The Montagues and Caputlets were sitting in the waiting room of St Katherine's Hospital. They were now sitting next to each other, just a few feet away from their children. They felt dead. They had to be dead, it was the only reason as to how they could be there and not there, how they couldn't hear anything and how even though they looked they could not see.
Their children were dead. And they'd died together.
And they, their parents, could now see their children's blood on their hands. And the blood of so many others who'd been injured, who died, who's lives were even slightly affected by a simple case of mutual dislike between them. What was the cause of it, they wondered. They couldn't think of an answer. And they didn't care. The past was hazy to them now. The future was non-existent. All they could focus on was the present, that never ending feeling of their souls sinking deep into their stomach, the continuance of the realisation that their only child was dead, that they would never return, that they were dead, that they were dead, that they were dead, that they were dead…..
"You can see them now, if you want to."
All four of them looked up simultaneously. The doctor was standing there…was grimly the right were or sympathetically? Does it even matter what the right word was, he was standing there.
"I…I want to go in." Caroline Montague was slowly standing up. Ted Montague stood up and tried to help her.
"I'll come with you…"
"No. I don't want you to…"
"It'll help…"
"NO!" she looked at her husband and tears were on the verge of breaking over. "You can't help me. You can't help anyone. You can't help him…"
"He's my son too…"
"HE'S NO ONE'S SON BECAUSE OF YOU!"
Her words shook him. They made him angry.
"You're as much to blame as me…" she slapped him.
Nearby Gloria and Fulgencio Capulet watched the scenario and didn't say anything. Fulgencio tried to slip his arm around his wife's and she pushed him away. He blanched at his wife's rejection. He grabbed at her arm and she looked at him. Any other day and she would have done nothing, would even have been terrified to push him away. But today she didn't care. And today he knew that she didn't care and he let go of her arm.
Gloria was listening to Caroline's rants against her husband.
"HOW CAN I GO IN WITH YOU? YOU KILLED MY SON!"
Fulgencio looked away. He couldn't look at them because he they were the cause of his daughter's death and because he was the cause of their son's death. And he couldn't look at his wife because despite her stony countenance he knew that she was in accordance with Caroline Montague.
He thought back to when they'd arrived outside the church. So long ago it seemed. Ted Montague looked shaken to the core, as if he couldn't fully understand what had happened. He knew that he himself had looked as shaky as he'd felt. As shaky as he knew he looked now. Caroline Montague looked pale and sickly. It was obvious that she'd cared about her son more than anything else. His own wife was on the verge of tears. She'd been on that same verge when they'd first thought that their daughter was dead, but this time it was different.
Now there was no doubt. The first time she'd looked as though she was merely sleeping, which, as it turned out in a case of cruel irony so black that it wasn't even faintly funny, she was. Her visage had been at such perfect peace that there was even a resemblance between her and her figures of the Virgin Mary. But when she'd really died only one side of her face had kept that perfection. The other was splattered with her own blood. A reminder of the grim truth of death, no matter how gloriously it was shown in the tales of the saints they all studied and worshipped, death had no trace of beauty. Perfection, composure, but no beauty.
Fulgencio drifted from this reverie back to the waiting room. His wife's expression hadn't changed. It'd changed when they'd driven to the hospital from the church. While she was hearing the Friar's story her face had remained tearful. But as they'd driven from the church it turned to stone, and displayed only bitterness.
That was why Fulgencio couldn't look at his wife. He knew that she felt the same way towards him as Caroline Montague now felt towards her husband.
"Just let me come in with you for one minute, you can't go in there alone….."
"I don't want to go in with you, can't you understand that? I don't want to…"
"I'll go in with her". The Montagues looked up. Gloria Capulet had stood up and was looking directly at Caroline.
"I want to see my daughter. Your wife may need help, even if she doesn't want you".
Ted was silent. He looked at his wife who was looking at Gloria. She nodded. It was faint but it was there.
Fulgencio, in a moment of desperation and pathos, rose and tried to take his wife's arm.
"You….it's going to be hard….. you might want me to come to….."
Her head wiped round. Her eyes were brimming with the tears of fury as she murmured to him in a low voice.
"You killed your own nephew and my daughter. How can I even look at you?"
Her eyes were now ice but they burned. He was defeated and he dropped his hand from her arm. It was an embarrassing defeat but no-one was laughing.
Gloria turned her back on her husband and slowly walked to the Montague's. She hesitated and then gently hooked her arm through Caroline's.
"Come on." And the two women walked to where the doctor had shown them. Their husbands, unused to not being needed, were left behind.
It would appear that there were now two women in the room, looking at two corpses on two tables. But in reality each women in black were only looking at one corpse in white. Their children. But not their children. Some part of these two women were still hoping that these weren't really their children. Another part of them was telling them that this corpse lying there in white wasn't their children, they weren't even human, just a body, a clever fake, an empty shell that couldn't possibly have ever had any sign of life, not even that faint spark. But they weren't thinking of that any more. Each woman can only think that this was their child, their joy, their light, their life, and it was gone.
