Pulse

  Something about those words chilled me. Is that what this was, I thought? An escape from the suffocating realities that had slowly built around me, like a jail-cell wall, one cement block after another. A white-coat job with long, winding hours and little praise or affection. A lonely, cold apartment. No real friends. Cait’s pregnancy. This baby that I had on the way, that I would have to raise and help form into a decent human being. Unlike me.

  Mia could sense me tense, and her eyes widened.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “What are you thinking about?

  I kissed her forehead, a soft peck.

  “Your heart’s going off like crazy, honey,” I told her.

  Taking her wrist, like I had the first time we met, I listened to her pulse. And it was then that I recalled my first sight of her; this nervous girl in a hospital bed, or the sleepy-eyed face in a dark room, all tethered to wires and beeping machines.

  You’re a good doctor.

  No, I wasn’t.

  With my own heart thudding, I added: “It’s practically sprinting.”

  She fit so perfectly into the curve of my arm. I could have held her there forever.

  “It’s because of you,” she said. “My heart has a mind of its own.”

  As I held her, we listened to the beach noise. From our hotel room, on the beach-front, we could still hear the lap of waves against sand. The distant sound of gulls, or late-night laughter.

  And right then, though I would have never told her, my heart broke a little.

  Chapter 15

  MIA

  It was hard to climb back into his Porsche after leaving the hotel. We couldn’t stay the night, because he had the hospital looming over his shoulder, and appointments to take in the afternoon, and I had to pick my mom up at the airport. Graduation was finally here.

  “I wish you could come,” I said, feeling the pit form in my stomach. We were driving back from Clearwater, and the sun had not yet risen. Radiohead was playing in the background, a static lull, and I was curled up on the passenger’s seat, half-asleep.

  “I wish I could,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “You know I do.”

  I did know. But I still didn’t feel any better about the whole thing.

  “This sucks,” I said.

  “It does suck,” he agreed. “But I’ll be thinking about you all day.”

  That morning, running off of three double-shot espressos, I picked my mom up at the Orlando airport. We had breakfast at Nature’s Table, did a little bit of sight-seeing around the city, and I dropped her off at the Hilton to checkin before returning to my apartment for graduation preparations.

  I slid on my dress, then my graduation gown, and snapped a photo of myself. Holed up in the bathroom, I beamed it over to Alex.

  I waited for a quick respond, but never received one. Hospital-stuff, I figured. Nothing to get hyped up about. I just had to let it go.

  During the car-ride to campus, Mom peppered Aimee and I with little facts about Arizona, and the heat, and the people, and the scorpion that she’d found crawling around in her kitchen that same morning.

  “Scary,” I said. “What’s the point of scorpions, anyway? Like, spiders eat bugs, bats eat bugs, snakes kill spiders, but what do scorpions actually do besides look terrifying?”

  “Dad killed it,” she reassured me. Dad was my second favorite relative in the world, who unfortunately had to stay behind for work, which was also the same reason that mom could only stay until Sunday.

  “Thank God for Mia’s Dad,” Aimee remarked. We all agreed.

  During the ceremony, as I walked across the stage to get my diploma, I tried to imagine that Dr. Greene – that Alex – was in the crowd, hiding somewhere, watching me while en incognito. I imagined his brimming smile, full of pride and maybe a little bit of nostalgia as he remembered his own college graduation.

  As I held that diploma, I felt strangely sad. But I smiled through it, hugged Aimee tightly, and blotted the tears as my mother took a million photos, and told me a million times how proud she was of me.

  When Aimee invited me out, despite my mom’s protest for me to go, to have fun, I decided to shack up with her and watch old movies and eat ice cream. Seeing her again for the first time since Christmas only reminded me of how much I had actually missed her.

  “When do you expect to hear back from Cambridge?” she asked. Because this was the only topic on everyone’s tongue these days.

  “Any day now,” I told her. “Maybe tomorrow, even.”

