The first night isn’t the hardest. Too lost to the numbness of it all.
Nor is it the second night.
She spends it, and the following ones, watching the small army that rank and files around Waverly. It takes a while to melt away. The final moment isn’t actually until the fifth night.
Nicole creeps into the corner, leaning on a wall and waiting, but “I see you,” Waverly says, back turned.
“Waverly,” Nicole says, and it’s the absolute height of what she can manage. This isn’t easy for her, either.
“What is this, anyway?” Waverly demands, the line of her shoulders like a drawn wire as she reaches for the tea. “A 72-hour pass, or something?”
“I—” Nicole starts, and thinks that being initiated into her new billet had been like cracking through the ice. The cold shock of impenetrable jargon and unexplainable traditions. “Something like that,” she allows, looking at the line of buttons on her uniform blouse.
“Something like closure?” Waverly slams the box of soothing herbal tea onto the counter. “You thought you could waltz into my house one last time, and what, exactly?”
“I’m sorry,” Nicole tells her shirt.
Waverly jerks her head around, but only far enough to glare from the corner of her eye. Like the force of her emotions can’t bear to fully look.
Nicole’s fingers are on her shoulder, and in that little patch of touch she can feel the way they are stitched together. The tiny tidal forces of the Van der Waals that are still enough to cement the bits of their lives together. Stitched all the way through their cells, driven into their unconscious habits and tangled into their neural networks.
Feel how sharply it’s going to pull when they part, and how deeply it’s going to hurt. And the incredible Nicole-ness that brought this moment about.
“I don’t forgive you,” Waverly hisses, all of her bravery and all of her rage trembling through her muscles. Her face twisted into something Nicole’s never seen before. “You don’t get to be the one to leave, and the one asking for forgiveness.”
“I’m sorry,” Nicole says, one last time, feeling the echoing uselessness of the words. Under her touch, Waverly sucks in a breath that Nicole knows will be her final condemnation.
“Get out.”
Nicole gets. What choice does she have?
Waverly doesn't necessarily look smaller in the hospital bed, but she certainly looks grimier than usual. Hair tangled from the pillow, and a rill of blood at her temple. “Wynonna?” she asks, eyes still closed, and Nicole feels it clinch into her chest.
“No,” she says, still braver than she’s ever been smart. On the bed, Waverly’s breathes out fast, and opens her eyes slowly.
“Definitely no,” she agrees, with a flatness that Nicole doesn’t remember, from before.
“Hi,” Nicole tries, literally twisting. Fingers working against each other. “Hi.” The second greeting rushing out of her like a river.
“How?”
A logical question, but all Nicole’s allowed to do is shrug. “I still get news.”
Waverly snorts, and seems to regret it. Rolling to the side barely in time to heave into a strategically placed receptacle. Panting, wiping the back of her hand against her mouth.
“Here,” Nicole twists the cap off a bottle of water, but Waverly refuses the bottle. Groaning as she rolls flat. Fingertips white as she presses them into her temples.
“Okay,” Nicole hesitates, then hovers a hand over Waverly’s eyes, blocking the already dim light. “It’ll get better, I promise.”
“Not like the movies,” Waverly murmurs.
“No,” Nicole agrees. Concussions are definitely not like the movies.
“Did you hallucinate, too? All those times?”
Nicole feels that clinch into her chest, also. “You’re not hallucinating.” Waverly’s face pinches rebelliously, and it seems to be another bad idea because it immediately creases in pain. “You’re going to be okay,” Nicole promises.
Waverly smiles, without opening her eyes. “I missed you.”
Nicole ponders the past tense for many nights.
“Halt!” Nicole screams, even as she runs. Feet slapping as she follows a hunched and jinking figure. Darting between the street lights, and down an alley.
“Well, fuck me running.”
The church is empty. Or, it had been empty. The new and singular voice is loud in the absent hush. It slaps between Nicole’s shoulder blades with a solid thwack. This isn’t what she had wanted. She had meant to slip into town, then slip right back out. No grand dénouements necessary.
Well, best laid plans of mice, and such. “Wynonna,” she acknowledges.
“Never thought I was going to see you again.” She sounds bemused, and Nicole doesn’t need to close her eyes, or even turn to remember the slit-eyed look of Wynonna’s anger. She feels her cheek twitch.
“He told me once that I was like a daughter to him.”
It isn’t what Wynonna expected. Her breath catches, and Nicole turns to look at her old friend. Wynonna’s hair is still wild, but it’s been shot through with the sparkling beginnings of what will no doubt be the mane of a true silver fox. Nicole smiles, and it softens the tone she had meant to use.
“Even I get to come to my father’s funeral.”
Wynonna looks instinctively towards the picture. Retired Sheriff Randall Nedley, looking soberly out into the pretty much empty room. The service over, the casket waiting to be taken to the grave.
Nicole drops her eyes.
“It took Waverly years to get over you,” Wynonna tells her, without much cruelty. Nicole smiles into the grudging rebuke. It may have taken time, but Waverly had rebuilt.
