. She couldn’t watch him die from the shadows while Beth sat at his side. It would kill her.

“What do you want from me, Adrian? What can I give you that you haven’t already taken from me?” she asked tiredly. “What do I have left?”

“Your compassion, Kayla. Your heart.”

She almost smiled then, felt the acrid humor rise beneath the pain and threaten to explode from her aching chest. He’d asked for the one thing she had that didn’t work.

“It’s broken. You broke it. Remember?”

“I loved you, Kayla, but Beth would not have survived my leaving her.” His dark brown gaze searched her face. “I knew you would get through it.”

A sharp laugh escaped her tightening throat. “You knew I would?” she asked. “Then what do you want now? To break me again?”

Adrian sighed, the sound loud in the almost tomblike quiet of the stone building.

“I want you to help Beth.”

For several moments, she didn’t think she’d heard him right, but the pleading expression on her face convinced her.

“You’re kidding.” Kayla stared at him, feeling as if someone had punched her in the stomach. “Help her how?”

“She’s fragile, Kayla. So fragile she seems like a leaf being pushed along the ground by a strong wind. She needs hope. She needs a friend. She need protection,” he rushed the words out as if he didn’t know how much longer he’d have her to say them to. “Someone has to help her when I’m gone.”

“And you’re asking me?”

Kayla couldn’t believe what he asked of her. This man, the man she’d loved painfully for every minute of the last ten years, and more, wanted her to help his wife, the woman he’d left her for, to get over his death.

She jumped up, heart pounding violently against her ribs.

“You can’t ask me. I can’t do it. You can’t ask me,” she repeated, tears trembling on her lashes.

Adrian looked up at her, his eyes filled with tears. “Please, Kayla. There is no one else I can ask. No one else I can turn to.”

Footsteps interrupted them, and Kayla turned, looking for a place to hide, as she’d done so often back then, after she found out he was married. She sped across the room to the opposite window, breathing hard to control the anger and pain scratching its way to the surface. The sound of someone coming down the stairs grew louder, and in another moment, Beth came into view again, her face fresh and glowing, some of the sadness washed away.

Kayla watched her glide over to Adrian, reach for him, and then he looked at Kayla over Beth’s bowed head, his eyes so full of pleading she had to turn away.

A tall, thin nurse in starched white came around the corner from the reception area, pushing a steel wheelchair with a blue blanket draped over its back.

“Mr. Davies, it’s time for your tests.”

Kayla watched him get up stiffly, moving like an old man into the wheelchair. The nurse fussed over him, covering his thin legs with the blanket.

“We’ll be back in about thirty minutes, Mrs. Davies,” she said brightly. “Why don’t you go get something to drink?”

Beth nodded, and within minutes, Adrian was gone, whisked away into the atrium shadows and down another hall.

Kayla knew she should leave then, but she seemed frozen in place, watching her rival, a woman who didn’t even know she existed. Turning toward the window behind her, she made her decision. She would wait here until Adrian got back, until she could say one more goodbye, and then it would be over. She would go, knowing she would never see him again.

“Excuse me.”

A soft voice behind her made Kayla turn to find Beth at her left shoulder. +“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude earlier.” The woman nodded toward the upper floor.

“That’s quite all right,” Kayla offered, searching for something else to say.

“May I join you?” Beth indicated the other seat at the window, and Kayla nodded, hating herself for it. She’d always had trouble saying no, yet she certainly didn’t want to sit and talk to her lover’s wife.

“What are you here for?” the other woman asked.

Kayla wondered what Beth would say if she answered, “I’m here for your husband,” but she didn’t.

“I’m visiting a friend.” Reluctantly, she added, “You?”

Ready tears welled up in Beth’s clear blue eyes, making Kayla immediately regret her automatic question.

“My husband’s here,” Beth answered in a trembling voice. “He’s dying.”

Kayla’s heart squeezed tight. “I’m so sorry.”

A tiny lace handkerchief appeared as if by magic from the belt of Beth’s dress, and she dabbed at her eyes.

“I know I must look a mess. I just don’t know if I can handle this.” Her voice broke, but after a moment, she continued, “He went through a period with it about ten years ago, and it almost killed us both then. But finally he came home, and he’s been better, mostly. Different in some ways, but…”

Her voice trailed off.

