For three days, I stayed there, unsure of what else I could possibly do. Leon was done with me, and Letty...I was positive that Letty knew the reason Leon had left me. Knew the reason he was done with me and had had to break off the thing that made him most happy because he was afraid I would break it off first. I hated myself for thinking of Dominic, even as I laid there so devastated by what had happened with Leon, I thought about him. It was completely baffling to me that I could so wholeheartedly love two men, and now neither of them were accessible, and I felt very alone.
On the third day, my mother knocked on the door.
"Miss Isabel, what are you doing in there? I haven't seen your face in days."
I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow and groaned, but for some reason, some strange, extraterrestrial reason, I wanted to see my mother. I didn't want to tell her the whole story, or for her to get involved, but I wanted to see her, wanted her to see me, and try to make everything better, as she had when I was a child.
"The door's unlocked," I murmured. She stepped in and sighed, staring at me with her head cocked to one side.
"Leon?" she asked, and I nodded, my eyes filling with tears.
"I want to go home, Mom," I said. "I want to go home."
"No, Izzie. Our vacation isn't even half over. Now what's the matter. It can be fixed, no matter what it is. You're not pregnant, are you?"
"God, mom."
"Okay, you're not pregnant. There'll be others, Izzie," she said. "Wasn't practical, this one. Gorgeous, and well mannered, but not practical. I was speaking to Jacqueline Gauthier Jackson would like to come here, and visit."
"Mother!"
"What? You said the two of you parted amicably!"
"And haven't spoken since! Jesus!"
She had a point. As much as it slayed me to admit it, my mother had a point. So I washed my face and shaved my legs and changed my clothes and called him. He sounded relieved to hear my voice. So relieved that I thought I heard the choking stricture of tears in his throat. He asked if he could see me, and I told him yes.
He arrived the very next day, an obscene price paid by a man of obscene wealth-my father, Jackson Gauthier's biggest fan. I was truly dreading having my parents drive me to pick him up, but the only alternative was to call a hired car and driver, and the resort's hired driver was Leon.
So I rode with them, staring at the back of their heads, wondering what Jackson could possibly want with me, and with Mexico in general.
He was still as gorgeous as ever, but looked older, somehow. Older, solemn as before, smile seeming stressed, forced, as he sat beside me, 5'8" tall and 186 pounds of solid rock muscle. Mr. Football, the running back, great white hope of the academy.
When we reached the house at the villa, my parents-and their infuriatingly idle small talk-mysteriously disappeared. I wore a harmless blue cotton sundress and sandals and my Old Izzie makeup-tame mauve lip color and mascara and nothing else. I kind of regretted it. I still stung from Leon's rejection, and the way Jackson stood, slumped, with his hands in his pockets, defeated and wordless, angered me.
I wanted to scream at him: You fucked up your life! What do you want ME to do about it? It's nobody's god damn fault but your own.
I wanted to be in the slutty, racy clothes that had made Leon absolutely burn for me, to flaunt what I had become in Jackson's beautiful, morally astute face.
But instead, I was frumpy. I was boring. I was the girl he'd forgotten about, due to inebriation and Ashley Hampton's black string bikini. And I had learned more about men in the past four weeks than in the previous three years I'd spent with Jackson. I knew without a doubt that he regretted it...with every fiber of his being. I knew that he wanted, more than anything, to be in my arms.
"Want to see my bedroom?" I asked, and he hesitated before nodding slowly.
"Sure." His voice was quiet, a bit gruff, and I gestured for him to follow.
I didn't look at him as I led him up the stairs and shut my bedroom door behind the two of us, but his eyes were on me. Locked on me, burning holes in the back of me. Black combat boots with lug soles lay at the foot of the bed, and a black leather mini-skirt, and I saw his eyes catch on them, but, disappointingly, he didn't ask. I leaned back against the door and met his gaze, folding my arms over my chest.
"You look thin, Isabel," he said, tentatively, as if he didn't really know me well enough to say that. "Your hair looks light. And you chopped it."
I shrugged.
"I may have lost some weight, I don't know. It's lighter from the sun. And yes. I chopped it." He did another once-over of the room. "Why did you come here, Jackson?" The question was brutal, but I couldn't phrase it any other way. Had to pose a direct question if I anticipated a direct answer.
