Nicholas Sparks - Safe Haven

Beautiful. She was always so beautiful, he thought, and then he was tired again. His breaths became ragged and then he started to feel cold, so cold, and he began to shake. He exhaled once more, the sound like air being released from a tire. His chest stopped moving. His eyes were wide open, uncomprehending.

Katie stood over him, shaking as she stared down at him. No, she thought. I’ll never go with you. I never wanted to go back.

But Kevin didn’t know what she was thinking, because Kevin was gone, and she realized then that it was finally, truly, over.

The hospital kept Katie under observation for most of the night before finally releasing her. Afterward, Katie remained in the hospital waiting room, unwilling to leave until she knew Alex would be okay.

Kevin’s blow had nearly cracked Alex’s skull, and he was still unconscious. Morning light illuminated the narrow rectangular windows of the waiting room. Nurses and doctors changed shifts, and the room began to fill with people: a child with a fever, a man having trouble breathing. A pregnant woman and her panicked husband pushed through the swinging doors. Every time she heard a doctor’s voice, she looked up, hoping she would be allowed to see Alex.

Bruises mottled her face and arms, and her knee was swollen to almost twice its usual size, but after the requisite X-rays and exams, the doctor on call had merely given her ice packs for her bruises and Tylenol for the pain. He was the same doctor who was treating Alex, but he couldn’t tell her when Alex would wake and said that the CAT scans were inconclusive. “Head wounds can be serious,” he’d told her. “Hopefully, we’ll know more in a few hours.”

She couldn’t think, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop worrying. Joyce had taken the kids home from the hospital and Katie hoped they hadn’t had nightmares. Hoped they wouldn’t have nightmares forever. Hoped Alex was going to recover fully. Prayed for that.

She was afraid to close her eyes because every time she did, Kevin reappeared. She saw the smears of blood on his face and shirt, his wild eyes. Somehow, he’d tracked her down; somehow, he’d found her. He’d come to Southport to take her home or kill her, and he’d almost succeeded. In one night, he had destroyed the fragile illusion of security she had managed to construct since she’d arrived in town.

The terrifying visions of Kevin kept coming back, recurring endlessly with variations, sometimes changing entirely; there were moments she saw herself bleeding and dying on the porch, staring up at the man she hated. When that happened, she instinctively groped at her stomach, searching for wounds that didn’t exist, but then she was back in the hospital, sitting and waiting under fluorescent lights.

She worried about Kristen and Josh. They’d be here soon; Joyce would bring them in to see their father. She wondered if they would hate her because of everything that happened, and the thought made tears sting her eyes. She covered her face with her hands, wishing she could burrow into a hole so deep that no one would ever find her. So that Kevin would never find her, she thought, and then remembered again that she’d watched him die on the porch. The words He’s dead echoed like a mantra she couldn’t escape.

“Katie?”

She looked up and saw the doctor who was now treating Alex.

“I can bring you back now,” he said. “He woke up about ten minutes ago. He’s still in ICU, so you can’t stay long, but he wants to see you.”

“Is he okay?”

“Right now, he’s about as good as can be expected. He took a nasty blow.”

Limping slightly, she followed the doctor as they made their way to Alex’s room. She took a deep breath and straightened her posture before she entered, telling herself that she wasn’t going to cry.

The ICU was filled with machines and blinking lights. Alex was in a bed in the corner, a bandage wrapped around his head. He turned toward her, his eyes only half open. A monitor beeped steadily beside him. She moved to his bedside and reached for his hand.

“How are the kids?” he whispered. The words came out slowly. Labored.

“They’re fine. They’re with Joyce. She took them home.”

A faint, almost imperceptible smile crossed his lips.

“You?”

“I’m okay.” She nodded.

“Love you,” he said.

It was all she could do not to break down again. “I love you, too, Alex.”

His eyelids drooped, his gaze unfocused. “What happened?”

She gave him an abbreviated account of the past twelve hours, but midstory she saw his eyes close. When he woke again later that morning, he’d forgotten parts of what she had recounted, so she told him again, trying to sound calm and matter-of-fact.

Joyce brought Josh and Kristen by, and though children weren’t ordinarily allowed in the ICU, the doctor let them visit with their dad for a couple of minutes. Kristen had drawn him a picture of a man lying in a hospital bed, complete with a crayon-scrawled GET WELL, DADDY; Josh gave him a fishing magazine.

As the day wore on, Alex became more coherent. By the afternoon, he was no longer nodding in and out, and although he complained of a monstrous headache, his memory had more or less returned. His voice was stronger and when he told the nurse he was hungry, Katie gave a smile of relief, finally sure that he was going to be okay.

Alex was released the next day, and the sheriff visited them at Joyce’s to get their formal statements. He told them that the alcohol content in Kevin’s blood was so high that he’d effectively poisoned himself. Combined with the blood loss he’d suffered, it was a wonder he had been conscious, much less coherent to any degree. Katie said nothing, but all she could think was that they didn’t know Kevin or understand the demons that drove him.

After the sheriff left, Katie went outside and stood in the sunlight, trying to make sense of her feelings. Though she’d told the sheriff about the events of that night, she hadn’t told him everything. Nor had she told Alex everything — how could she, when it barely made sense to her? She didn’t tell them that in the moments after Kevin had died and she’d rushed to Alex’s side, she’d wept for them both. It seemed impossible that even as she relived the terror of those last hours with Kevin, she also remembered their rare happy moments together — how they’d laughed at private jokes or lounged peacefully on the couch together.

She didn’t know how to reconcile these conflicting pieces of her past and the horror of what she’d just lived through. But there was something more, too, something else she didn’t understand: she’d stayed at Joyce’s because she was afraid to go back home.

Later that day, Alex and Katie stood in the parking lot, staring at the charred remains of what had once been the store. Here and there she could see items she recognized: the couch, half burned, tilted on the rubble; a shelf that once housed groceries; a bathtub scorched black.

A couple of firemen were rooting through the remains. Alex had asked them to look for the safe he’d kept in his closet. He’d removed the bandage and Katie could see the spot where they’d shaved his head to apply stitches, the area black and blue and swollen.

“I’m sorry,” Katie murmured. “For everything.”

Alex shook his head. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do it.”

“But Kevin came for me…”

“I know,” he said. He was quiet for a moment. “Kristen and Josh told me how you helped them get out of the house. Josh said that after you grabbed Kevin, you told them to run. He said you distracted him. I just wanted to say thank you.”

Katie closed her eyes. “You can’t thank me for that. If anything had happened to them, I don’t know that I could have lived with myself.”