  “Are you nervous?”

  “Yes. No. Absolutely.”

  Mom laughed.

  “So, what happened with you and Evan? Aimee said you two were no longer a going concern. You know, I liked him. He was a nice boy.”

  I guess. I guess he was. Maybe we’re all generally nice people, and just glaringly imperfect humans.

  “We were together, and now we’re not,” I told her. I didn’t want to get too deeply into it. It was over, and I just didn’t care to keep picking the scab. “There’s not a whole lot to tell.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Is there anyone new in your life?”

  This was the hardest part. Lying to my mother. Because how you tell them, truly, that you’re falling for an older man that was also your doctor?

  “No,” I lied. “Not now, at least.”

  We spent the rest of the night watching The Princess Bride, then fell asleep.

  That morning, Alex texted me. I read it aloud to myself as I was brushing my teeth:

  I’m so proud of you, my little fox.

  Before I knew it, it was already time for me to bring Mom back to the airport. I watched her wheel her luggage inside, waving a thousand frantic goodbyes in my direction, and I swallowed the lump in my throat, reminding me that such a thing existed as summer break, and holidays, and that none of this was forever. It just felt like it.

  Back at the apartment, with my phone buzzing, I reached inside my purse only to pull out a pair of glasses. Dr. Greene’s glasses.

  How?

  I thought about it, then it clicked. I must have grabbed them off the Porsche’s floor while scrambling to pick up the spilled mess from my purse. It had managed to fall from the dashboard, but that was my own tired stupidity.

  “Guess what I have?” I smirked. “I hope you don’t have a terrible headache or anything.”

  “Contacts,” Dr. Greene said. “A glorious invention. Still, I’ll be needing those back.”

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “At the office,” he said. “I could pick them up after?”

  It was raining outside. I should have accepted the offer. It would have been safer that way, in more ways than one.

  “Or I could bring them to you.”

  “Mia,” I could hear him sigh, even though he had tried to pull the phone away. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I’ll be quick,” I promised. “Anyway, I have to work tonight. The library is still open until midnight, you know. I won’t be here later on.”

  He told me to meet him outside, so I threw on a hooded sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, and braved the heavy pelting of rain. In Florida, the rain didn’t come in subtle, gentle droplets. Each storm was almost like a threat from God, that he could rip open the Earth and swallow us whole again if he wanted.

  It took me almost fifteen minutes to snag a cab, at which point I was thoroughly soaked. When I finally arrived at the office, the driver agreed to hang around the parking lot as long as he could keep the meter going.

  I stood outside the entrance, waiting for him, anxious about the amount of cash that I had on me, and where he was.

  I pulled out my phone, shot him a text, and about ten seconds later, he emerged. Accompanying him was a heavily pregnant woman; blond and statuesque and very beautiful in a prim and proper, Ice Queen kind of way.

  When I smiled at him, she noticed me, and asked who I was.

  “This is a patient of mine,”
he explained. “Mia, this is Cait.”

  We shook hands. She stood for a second, silently trying to figure me out.

  “Well, alright then. I’ll see you later,” she said to Alex, then turned to leave.

  He waited until she was safely out of the parking lot before speaking again.

  “Who is she?” I asked.

  “Secretary,” he said quickly. “Obstetrics.”

  I didn’t think twice about it. I simply grabbed his glasses, handed them over, and waited for him to stop acting as if he’d seen a goddamn poltergeist.

  “You really can’t just show up here unannounced,” he said. “We need to be careful.”

  “Wow,” I muttered. “I really am sorry, then.”

  I was sort of pissed, to be honest, but I knew I had to try and be understanding. There was no way to go about this without it being tricky. If I wanted to be around him, it had to be by his rules.

  “You know how much I care about you,” he said, his tone apologetic.

  “Of course I do,” I said. “Anyway, I need to go. The meter’s running, and I really should have waited, because I’m broke.”