"I miss you."
I raised an eyebrow. "Even more than you missed me when you were in the Keys?" I asked tonelessly.
He swallowed hard and looked away, and was silent a long while, but I made no apology and offered him no way out. Finally he cleared his throat.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"For?"
"For everything that's happened. I want to be with you again."
"What about Ashley?" I sat on the bed, legs bent, elbows resting on my knees. He was trying not to stare up my skirt. It was hilarious.
"Ashley is going to have the baby, and we've decided to give it up for adoption, but she doesn't want to be with me. She says I'm boring."
"You are," I said. "Very."
He looked absolutely wounded. "Thanks."
"Not a problem."
The phone on the little desk rang, and I crossed the room and answered it.
"Hello?"
"Izzie, it's Let. You gotta come help me."
"What? What are you talking about?" Something was off...something in her voice was not right.
"It's Dom. Something's wrong with him. Please, please help me."
I had never heard Letty sound like that before. Panic rode heavy on her tone, and her voice was pinched and pleading.
"What's wrong with him? What do you mean?"
"I don't know, it's like he's gonna fuckin' die. Come help me. You know doctor shit, right?"
So I bade Jackson follow me and ran as fast as I was able, barefoot, down the stretch of villa homes. Letty met me at the door, and she was worried, as pale as was humanly possible for a Puerto Rican to be.
"He's in his bed," she said, glancing only briefly at Jackson. "He won't go to the hospital, but he's gonna fuckin' die. We have to get him to go. You gotta help me."
"Calm down, Letty. I'll help you. Calm down."
I followed her up the stairs, and Jackson trailed at my heels, and when I saw Dominic, my heart dropped like a brick. He wore navy cotton lounge pants and nothing else, doubled over, lying on his side, clutching his stomach. He was drenched in sweat and he was writhing like a man possessed. I went to him, shaking inwardly, wanting to take him in my arms and rock him, but instead I sat on the end of the bed.
"Letty, get me some water and a wash cloth. He's got an insane fever. Jackson, I want you to run back to the house. On the refrigerator is my father's cell phone number. Get a hold of him, tell him to meet you there. When he gets there, sober him up the best you can, tell him I've got a guy here with a high fever and severe abdominal pain. And bring him here. I want him here A.S.A.P. You get me?"
Jackson nodded, as if grateful for the escape, and ran out. Letty did the same, distracted, and I laid a hand on Dom's forehead.
"Dominic, can you hear me?"
"It's my guts that are shitty, Izzie, not my ears."
"Roll over onto your back," I said, "And let me look at you."
"No, I don't need..." He moaned. "This shit."
"You need to be in a hospital. That is what you need. Would you like me to call an ambulance for you?"
"No!"
"Then roll OVER."
A miraculous thing happened. Dominic obeyed me. He rolled over and eased his body flat, and he looked like shit. Every lingering thread of common sense left in my person screamed at me to call the ambulance, obedience or not.
"Where does it hurt, Dom?"
"In my guts."
"Where in your guts? Show me."
"All over," he said. "I think it's my lungs or something, it hurts in my back."
"Where in your back?"
His face crumpled and he folded over himself again on his side. It was like he couldn't get a breath because the pain was relentless, stabbing, sharp and constant. I ran my hands through my hair, heart pounding, panicking as I flipped through a veritable mental rolodex of diseases and dysfunctions that might be triggering such violent suffering in him.
"Did you eat anything different, Dom? Any meat that might have sat out, or...?"
"No. No, it's not like that."
"An ulcer, maybe? Have you had an ulcer before?"
"It's not my stomach!" he snarled, but he sounded weak and tired. The boom was gone from his voice, the fire absent from his temper, and I realized that it had been an exclamation of desperation, not anger.
"Dom, you have to try to tell me what's wrong. Take deep breaths for a minute, in and out really slow. You're gonna be okay, but I can't help you unless I know what's going on. He was quiet, eyes closed, breathing heavy and fast through his nose, and I wanted to cry. I couldn't think. He squirmed and moaned, like he was a woman in labor.
"Turn back over, Dom. Let me check you out."
