Jump 10
She was freezing. Kate had on a turtleneck, and a jacket, and wool pants, but she had goose bumps everywhere. Why did they have to keep doctor's office waiting rooms so freezing? Well, ambulatory surgery center waiting rooms. Whatever.
Castle's knee was bouncing.
Everything else about him conveyed confident disinterest: his incessant touch-screen tapping, his slight slouch into the cushioned back of the waiting room chair. No glances at his watch; no checking the door. But the knee gave him away.
Alexis wasn't hiding anything. She'd nearly worn a groove in the tasteful, beige, Berber carpet between the water dispenser and the magazine rack. The furrow in her brow was verging on permanence. The teenager was going to regret this life of worry and self-imposed responsibility when she hit thirty and had her first wrinkle already.
Two hours was probably a "quick surgery" in the eyes of most surgeons, but when they had kissed Martha good luck, none of the family had really asked the medical staff for a time table. Local anesthesia, minimal recovery time, likely no need to stay overnight—all of that had seemed very reasonable when Dr. Leigh had explained it.
Nothing to worry about.
The doctor's easy manner and smiling confidence had made everything sound routine. More like a pedicure than cancer surgery.
So why was the deep gnawing dread still digging into Kate's stomach?
And the knee bouncing was driving her completely insane.
She laid a hand over the angle of her fiancé's kneecap, and all motion ceased. But she didn't break her gaze following Alexis' measured steps—twelve down, pivot to the right, twelve back, pivot to the left. A bit like a slow tennis match, but the back-and-forth was soothing.
And it kept her from wanting to pace herself.
She saw it in Alexis' sudden halt on step seven. By the time she looked up, there was Dr. Leigh, pushing open the door, smiling with that lovely, sure curve to her lips and those confident brown eyes.
# * # * # * #
Martha had been situated in her bedroom, pajamaed and propped and covered and fawned over to the gratification of even her actor's ego as soon as they had returned home. She had been remarkably spry, claiming she felt absolutely no pain, and it was hard for them to argue when she laughed and joked right along with them.
Alexis had been in charge of reading her post-operative instructions and timing her pain medication, and as a result, she had also memorized every side effect and interaction on the prescriptions. But the crease had smoothed out on the young woman's forehead.
It was all fairly simple—take it easy, leave the dressing on and no showering until the next day, no lifting, and take the prescribed pain medication as needed.
Martha had taken everything remarkably well, was the epitome of the perfect patient, even ate her dinner, which the family brought up on trays and ate with her in her room.
When the sun sank below the skyline, Kate noticed the subtle change in her eyes—a tightness that she remembered well from her own mirror over a year ago.
Martha took her meds and Kate shooed the others out, promising to check in again before bed and leaving her cell in easy reach.
As she was pulling the door closed, the older woman called her back into the room.
"Kate?" A pause, as she turned around and peeked back in through the door. And then hesitantly, "Would you… do you think tomorrow you could…"
Kate wasn't following, but whatever this request was, it was disconcerting for Martha. Then the red head gingerly laid her palm over the side of her breast, where her robe was bulging slightly over the bandage.
"I know Alexis is going to offer, but… I don't want…"
Oh, well of course. It was just a bandage, and it probably wouldn't be nearly as angry as her own wounds had been last summer. But there was no reason for Alexis to see her grandmother like that, no matter how much she wanted to help.
Kate smiled, tried to let only the understanding and not the sorrow leak into it.
"It's easier to put the idea away if you don't have to face the scars."
Martha pressed her lips together and shut her eyes briefly, nodded ever so slightly.
"Yes."
"I'll be up first thing in the morning and we'll get you in the shower."
She turned and placed her hand over the doorknob again, paused at Martha's voice, soft and clear.
"Kate, I want you to know how much it means that you've been here for this. For Rick. For Alexis. For me. You didn't have to be."
She didn't turn back around, for fear of giving away her filling eyes to the person she for whom she wanted most to be strong.
"Of course I did. You're my family."
# * # * # * #
She was curled against his chest, cheek pressed into the soft cotton of his t-shirt, listening to him breathe, waiting for him to start talking. He wasn't falling asleep. She could hear it in the shallowness of his inhalation, the slight variation in the length of his breath back out against the top of her head. He was doing a decent job of faking it, though. Just not good enough to fool her. When he inhaled and held, she knew the vibration through his chest wall was coming.
