Knock. Knock.
“Come in.”
Dorothy opens the door. Pink scrubs, gray undershirt, gray Nikes, her hair pulled into a ponytail, and a scowl on her face. “You need to promise me right now that I won’t get fired for being in your office instead of where I’m supposed to be.”
“I promise.” Well, I’m ninety-nine percent sure she won’t get fired. I’ve been here long enough to have some pull.
Dorothy closes the door behind her and takes a seat, looking out the only window in my office, the one that has a great view of downtown Portland.
I lift both of my legs onto the desk so she can see that my cast is off. She makes a quick glance in the direction of my legs, then her gaze meets mine.
“You’re better. Good to know. I choose Roman. Go back to your wife. Are we good? Am I dismissed now?”
“No. We’re not good.”
She blows out a long breath. “If my grandfather would have chosen his mistress over my grandmother, my mother wouldn’t have been conceived. I wouldn’t exist. My father wouldn’t have found the woman he loves so much. I’m not a believer in fate, but I believe some things just make sense. You and Dr. Hathaway make sense. Giving Roman a home with both of his parents makes sense. We don’t make sense.”
“First…” I ease out of my chair, limping a bit to make it around the desk so I’m leaning back against it while standing in front of her “…we make sense. It’s nothing that can be put into words. I just know we make sense because I feel it. Second, you’re not my mistress. Julie divorced me. And you never would have been my mistress. I’m not that man.”
“But she wants you back.”
“And for a year after the papers were signed, she could have had me back. But then you walked into my life and changed that.”
“I didn’t.”
“Dammit, Dorothy!” I slam my hands beside me on the desk, and she startles. “You get to decide if you love me, if you want to be with me. But it’s not okay for you to make decisions for me and my life. But…” I lean forward, resting my hands on the arms of her chair “…if you love me, then be with me.”
Her forehead wrinkles as she clenches her teeth, emotion filling her eyes with unshed tears. I don’t want to hurt her. I want to love her. I can’t find my breath when I imagine her with anyone but me. It has to be me. She has to let me love her.
Drawing in a shaky breath, she brushes away a tear before it meets her cheek. “You’re going to remember me as the person who gave you back your life. That’s how I want you to remember me. Years from now you’re going to have a perfect life. A wife. Roman. Maybe even a little brother or sister for him. A dog. Possibly an emu of your own. Or an alpaca. And you’ll smile thinking about this moment when patient transporter, Dorothy Mayhem, insisted you not give up what is most likely your last chance at taking back your life … the perfect life. Can you do that? Can you remember me like that?”
“Don’t give up on me. Please …” I rest my forehead against hers and close my eyes.
Dorothy rests her hands on my cheeks. “I’m not. I’m your greatest warrior. I’m your Wonder Woman. I’m fighting for you when you’re too stupid and blind to see what’s right in front of you.”
“No.” I roll my forehead against hers. “You don’t get it. You’re the one who is too stupid to see it. You’re the one who will remember us, and you’ll see how you made the choice. Not me.” I grab her face the same way she’s holding mine. “Look at me.”
Dorothy forces her watery eyes to meet my gaze.
“This is your choice. It’s always been your choice. Because I made my choice the second I got into the backseat of your car.”
More tears roll down her face. “I choose Roman,” she whispers.
I press my lips to hers, holding her firmly to me, committing this feeling to memory. “He’s not yours to choose,” I whisper, releasing her and tearing my face from her grip.
She chokes on a sob as I grab my crutches and leave my office.
Chapter Thirty-One
It’s not okay
Dorothy
“Wow! Really, Dorothy? Where have you been? I know you’re an adult, but we’ve been—” Mom’s hand covers her face when I look up, letting her see my swollen eyes from crying.
All. The. Tears.
I left the hospital at eight. Worked out for two hours. Then sat in my car outside the gym crying for two more hours.