He managed to roll over, stretch out, and lie still. His skin was fiery to the touch as I put my hands on him. I wanted to check his appendix, but when I flattened my fingers against his side and pressed down, probing, he took my wrists and threw my hands away as if I had burned him.
"Don't do that," he growled.
"Here." Letty handed me a lemonade pitcher filled with water and a washcloth, but I felt strange and handed them back to her, not about to give him a sponge bath with her in the room.
"Wipe him down, all over. I think he's got appendicitis."
Letty shook her head and tapped at a barely-visible silver scar.
"Dom doesn't have an appendix."
"Shit." What else would have hurt if I pressed there? His kidneys?
Of course. His kidneys. He'd told me his back was hurting.
"Where in your back do you hurt, Dom." My tone was soft and gentle. I wanted so badly to make him feel better. He put one hand just at the start of his ribs on his back. Yeah. Kidney something. But what? Kidney infection? Kidney stones? Both? For the first time in a very long while, I could not wait to see my father.
When he arrived, he was half-drunk and not a happy man. But he had his game face on, and became completely professional the minute he saw Dominic.
"Okay, pal. I need you on your back and stretched out flat."
Dom was in agony that seemed to increase exponentially with each passing second, but he obeyed my father. Letty was watching, absolutely void of any color, sitting cross legged on the bed against the wall, and I watched, as well. I watched my father's hands move over Dominic's body, the deft, easy exploration, knowing every curve and contour, its scientific name, its purpose, and watched the pained stillness in Dom as my father worked with him, the instant, quiet respect my father commanded.
"He's got renal colic. Can only be confirmed by an X-ray, but I'd bet my soul on it. I don't have anything strong enough for the pain and a misdiagnosis would be a disaster. He needs to go to a hospital. Tell them, Izzie. Kidney stones, and they're infected. Keep him cool. He'll say he's freezing, but keep him wet and cool. And take him to the hospital."
And with that, he was gone.
"I can't go to the hospital," Letty said. "I don't go to hospitals. Ever."
"What?" I asked dumbly.
Dom rolled over into a fetal position, trembling. Only in the cancer ward in New York had I ever seen someone so violently ill.
"I don't go anywhere near them. I can't. I can't go. I'll pass out."
"Letty," I sighed.
"I seriously will. I'm sorry, but I can't. Not since my brother died."
"I have to puke," Dom said, and stood on shaky legs, stumbling. I took one of his arms quickly and wrapped it around my shoulders, helping him into the bathroom. His legs gave out beneath him and he clutched the toilet bowl, hurling into it. I stood with my hand over my mouth and watched in disbelief. He had very little in his stomach, and before long he was only dry-heaving uncontrollably. I knelt beside him and wrapped an arm about him, tears filling my eyes. Terrifying. I was terrified, to see someone I'd regarded as virtually invincible so incapacitated. With my free hand I rubbed between his eyes, a trick I'd learned from my father, distracting Dom's body from the task at hand enough so that he could stop gagging. He slumped forward with his face on the toilet seat, hugging the bowl, eyes closed.
"I'm gonna fuckin' die."
"You're not going to die," I whispered. "Let's get you to the hospital. They'll start an I.V. In fifteen minutes, you won't feel a thing."
He hesitated, but then finally nodded.
"Letty won't come with."
"Everyone else go out?" I asked, and he nodded, seized again by the gripping excruciation in his flanks.
"Okay, I'll take you. Come on."
The ride to the emergency room was awful. Dom was at wit's end, and could not take anymore. I checked him in once we got there and didn't see him again for two hours, calling Letty periodically to tell her I was still waiting...still waiting...still waiting.
Finally an ER doctor came and got me, told me that Dom had been admitted, and that he would be undergoing a minor operation to remove the stones; they were too large to pass, the infection was nasty, and his pain was extreme. He was in his room now, would be taken to a procedure room in forty-five minutes or an hour, and had asked to see me.
Dominic was absolutely doped to the gills, and his hurting was still evident.
"Hey, homeboy," I said, and he smiled wanly, all melted back into the pillow.
"Am I gonna die, Iz?"
I scoffed.
"Of course not."
"This is easy?"
"Very easy," I said. He was afraid. "They make just this little slit in your belly and put a tube in it. Take them out. End of story. Not a big deal at all. And it's a hell of a lot less painful than having to pass them."