Kayla nodded. She remembered watching Beth arrive to pick Adrian up from the hospital, the look on his face as he waved goodbye behind his wife’s back. He’d been different, true. Strong and vital, his health restored. Kayla hadn’t expected the cancer to return. Adrian and Beth probably hadn’t expected it either.

“He can’t leave me,” the woman said, tightening her fingers around the wisp of fabric in her hand. “I need him.”

“Things will work out the way they’re supposed to.”

Even as the words left her lips, Kayla knew Beth wouldn’t understand. Things usually did work out that way, though, even if you couldn’t see it at first. If Adrian hadn’t left her, Kayla would never have written the bestselling book, When Men Leave, wouldn’t have immersed herself in the research of grief and loss, wouldn’t have been able to help all the people she’d brought through death or divorce to the other side of life without a loved one.

This was her calling now.

She couldn’t help herself. She reached out and took Beth’s hand.

“Loss is a part of life, Mrs. Davies. You have to be able to accept it and move on. I’m sure that’s what your husband would want.”

Beth raised tear-filled eyes to hers.

“You just don’t understand. Adrian is my life. I can’t live without him.” She swallowed loudly in the quiet room, real fear shadowing her beautiful face.

“Who will take care of me?”

Despite all the reasons she had to hate this woman, Kayla still felt sorry for her, wanted to help her.

No, that wasn’t right. She didn’t really want to help her; she had to. And that’s why Adrian called her, because he knew she’d be compelled to help by the force of her own inner demons, the “strength” she hated being known by. He knew she’d have no choice.

Had he known how hard it would be?

They talked the whole time Adrian was gone, and when the nurse came to get Beth, Kayla made up her mind. She would get the other woman through this, just as Adrian had known she would. By the time she left the building, arrangements were in place for her to join Beth the following day while Adrian underwent chemotherapy.

Each day of the next few weeks seemed the same. Kayla arrived at the hospital early and sustained Beth, and Adrian, too, through tests and treatments and even held his head when the chemo made him sick. Between the two of them, she and Beth took turns wiping his brow, reading to him, singing in harmony for his enjoyment. Kayla became surrogate wife, surrogate mother to both of them. Adrian grew weaker with each passing day, and Beth more quiet and withdrawn.

Adrian lay alone when she got there on Saturday, the shades of his room drawn against the sunlight he seemed no longer able to stand. He lay, pale and drawn, against the mound of pillows the hospital provided for his comfort, comfort that eluded him these days, despite all efforts.

Kayla quietly put down the magazine and soda she’d brought for Beth and went to sit beside him. The chair creaked with her weight and his dull brown eyes opened, searching the room blindly until he focused on her face.

“Kayla,” he whispered in a scratchy murmur, “it’s almost time.”

Kayla took his hand. “No, Adrian. You can’t leave us yet.” The “us” had become automatic; she and Beth seemed almost like two halves of a whole. “We’re not ready.”

His fingers tightened around hers. “There is something you must promise me. Something you must know.”

“All you have to do is ask, Adrian, as always.”

Seeing him, being near him yet unable to show her true feelings, became easier with each passing day. Her emotions blurred from intimate love to love encompassing both him and the woman he’d married. Kayla could not think of one without the other any more, and the memory of his naked body, his hot kisses, paled and died within her mind.

“Kayla,” he said, his voice clearer, although with much apparent effort. “Listen to me. Beth will need you even after I’m gone. You must stay with her.”

Kayla’s thoughts had not strayed beyond his death; no sense of what Beth would do once they left the hospital or the cemetery had crossed her consciousness.

Stay with Beth? Hardly an option, even if Beth wanted it so. Kayla had her own life, a life put on hold for several weeks now to tend to the two of them.

“I can’t stay with her, Adrian. You must know that. I have a life to get back to.”

She patted his hand reassuringly. “I will see her through this, but eventually, she must go on, alone.”

He shook his head weakly. “You don’t understand. She needs someone to take care of her. Without protection…” He paused, as if searching for the right word, “she will die.”

“Don’t upset yourself, Adrian. Things will work out the way they’re supposed to. They always do.” Her stock phrase these days.

