Parallel

by O'Roark, Elizabeth

  Found something. I freeze, suddenly aware of my heart, pounding louder than normal, so loud I’m surprised he can’t hear it too.

  He rises, flipping on a light board just to our left. What I presume is an image of my brain hangs there. I’m oddly relieved to see it looks normal, as if I thought it might be half a human brain and half something wildly improbable, like antennae or another set of teeth. “This,” he says, pointing at a black dot in its center, “is what we found. It’s so small I’m not even sure it’s what’s caused your seizures. Something of that size, in that location, should not be symptomatic.”

  “What is it?” I whisper.

  He takes the seat beside me. His eyes are the softest gray-blue, like the wings of a dove. “It appears to be a tumor.”

  Ice fills my lungs, making a deep breath impossible. “A tumor.”

  His hand reaches out, and for a moment I’m certain it’s going to grab mine. But just like yesterday, he stops himself. “The majority of brain tumors are benign, so I really don’t want you stressing about this just yet. You very well could have had this for your entire life.”

  “And if mine isn’t benign? What then?”

  He nods, his eyes flickering away. “Operating in this area of the brain is impossible. But again, it could very well be nothing. We need to do another imaging test—similar to what we’ve already done, but this time looking at the metabolic activity around the tumor. It should help us determine the type of tumor it is and how likely it is to grow.”

  My mouth is dry. I nod, feeling…nothing. Nothing at all. I dig my nails into my palms but it barely registers.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.” What I want more than anything is to dislodge the sense that all of this can’t really be happening. I’m only twenty-eight. I’m about to get married. My life is just starting, and out of nowhere I’m missing him and wanting what I’ve never wanted, and I may be looking at the end of all of it. I don’t know how to put this into words. “My life was completely normal a week ago,” I finally say.

  “Let me take you down to imaging,” he says, rising. “Your life may still be completely normal.”

  This time he sets me up for the exam himself, helping me onto the table, getting everything into position. He seems to hesitate when it’s time to leave. “It’s going to be fine,” he says.

  “You know, even if the tumor is nothing, I’m still having bizarre dreams about someone I don’t know and discovering they’re accurate.”

  His smile is soft. “Hey,” he says, “I’m not a bad guy. There are worse people to dream about. Unless I’m a jerk. If I am, then your dreams are completely fictitious.”

  “You weren’t a jerk.”

  “Good.” His dimple appears, and I have a sudden memory of him in that convenience store smiling at me through the glass, unaware that my heart was breaking, that we were going to be separated. And as I slide into the MRI to check on my inoperable brain tumor, I can’t help but feel history seems to be repeating.

  11

  NICK

  Meg and I both have an hour free. She wants to go out to lunch and is not happy when I tell her I want to swim instead.

  “Again?” she asks. “You already worked out.”

  I blow out a breath. I am way too keyed up to sit with her for an hour. “It’s just been one of those days.” One of those days when I’m waiting for a report from radiology that won’t fucking arrive. One of those days when I’m going to put a fist through a wall if I hear, again, that it’s “on the way.” And one of those days when I can’t stop thinking about a patient, can’t stop picturing her…even though we are both with other people, and, as my patient, she’d be off-limits even if we weren’t.

  I get over to the pool and dive in without preamble, with no routine in mind. I just need to push, to swim until I’m too exhausted to think about this anymore. I’ve always hated impossible questions. Medical journals produced nothing helpful, not that I expected them to. There’s no answer to what’s going on with me and Quinn, but I can’t stop pushing and prodding at it, as if something completely obvious will present itself. It spins in my brain until I’m sick of thinking. And thus the need for this swim, which doesn’t seem to be doing a damn bit of good.

  I thought I was happy with Meg. Maybe it wasn’t everything I’d ever wanted from a relationship, but it felt like enough…certainly far more than my brother will ever get to experience. Except spending a morning with Quinn was like being exposed to sunlight after an entire lifetime beneath fluorescent lights. I’m not sure, now, that I can be happy with less.

  * * *

  I hustle back to the hospital with my hair still wet, stopping by Darcy’s room on the way. I never see her without thinking about what could have been. If her mother had brought her in when Darcy’s headaches first started, we could have saved her. As much as this bothers me, it’s her mom who’s being destroyed by the knowledge, and it wasn’t even her fault. When the pediatrician dismissed her concerns, she listened to him. God, I wish she hadn’t. Doctors know a lot less than they want you to believe. Especially that one.

  Darcy is in bed when I get to the room, with her mom curled up beside her. She smiles wide, more animated than usual, and lifts a massive cupcake in the air. “Look what Quinn sent me!” she says.

  Darcy’s mother reaches behind her to a massive box from Sprinkles, where ten of twelve cupcakes remain. “Want one?” she asks. “Darcy’s new friend sent six for Darcy and six for Raven, so I feel like we may have more than we need.”

  Something expands inside my chest. Who learns she has a brain tumor and manages to think about a little girl she just met instead? I decline and head straight to radiology, ready to unleash hell if the results aren’t in. Fortunately, that’s not necessary. I rip the radiologist’s report from the envelope before I’ve even gotten to my office.

  * * *

  She answers on the first ring.