“Dorothy …” Mom scuffs her slippered feet across the floor and pulls me into her arms.
I don’t even cry. Everything feels numb, like all my feelings resided in my tears, and I have no more tears left—and no more feelings.
Not joy.
Not love.
Not anger.
Nothing.
“What happened?”
“He hates me.”
“Who?” She pulls back, holding me at arm’s length.
“Eli.”
“No.” Mom shakes her head.
I nod slowly, still feeling no emotion. No tears. No smiles. Just nothing.
“Why do you think that?”
“I chose Roman instead of us. How is that wrong?” I manage to furrow my brow because I still don’t get it. I’ll never get it.
“It’s not wrong, baby girl. It’s brave. It’s honest. It’s kind beyond words. And Eli can’t understand because he loves you. And speaking as someone who loves you very much, I know he’s hurting because the idea of living without you is pretty unbearable.”
I turn toward my bedroom. “Goodnight.”
“Dorothy …” She follows me to my room.
“He said it was my decision. And I chose Roman. Then he said Roman wasn’t my choice to make. And he blames me. But it should have been his choice. Julie and Roman or me and part-time Roman. But he kept trying to make the wrong choice. And I can’t live like that. That’s too much pressure to not screw up and make him regret choosing me. Too much pressure to be something good enough that he doesn’t miss Roman when he’s not with him … when he only has me. And what if he doesn’t have me someday? I could die. Or move. Or be spectacularly me like I’ve been with all of my relationships … all of my failed relationships. Then what? Dr. Hathaway is not going to wait for him forever.”
Mom gets a clean nightshirt out of my drawer and one of my favorite pair of practical, boring white panties. “Go shower. Get some sleep. Clarity will come with time. Forgiveness will come with time. So don’t watch the clock. Do your thing. Live your life. Then one day you’ll realize that this was nothing more than an experience to help you deal with something else down the road. Eli is extremely lucky to have had you in his life, even if it was only temporary.”
I nod. Taking the shirt and panties from her. “I hope so.”
Elijah
“Hi.” Julie sits up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The blanket falls from her body and off the sofa onto the floor. She checks her phone on the coffee table. “One a.m. Are you okay?” Her gaze lands on my leg as I limp into the room without my crutches, slipping off my hoodie.
“No. I’m not okay.” I ease into the chair across from the sofa.
She retrieves the blanket from the floor and wraps it around her again, nestling into the corner of the sofa, red hair messy from sleeping. “Want to talk about it?”
“No.” I stare blankly at her.
“How did you get home?”
“Cab.” I scratch my forehead, pinching my dry eyes shut for a few seconds.
“I guess you don’t need to get your cast removed tomorrow.”
I shake my head.
She blows out a slow breath. “Have I lost you, Eli?”
How do I answer that? The answer should be glaringly obvious. Right? I mean … she divorced me. How can you say you’ve lost something you willingly, even eagerly, gave away—released, let go?
“You made me feel like nothing. Less than nothing.” I grunt a laugh. “I mean … is that even possible? I think so. It wasn’t that you just didn’
t want me, it’s that you despised me. And I get it.” I finally glance up at her, meeting her anguished expression. “You had … you have something going on that’s out of your control. But I didn’t know that. And neither did you. And that nothingness radiated to every cell in my body, taking over my existence. And for so long I felt like only you could bring me back to life. I felt like I would never be me again without you.”
I shake my head slowly. “God … I felt like you were this force by which I lived my life. And when you left, it felt like the sun stopped shining. Like I didn’t know how to exist in a world that didn’t revolve around you. I let you be my everything. So when you left, I had nothing. Except Roman. And for so long I clung to him for the wrong reasons. He was you. The only piece of you I still had. A tiny sliver of my existence that you didn’t … that you couldn’t take away.”
“Eli … I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. God … don’t apologize for being bipolar. That’s fucked-up. It would be like my patients apologizing for having cancer. Apologizing for suffering. Apologizing for dying.”
