It mocked him - one small leather-bound book, held closed by a piece of knotted lace. There was a rose etched onto the front and her name burnt into the lower part of the back. And her scent was on the pages. It was private, personal… hers.
He found it at the back of her lingerie drawer, of all places, one night when he pulled out all her things in a fit of anger. He didn't understand the why or the how, but he suddenly found himself throwing things out of her closets, her files, her rooms, one night when he could no longer take her absence, knowing that she wouldn't be rushing in apologizing for being late or whatever. He had, to use one of her expressions, "lost it and lost it good."
That he found it amongst the debris should not have amazed him as much as it did. He had seen her write into a similar book many times when they had first gotten together. That one had been bound in white, with images of peach blossoms as decoration. But because he had never seen her journal in the days since she had come to live with him, had never stopped to look at her nightly ritual and considered how much it had changed, so he never even stopped to think that she might still have one. It was one of the many things he just didn't notice.
Despite the situation, despite how desperate he felt, he never should have taken it with him. He never should have considered unknotting the lace, opening the book and reading what was inside. And he never should have been consumed with the idea of taking the thoughts she placed on those pages and claiming them without her consent. But he was considering it, more and more every day.
That thought consumed him as he watched her closely, his eyes rarely straying from her face as she lay there. She looked so pale, so fragile. This was not Diana sleeping late after a night out, or collapsing of exhaustion after they had had great sex, or sleeping off a migraine. No. This was not his Diana, who always looked soft and peaceful in bed. This was a woman on the brink of death, and he wanted Diana back.
And so he read it. He filled day after day with her words. He took the last thing she had left, the last thing he had of her - certain that he was going to lose her forever. He read it... only to learn that he had lost her already.
Returning home from a shopping trip, of all things, is what nearly cost her her life. Of course, if God had wanted to knock her off the face of the planet, he would have had to choose between home, shopping or out with Armando. And she just knew that God wouldn't dare do anything against Armando. So, since she rarely did anything else these days, shopping would have been the obvious choice, the only choice.
She was told that a reckless driver ran a red light and straight into her car. Of all the clichés that could have happened this one was the one that made the least sense to her. But then, little in her life made sense these days. Why should her impending death be any different?
Once she remembered enough to remember the accident, it replayed in her mind constantly. She saw the car coming towards them, her driver saw the car coming towards them, but there wasn't enough time to do anything. They couldn't react in time, couldn't change the outcome at all. The accident happened, and they hadn't done anything wrong and couldn't have done anything to prevent it.
Her driver didn't survive. She mourned him, though hadn't known him very well. Actually, she hadn't known him at all. Ramon, her regular driver, had been out with the flu so he stayed in Dallas when they went to Mexico City. Armando had found someone to take his place while Ramon got better.
As awful as it sounded, she was glad it was the replacement who had died and not Ramon. She knew Ramon's wife and children, had had him driving her around for almost two years and couldn't bear the thought that he'd be dead just because Armando was so stubborn about having someone drive her around when she could do it for herself. Ramon she would miss.
She never asked if her temporary driver had a family, wife or children. She didn't want to know, didn't want to think about it, didn't want to regret that too. And she woke up from the coma too late to do anything about the funeral. She just hoped that Armando was kind enough to send flowers or something.
The other driver, the one that caused the accident, suffered permanent injuries that would leave him in a wheelchair for what was left of his life. And, on top of that, he would probably spend several years in prison. At least that's what was going to happen if Armando got his way. And Diana had learned a long time ago that Armando usually got his way.
She had been in a coma for 72 days, in addition to the injuries she suffered - injuries that included a collapsed lung, kidney and liver damage and so much blood loss that brain damage was suspected. Recovery was going to be painstaking and difficult, she was told. There were moments when she would wish for oblivion, mostly because of the memory loss and the physical therapy. And because of the damage to her internal organs, she was probably never going to be completely healthy again.
But she was alive. And she was going to stay that way, if she followed instructions and behaved herself. The good thing was that Armando had already trained her to follow instructions, so paying attention to the doctor's orders should be a breeze in comparison.
Armando was, of course, hovering like a worried husband. He cancelled his business trips and only stayed away from the hospital for the barest of time, visiting her before work, at lunch and after work for several hours. She hadn't seen this much of him in the entire time they were together, and, sick as she was, it was starting to get on her nerves.
The nurses told her that he had hardly left her side for the entire time she was in a coma. They were all in awe of the caring and commitment he had showered on her in her unconscious state. Of course, cynic that she was, Diana believed that the fact that he was gorgeous and so obviously rich helped somewhat in their romantic notions. And she wondered, briefly, what they would have said if she had told them the truth about their relationship. Not that she ever would, but it might be fun to watch their faces as the truth sank in. Or maybe they wouldn't care.