  “It’s Nick.” I pause. “Nick Reilly.”

  “Hi Ni— Dr. Reilly.”

  “You’ve gone on a honeymoon with me, so I feel like we ought to at least be on a first-name basis.”

  She laughs. The sound is husky, intimate. I have to reach down and adjust myself, which is not exactly typical when calling a patient about her brain tumor. “I’m going to assume,” she says, “that you wouldn’t be making jokes if I only had a month to live.”

  This is true, although since I appear to be incapable of behaving normally around her I couldn’t say for sure. “It’s all good news. We don’t see signs of increased blood flow to the area, which indicates it is not growing. It’s possible it’s been there forever.” I’ve never been so relieved by a scan in my life.

  “So I’m okay?” she asks. “Aside from the bizarre knowledge of your personal history, that is.”

  I grin and lean back in my chair. “Aside from that, I think so. We’ll still need to keep an eye on it, but as long as you don’t have any more incidents, a follow-up MRI in six months will be fine.”

  Except, in six months, she could already be married to that tool I met in her room the other night. The thought makes me queasy.

  “So if the scan looked okay, does that mean you can call something in for me, to stop the dreams?”

  Why does a part of me want to tell her no? I sigh heavily. “We’ve got your pharmacy on file. I’ll call it in and check with you tomorrow to see how it worked.”

  It takes a minute for us to actually hang up the phone. She seems as reluctant as I am to end the call. And I like her reluctance way, way too much.

  12

  QUINN

  I’m fine. I’m going to live. It’s a relief…so I’m not sure why I feel vaguely disappointed when Nick hangs up. I pick up the phone to call my mother afterward but put it down again. She doesn’t know about the brain tumor because I didn’t want to worry her until I knew more, and I suppose there’s no reason to tell her now. Plus, she’s worked herself up into a fever over t
he fact that I’ve now passed out at the inn twice—which certainly doesn’t bode well for the wedding—and I don’t feel like listening to any more of her theories about why it’s happening. No pesticide or allergy has ever caused the problem I’m currently having. I concocted some theory about the sunlight from the lake affecting my pineal gland, and she’s gotten the inn to agree to let us place the tent in front of the main building rather than beside it, so I can avoid looking at the house if necessary.

  I pick up the meds on the way to the Metro, bouncing them from one hand to the other during the long ride home. I don’t actually want to take them. I’ve seen myself falling in love with Nick, marrying him. It’s like a really engrossing TV show that’s just ended on a cliffhanger, and I’m desperate to know what comes next. Except, with each of these dreams, I fall a little harder for him, and that is so much more dangerous now that I know he exists.

  Jeff’s in the yard when I get home, playing football with Isaac, this teenager who lives a few houses down from us. He’s in his element right now, and the sight of it is bittersweet. It’s who he was meant to be—a football coach, a big fish in a small pond—and I took it from him by moving here. My friends are less forgiving than I am of his job woes, but that’s because they didn’t know him back when he was succeeding. They’ll never understand how much he gave up to be with me.

  My father saw that quality in Jeff. Knew he would always be there, loyal and steadfast in his devotion, willing to follow me wherever I went. I trusted my father’s views implicitly, and for good reason—I wasn’t the only one of us who sometimes knew things I should not. My father knew I was allergic to shellfish before I’d ever had it. He knew Matisse was my favorite artist before I’d ever set foot in a gallery. So sometimes I wonder if he knew things about my future that I did not, and wanted Jeff to be there by my side when they happened.

  I cross the street and Jeff smiles over his shoulder, throwing one last pass to Isaac before following me inside.

  “That kid has an amazing spiral,” he says. “He’s fast too. I could totally have him ready for JV if his mom would just agree.”

  We make dinner while he continues to tell me Isaac’s strengths, and bitches about Isaac’s mom’s fear of concussions. That stupid Will Smith movie made everyone paranoid. You know what sport has the most injuries? Cheerleading.

  I was worried my news about the brain tumor would ruin our evening, but the whole time we’re cooking he never asks once about the MRI. I try not to let it bother me.

  Over dinner he complains about the new asshole at corporate and some policy on travel reimbursement I’m unable to care about. I wait for him to finish his diatribe, resentment churning in my stomach, but when he’s done with that he moves on to another topic entirely.

  “We need to go back to that development in Manassas,” he says, oblivious to my unhappiness. “The agent called today and said the model is open.”

  I’m already in a bad mood, so the suggestion hits me poorly. “I told you I don’t want to live in Manassas. It would take me two hours to get into work.”

  He shrugs. “Well, it’s not like you have to work in D.C.,” he says. “You can get a job anywhere.”

  I grind my teeth. I go out of my way not to remind him about his employment history, but the fact that he’s managed to stay at his current job for four months doesn’t mean my job is suddenly irrelevant. “Washington Insider pays me twice what anyone else will,” I remind him. “And there have been months when we’ve needed every penny of it to pay our bills.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. His shoulders sag and I immediately want to take it back. “I know it’s been rough going for a while. But it’s not like we’re completely screwed if one of us is out of work. You’ve never even touched your inheritance.”