  He reached into his wallet, withdrawing a crisp twenty. And despite the discomfort, and maybe even a bit of mild shame, I accepted it, thanked him, and darted across the parking lot. All while cursing the rain.

  Sifting through the nickels and dimes at the bottom of my purse, I was thankful to have this new job. I barely had any scratch to my name. Any extra amount went towards food. If I didn’t have campus housing, and actually needed to pay for rent and utilities, I’d be screwed.

  And here Dr. Greene was: a successful and smart doctor.

  I sank into my seat, and the driver seemed to notice my distress. He offered me a Starburst from his pack, saying:

  “You can have the last pink one, if you want.”

  I took it, smiling.

  “You’re awesome,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Later that afternoon, I shot him a text. Then a second one. But he never replied.

  Chapter 16

  ALEX

  I was in the OB/GYN waiting room, sitting next to Cait, when a text alert pinged. My eyes had been glued to this giant glass tank in the corner, filled with various exotic-looking fish, that was supposed to be therapeutic or something. They had this lilting, instrumental music playing in the background. Flutes. And the entire room was bathed in a warm, champagne light.

  Ping.

  Cait’s eyes were glued to some Home and Gardening magazine. She didn’t even think twice about the alert. I nudged her, saying:

  “One second. It’s the office. I’ll be right back.”

  She nodded silently. Nobody seemed to actually talk in this waiting room. It was all just the background music, the friendly chirp of the receptionist, or the flipping of magazine pages.

  Outside, leaning against the front door, I opened the text.

  I know you’re probably busy. I’m sorry for being such a pain in the ass.

  She wasn’t, of course. She was just being her age. A twenty-two-year-old girl, anxious and wondering where the guy she’s been fucking has been off loitering, and what’s he’s been thinking about, and why he hasn’t answered her texts aside from my last vague message. It wasn’t a conversation. And why not?

  Long-handed answer? I was too anxious to message her with Cait present; she had appeared curious since watching Mia leave the office. I could see it all over her face. Everytime I glanced at the floor, or at my phone – sneaking a peek at the photo that Mia had sent me, dressed in her graduation garb – she perked up.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  We were standing in the nursery, our hands covered in paint, when the phone sounded. I sighed heavily.

  “Nothing,” I had told her. But what I wanted to say was: “Everything.”

  Now, here I was, standing outside the entrance of a Women’s Health Center, waiting to see my unborn child in all of its ten-fingers-and-toes glory.

  I know, I should have been more excited. And I definitely wasn’t feeling nothing. A sense of prospect for this very moment had almost worked its way through my bloodstream like a slow, simmering mix of anxiety and dread and a pinch of excitement. If a patient were to come to me with these symptoms, I’d probably suggest some testing, but I knew this was just a heavy dose of anticipation.

  I wanted to feel happier. I was hoping, especially over the past several weeks, that something would shift inside of me; that some sort of hidden, buried paternal instinct would finally work its way through the soil and come to blossom. Sure, maybe most fathers-to-be are a little scared, but that’s all I was feeling.

  I wasn’t happy about it. Not at all. And maybe this was what I needed – to see the baby as something more than just words out of Cait’s mouth, or paint swatches taped to a blank wall.

  After snapping myself out of the daze, I went back inside and waited. I pissed around on my phone playing Plants vs. Zombies. I read a news article on the situation in Palestine. I re-read Mia’s text, staring at the photo with what was probably a weird, blank-looking expression.

  When they called Cait’s name, I felt insecure and unsettled as we maneuvered our way down the hall and into this little, darkened room. I sat down on the open seat beside where Cait lay down, her stomach having seemed to really pop in the last few weeks.

  “He or she has been very active lately,” Cait remarked. “I’ve barely been able to sleep, and my back is killing me.”

  She was talking to her doctor, and not me. The same doctor whose hand I shook for the first time, and introduced myself to for the first time, and where, for the first time in this particular office, I was hearing about Cait’s woes. The mother of my child, with her sore back and lack of sleep.