But Armando's brief foray into the caring male routine wasn't the worst part. Diana knew that that would go away as soon as she was better. And they would go back to the relationship where he had a life and every once in a while remembered that he had her in tow. Or maybe, since she was now practically disabled, he would want to cancel that arrangement and find a newer model of live-in decorative female. Either way, the attentive male routine wasn't going to last much longer, so it didn't bother her all that much. That wasn't the part that worried her. Of course Armando was hovering, he considered her his property and nothing happened to his property without his permission. It was a control thing. He didn't like to think that she could have died and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.
No. That wasn't what made waking up after a 72-day coma so damned weird. It was seeing Alicia Alvarado sitting in one of the hospital chairs next to her bed that freaked her out. Because that told her better than anything the doctors or Armando could have said to her just how close to death she had been. Why else would her sister come visiting after a lifetime of a failed relationship? Why else would Alicia deign to sit in the hospital room of the sister born to her father with one of his many mistresses?
On the first day, the day of the crash, he focused on making sure that she was alive, breathing, heart beating, and that she would stay that way. She was in surgery for hours and no one could tell him anything but that she was in critical condition. He didn't think about anything or anyone else, just Diana and the possibility that she might die. And he prayed.
On the second day, when she was still in recovery, when she had already slipped into a coma and they still could not tell him if she would survive the day, he remembered to call her grandmother. He had never had a reason to call her before, had only spoken to her a handful of times when he and Diana had first gotten together and he had answered her phone to find la abuela on the line. He didn't even have her phone number, had had to have his secretary find it for him. Then he called, and wished he hadn't.
He told her what had happened. He apologized for waiting so long to get in touch with her and offered to bring her out to Mexico City to be with her granddaughter. He expressed his grief and concern. And he found out that Do�a Marta Mart�nez de Rodr�guez was a cold woman, unforgiving and heartless.
She told him that she would not be going to Mexico City to see Diana. She told him that Diana was no longer part of her family, had not been since she had taken up with him and decided to live like a cualquiera, like a corriente. She told him, in less-than-flattering terms, what she thought of Diana's relationship with him, of how long it had been since there had been any contact between them and that she would prefer it continue that way. She finished by letting him know that she considered the accident Diana's castigo de Dios for living in sin. She asked that he not bother her with news about esa mujer again. And then she hung up without a goodbye.
Unable to reconcile the conversation he had just had with the very real possibility that Diana might not survive, he tried to contact her sister Catalina. Diana had keep pictures of Catalina all over her apartment, when she still had an apartment to decorate. These days she carried a small photo album in her traveling case, filled with pictures of her family that she would bring out every once in a while and look at between airports and hotels. She had spoken of her sister in glowing terms, he remembered… though she hadn't spoken of her at all recently. And that, coupled with the very disturbing conversation he had just had with Do�a Marta, gave him a bad feeling.
Hours later, dozens of messages later, he was still unable to contact Catalina. He had the suspicion that Do�a Marta had intervened and Catalina wasn't answering the phone to avoid talking to him and wasn't returning his messages because she didn't want to anger her abuela. He could not believe that they would do that, just abandon Diana at a time like this… but he hadn't even known that they were estranged… hadn't known that they weren't speaking, that her abuela didn't approve of their relationship… hadn't known that he was costing her more than time with her friends and her career and her love of Houston.
And so, at the end of the second day he realized that no one would be coming by to worry about Diana. And no one else would mourn with him if she didn't survive. On the third day Alicia Alvarado showed up.
He had sat in that chair next to Diana's bed for hours , refusing to move, refusing to leave. Nurses came in and out of the room, trying their best to make a little noise as possible, trying not to disturb him. And he ignored all of them. Except the doctors, the doctors he grilled without mercy about her condition and her recovery. But other than that, he held her undamaged hand and looked at her face, hoping to see her open her eyes.
He heard the door open and expected to see one of the nurses on duty come into the room and check her vitals. When no nurse approached the bed after a few moments, he forgot all about the door. He never looked away from Diana's face. Until he heard her voice.
"How is she?" The question was whispered, soft and tremulous, almost too low to hear. But in that silent room where the only noise was the beeping of the heart monitor, Armando heard it clearly.
Standing in the doorway was a young woman, maybe 18 or 19 years old. She was petite, with long dark hair and dark eyes, dressed in traveling clothes and towing an overnight bag in one hand. She was looking at Diana, an unreadable expression on her face. Something about her face reminded him of Diana, and he was struck by the similarity. From a lifetime of reading other people he knew, just knew, that this woman belonged to Diana somehow. She was family.