Belle Pearl (25 page)

When I got back to the hospital, Anthony was there. He was dressed in a bright yellow shirt and pink pants, his head on Pearl’s cheek, crying his heart out. Daisy had put the ear buds on Pearl and the iPod switched on. I thought I heard the tune,
Unchained Melody
and it made my eyes smart. Another nurse—an older woman, this time—waddled in, adjusted Pearl’s IV bags, double-checked settings and the cardiac monitor, and left, leaving our motley party to get on with it.

Anthony didn’t even notice me. Billy was quietly reading a magazine. Daisy looked up at me, her eyes even more puffed than before, her mascara smudged. She took me aside and mouthed silently, “Bruce is also in the hospital. Anthony’s freaking out.”

“Bruce, his boyfriend?”

“He’s had another aneurism. Obviously Anthony’s torn in two. Guilty if he didn’t come here, guilty now he
is
here. He’ll be flying back to San Francisco on the red-eye.”

“Poor guy. Any change in Pearl?” I whispered. I didn’t want Pearl to hear us, even though they assured me she was out of it.

“Not a peep,” Daisy murmured back. “And that’s another reason why Ant is freaking out. He overheard one of the neurologists talking about Pearl’s condition. But Ant is such a drama queen, I don’t know.”

“But I spoke to Dr. Bailey earlier. He said it’s too soon to make a definitive prognosis—that we need to wait.”

“That’s what I hoped too. But they won’t speak to me because I’m not family.”

“You
are
family, Daisy.”

“Thanks for that.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “Anthony said that—”

“I heard the doctors discussing Pearl earlier,” Anthony piped up, his lip trembling, his body shaking uncontrollably.

Billy put his magazine down and gathered a measured breath. “We need to speak to Dr. Bailey directly, Ant. What you heard was hearsay.” His face was gaunt and drained, his eyes empty with fear.

I came over to Anthony and laid my hand on his shoulder and gave him a pat as if to say,
There, there, now.
I felt ridiculous—I didn’t know what else to do—the man was a blubbering mess. I didn’t want him to say anything in front of Pearl but he couldn’t be stopped.

He blurted out, “They were talking in a lot of technical, medical jargon, you know. Cerebral edema, sub-something-or-other bleeding, cervical spine fracture. They said that her frontal lobes and parietal lobes are irreparably damaged, and that when the anesthesia wears off they can establish brain death. Something about Doppler flows and oh yes, of course they want to get their greedy hands on her kidneys.” He started wailing, braying like a donkey, tears spilling from his inflated eyes. “Why me? Why is it all happening at once?” he yodeled.

I squeezed his shoulders. “No, Anthony. Dr. Bailey wouldn’t be so unprofessional. He’s one of the most respected neurosurgeons in the country. And the neurologist, too. They’d let us know something like that, straight away. There’s the baby to think of, as well. You must have misheard.”

Anthony gulped air. “It’s the weekend. He probably wanted to go fishing or something…you know, couldn’t face getting into some heavy family drama, so thought he’d wait until after the weekend to tell us the bad news.”

I didn’t want to argue about this with my brother-in-law, out of his mind with upset, so I let it pass. I had an urge to throttle Anthony, choke some sense into him, chuck them all out of the room, Daisy included, and just lie there quietly with Pearl. Alone. But they, too, had a right to be with her.

Yet Anthony continued, as he wrung and twisted his fingers through his hair and cried, “I’m sorry, call me a coward but I am
not
going to stay here and watch my sister die! I mean, she is dead, right? Technically
dead,
being kept alive by machines? Her brain isn’t functioning!” His pale blond eyebrows shot up. “All they have to do is yank out the tubes and that’ll be it!”

“Enough, Ant,” Billy barked, trying to remain calm. His fists were clenched though; the tension in his body was raw, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, his jaw tense. “If you need to leave, then just go. Nobody is judging you—we all will deal with this on our own terms.”

“That’s right, Dad. And my terms are shattered to pieces! My terms are…fuck, I don’t know…I can’t even think straight, but I cannot and
will
not watch while they fucking pull that plug. Bruce needs me. Pearly isn’t even aware that I’m here!”

“I dispute that,” Daisy said quietly. “She knows. She knows in her soul and in her heart—which, even if her brain
is
supposedly… ‘dead,’ is still beating, by the way.” She whispered the word dead. “She
knows,”
she added, “how much we love her.” Daisy buried her face in her hands and then rushed out of the room, crying, into the corridor. I followed her, nearly crashing into a man hobbling along with an IV pole. I needed to find the nurse, call the doctor on his cell or find someone who knew what the fuck was going on.

Pearl’s brain had to be alive and functioning. Who was to say someone was ‘brain dead,’ anyway? There were miracles, weren’t there? Misdiagnoses? She
had
to pull through.

She just had to.

Or I’d wander through life nothing better than a grain of dust.

PEARL’S EPILOGUE.

H
is hands were music to me all day long. His touch so full of love, so perfect, that I drifted in and out of a blissful dream. We were making love and he was telling me that I was the most beautiful woman he had ever known. Were we making love? I don’t know, because every time I woke up it was just the movement of his hands and the song of his voice. Poetry. Stories. Tales of Madeleine and Louis. Laughter filled my ears.

And here I am. In a strange world of non-being, yet feeling so alive! So alive with love. I’ve lived. I’ve done everything I’ve ever wanted to do. Some people will tell you that living is the most important thing. But I say it’s true only if you are living with life in your
heart.
Otherwise you’re dead.

I can feel myself drifting away to
Utopia.
I don’t care that I’m leaving Life behind. Because I have loved. I’m in love and have
been
loved. And nobody can ever take that away from me. Someone special—Alexandre—has given me his all. I am full. Literally.

