The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

a coma. She’s been like this ever since. The doctors say there’s no hope, that she’ll never recover. But I can’t bring myself to disconnect her.”
    He took her hand. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought—I wanted to be with you so badly. I thought if you knew, you’d never give me a chance. Evelyn? Say something.”
    She reached out, touched Isabel Thorne’s hand lying so still on the hospital blanket. What could she say? How could she blame him? He must have suffered terribly. She would tell him that it was all right, she understood.
    The tubes turned into vines: thick canes of briar roses, thin green shoots of honeysuckle. They sprouted leaves, then flowers. Pink and white roses blossomed, honeysuckle dangled. She could smell them, thick and sweet. She was standing on moss, in the middle of a forest.On a stone table before her lay a woman in a dress as red as flame, long black hair cascading down and pooling on the forest floor. Roses grew over her, swaying. Honeysuckle wrapped itself around her arms, her throat. Soon she would be completely covered.
    “Evelyn,” said the man beside her. A knight in green armor, a man made of leaves. He was holding her hand: no, in her hand was a tree branch. She could smell loam, the humid forest air.
    She breathed quickly and put a hand to her chest. It was happening again.
    This isn’t real
, she told herself.
I need to make it go away
. The medication, that’s what she needed. It was in her bathroom cabinet. “Just in case,” Dr. Birnbaum had told her. “But I don’t think you’ll need it again, Evelyn.” Well, he’d been wrong.
    She heard a movement. The woman on the table was almost entirely wrapped in vines. Only her head was still free, although tendrils were already reaching across her forehead. She turned her head toward Evelyn and opened her eyes. Black eyes, as deep and black as night.
    Evelyn reached toward Brendan, opened her mouth, tried to speak.
I need to go
, she tried to say.
I can’t be here for you right now. I’ll call you tomorrow, I promise
. But nothing came out.
    She turned and ran through the forest, down the pink hallway. A taxi was waiting in front of the hospital. It had just dropped off a woman in a wheelchair and was starting to pull away when Evelyn waved frantically. The taxi stopped.
    For a moment she panicked. How could she ask the driver to take her where she needed to go? “Bartlett College,” she managed to say, although the man leaned toward her as though he could barely hear.
    “Sure, lady, but it’s going to be expensive,” he said.
    She opened the door and slid into the seat. She sat trembling as the taxi pulled away from the curb. She looked back at the hospital. Brendan Thorne was standing there, in front of the sign that said EMERGENCY ROOM , where the ambulances were parked. He was looking directly at her, doing nothing. Just standing.
    She drove home from the college as quickly as she could, ran upstairs to the bathroom cabinet, and shook some pills out of the plastic bottle into her hand. With her clothes still on, she lay down on her bed, where they had first made love. She stared into the darkness. She remembered the forest, the man made of leaves, the stone table with the woman lying on it wrapped in vines. The woman’s eyes, open and staring into her own. Filled with such hatred, as though it had been there, waiting, for centuries.
    She knew the pills would put her to sleep—they always did. Tomorrow she would call Brendan, explain everything. It would be all right.
    But when she woke the next morning, it was not all right. She’d had problems with nausea before, but never like this. The room was spinning around her. She couldn’t stand. She had a vague thought that she should cancel her Friday classes but couldn’t remember where she’d left her cell phone. How could she get to it, anyway, when the floor kept moving? She wondered how many of the pills she’d taken. Too many, more than she