Page 49 of Almost Dead (The Cahills 2)

Oh God, I’m going to die. The hospital staff doesn’t know I’m alive. This is so wrong. So damned wrong.

I’m so frustrated! With all my might I try and fail to move any part of my body—an eyelid, an eyebrow, a finger, my lips—but my muscles are frozen, useless. As hard as I try, I can’t do anything!

Please, God, let them understand that I’m awake, I can hear them. Don’t let them kill me…. Please…It’s a miracle they’ve kept me on life support, I know that. But now they’re talking about discontinuing it. At any second they could pull the plug and not give me the time to prove to them that I’m awake, I’m alive, and I have so much to tell!

How can I make them understand? If only I’d had a real mother, one who embraced me, one who was not so cold, always unavailable. Everything, it seems, was more important than her daughter. Her parties. Her “women’s retreats.” Her charity work. Everything! She acted like she wanted me, but it was just that—an act. The truth of the matter is, I was an inconvenience, something to be kept in a drawer until she needed me, like one of her precious pieces of jewelry.

And so I’m alone.

Again.

As always.

The nurses have given up hope, and the doctor is convinced I’ll never wake up. Here he comes now. With his low voice, bright light that he shines in my eyes, cold stethoscope that he puts on my chest. Can’t my damned body please react so that he can understand? If only I could hold my breath. Or freak out enough to elevate my heart rate or anything!

“Condition unchanged,” he says.

No way! My condition has changed. Listen to me, you old fool—I’M ALIVE.ALIVE!

If only I could scream or even whisper!

Surely they can’t make the mistake of thinking I won’t completely wake up. Yes, I’ve dozed; yes, I’ve had only a few moments of lucidity; and yes, I can’t seem to communicate with anyone, but please, please give me a chance. It’s not hopeless.

“I don’t know how much longer we can keep her like this,” the doctor says. “I’ve consulted all the specialists in the area. No one has any hope.”

But they’re wrong! Can’t you see that?

Oh, sweet Jesus, if I just had more time!

If only I had one more opportunity to tell Jack that I forgive him, that I love him, that I was wrong…so wrong. I remember what happened…every little detail…

Chapter 10

A funeral should never be a media circus.

There should be a rule about that somewhere.

But Eugenia Haversmith Cahill’s funeral ceremony and internment were nothing less than a three-ring circus for the press, Cissy thought angrily as she stood at her grandmother’s grave. A stiff breeze blew in from the ocean, causing the ribbons on the standing floral sprays to snap and the roof of the small tent near the grave site to flutter, but the weather hadn’t deterred the police or reporters from showing up.

Bastards! Cissy thought.

Grief-riddled, she watched as her grandmother’s casket was lowered into the earth. She made a mental note that when she died, she wanted the ceremony to be quick and simple, as Rory’s had been. Just a few family members, the preacher saying a couple of short verses, a prayer, a hymn, and that was it. Rory Amhurst had been interred without a lot of fuss.

But this was different.

The century-old church where Eugenia had been a member for fifty years had been filled to capacity, voices of bereaved members lifted in song and prayer. A long-winded pastor had read from the Bible, prayed, reflected on Eugenia’s celebrated life, and her sudden, violent death when “God had called her home.” Cissy had felt tears gather in the corners of her eyes during the ceremony and wished she were alone. Completely alone. Not standing in a sea of friends, relatives, neighbors, and strangers under the soaring ceiling of the very church in which her grandmother and grandfather had been married half a century earlier.

During the church service, Jack had been by her side, which she supposed was comforting, though it seemed such a lie, a fraudulent display of a marriage that was being ripped apart. He was with her now too, standing under a portable awning beneath a cold winter rain as Gran’s casket settled into the wet dirt next to the burial plot of her husband, Samuel J. Cahill. Eugenia’s name, birth date, and the words Loving Mother had already been etched into the marble—only her date of death still needed filling in.

Oh, Gran, Ciss

y thought miserably, guilty for every bad thought she’d held against her grandmother as a child, teenager, and adult. For all the times she’d wished her grandmother had butted out of her life. For her favoritism, at least early on, of her grandson. For her strict rules and discipline.

As wind chased the rain into the city, Cissy was seated. Jack, again, was on one side of her; her uncle Nick and his wife, along with her estranged brother, on the other. Jack’s family and Eugenia’s friends were scattered around the grave site, all half-hidden by umbrellas. At a distance were the police and the camera crew from one of the stations in town that had made the drive up to the cemetery overlooking the city and bay. The cops were clearly expecting Marla to show up. Several plainclothes detectives were mixed in with the crowd, and the media waited discreetly at the periphery. They wanted Marla: her mother, the notorious murderess and prison escapee.

Cissy swallowed hard. She couldn’t wait for the ceremony to be over. She still had to get through the gathering at her house, where friends and family were invited to stop by and have something to eat or drink. Cissy had decided to host it at her house rather than at the big house on the hill. There was something too macabre about returning to the place where her grandmother had died and throwing a party, albeit a quiet one. She imagined Sara mentally calculating the value of the real estate, or one of her greedy relatives asking about the disposition of Gran’s jewelry or furniture. No, it was better to return to her own house, where Tanya was watching Beej and Cissy could take some time, if she needed it, in the solace and solitude of her own bedroom.

The preacher asked them to stand, then led them in a final prayer. Jack grabbed Cissy’s hand as images of her grandmother slid through her mind: Gran hosting charity events, Gran knitting while the television blared, Gran teaching her bridge and suffering through impossibly long board games, Gran buying Cissy her first horse, a palomino gelding they kept at the ranch, Gran delighted when Cissy’s brother, James, was born.

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