I see a light and it’s smoothing itself all around me like a warm sea. I’m bathed in shimmering gold luminosity. I’m weightless, floating. I can see Mom and she’s laughing.

She’s beckoning me to join her, calling my name.

ALEXANDRE’S EPILOGUE.

Six months later.

T
he memorial went beautifully, thanks to Ant who organized it all. White lilies adorned the little church on the hill and the view below was breathtaking. Rolling hills and green valleys patch-worked over the land, with houses dotted here and there. I knew that Pearl loved countryside like this. Her dad stood there, his hands behind his back, standing tall and proud, and I wondered if he minded that Daisy hadn’t chosen him, after all.

Louis and Madeleine were scampering about, squealing with delight. Only children have the privilege of being so uncouth; blissfully unaware of the turmoil going on in grown-ups’ heads, I thought. But Ant had been brave today and hardly shed a tear. The pastor read some lovely prayers and Anthony read a Walt Whitman poem—one of Pearl’s favorites, in fact.

I was wearing a suit, the same one that I’d worn on our wedding day. I felt a lump in my throat, remembering the beauty of the falling snowflakes, Pearl’s exquisite face, and I was grateful to have that memory—indeed
all
the memories of our wonderful life together.

I felt an arm slip under my jacket and snake it’s way around my waist. I looked down at my wife. “So, what did you think?”

“I’m sure Bruce would have loved this,” she said.

“Well, I never met the man, but the service was beautifully done.”

I peered down into the carrycot just to check on little Lily. Her smooth, delicate face looked so peaceful and her heart-shaped, pouting lips so content.

“Don’t worry, she’ll be asleep for a while now,” Pearl said, nestling her head against my shoulder.

“Shall we go back to the hotel and make another?” I asked with a crooked smile.

“Another baby? You’re a fast worker, Alexandre Chevalier; I think I’m babied-out for a good long while. But if you’re
careful,
I guess—”

“Let’s go back, right now. I feel like hanging out with only you, all afternoon.”

“What about those two rascals?” Pearl said gesturing over to our two runaround tornadoes on the loose.

“Joy,” I said, “is not called Joy for nothing. She can take them to see the Golden Gate.”

“You’re on,” Pearl agreed.

“That easy?”

“I told you I was an easy lay,” she said, and laughed.

“I wish,” I answered, taking all of her in my arms. I squeezed her tight and breathed in the Pearl Elixir. “For forty-eight whole hours I thought I’d lost my rare Pearl,” I murmured into her soft blonde hair. “My belle Pearl.”

Yes, those couple of days when Pearl was in a coma was the worst time of my life. But it turned out that the conversation between doctors that Anthony overheard was about another patient altogether, not Pearl. It was a good thing he returned home to Bruce, because Bruce died two days later. His family organized the funeral, negating the fact that Anthony was his boyfriend—refusing to have anything to do with him at all, so Anthony got this memorial together, six months later. We were now all saying goodbye. It was a poignant moment for me because, although it was sad, I couldn’t help but feel that one life was lost and another gained.

Pearl survived.

Daisy was right.
Wake Up Little Suzy
jolted Pearl out of the coma. Her recovery was not immediate, obviously. It took her a long time to get back to complete normality and she spent most of that time in the hospital, due to her pregnancy. I didn’t want to take any risks. But the birth went beautifully and she hardly suffered any labor pains, this time around. When little Lily popped out completely healthy, with all her fingers and toes, I thought I’d burst, I was so happy.

Since then, Pearl and I have been taking it easy. With HookedUp out of our lives and more money than anyone needs for several lifetimes, we don’t have to work. Natalie has taken over HookedUp Enterprises, and Pearl just acts as consultant once in a while. She sold on
Vanity Fair
—she realized that running a magazine was very different from reading one—in fact, she spends a lot of time reading, and is working on a book based on her great-grandmother’s journals. She’s a full-time mom and I’m a full-time househusband. The best job I’ve ever had. After the scare—thinking I had lost Pearl forever—I realized that there is nothing more important than family. Nothing.

Even Sophie has chilled out. After the Google buy-out, she saw the digits of her bank account and nearly fainted. She decided to take a year off and travel around Europe with Alessandra. (Who was nominated for an Oscar for
Stone Trooper
but didn’t win.) Sophie finally got a divorce, and her husband married his mistress: a young woman who had been his personal assistant. What a cliché.

All my exes finally accepted that Pearl was the only woman for me and they gave up their pursuit. Indira even sent flowers to the hospital when Pearl came out of her coma, and Claudine sent her a get-well card. Other than that, everything trundles along as it was, except Sally has her hands full with three dogs; we kept one of Rex and Bonnie’s puppies. People still believe Bonnie’s collar is made of real diamonds.

As for Elodie, she’s still traveling about South America, searching for her vocation in life. I have a feeling she has a long and fascinating story to tell. Time will tell. She’s a dark horse, that one.

And as for us? Pearl and I have never been happier. I treasure each moment that we have together, each second, each minute, each hour.

We are inseparable.

Thank you so much for coming along on Pearl and Alexandre’s emotional journey with me. I owe so much to you, my readers, and without you none of this would have happened.

I have more stories to tell, and I hope you will come along for the ride. So please
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If you have haven’t already read
The Pearl Trilogy
that precedes this book and are curious to read Pearl’s side of the story, click here:
Amazon US
or
Amazon UK
.

If you haven’t read
Pearl,
the first part of Alexandre’s story, that directly precedes
Belle Pearl
, click here:
Amazon U.S
or
Amazon U.K.

I have also written
Glass
, a short story.

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