Even as she said it, Kayla thought back to the day she’d decided to help this man and Beth. She smiled down at him. “You’ll see.”

“Kayla, ten years ago I begged you to sacrifice your feelings for me,” he whispered. “Now, I must ask you for an even bigger sacrifice. You must promise to take care of Beth for me, to give her what she needs for as long as you can. She’s too weak to kill for survival.”

Kayla’s breath stopped in her throat.

“What did you say?”

She must have heard him wrong. Kill?

“Beth is a vampire, Kayla. I saved her from the streets when I was just a teenager. We’ve been together ever since.”

His breath came in short gasps now as he labored over his words.

Thank God she was sitting. Kayla let go of his hand and leaned back, closing her eyes. Vampires didn’t exist. It must be the drugs or the chemo; Adrian was obviously hallucinating. That must be it.

The door opened, and Beth walked in, as lovely and fragile as she’d been the first day Kayla saw her. She smiled that perfect smile, and moved to the other side of Adrian’s bed to sit in the chair opposite Kayla’s, taking her husband’s hand.

“Did he tell you, Kayla? Will you stay?”

She sounded like a child, all breathless anticipation. “Please?”

Kayla didn’t know what to say.

---

THE DAY of the funeral dawned overcast and cool, the summer bowing to September’s moody weather. Kayla and Beth stood on the fake green grass rug before the yawning gravesite and held hands, waiting, something they’d gotten good at through the long course of Adrian’s illness.

“You’re cold,” Kayla murmured softly, feeling the chill of Beth’s skin even through the black silk gloves she wore.

“I’m always cold.” Beth smiled up at her from behind her dark veiled hat. “You know that, silly.”

Kayla nodded. “I know. I’ll get used to it.”

“I wish he’d let me save him,” Beth said, pressing closer to Kayla, her black chiffon skirt clinging to both their legs.

She sighed, voice sad. “He said he didn’t want to live forever with the cancer.”

Kayla patted Beth’s arm reassuringly. “He didn’t mean it as a slight. He never wanted to hurt you. Never.” “

Adrian thought I never knew about you, Kayla.”

Beth laughed then, high and bright, like spring sunshine she could never truly appreciate. “I was so glad you were with him during those days, when I couldn’t be out in the daytime. I thanked God for you every single day. I had no idea how much you would be hurt when he left.”

Beth looked up at her again, and Kayla saw a glint of tears beneath the black lace.

“He never wanted to hurt you, and I never wanted to hurt him. But now, we’re together, you and I. For a long time to come.”

She giggled softly, looking around to make sure no one was near enough to hear. “And, who knows, you may want to join me some day.”

Kayla shook her head. “Probably not.”

Beth squeezed Kayla’s hand. “We’ll see.”

The funeral director approached, then mourners, those friends Adrian had made through the years of his life, people Kayla knew. Dr. Wheeler pushed through the crowd toward them.

“Ms. Turner, how nice to see you again.” He nodded to Beth, and then moved around her to shake Kayla’s hand.

“How are you holding up?”

Kayla saw genuine concern beneath the puzzlement in his eyes, and it touched her. “I’m doing well, Dr. Wheeler. Thank you.”

She withdrew her hand from him, reaching for the handkerchief tucked in her pocket. The day clung to them, endless in its sadness.

“I can’t stay for the burial, but if there’s anything I can do for you, all you have to do is call.”

The doctor nodded to her again, and left them, moving away from the knot of people toward a small red car. Kayla watched him go, wondering if perhaps some day in the future she might take him up on his offer.

“May we begin?”

The funeral director spoke quietly, motioning Beth and Kayla into the seats in front of the coffin. The service was short and sweet. In deference to Beth, Kayla opted for no crosses, no Bible, only generic words of comfort to bid Adrian on his way.

As they sat and listened, she studied the casket closely for the first time. For some strange reason, it looked familiar, and a frown marred her forehead for a moment, then smoothed away as the box began to sink into the gaping earthen hole. She and Beth rose and moved to watch it, each dropping a single white rose onto its gleaming wooden lid. Kayla finally recognized the rectangular box and smiled. How fitting.

Adrian’s coffin exactly matched the one they had at home. In Beth’s room.

 

---