“Two kids, and a place on the local board,” Nicole says, and endures Wynonna’s sharp look with a shrug. “Like I told Waverly, I still get news.”
“She told me she saw you a couple times, just in passing.” Wynonna shifts. “I never knew what to think.” Nicole parts her lips to respond, but the whisper of the door opening cuts her off, two sets of soft shoes entering.
“Oh,” the funeral director says, throwing out a hand to stop his assistant. “Our apologies, Mrs. Holliday. I didn’t realize you were still in here.”
“It’s okay,” Wynonna said, looking straight at Nicole. “Just one last visit. For old times sake.” She stands, hand twitching like she means to touch Nicole. The shoulder, or even the cheek. Something in her face, a fondness for their old selves. The surging hope and painful audacity of the young.
She ends up dropping her hand and walking away. Still, Nicole feels like she’d been touched. Warm.
“Come out,” Nicole barks into the little garbage alley. Brick walls going two stories up, surrounding on three sides. A box canyon of rubbish dumpsters and cardboard boxes, and Nicole at the entrance. “You’re trapped, come out.”
The running boy does not come out.
Nicole takes a sliding step in.
“Hello, Nicole.” Waverly sits down next to her on the park bench. Nicole blinks into the sunlight, looking around the tidy park. A small variety of small children shrieking in the water sparkling on the splash pad, and all the swings full.
Calgary, she thinks, but doesn’t know for certain. She looks at Waverly. The lines around her eyes have deepened, bracketing around a habit of smiling. Her suit is modern, and deeply flattering.
“Wow,” Nicole says. “Madam Minister.”
“Culture, Multiculturalism, and Status of Women,” Waverly confirms. “Sworn in a whole two weeks ago.”
Nicole grins at the quiet pride. “Knew you could,” she says. Once, decades ago, that would have made Waverly duck and deflect, circling around her own youth. This Waverly, a little more weathered, and far more certain is just as compelling. Filled with the surety of her own wisdom.
“Got a grandkid out there?” Nicole jerks her chin, surfing the wave of regret before it can swamp her, but Waverly shakes her head.
“No grandkids,” she says. “Just a summertime lunch break.” She jostles a plastic clamshell Nicole hadn’t noticed. Salad, and a wrap.
“Still a vegan?” she asks idly, just to be filling the space.
“Still a redhead?” Waverly shoots back, eyebrow up, and Nicole laughs.
“Carpet and drapes.”
Waverly laugh is still music, but she sobers as it fades. “I think of you, sometimes.”
“Don’t forget to eat,” Nicole tells her, right before her throat clamps tight.
She’s halfway down the alley when she realizes he’s behind her. Hiding behind a dumpster. Maybe inside one, from the way the smell surrounds her.
The way his body presses against her back. All four of their feet scuffling, and the clamp of his arm like a bandolier across her chest. She twists, but somehow he’s punching downward with his free hand. Quick, and somehow wrong. The blows are too light to be leaving her sapped like this. She grunts, scrabbling, both of them slipping as their feet lose traction on something wet.
He pulls away. She watches from her curl on the ground as he slinks back to the mouth of the alley and away. It’s wet where she’s lying, but she’s too tired to get up. She needs to rest, just for a second.
Waverly, she thinks.
Nicole stands outside the tidy brick building, dressed in her polished best. The leather of her Sam Browne shining across her chest, the white of her gloves a ceremonial crispness. In one hand is a bright purple burst of heliotrope, mixed with blue hyacinth.
They are all the things she wants to say, had always wanted to say.
Her chest catches when Waverly comes walking out the front doors. Slowly, curled into the form the last weeks have forced on her. The hours of pain. She blinks in the afternoon sunlight, suddenly quizzical. Looking down at her spread hands, her own arm. A long, long moment of assimilation. Then her head jerks up, and her eyes are straight on Nicole.
They stay fastened onto her, the entire time it takes Waverly to walk across the long grassy sward that fronts the hospice building. “For you,” Nicole says, holding the flowers out.
Waverly swallows hard, licks her lips, lifts her hand to take the flowers. “Consistency, Devotion, Faithfulness,” she says, their hands brushing as she grips the stems. Nicole grins.
“Of course you’d know what the flowers mean.”
“Of course I would,” Waverly agrees. They look at each other, and Nicole thinks time really does wash away most sins. The moving finger writes, but the ink fades, and the edges blur.
“You were the love of my life,” Nicole says. She’d had a better speech, but the light of Waverly’s eyes is captivating. Shining with the clear eyed youth they had once shared, but deepened by the span of wisdom she’d acquired. Living a life Nicole had not shared.
“And now you’ll be the love of my whatever the fuck this is,” Waverly says, hand cupping behind Nicole’s neck. Fingers nudging under her uniform cover, winding into the fine hairs at her nape, pulling her down into a kiss.
Nicole breathes out as the last fear slides away.
Everything dies baby, that’s a fact. Maybe everything that dies someday comes back.
- Bruce Springsteen, Atlantic City