"Yeah?"
"Oh, yeah."
He gave another forced, weak smile, then lifted his arm and stared at the tubes running into it.
"What are they putting in me?"
"I dunno," I said truthfully, and looked up at the bags hanging on the IV stand. "One is like intravenous Gatorade. Keeping you from being dehydrated. This one's penicillin, and the last one is...Morphine. Excellent."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"You call Leticia?" he asked.
"Not in a while. I will. You want me to call her right now?"
"Yeah."
I lifted the phone on the bedside table to my ear and punched in the number. Letty answered it before I even heard it ring.
"Izzie?"
"Yeah, Letty."
"Is he all right?" she asked.
"He's fine. He's got kidney stones, and he's going to have surgery in about a half-hour."
"Surgery? For what?"
"To remove them. But it's nothing serious at all. He'll probably be home tomorrow morning."
I heard Letty sigh.
"Awesome."
"They've got him all doped up and he's feeling much better. You want to talk to him?"
"Yeah."
I handed the phone to Dominic, helped him get situated, and sat in a chair next to his bed.
"Hey, Ruca," he said, smiling a little. His lips were dry and pale. There was a pause. "I'm okay. Isabel says I'll survive." I grinned. "It's okay. You don't have to worry, Mami. I'm okay." He was quiet, listening to her talk, and closed his eyes a moment. The entire room was silent, peaceful. I wondered what she was saying to make him so calm. "I will," he said finally. "I love you too." His voice sounded choked, almost as if he would cry. "Yeah. Bye." He held onto the phone a moment longer, then passed it to me.
I hung up, wondering for the first time if Jackson was still with Letty or if he'd gone back with my father. As if picking up my thoughts, Dom asked.
"Who was that guy with you?"
"That was Jackson Gauthier. My high school boyfriend."
"Looks nice."
"He got a girl pregnant on spring break in Florida while I sat home and went to church with his mother."
"Wonderful," Dom said, and then his brow creased with pain and his hand went to his side.
"Poor guy," I cooed. He flipped me the bird, and I laughed. "Keep it up, I'll turn your morphine off."
"How about you turn it UP?"
"If you weren't going in for surgery, I would. But I don't know what they're going to give you, and I don't want blood on my hands."
"Oh, okay." He closed his eyes, and I pulled my legs up onto the chair, hugging them to my chest. He was silent a long, long time, and I thought he was asleep. I jumped when he spoke. "Isabel, I'm really sorry."
I swallowed.
"For...?"
"For ruining you and Leon. That was my fault." His words were slurred, but still intelligible. I dropped my eyes. "I have a problem with fidelity, you know?" Confessions of the gorgeous and colic-plagued. "I should have kept my damned eyes off of you, and I should have ignored it when I saw you looking. And not only you, but I've fucked Leon over like this before. Only he doesn't usually care. But he cares about you. That's why he...He knew what would happen. He knew he wouldn't win."
"He would-"
"Izzie." He sounded so tired. His one word stopped the denial dead on my lips, and I felt tears burn in my eyes. "I know you love Leon. Without me, and with more time, I can see the two of you living happily ever after. White picket fence, five kids, and a dog." I laughed.
"Five?"
"Yeah. But. I'm here. And you only have the summer."
"So what's the deal, Dom? What do you want with me? Why DIDN'T you ignore me when I looked at you, and keep your damned eyes off of me?"
"You're gorgeous," he said. "You just don't know it. And you're smart, and you're interesting. You're so...different. A good different. You make me wish like hell that I had done things differently in my life."
"But you love Letty, Dom. And she's smart and gorgeous and sexy and interesting."
"She is. And she's been with me since the day I got out of prison."
"Prison," I repeated numbly. In the past four weeks combined, I had not heard so many words come out of Dominic Toretto's mouth.
"Yeah. Lompoc. In California." The last word was garbled as he doubled over. "Jesus Christ," he hissed. "I have never hurt so bad in my entire life."
"They say it's like labor," I said softly. "They should be coming to get you soon."
He rode out the pain, then leaned slowly back into the pillow, beads of sweat glinting on his forehead.
"You're not going to come around anymore," he stated. "Because of the thing with Leon. Are you."
"I don't know, Dominic. I don't think so."
