This story starts right after the movie ends and has ten chapters. I will post the last two chapters in about a week because I'm not finished with the translation yet. Two very nice ladies, HeySlowpoke and Ligeria, beta-read my translation, so I'd like to thank them a ton for their time and effort! (Nonetheless, please excuse my sometimes weird English - I'm not a native speaker.)
Of course I don't own these characters and no copyright infringement was intended. The book "Carol" (The Price of Salt) is copyrighted by Diogenes and W.W. Nortan & Company. The movie is copyrighted to Weinstein studios (among others).Chapter 1Therese involuntarily turned up the collar of her coat when Carol and her friends stepped out of the heavy door of the
Oak Room. The night was rather cold for an April evening, but it wasn’t New York’s brisk wind that made her hand shiver when Carol’s colleague-to-be handed her his lighter. Just one more cigarette with the other guests, then she would be alone with Carol.
Carol seemed to be nervous, too. Therese heard her laughing at Mr. Johnson’s lame joke, but it felt forced. Since the others joined in, it wasn’t apparent, but Therese knew Carol’s laugh too well.
Therese looked at her shoes and tried to focus on her breath. Now, there was no way back. All the defensive walls that she had built up so carefully had crumbled to dust within a single day, one after the other. Only a few weeks ago, she had sworn to herself that she would never again make herself so vulnerable towards Carol, and now she was standing right next to her, feeling like an animal offering its neck to the enemy. Even though Carol was anything but an enemy, she was still the person of all people in the world who could hurt Therese the most.
Therese closed her eyes and tried to think of Carol’s words in the
Ritz Tower, of the hope in Carol’s voice and the laboriously covered desperation when Therese had declined her offer to move in with her. She tried to envision the radiant smile on Carol’s lips when she had noticed her in the
Oak Room and the warm hand on her back when she had led her to her table. It hadn’t just been a delusion. Carol really wanted to live with her.
When Therese opened her eyes again, she felt Carol’s questioning eyes on her. The red lips drew nervously on the cigarette, but there was a hidden sparkling in the blue-grey eyes that Therese had never seen before. Not even in Waterloo.
“We should call it a night,“ Carol said, crushing the butt of her cigarette with her heel.
“Yes.” Therese’s knees immediately started to buckle. She wanted to say something nice to Carol’s friends but her voice failed her completely. So she confined herself to a kind smile and hugged everybody like everyone else did. Then Carol and her were alone.
“They’re nice, my colleagues, aren’t they?” Carol asked while she was looking for her car keys in her purse. Therese nodded, fully aware that Carol couldn’t see the gesture, but she didn’t really seem to expect an answer. “My car is over there,” Carol explained after she had found the keys and pointed to one of the back rows of the parking lot.
Therese’s legs felt like jelly when they crossed the parking lot and she prayed that they would carry her the short way to Carol’s car. Time and space seemed to strangely extend and the walk suddenly felt endlessly far. As if by a miracle, they arrived at the Packard at last and Carol unlocked the passenger door for Therese. Like a distant magical drum, the clicking of Carol’s heels echoed in Therese’s head when she walked around the car to open the driver’s door as well.
As soon as Carol had taken her seat next to Therese, her presence seemed to entirely fill the internal space of the car. Everything else faded into the background and Carol’s presence surrounded Therese like a warm summer rain and made her breathe deeply. The scent of Carol’s perfume was still the same and Therese’s reaction to it, too. After all this time. In spite of everything that had happened. How often had they sat next to each other, nothing but roads in front of them and behind them, and Therese had felt the constant tingle of Carol’s presence in their driving cage.
When Therese noticed that Carol didn’t start the engine, she dared a side glance and saw that Carol was equally afraid. Her hands ran over the steering wheel nervously and Therese anticipated the next question.
“Where do you want me to drive you, Therese?”
Usually Therese became extremely calm when a certain grade of excitement or anxiety was exceeded and it often unsettled the people around her. But this time, Therese surprised herself when she gently took Carol’s hand from the steering wheel and put it in her lap. Almost with a meditative slowness, her fingers took off the leather glove and her fingertips ran attentively over each of the knuckles like caressing a lost treasure.
“Therese …”
Therese put the hand to her lips and kissed it. “Show me your apartment.”