"She's going to be fine. I know she is."
His voice was quiet. Appropriate for the late hour, the dark room. But it was walking that tenuous edge between confidence and uncertainty. She rubbed warm circles against his sternum with her palm.
"Everything went great today. The pathology will come back Monday, she'll start her radiation right after Thanksgiving, and she'll be done by New Year's. DCIS—"
"Is the best diagnosis she could have had. I know. I read the thing you printed for me. And I went to the American Cancer Society site, too. I'm just not used to feeling so useless."
Ah, this made much more sense. She knew this was more than simple worry.
"So do something about it."
"I wanted to do the walk, but that was in September. And I know I could just donate, but I feel like that's not enough. I want to do something active. I want to contribute."
He was all tied up in knots. There was this thing he sometimes did when he was frustrated—grabbing a handful of her hair and squeezing it between his fingers. It never tugged or pulled as long as she was lying still—wasn't even a conscious thing, she didn't think. He was doing it now, taking up vast fingerfuls of curls and clenching them in his fist between her shoulder blades.
"You have to play to your strengths. The best thing you could do is to raise awareness. Use the fame. Use Paula. I'll bet she can set up something. A TV spot. An appearance at a fundraiser. Maybe you could even volunteer to help write patient's stories. You could get your poker buddies in on it, too."
He let her hair loose, threaded his fingers up close against her scalp instead, used just enough force to tip her head up to look at him.
His eyes were studying her—searching, she thought, but she knew not for what.
"How do you do that? How do you find me when I'm lost in the middle of that mess? When I can't find myself?"
"I'll always find you. It's what I do, Castle."
# * # * # * #
They stood before the mirror in Martha's bathroom, the patient with one hand balanced on the counter, robe untied to reveal her bare chest and bandage.
Kate washed her hands, warmed them under the water, tried very hard not to imagine herself underneath the tape and gauze.
As she gently began to find edges of tape, the words just spilled out of her mouth.
"I got a call from Paula this week. I guess Rick mentioned to her we had picked a date, and she wanted to know what venues I wanted her to look into for the wedding."
She focused on the squares of gauze, the slightly-rolling edges of the paper tape securing it to the skin. She had to have her eyes on her work, but she couldn't think of this as Martha. She couldn't hurt Martha. But she had to take this off, and it was right beside her surgical wound. It couldn't be pleasant, but it had to be done.
"I guess it's never too early to start planning." Martha winced as one edge of tape pulled, close to the incision.
She'd never had such respect for her father, changing all her bandages the summer before last. She'd never had such compassion for Josh's uncanny knack for depersonalization. He wasn't changing dressings; he was the one inflicting the wounds in the first place. How could he bring himself to cut through a person's skin, through muscle? He'd cut through hers.
She blinked herself out of her spiral down, tried to keep her tone light, distracting. This was not about her.
"I don't know how this all went… before. But I have no clue what I'm doing planning a wedding. I mean, I know Paula can help, and we can hire a coordinator to do everything. It would all be easy that way."
She lingered over those last words. Martha picked up on it, of course.
"But…"
"But when I was about six or seven, my mom took me to this friend's wedding. We were all invited, but my dad was out of town, so she asked me to be her date."
She gently tugged off the last corner of tape with only a blink from her patient. She rolled the bandage in on itself before tossing it in the trash. The incision was small, and there were no stitches visible—just a slightly swollen pink line. It hadn't even really bled onto the bandage. These surgeons were definitely better at aesthetics than her ex. She continued her story as she helped Martha out of her robe and into the shower.
"I'd never been to a wedding before, never got asked to be a flower girl or anything, and my mom spent hours making it into this big adventure. Took me all through her wedding photos, told me about the dress, and the church, and the cake and the bouquet toss at the end. I was kind of a tomboy."
Martha pulled back the curtain to raise an eyebrow in a smirk remarkably like her son's.
"Really? Never would have guessed."
Kate sat on the counter. She assumed she might have to help with hair washing, maybe, if Martha was sore lifting her arm.
"Yeah, well, that's why she thought she needed to make it exciting, since she knew I wouldn't fall into a giddy stupor over the ruffles and the bows and the poufs—this was the eighties after all. So she told me a lot about planning her wedding, how she and my grandma shopped for her dress and picked out all the music and the readings, and the flowers and the decorations. She made it all seem so real, but so magical at the same time."