"Strange, isn't it? How many different ways you can love, and lust, and..." He waved a hand. "Whatever."
"You love Letty," I said. "But you want to sleep with other people. And do you love any of the other girls you fuck?"
"Not usually."
"Then why is it worth hurting her over?"
"It's not. I don't know why I do it. But I haven't done it...Not much...Since I met you that night at that party and...And you were there with Leon and Letty was crying in the kitchen." He was truly running at the mouth now. "But it's not the same with you."
"No?" I asked. At this point, I had not a fucking clue in regards to what he would say next.
"No." He opened his eyes and met my gaze and held it for a long moment, as if he were trying desperately to choose his next words wisely but lacked the mental organization to do so. Then another wave of pain swept away completely any remnants of his train of thought. It hurt me to see him hurting, this big, beautiful man, father figure to everyone, and I was both relishing and regretting having to be there to help him through it. Letty belonged there with him, and her irrational fear baffled and aggravated me. I wondered where Mia was, and why she was unreachable as her primary caretaker lay here so sick. And Leon, and the big filthy guy. I wondered about them too, but was immeasurably glad that Leon was not there. I was nowhere close to ready to see him.
"I wish I could talk to Maria before they come get me," Dom said, truncating my wondering.
"Maria?" I asked.
"Mia. My sister."
"It will be fine." I took his hand and squeezed it. It was evident in his eyes that the morphine was fucking with him, making him nervous and unsure of what was going on, amplifying every emotion and loosening his tongue. I wasn't sure he was reacting to the drug very well, and made a mental note to suggest an alternative to his doctor.
I held his hand until a couple nurses and an M.D. came for him. He pulled me in for a quick hug, clinging tightly, and I kissed his forehead without thinking about it.
"Go on," I said. "I'll be here when you're done." The nurses wheeled him out, and I followed them into the hallway, catching the doctor's sleeve and commenting, in medical jargon, so he'd take me seriously, on Dom's reaction to the morphine. He smiled kindly and thanked me for the observation, said he would arrange for something else immediately.
Just as Dom disappeared into an elevator, Vince appeared out of one at the opposite end of the hallway.
He jogged toward me with a concerned scowl on his face.
"Where is he?"
"Just went into surgery," I said.
"He all right?"
"He'll be just fine," I said, and was touched that Vince was there. Brooding, distant, with an explosive temper and a cranky-toddler demeanor, he was the last person I had expected to see.
"This just came out of nowhere?" he asked. Another surprise-his breath was odorless and he was clean.
"What sometimes happens is they form and don't cause any irritation until they get stuck somewhere along the way, this time actually in his kidneys. And it may have ached for days, but he mistook it for the usual, since he's a pretty physical guy. But they're all infected and too big for him to pass, so-"
"Pass?"
"Piss out," I clarified, and Vince half-smiled. "So they're just going to make a small cut and draw them out through a tube."
"But he's fine?" Vince asked.
"He's fine.
"For sure?"
"Not a doubt in my mind."
Vince sighed audibly, and it occurred to me that this was his only family. That meathead Italian headed up for surgery was all he had. All any of them had, even. They had each other, but it also occurred to me that they probably would never be able to function should anything happen to Dominic Toretto. They all loved him, deeply, and he nurtured and provided for them, made them a support system for one another, had good old-fashioned sit-down meals. Now if only he could quit fucking their girlfriends.
Vince sat with me silently and waited. I didn't initiate conversation with him and he didn't talk to me. He'd gotten what he needed from me: assurance that Dom was all right.
I wanted to ask him what had happened with Letty's brother that scared her so much she absolutely refused to come with Dom, but I respected his space, respected him for being there, and kept my mouth shut.
My ass ached from having sat so much that day, so before long I was pacing. When I thought I'd better stop or suffer a broken neck at Vince's hands, I moved my psychosis out into the hallway, and was just in time to see them roll Dom by.
He was still out, absolutely motionless, and peaceful as a slumbering newborn. The sight of him brought tears to my eyes, and for the first time that day, I let them fall. Wrapped my arms around myself and let them fall. All the stress and tension, all the heartache and guilt and responsibility, all the regret and worry, the perfectionism, the pain, the fever...It was all gone from him and he slept. He just slept.