Her heart ached when she saw tears in Carol’s eyes. “Are you sure?” Carol asked without averting her gaze.
“Yes.” Therese had actually never been so sure about something in her entire life. Today, for the first time in months, she finally felt whole. Even though she had changed, even though she was proud of the person she had become, a life without Carol wasn’t a life. Every day without her was colorless and empty, and whatever people were saying, nothing could be more right than this.
Carol cupped Therese’s cheek with her other hand and caressed the soft skin. She didn’t say a word but her grey eyes spoke all the more and Therese felt the overpowering need to touch her. Here and now. At her most intimate spots.
“Let’s go,” Carol whispered. Her voice was husky and brittle and Therese closed her eyes when a wave of shivers ran through her body. These two words sounded like a promise, like a gate into a new life. Of course, they had to talk about a lot of things if they wanted to dare a new beginning. But now, in this moment, there wasn’t anything more important than what they felt for each other.
Therese refused to let go of Carol’s hand during the drive. Carol’s hand rested calmly in her lap and Therese covered the slim fingers with her own as if she never wanted to let go of them till the end of time.
“It’s not far now,” Carol explained about 15 minutes later and the thrill of anticipation was unmistakable in her voice. In a way, she again looked like the Carol whom Therese had met at Frankenberg’s toy department.
Therese, on the other hand, became more nervous by the minute. Would this apartment actually be her new home one day? Would she really live together with Carol? Would she get up with her every day, go to bed with her every night? It felt like an unreal dream, too wonderful, too big to be true.
“Has Rindy stayed at the apartment yet?” Therese broke the silence. Hopefully Carol would tell her what really had happened during the divorce and how it could be possible that she had seen her daughter only twice the last four months.
“No, but she has her own room, of course.” A faint smile brightened up her face and Therese knew that Carol was imagining Rindy at her apartment.
“That’s nice.” Therese squeezed Carol’s hand and looked at her lovingly. But the smile had suddenly disappeared from Carol’s face. She stared at something ahead of them, and then everything happened so fast that Therese’s brain couldn’t follow. She just felt the impact and heard the bang and thought of Sister Alicia and her parents and Carol, again and again Carol, and then everything went black.
* * * *
“Miss? Can you hear me?“
Therese felt like somebody was talking to her from a far distance, like from the other end of a tunnel. But she couldn’t pass it. As much as she tried, she didn’t succeed.
“Miss Belivet?”
Therese tried again, even harder. At the other end of the tunnel the light was blazingly bright and she pressed her eyes together tightly.
“Miss Belivet, can you hear me?”
Therese forced herself to open her eyes, only to close them again immediately. Was she dead? Everything was so bright around her. Suddenly she felt a rough hand smacking her cheek and she jerked her eyes open.
”That’s better.”
Therese stared at the red face of a small, dumpy man with a half-bald head and a double-chin. He wore a white coat, like the other men who stood around her bed, and looked down at her with a satisfied smile. “How are you, Miss Belivet?”
“What?” She looked at him blankly.
Again, the rough hand went to her cheek and patted it. “Don’t worry, Miss Belivet. You’re in very good hands.”
Therese’s eyes tried to roam the room, attempting to understand where she was, but an unbearable headache made it impossible to continue. “I’m sick,” she muttered and closed her eyes again, exhausted.
”That’s understandable,” a different voice said. It sounded younger and kinder than the one of the bald one, but Therese was too tired to open her eyes again. “You have a bad concussion, Miss Belivet. Therefore we’ll have to keep you here for a while. Besides, you’ve got some bruises and contusions. You were extremely lucky.”
Therese tried to say something but her mouth refused to form the words. It took her a while until she finally succeeded. “What happened?” she whispered.
“Don’t you remember that you woke up two times in the ambulance?”
“No.”
“You were in a car accident, Miss Belivet.”
A car accident? I don’t even have a car… Therese suddenly yanked up her upper body and groaned when the pain in her head made her almost lose her consciousness.
Carol! She opened her eyes, trying to figure out who had just been talking to her. But she felt dizzy and everything became blurred before her eyes. Her arms gave in and she sank back into the mattress. “Carol,” she whispered.
“Carol?” The young doctor looked questioningly at the bald one.