“What happened tonight, Eli?” she whispers.
My gaze affixes to the coffee table. “I lost Dorothy.” Pushing out of the chair, I hobble to the stairs and climb them, slowly and awkwardly, but I do it by myself. After a long shower, I floss and brush my teeth, crawling into bed around two a.m.
Just as I start to drift off to sleep, the other side of the bed dips. Julie slides in next to me, wrapping her arms around me, her front to my back. I close my eyes again and fall asleep.
The next morning, I wake up a little after six to an empty space next to me. It takes me a few seconds to get my balance when I stand, pulling on a white T-shirt. As I navigate the stairs, the aroma of coffee greets me.
“Morning.” Julie’s already showered and dressed for work in a navy pencil skirt and light gray button-down shirt. Her hair is neatly pulled back into a ponytail.
“Morning.” I take a seat at the table.
“So … we need to make some decisions.”
Decisions. I kind of hate all decisions at the moment. I don’t even want to make a decision on what I’m going to wear today, let alone make any sort of life-changing decision. “What decisions?” I murmur.
She hands me a cup of coffee, brushing her lips along my cheek for a soft kiss. I don’t think I want her kissing me. But I did want it for so long, the foreign feeling of not wanting it is messing with my head.
“Your mom is coming over today. So if you decide to come into work, she’ll be here with Roman. But we need to set a schedule. My mom is used to watching Roman every other week, so I don’t know how she’ll feel about watching him full-time. She’s been used to having lunch with friends on her weeks off, or taking short trips with Dad. But what I’m really thinking is we should consider scaling back our schedules like we discussed doing right after Roman was born. Well …” She sits across from me. “I adjusted my schedule and you just made sure you didn’t work more than forty hours a week. But what if we tried to each work four days a week. I could take Thursdays off. You could take off Fridays. If your mom is willing to watch Roman on Mondays, then my mom could do Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and he wouldn’t have to go to daycare. Also my mom will still have days off to do other things, including her getaways with my dad. What do you think?”
What do I think? I take a sip of my coffee. Well, I think I miss Dorothy.
“I can’t do this now.” I bow my head, scratching the back of it while closing my eyes.
“Oh … well. Okay. We can discuss this later when you’re not so groggy. Do you want to ride into work with me?”
I used to … I used to want her next to me in bed. I used to want her good morning kisses. I used to love commuting to work together, especially on the days that we couldn’t keep our hands off each other—during the early years, right after we both got our jobs at the children’s hospital.
The reckless behavior.
I used to drive seventy-five … eighty miles per hour with Julie’s head in my lap, her mouth on me. Sometimes I had to pull over behind an old building or along an empty trailhead because we just couldn’t wait … because we needed each other in every way possible.
The feeling of needing Julie has consumed my entire adult life.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be there today, since they’re not expecting me until Wednesday. So I’ll drive.” I try so hard to sound normal. To sound okay. But I’m not okay.
Dorothy … everything with her is okay.
Beautiful. Exhilarating. Heart-stopping. Soul-reaching. Okay.
“Okay. I’ll check in on you. Maybe we can grab lunch if my schedule allows.”
No. Julie isn’t allowed to say okay. It’s not her word. It loses all meaning coming from her lips.
“Maybe.” I force a smile before taking a sip of my coffee.
“Oh, your mom is here.” She sets her coffee cup in the sink. “Since you’re driving, I’m going to take off. Kiss Roman for me.”
I nod.
How is this happening? How is she standing in my kitchen, acting like we’re a family, giving me exactly what I’ve wanted forever? How is it possible to feel so suffocated by my dreams?
“Good morning, Lori! Have a great day,” Julie’s cheery voice grates along my nerves.
“Someone’s in a good mood.” Mom lifts an eyebrow in surprise after Julie shuts the door.
We haven’t seen this Julie in a long time. It’s great, right? I mean it should be everything. But it’s not.