"I've heard many a bride wax poetic about her wedding day."
"Well, when we finally got to the wedding, I was pretty excited. New dress and sparkly shoes and everything. And she looked gorgeous. But then, she always did. That day, though, she was glowing, and giggling with me. And when they said their vows, she actually had tears in her eyes. My mom was not a woman who cried over little things. I guess this was one of her last close friends to get married. She said it was happiness overflowing. I was just mesmerized."
"It sounds lovely."
"It was. It really was. It almost made me girly for about a week. And then I went back to climbing trees. But I think that wedding got stuck back in my psyche somewhere."
"Ha. Well, you don't seem to have any trouble combining your toughness with your feminine side now, dear."
She did love her heels. And her lingerie. Kate smiled to herself about what her mother might think of her now.
"Since my mom died, I really never thought I would get married."
"But then you met the right person."
"I did."
"And after a little convincing, 'never' turned into 'maybe'."
"He can be very persuasive when he wants to be."
Martha laughed from behind the curtain.
"Don't get me wrong, the princess fantasies stayed back in 1986. But I just… I want it to be special, and I want it to be about us. Not about publicity or about Paula or about selling books. And I don't want it planned by some stranger."
That was the part she was very sure of. It didn't sit right with her to think of someone else putting in the time and effort. It should be her. Her and her mom. But short of that… at least her.
The water shut off and the towel disappeared from over the curtain rod. Martha must not have wanted to wash her hair after all.
"Well, of course you don't want any of those things. And Kate, that's why this one is it. This one is the real thing. No red carpet or swans or diamond dust on the cake."
Kate nearly choked.
A hand appeared and grabbed the terrycloth robe from the hook where Kate had hung it beside the shower.
"Really? You mean they…? On second thought, maybe I don't want to know about the… others."
"You have nothing to worry about. I can hear you comparing yourself to them inside your head, so just stop it right now. There is no comparison. You are in an entirely different universe from anyone he's ever even dated, much less married."
"Thank you. I think."
"Oh yes, that's about the biggest compliment I can give when it comes to Barbie and Midge."
Kate chuckled.
"I always did prefer Tracy. She would have been from around the time you were playing with dolls, if you ever played with them."
"She had brown hair and green eyes. I got one for my birthday. It was the only Barbie I ever had. I'll admit I didn't play with her much. I was more of a Lego sort of kid."
"I loved my Barbie. We only had one when I was a little girl. I had always looked forward to having a little girl so we could dress them up. But then I had Rick, who was all robots and gizmos. I got my doll fix with Alexis though. She still has mine, too. I think she has all of them in a case somewhere, sealed up and perfect."
Martha slid back the curtain and stepped out of the tub in her robe, hair dripping at her shoulders.
"Oh, I was going to help you with your hair."
"Seems that I'm fairly good at washing my hair one-handed. But I'll take you up on some help with drying it."
Kate took the towel from her and stood, scrubbed it through the short red tresses.
In the mirror, she found her future mother-in-law's eyes. The words came out before she could think any harder about them.
"Would you be willing to help me?" She paused, watched a brief flash of confusion in the other woman's face. "I mean, I know it's a lot of trouble, and you've probably done all this before, and I know you have a lot going on right now in your own life, so please don't feel like you have to say yes—I won't get my feelings hurt."
She finally ran out of words.
"You're asking me to help you plan your wedding?"
Kate nodded her answer at Martha's reflection, not sure what that incredulous tone of voice meant.
She spread the towel over the bar on the wall, and Martha turned to face her, and an angelic smile overtook her features.
"My darling I would be honored."
She reached for Kate in a one-armed hug, squeezed her tight.
This woman could never replace Kate's mother. Kate knew parts of this wedding would make her sad, dredge up all those old hopes and wishes never to be fulfilled. But she needed to make room in her heart for new wishes. And she found herself including this crazy, outspoken thespian in some of them.
She pulled back, kissed Kate on the forehead.
"I promise not to take over. And you and your classic, elegant, understated taste are completely in charge."
Martha led the way out of the bathroom and into her bedroom, Kate following behind with the fresh bandage supplies. She turned back with a glint in her eye, pinned Kate with her most serious look.
"Am I allowed to buy magazines?"
Oh good grief. What had she done?