“Miss Belivet was not alone in the car.” The older doctor cleared his throat. “A woman named Carol Aird sat at the steering wheel. She’s still in surgery.”
“Surgery?” Therese mumbled under her breath, but she couldn’t ask any further questions because everything around her sank into nothing and the world became black again.
* * *
When Therese woke up the next time, she was alone in the room. Voices and the rattling of dishes reached her ears from the hallway. The splitting headache was still there and Therese immediately felt a wave of nausea again when she tried to bend her head towards the door. What on earth had happened? How long had she been lying here? And where was Carol?
She’s still in surgery. The words of the bald-headed physician popped into her head again. That had to mean that she was still alive, right? But why were the doctors operating on her? What had happened to her? Therese imagined Carol’s slim body lying on the surgical table and immediately the next wave of nausea came over her. She tried to breathe deeply a few times, forcing herself to calm down. Surely, somebody would look after her sooner or later and then she could ask them her questions.
As if Fortuna had read her thoughts, the door opened and two men in navy blue uniforms entered the room. One of them was so tall that his colleague next to him looked like a little boy, although he was obviously the older one. “Miss Belivet?” the smaller one addressed her and headed for Therese’s bed.
”Yes,” she confirmed tiredly, careful not to move her head even a few millimeters.
“My name is Wyler, and this is Mr. Hayes.”He pointed to his tall colleague. ”You’ve been involved in a car accident?“
“Obviously,” Therese groaned quietly. Did the police seriously want to have her testimony now?
“Do you know what happened?” the older one asked, unimpressed.
“No.”
”The car that crashed into yours obviously left its lane. The driver was already dead when the paramedics pulled him out of his car.”
“Oh my God.” Therese felt so dizzy that she struggled not to vomit on her blanket. Too many thoughts were running through her head, refusing to make any sense. Fortunately, the policemen were occupied with checking out her wounds which bought her some time. “Have you talked to Mrs. Aird yet?” she panted out.
“No, she’s not conscious yet.”
Not conscious yet? What was going on with Carol?
“Miss Belivet,” the tall one continued, “Everything points to the fact that the driver lost control over his car. We suspect alcohol but we don’t have the results from the autopsy yet.” He paused. “Miss Belivet? Are you still listening to me?“
“Yes.” Therese forced herself to concentrate. The more distracted she was the longer this would last.
“Who sat at the steering wheel?”
Why did the man ask her that? They already knew the facts. “Mrs. Aird.“
“Do you remember if Mrs. Aird had consumed any alcohol?”
“No.”
“No, you don’t know, or no, she didn’t consume alcohol?”
Of course Therese remembered the glass of wine that Carol had at the
Oak Room, but like hell she would tell the policemen about it. “No, I don’t remember.”
The two men exchanged a glance and for a while only the scratching of the pencil on the older one’s notepad was audible. “Where did you come from?” he asked.
“We’d been at a restaurant, the
Oak Room”
“And what’s the last thing you remember?” the large one asked.
Therese thought about the question. The last thing she remembered was that she and Carol had gotten in the car and Carol hadn’t started the engine. And that she had taken Carol’s hand and…
“Miss Belivet?”
“I’m sorry, sir.” Therese’s voice broke down. She pressed her palms on her eyelids to keep the tears from falling. “I don’t remember anything from the drive.”
“Then try to remember, Miss Belivet.” The giant went to Therese’s bed and bent over her. “Your car was in the middle of a curve on the road when the collision happened. The other car must have hurtled towards you from the left.”
“I don’t remember anyth…” Therese fell silent when from nowhere a wave of random images overwhelmed her. Suddenly everything was back again. Carol’s wide eyes, frozen in shock, the car hurtling towards them, towards Carol. Oh God! Nobody could survive that! Oh God, Carol!
“Miss Belivet?”
Therese couldn’t respond anymore. Beads of sweat appeared on her forehead and she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs anymore. The room’s size changed and it seemed as if it would devour her like a huge mouth. As if from far away she heard one of the policemen leaving the room. Shortly afterwards the young doctor, whom Therese knew already, came in again.
When the physician saw Therese, he immediately sent the two men outside the door. “Don’t you see that this patient needs to rest?” he asked angrily and patted Therese’s shoulder. “Listen, Miss Belivet, I’m gonna tell the nurses to give you a sedative. And the police won’t bother you anymore for now.”