  My own wretched behavior, my own distance, suddenly became very real.

  When I spotted Cait’s fidgeting hands, all unwoven nerves, I held one. For the sake of formally-trained beside manner, maybe, but if there was ever an appropriate time, this would be it.

  I used my empty left to shake her OB’s hand, smiling sincerely even though I knew that the returned smile was fake. She didn’t like me much, I sensed. But I guess it was deserved. Cait was full-term now, and this was the first time we were meeting.

  The ultrasound tech was nicer. Her smile was kinder, brighter. When she squirted the contact gel onto Cait’s stomach, she warned that it would be cold.

  At first, the screen was blurry. She moved the wand around, and I waited, mouth slightly agape, for the picture to clear.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to know what you’re having?” she asked.

  The wheels in my head, as I saw my baby for the first time, began to shift and turn. There it was, all laid out in front of me, indisputable proof: a tiny profile, tiny limbs, tiny legs all kicking about.

  “I’d like to know,” I said, swallowing. “If it’s a girl or a boy. I really would. Cait?”

  She glanced up at me, surprised and vaguely uncomfortable. She was still holding my hand, but there lacked that expected grip that two expectant parents might share.

  After wavering in some hesitancy, lowering her eyes, she spoke.

  “Okay,” she agreed softly. “I’d like to know, too.”

  After a minute of searching, the technician’s eyes lit up.

  “Are you ready, Mom and Dad?” she asked. God, she looked so delighted.

  “Yes,” I said. But Cait said nothing.

  She grinned widely.

  “It’s a girl,” she declared. “Congratulations, you two. She’s beautiful.”

  A girl. A baby girl.

  “Wow,” I said softly. “A girl.”

  I watched my daughter dance around on the screen. She kicked and moved her arms and legs, squirming around, all nestled and snug. When she stretched her fingers, I could see every one of them, all perfectly formed.

  I tightened my hand around Cait’s, full of a sudden, unexpected affection. But she didn’t return the gesture
.

  The technician printed out a stretch of photographs, and I observed each one carefully. When she was gone, I glanced up at Cait, full of awe. The nausea was still very real, the anxiety still very constricting. But I now felt something new. She was here, and she would be welcomed into the world soon.

  “We’re having a little girl, huh?” I mused. “I guess that could gives you some liberty to color-coordinate the nursery now.”

  She nodded lightly, withdrawing her hand from mine.

  “Who was that girl?” she asked. “The young one, with the dark hair?”

  As if on cue, ping. Another text.

  “I’m not sure I know who you’re referring to,” I said. When confronted, if ever there’s one resounding truth: play convincingly dumb. “The girl who met us outside the office entrance?”

  “Yes.”

  “I told you, she’s just a patient,” I said quickly. “Translation: she’s nothing.”

  Cait wiped the gel from her stomach with a damp towel. I stood, sickened at the words that had just fallen from my mouth.

  She’s nothing.

  I looked down towards the floor; white and gray speckled tile. My phone felt as if it were burning in my back pocket.

  “Do you need any help with the nursery items?” I offered. “The crib. I know you’ll probably want some help with that.”

  “There’s no need,” she said mildly. “Mason’s coming over tonight. He’ll help.”

  I stopped short. “Mason?”

  “Yeah,” she trailed off, pulling her shirt down. “Does that bother you?”

  “Is water wet?”

  “Alex,” she said, unamused. “Seriously.”

  “I’m just trying to understand,” I told her. “I thought you two were no longer an item. I thought he’d kicked you out of his place.”

  She grew quiet. She didn’t speak again until we were in the parking lot.

  “I don’t want to do this alone,” she finally said, leaning against her car. An old Acura. My old Acura. A loan that would probably become something more along the lines of permanent. “And you’ll always be her father, but if this isn’t going to be a unit, I’d like to have someone there with me.”