“Yup.” I take another sip of my coffee, resting my elbows on the table.
“Your cast is off, yet your appointment to get it off is today. Want to talk about it?” She takes a seat next to me, setting a glass bottle of green juice on the table and her purse on the floor.
“Nope.” I move my attention from her to the window, not really focusing on anything in particular. That’s the problem. Nothing in my life feels in focus.
She rests her hand on mine. “What do you want, Eli?”
I grunt. “The impossible.”
She returns a half-hearted laugh. “Well, I taught you to reach for the stars. I guess I should feel some pride in your predicament. Can you define the impossible?”
I rub a hand down my face and blow out a long breath. “I want Roman every day. I don’t want to miss out on a single thing. And I want Dorothy. And I don’t want to hate Julie. And I don’t want her to hate me. And if I’m making a wish list, might as well add curing cancer to it.”
“What’s your plan B?”
Allowing a tiny smirk to grace my face, I give her side-eye. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out since Dorothy removed herself from the equation.”
“I’m sorry, Eli.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“So where does that leave you and Julie? She seemed pretty happy a few minutes ago.”
“Yes. She crawled into my bed last night and wrapped her arms around me, releasing this content sigh like all is right again in the world. This was after I told her Dorothy left me. I just lay there wondering how my life got so messed up. And I feel like something is wrong with Julie for wanting to be with me when she knows I’m in love with Dorothy. But then …”
I laugh a crazy man’s laugh. “But then it hits me. I’ve been the one for the past year, silently begging her to come back to me, love me, need me, raise Roman with me, while knowing all along that she didn’t want me.”
“Yes. It’s ironic. And painful. And I wish I had a brilliant answer for you, but I don’t. However, if Dorothy is truly out of the picture, then you need to decide where to go from here. You need that plan B.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Goodbye
“Welcome back.” Dr. Warren glances up from the computer in my lab, giving me a faint smile.
“Thanks.” I planned on arriving a little earlier, but Roman woke up and I decided to have breakfast with him and my mom.
Warren’s gaze
lands on my leg and my slight limp. “Sure you’re ready to be back?”
“More than you can imagine,” I murmur, swiping through a few charts and lab results on my tablet.
“Must have been hell, you know … being nursed back to health by Dr. Hathaway and sleeping with Dorothy Mayhem.”
I blow a laugh out my nose while glancing up from my tablet. “Alright, I suppose this is as good of time as any. Yes, I was involved with Dorothy. But I’m not now. And I apologize if you truly had real feelings for her that went beyond getting her under you in the on-call room.”
Warren crosses his arms over his chest and nods once. “What happened?”
“An apology. That’s the most I owe you. I’m not telling you what happened between me and Dorothy.”
He shrugs. “She’ll tell me. I’m not sure she can keep a secret.”
“Leave her alone.”
Warren holds up his hands. “Whoa … I’m leaving her alone.” He glances over my shoulder and nods. “Speak of the devil.”
I turn toward the window. Dorothy’s talking to Willa. She grins at something Willa says. It makes me smile. I love seeing Dorothy happy. But her smile falters as her attention gets pulled toward something past Willa. Julie passes them, giving Dorothy a wide grin and a nod before she makes a quick left, coming into my lab.
“Doctors.” She hasn’t lost a bit of her early morning cheeriness. “Keisha Eldridge’s biopsy came back. It’s malignant melanoma.” She shows me the results.
After looking over them, I hand them to Dr. Warren.
Julie smiles and runs her fingertips along my ear, messing with my hair. “You could use a trim, Eli.”
My eyes find Dorothy. She drops her gaze, tucking her hair behind her ears as she brushes past Willa like she can’t get out of here fast enough.
“Let’s take Roman shopping next weekend for a new Halloween costume. He’s already worn out his superhero costume. I knew he would. We should get costumes too. Remember we always talked about doing that?”
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