Therese was too busy with breathing to speak, but with a nod she gave him her consent.
About ten minutes later an older nurse with grey locks came through the door and injected something into Therese’s vein. “This will calm you down a bit, little one,” she said and gave Therese an encouraging smile.
Fortunately, the worst part of the attack had already been over before the nurse had entered the room, so Therese’s heart didn’t beat so wildly anymore and the images in her head had decreased a bit. It just hurt even more than before. “What’s your name?” she asked the nurse.
”I’m Vivian,” she introduced herself cheerfully. “You will see me more often for sure.”
“Can you do me a favor, nurse Vivian?” Therese gathered all her courage. “I wasn’t alone in the car. Could you tell me how Mrs. Aird is doing?”
”Are you related to her?”
“Yes, she’s my aunt.” By now, Therese’s brain was working reliably enough to understand that a lie was the only way to get the information.
“I’ll see what I can do.” The nurse looked at least ten years younger when she smiled. “What was the name again?”
“Carol Aird.”
“Okay, fine. But it can take a while,” Vivian warned Therese. “All hell has broken loose today.”
“That’s okay.” Therese stroked her forehead with the back of her hand and noticed that her arms were cluttered with violet-blue bruises. “Will you wake me in case I’m asleep?”
The nurse sternly shook her head. “Try to stay awake, Miss Belivet, even if it’s difficult.”
Therese took a deep breath when the nurse had left the room again. She felt as exhausted as if she had run 50 miles and longed for nothing more than quietness and rest. But as long as she didn’t know how Carol was doing it was impossible to even think of it.
The time of waiting extended to infinity, but finally nurse Vivian’s grey locks appeared in the door again. “Brace yourself for a new fellow patient,” she informed Therese.
“Carol?” Therese heart beat faster immediately.
“No, another car accident.” The nurse pushed Therese’s bed a little to the left in order to make room for the new bed. “By the way, your aunt left surgery a couple of hours ago and will surely stay in intensive care for a while.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Therese’s green eyes looked anxiously at the nurse’s face. “Is she severely injured?”
“Your aunt suffers from a severe traumatic brain injury. In addition, the spleen had to be removed. Her left collarbone and several ribs are broken.” The nurse shoved a second table next to Therese’s bed and pulled the curtains closed. “She was put into an artificial coma.”
“What?” Therese’s fingers dug into the blanket when everything became blurred before her eyes. “Why?”
Vivian patted Therese’s hand when she noticed her expression. “Don’t you worry, little one. That’s just a precaution and very common in cases like this.”
“How long…?” Therese broke off when the door opened and two nurses pushed a bed with a sleeping patient next to Therese’s. The patient was a young woman, not older than eighteen or nineteen, Therese noticed, horrified.
“You should ask your aunt’s treating physician Dr. Meyer about that,” Vivian advised her while she helped her two colleagues pushing the bed of the young patient closer to the wall. “Most often it’s just a few days.”
Therese swallowed down the heavy lump in her throat. “Can I make a phone call somewhere?”
The nurse laughed out loud. “You are supposed to lie here and be a good girl, Miss Belivet. And in a few hours we’ll see how you are doing.”
Therese looked so utterly aghast that even the nurse pitied her. “Listen, dear, in your condition you wouldn’t even make it to the phone,” she explained in a maternal tone. “But I’ll come back in a while and look after you, okay?”
Therese nodded. She hated to admit it, but the nurse was right. She would never make it to the telephone like that. The three nurses quietly left the room and Therese was alone again, apart from the sleeping young woman next to her who probably had come out of surgery not long ago.
Fortunately, it was Saturday and Therese didn’t have to inform her workplace. Nonetheless, she wanted to call Dannie as soon as possible and ask him to call her boss. And she badly needed to contact Abby. She was Carol’s best friend and would know who needed to be informed in Carol’s environment.
Therese wiped a tear out of her eye. She cursed quietly when the crying made her headache even worse. The nurse Vivian had told her quite sternly to stay awake, but Therese couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. Maybe it would do her good to sleep for a little while, and maybe when she woke up again, it would turn out that everything had been nothing but a bad dream and she was actually lying in her bed at home. Maybe she just didn’t notice that she was in the middle of an endless nightmare – one of those box dreams where you always think you’ve woken up but you’re actually still dreaming.