  Just like that I’m irritated again. “I want that money to go toward something special. I’m not going to fritter it away on things we should be able afford on our own.”

  “You thought you were going to use it on school,” he argues, “but obviously that’s no longer happening. I get not wanting to fritter it away, but let’s at least put it toward something like a house. We can’t stay here. We need a place where we can raise a family.”

  Nothing he’s said is untrue, but my stomach sinks all the same. Once that money’s gone, it’s gone. And with it, any lingering hope of becoming an architect. I know it’s probably never happening, but the idea of giving it up hurts anyway. “Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”

  “It doesn’t have to be Manassas, but we would get so much more for our money there. We should at least go look at the model when I get back.”

  “When you get back? You’re leaving?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Day after tomorrow. I told you about it—Albany, and then down to Miami.”

  Is it unreasonable to expect him to stay home under the circumstances? Perhaps. But this, combined with the fact he hasn’t even asked about my test results, has me feeling separate from him. As if we are no longer part of a team, but two entities that merely coexist.

  I’m in bed, nearly asleep, when he finally slides in beside me. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t think Jeff was hot. He was Rocton’s star football player, and I’m still the envy of half my graduating class for landing him. But tonight, when he starts to tug at my shorts and those wiry chest hairs of his are scraping my back, I feel repulsed. And that’s a first in all our years together.

  I remove his hand. “Sorry. It was a long day. Dee was pissy about me being out this morning.”

  “Oh yeah,” he says, kissing the back of my head. “I forgot to ask. Everything good?”

  Nick wouldn’t need to be reminded, whispers that traitorous voice. I banish the thought, but something surly and petulant remains behind. It leaves me unwilling to tell him the whole truth, because he hasn’t earned it. “Yeah.”

  Eventually his breathing deepens, turning into small snores, and I realize I haven’t taken the meds Nick prescribed. I creep from the room and pop the pills into my mouth before I can change my mind. But instead of returning to bed, I curl up with my laptop on the corner of the couch and do something I absolutely should not: I search for Nick’s name and click on images. There are thousands of Nick Reillys in the world, but only mine was a top college swimmer, and those pictures are the last thing I should be looking at right now: Nick, shoulders arched as he does the butterfly. Nick, standing with teammates in nothing but a Speedo, a medal around his neck. Jesus, those abs. My stomach spasms at the sight of him.

  And since I’m apparently determined not to do the right thing tonight, I click on a video. The NCAA 400 Freestyle Relay. “Nick Reilly, of UVA, beginning the last lap at a serious disadvantage,” the sportscaster says. “Three seconds behind Paul Diering of Syracuse. I see no way for UVA to win the race at this point.”

  But then something miraculous happens, something I know will happen because suddenly I’m certain I was there, sitting in the bleachers, screaming my heart out. Nick starts to catch up.

  “But the race may not be over yet!” the announcer shouts. “Look at UVA. That’s Nick Reilly, using that powerhouse kick we’ve come to expect from him, and he’s—oh my God—he’s really gonna do it. Look at the way he cuts through the water…”

  I don’t even have to watch—I remember all of it. The way Nick comes out of the turn an arm’s length behind the guy from Florida State, the way he consumes that difference and then surges. I was hoarse from screaming after that meet. I watch as he wins, leaping from the pool to be surrounded by ecstatic teammates.

  I have absolutely no memory of meeting him in college, but I know I was there. I remember him searching for me, pulling me in for a soaking wet hug. The camera shows no hug, of course, and when it pans to the bleachers, the place I sat is occupied by someone else…someone I knew well—Nick’s mom. The sight of her hurts. She is, I think, another person I once loved but lost.

  I set the laptop on the table and pull the throw blanket
over me in frustration. It was bad enough when I remembered being in London with Nick, but now I’m remembering times that predate that…and it feels like I was happier in all of them than I am now.

  Which means a situation that was already fucked up has gotten worse. “I really hope the drugs work,” I whisper as I close my eyes.

  I do not plunge into dreamless sleep. Instead, I go someplace where I am young. Nick’s kitchen, in his parents’ home. He and his brother have both been sent to their rooms for the fistfight that erupted at the table, and only his mother and I remain behind.

  “I don’t know why they were fighting,” I tell her. “All three of us can fit in the treehouse at the same time.”

  She gives me a weary smile. A smile I have seen often of late. “The problem is that there are two of them and only one of you.”

  It takes me a second to understand what she’s really trying to say—that the fight wasn’t over the treehouse at all. It makes me nervous. I just want everything to stay the same.

  “I don’t want them to fight,” I tell her. The three of us have been best friends since we were little, and now they’re going to ruin everything.

  She sighs. “It’ll end eventually.”

  “When?” I ask.

  Her smile is sad. “When you decide between them.”

  13

  NICK

  My arms slice through the water, fast, but not fast enough. I’m trying to run away from all of this, but the harder I push, the more Quinn fills my head. After we hung up yesterday, I did my best to shake the whole thing off. She’s already taken, and so am I. I couldn’t be with her even if that weren’t the case.

  By the time I’m done, I’m so tired I can barely push myself out of the pool. But Quinn remains front-and-center in my brain. I can’t seem to outrun her.