Andrew Gross - The Blue Zone

How did she feel?

Kate got there a few minutes late, taking the train in from Long Island. He still looked cute to her there, with his messy brown hair, a long woolen coat and scarf. Kate smiled-his Latin blood. And it was only November.

When he saw her, Greg stood up. She came over.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said, and smiled.

She smiled back. The first time he’d tried to use that phrase, their second date, he’d said, “You make my eyes sore.”

They ordered, and he brought the tray to their table. “A little cinnamon, yes?”

Kate nodded. They’d been doing this for four years. He finally got it right. “Thanks.”

They talked about anything at first: Fergus, who was missing her, of course. As she was missing him. The electric bill, which had come in high this month. One of their neighbors down the hall had delivered twins.

“What’s your name?” Kate stopped him. She looked in his aqua-blue eyes. They were hurting and a little guilty, as if saying, Kate, this is killing me…

“You know my name,” Greg answered. “It’s Concerga. My mother’s sister married into the Mercado family ten years ago. She is Bobi’s, the youngest brother’s, wife.”

Kate nodded, shutting her eyes. All these years she’d been living with a stranger. These were people she’d never heard of or met.

How do I feel?

“I swear, I never meant for anything ever to hurt you, Kate.” Greg reached for her hand. “I was only told to watch out for you. I’d been sent here to school. It was just a favor at first. Not to your father, Kate, I swear, but to-”

“Greg, I know.” Kate stopped him. “Mercado told me. He told me everything.”

Everything she had to know.

Greg wrapped his fingers around her hand. “I know how corny this may sound, but I’ve always loved you, Kate. From the first day I met you. From that first time I heard you say my name. At the temple…”

“I butchered it, didn’t I?” Kate said, blushing. “ Gray-ghoree …”

“No.” Greg shook his head. Tears glistened in his eyes. “It sounded like angels to me.”

Kate stared at him. She started to cry and couldn’t stop. It seemed as if everything she’d held inside over the past year-her father’s fall from grace, her mother dying in her arms, Raab twisting at the end-came uncontrollably pouring out. Greg moved from across the booth and sat next to her. He wrapped her in his arms. She just let it go, unable to stop.

“Kate, are you ever going to be able to trust me again?” Greg squeezed her, resting his forehead against her shoulder.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Maybe what the old man had told her at the end changed things, just a little. How he’d looked up at her with nothing left to protect in his life and said, at peace, “ I had to make a choice .”

Maybe we all had to make a choice, Kate thought. Maybe we all had a place, a space between certainty and trust, truth and lies. Between hatred and forgiveness.

A Blue Zone.

“I don’t know.” Kate lifted Greg’s face up to hers. “We’ll try.”

Greg looked at her, elated.

“Promise me, we never keep anything from each other ever again,” she said. “No more lies.”

“I promise, baby, no more lies.”

He hugged her. Kate could feel the emotion in his embrace. “Please come back, Kate,” he begged. “I need you. And I think Fergus would like to say hi.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. She wiped away the tears with the heel of her hand. “I think I’d like to say hi, too.”

They left and went outside, to Second Avenue. Greg put his arm around her. Kate let her head fall to his shoulder as they walked. Everything was familiar. Their life. Rosa ’s Foods, their little bodega. The Korean dry cleaner. It felt like she’d been away for a long time, and now she was home.

As they turned onto Seventh Street, Kate stopped. Smiled. “So is there anything else you’d like to tell me before we go in, now that it’s all out on the table?”

“ ‘ On the table ’ ?”

“Before we open that door, Greg. Because when we do, we start over. Who we are. Where we go from here. We can never take it back. It’s a freebie, Greg. A chance to turn the page and put the past behind us. A last chance.”

“Yes, there is something.” Greg bowed his head. He took Kate by the shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes.

“I’m not sure I ever told you,” he teased. “I actually hate dogs.”

“So that’s how it is.” Kate shrugged, her fingers wrapped around Tina’s curled fist in her private room. “It’s been a couple of weeks. We’re working on the trust thing. He came through for me, Teen. I don’t know, I think maybe it’s going to be okay.”

Kate brushed her friend’s smooth, white face. Tina’s eyelids quivered. Her mouth twitched every once in a while. But that was something they’d come to expect. Over the past weeks, her condition had improved. Her intracranial pressure was down. The bandages were gone. The breathing tube as well. She was breathing on her own now. Her Glasgow reading had risen all the way up to 14. She was going to wake up, of that the doctors were fairly sure. In a month or in a day.

But then what? That was the question no one could answer.

“I’m back at the lab,” Kate said. She stared blankly at the monitors by Tina’s bed: the steady yellow wave of her heartbeat, the reading of her BP. “It feels good. Packer’s got me finishing up on Tristan and Isolde. Two hundred and sixty-four trials, Teen. Can you believe that? We’re starting to write it up. The P & S Medical Review ’s agreed to publish it. And I’ve even been working on my thesis. You better get your ass in gear. Any longer, you’re gonna wake up and have to address me as ‘Doc’-”

Kate felt a tug on her hand. Just a reflex, the doctors said. It happened often. Kate looked. Tina’s eyelids twitched.

So much had gone by, how could Kate possibly tell her everything?

“It’s weird, Teen,” Kate said, staring out the window, “but I’m okay with it, what happened to Dad. At least it’s over. In a strange way, Greg probably did me a favor. Dad got what he deserved. But I asked myself, would I have pulled it, Teen? That trigger. If Greg hadn’t come.

“And I think the answer’s yes, I would have. That was my father lying there. I would have- for him! ”

Still, when Kate thought of it, it always came with tears. “You knew him, Teen. He was quite a guy. And he was right. You can’t just erase twenty years. … ”

Kate felt a tug again. She just kept staring.

But this time the finger wrapped around her thumb.

Kate shot Tina a glance. Holy shit! She almost jumped out of her skin.

Tina was staring back at her.

With open eyes.

“Oh, my God, Tina!” Kate leaped up, starting to scream for the nurse. But before she could, Tina’s mouth moved ever so slightly and the faintest smile of recognition edged onto her lips.

Kate could barely contain herself. “Tina, it’s me, Kate! Can you hear me? You’re in the hospital, baby. I’m here!”

Tina blinked and tugged on her hand again. She moistened her lips, as if she wanted to speak.

Kate bent close, her ear inches from Tina’s lips. They barely quivered, releasing only a single, murmured sound.

Kate couldn’t believe what she heard.

“ Leukocytes…”

Tina’s eyes locked on Kate’s. There was a flicker of life in them. Of laughter. Then the corner of her mouth curled into a familiar smile.

“Yes, leukocytes. ” Kate nodded, giddily. Leukocytes!