Before she knew it, sleep overpowered her. She neither heard her fellow patient calling for a doctor in panic nor did she wake up when several nurses ran into the room at short intervals to calm down the upset girl.
When Therese opened her eyes again it was 5 p.m. already and her neighbor sat in her bed bent over a magazine. Surprised, Therese noticed that her dizziness was a lot better when she turned to the young woman. “How are you doing? I’m Therese Belivet,” she introduced herself and cleared her throat. Her voice sounded as if she hadn’t used it for days.
The girl looked up from her magazine. She had been put in a much too big gown and looked even younger than she was anyway. The blond locks that fell softly over her shoulders made her look like a shy angel, a wounded angel considering her bandaged shoulder. “I’m Grace,” she said shortly and focused on her reading again. Apparently, she wasn’t exactly talkative which was quite fine with Therese.
“What happened to you?” Grace asked after a while without looking up from her magazine.
“A car accident.”
“Me too. I wish I had taken the tram.”
“Do you know if the nurse Vivian is still on her shift?”
“Who’s that supposed to be?” Grace shifted her position awkwardly trying not to move her bandaged shoulder. “I don’t know anybody here.”
“She’s one of the nicer nurses.” Therese cautiously turned to the other side and was relieved to notice that it worked better than she had thought. “I’ll try to find her.”
Slowly and with great care, Therese pushed her legs over the edge of the bed and tried to touch the ground. It took her a few minutes until she could stand on her legs safely, but finally she succeeded, and after she had found her purse in the small grey closet, she padded barefoot to the hall.
The nurses were already busy serving dinner and Therese almost bumped into Vivian. “I’m sorry…”
“Oh my Goodness, Miss Belivet, what are you doing here?” she nurse asked, visibly displeased. “You’re supposed to lie in your bed.”
”I need to make a phone call. “
Vivian sighed. “Okay, but afterwards you go back to your room and rest, you hear me?” Only after Therese has promised her faithfully to go back to her bed straight away, the nurse pointed to the glass door at the end of the corridor. “You go through the door over there, then to the right until the hallway ends. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you.” Therese shuffled on unsteady legs along the hallway, and when the smell of food reached her nostrils she realized she hadn’t eaten anything the entire day. She still didn’t feel hungry at all and the smell of warm food made her feel sick again.
After she had finally arrived at the telephone, Therese took the address book from her purse and looked for Abby’s number. When Carol’s friend had driven her back to New York she had given Therese her address, just in case. Therese had written it down but while doing it, she had sworn to herself she would never use it. But now Abby was the one who would most likely know what to do.
Therese’s hand shook seriously when she reached for the receiver, praying that Abby would be at home. Highly-concentrated, digit by digit, she dialed Abby’s number. Only when the phone started to ring she realized that she hadn’t thought about what she would tell her.
“Abigail Gerhard. Hello?”
No words came out of Therese’s mouth. How could she tell Abby what had happened?
“Hello?”
“Abby?”
“Yes? Who is it?“ Abby asked impatiently.
“It’s … Therese.”
“Therese?” Abby’s voice changed into worry immediately. She seemed to sense that something was wrong. “What’s going on?”
Abby’s simple question was the final straw. The hard-restrained emotions suddenly broke through and Therese helplessly burst into tears.
“Therese?” Abby started to panic. “What happened? Is something wrong with Carol?”
Therese tried to respond but was again and again shaken by sobs.
“What’s wrong, Therese?” Abby asked again.
“We had a car accident,” Therese ejaculated.
“What? Who’s
we?” Therese could hear Abby walking through her house.
“Carol and I.”
“Where are you? Are you injured?”
Only now did Therese realize that she didn’t even know which hospital she was at. Her gaze fell onto a table with two chairs in the hallway. On the white table cloth the word
Presbyterian Hospital was stitched in red letters. “I think it’s the Presbyterian Hospital,” Therese said slowly.
”How is Carol doing?“ Abby pressed on.
“She just left surgery …” Therese hesitated. “The doctors had to put her into an artificial coma … but they say it’s common treatment … and just a precaution.”
It was quiet on the other end of the line, so quiet Therese feared Abby might have hung up.