Caroline Montague walked over to her son. They'd pulled back the sheets so that she could see her son's head. His eyes were closed but his countenance was peaceful, he almost looked as if he was smiling. Or was she thinking so because she was still wishing that he was only dreaming, the way he used to. She reached out, just to brush back his blonde hair, the way she used to. Only now she traced her hand along the side of his face. She was thinking of the last time she'd seen him. The morning before the murder of Mercutio and Tybalt. He'd been so distanced from her for weeks, it had been almost impossible for her to believe that her son was back. Back with the same smile, the same hope, the same joy she'd always known was in him. She hadn't even minded that he'd come home so late, so long as he smiled and was talking to her again. But then he'd said that he had to go out again.
"I can't tell you why, mother. Not yet. But you'll know why I have to soon. You'll thank me for it".
"But… but darling you just got back. And…and you still won't tell me where you've been all night. You're not looking for trouble? I was so relieved yesterday when I learnt that you didn't have anything to do with that silly brawl. But…"
"Don't worry about that brawl. Soon no one's ever going to have to worry about that fight ever again. You'll see. Soon". He'd grinned and kissed her cheek. "I have to go know. You'll thank me for this some day…"
He'd started walking towards the door. Outside, Balthasar was waiting in his car. She'd followed him, worried that if she let him go now he'd slip back into that artificial night. She'd agonized over the son whom she never saw but now she could see the son she adored once more. She could not loose him. She couldn't.
"But Romeo….why can't you tell me? How can you be so sure about this feud?" She'd noticed a secretive smile play about his lips when she'd asked him this.
"Your father has no intention of stepping down and I doubt that the Capulets would ever even think of stepping down. And how can we know what going to happen…"
He'd turned around and had placed his hands on her shoulders.
"Everything's going to be fine. I promise". He'd smiled so that she'd just had to nod despite the tears that were brimming for no reason, except for joy or worry. He'd run down the steps into the car. He'd smiled once again, one of hope, one of assurance, as they'd driven away. She didn't know what he was doing, but she knew now that she could never have guessed that he was going to his wedding.
"Everything's going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine. Everything's going …"
Gloria Montague was looking at her daughter face. The side still so perfect. At peace. After agony comes peace. She reached out to graze her hand against her daughter's face. Still so pretty. Still so smooth. Now so cold. She moved her hand further down her daughters face and in doing so, the head turned over. Gloria jerked her hand away. She could see it now. The unshakeable proof of her daughter's death. She wanted to turn her daughter's head back, she didn't want to have to look at that horrifying proof. But she couldn't turn it away. She couldn't even look away. That same bullet hole which had shattered through her daughter's head now shattered any feeble, grasping hope that her daughter was in a mere dream of the happiness denied to her on earth among her own family. That denial came flooding back to Gloria know. How Juliet had smiled after the dance. How she'd wept when she'd learnt of her cousin's death (again, that slight pain swept through her at the thought of her lost lover, but now it was dull, not sharp), how she'd refused to marry Dave Paris, how she, Gloria, had denied her own daughter help or comfort as her husband had thrown their daughter against the stairway simply because she was afraid that he'd hit her again, how she'd turned away from her daughters plea for help, and how Juliet had looked at her, that last time they'd said goodnight.
"Farewell" she'd said. That word had never seemed so clear to Gloria as it did now as she looked at that dark red mark in her daughter temple.
"If only I'd listened to her" she thought, her heart starting to race and her blood starting to swirl in her brain. "If only I'd helped her, if only I hadn't been so afraid, if only I'd been there for her…"
She stopped. She looked over. Caroline Montague was bent over her son, her face buried into his chest. She was holding onto her son. She was sobbing. Gloria looked back at her daughter. Her heart had frozen on the way to the hospital. Now it broke. Her breath snapped and came out in jagged gasps. Somehow she could still hear Carline gasp out between sobs, the words stronger with every breath…. "My boy. My boy. My beautiful, beautiful boy."
Gloria walked slowly to Caroline and touched her arm. Caroline looked up.
"He was handsome". If Gloria was conscious at feeling anything at this moment she would have realised that she could not feel that hatred towards the young man lying there that she'd felt towards the man who'd killed her lover and destroyed the only thing that had made her feel young.
Caroline looked up at Gloria as she said those three words. She looked down slightly at the body of the young girl, that could have been the daughter she'd never had.
"I know he loved her" she said softly. "My son…if he hadn't cared he wouldn't have….he always felt things so deeply…" and wife a choke she flung her arms around Gloria and wept. Gloria felt her arms go slowly around this woman that she'd never spoken to before today.
"If I'd helped my daughter..." she started. "If I'd asked her…if I had even guessed…."
And she slowly let her feeling take over her and quietly began to weep.
"I can't let him come in here" she said. "I can't let the man I married look at my daughter…"
"WHY DIDN'T WE DO SOMETHING!" Caroline wailed suddenly. "WHY DIDN'T WE MAKE THEM STOP THIS? WHY DID HE HAVE TO BRING MY SON INTO THIS…" and those wails broke down once more into sobs.
These women had never spoken to each other before today. Now they were bound.
In grief….In loss…..In guilt….
Ted Montague and Fulgencio Capulet sat a few feet away from each other. It was on the tip of their tongues to express their condolences for the others loss.
But as they felt that same loss, and knew their dual share of guilt, they could not possibly say anything.