“Abby?”´
“I’ll be there in 45 minutes.”
* * *
Therese was relieved to see that her young fellow patient was asleep again when she came back into her room. She felt like curling up somewhere and cry, but privacy seemed to be an alien concept at a hospital. Constantly, nurses entered her room to do some stuff she hadn’t asked them to, and people were pushed through the corridors like cattle.
The way to the telephone had been more straining than she had thought and Therese’s eyes fell shut as soon as she lay down in her bed again. It was good to know that Abby would come soon. Granted, Therese’s encounters with Carol’s best friend had been kind of awkward so far, but Abby was the only one who would know what to do now. Nobody knew Carol better than she did.
Therese had to wait more than an hour until Abby finally knocked on the door. She looked pale and worn out when she stepped to Therese’s bed. “I talked to the doctors first,” she apologized.
“Did they tell you anything?”
“I told them I was Carol’s cousin.” Abby sat down on the edge of Therese’s bed.
Therese nodded knowingly. “I told them I was her niece.”
“So we’re practically relatives now.” Abby forced a smile. “How are you, Therese?”
“I’m so scared for her.”
The corners of Abby’s mouth were shaking and it took a moment until she was in control again. “I was referring to your injuries,” she said eventually.
“I’m fine. The doctors say I’ve been really lucky.” Therese pulled out her arms from under the blanket and showed Abby her bloodshot spots. “Only bruises and a concussion.”
“That’s good to know.” Abby stood up and started walking back and forth across the room. Therese was afraid the clicking of her heels would wake up Grace but she still seemed soundly asleep. “Why on earth were you two sitting in a car together?” Abby asked suddenly.
Therese had to swallow. How should she explain to Abby what had happened? Yesterday seemed like an eternity ago. “Carol wanted to show me her apartment,” Therese said cautiously.
Abby’s reaction surprised her. “So she plucked up her courage …” she muttered with a smile.
Therese’s thoughts involuntarily went to the afternoon at the
Ritz Tower. Carol hadn’t been the only one who had plucked up her courage on that day. They both had overcome their fears, had jumped off a cliff, several times, and Therese had hoped so much that now everything would fall into place. Instead, she was lying here at a hospital and Carol fought for her life. “What did you talk about with the doctors?” she asked quietly.
“I didn’t stop pressing on until they finally allowed me to see Carol,” Abby explained. “Would you like to join me?”
“Yes.” A big heavy lump grew immediately in Therese’s stomach. She didn’t think she could bear seeing Carol like this, but she had to do it. It was more important than anything else.
”Can you get up?” Abby went to the bed and offered Therese her hand. ”Do you need help?”
“No, I’m fine.” Therese still had to move in slow motion to keep the waves of nausea within bounds. But Abby waited patiently for her to leave her bed. She took Therese’s coat that the nurses had put in the closet when she had arrived and put it around her shoulders. “Carol is in a different building,” she explained.
With slow steps they headed off to the intensive care unit. Therese’s cautious moves contrasted sharply with the wildly beating heart in her chest. She was scared to see Carol and Abby was no different. Carol’s friend had crossed her arms in front of her chest and constantly looked at the ground while they walked slowly along the hallway.
When they finally stopped in front of a double-winged door, Abby’s face was white as a sheet. She made no effort to open the door, so it was Therese who gathered all her courage and pushed the door to intensive care open. A nurse in green scrubs handed them protective clothing and led them along a long corridor with beds, one next to the other. At the end of the corridor, the nurse pointed to the last bed.
There she lay, Carol, quiet and peacefully, and looked as if she was asleep, if it wasn’t for the machines and tubes that seemed to be connected everywhere to her body. Their regular noises hurt Therese’s ears and she needed some time until she could step closer to the bed. Seeing Carol’s slender figure lying in the big bed tore her heart apart. How could that be possible? How could a drunken car driver change everything from one second to another?
Therese wiped her hand over her eyes and silently sat down at the headboard of Carol’s bed. Gently, her fingers touched the blond strands of hair that partly hadn’t been cleaned from the blood yet. “Carol,” she whispered. “Don’t give up now, Carol …”
Then her voice broke off. Silently, she took Carol’s hand and put it carefully it into her own. Abby had stepped to the opposite side of the bed and it was the first time Therese saw her cry.