by Hayes, Liv
Aimee looked down, her blonde waves tumbling against the periwinkle-colored top she wore.
“I’m going to ignore that,” she mumbled. “And chalk it up to the fact that you’re hurting right now.”
“I’m sorry,” I told her, and it was true. I felt horrible. “But I need to do this. I need to go. I’ll be back. You can wait up if you want.”
Aimee nodded.
“At least let me drive,” she said, and looked around. “Spare yourself the cab fare. Also, this mess is actually kind of frightening.”
I hugged her tightly. I knew how I was behaving, of course. Younger than I should have been behaving; a twenty-two-year-old in the body of a scorned teenage girl.
But as I threw on my coat, ignoring the first droplets of the coming storm, I paid no real mind to this. Pain makes you numb, but love makes you blind.
So even if it was right in front of me, my fate laid out like a deck of Tarot cards, I couldn’t see what was coming.
Chapter 24
ALEX
I sat on the edge of an empty hospital bed, in the same empty hospital room where I had first met Mia. I tried to recall that first moment – shuffling in, standing there with her file clutched tightly, the little traits that I picked up at first glance: the freckles on her nose, the way her eyes darted about the room. The look of concern on her face.
I picked at the thread-bare blanket, ignoring the buzzing in my coat pocket. It was Cait. She’d messaged me about a dozen times, and I’d ignored each and every one of them.
It was late. I was on call, and technically could have left an hour earlier, but I didn’t want to go home. Mia’s hand-prints were still on the window; her scent was still on my sheets. Her lip gloss still kissed the glass that sat on my kitchen counter.
My heart twisted. Looking towards the window, I caught my reflection, almost as if I weren’t really a man at all, but the shadow of one. I could see the eyes, the figure; the hair and mouth that made up all the parts belonging to Dr. Alex Greene. But who was he, really?
Lost. Gone. Out to sea.
A tap on the door gave me pause, and Dr. Weisman entered carefully.
“Give me your files,” he said. “I’ll take them. You go home.”
“I’m finished,” I told him. “I just can’t bring myself to leave.”
Weisman sat down beside me. Just two grown men, two white lab-coats. Two doctors with patients to see and files to skim and a lifetime ahead of us spent shaking hands and hoping that the hands we touched wouldn’t end up tagged and slid into a refrigerated slot.
“I’ve fucked everything up,” I murmured. “And now I don’t know what to do.”
“Move on,” Dr. Weisman said mildly. “There’s nothing else to do, Al.”
“Yeah,” I said, then: “Maybe.”
I combed my fingers through my hair, which had gotten maybe a little too long than could be considered professional. It was almost to my chin, which was covered in soft, overgrown stubble. Smarmy, not sexy. I looked haggard.
“How old was she?” Weisman eventually asked. “Your girl, I mean.”
“Why does it matter, Nick?” I asked, feeling slightly on the defense. “Twenty-two. She’s twenty-two.”
“Jesus.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “How old was that girl you were screwing? Around the same age, if I recall.”
“She was,” he confessed. “But I knew what it was, and she knew what it was. We weren’t tied to any delusions. And even though I fell, it was of my own volition. I dug that grave.”
“So why is your marriage over?” I snapped. Weisman drew back, appalled, and I added: “I’m sorry, Nick. I’m not in the right mind right now.”
Dr. Weisman lowered his eyes, glanced at his watch, and looked away.
“Could I ask exactly what you were expecting from all this?”
“You could,” I answered. “But the truth is, I don’t even fucking know. I just know that I’ve never been so obsessed with someone in my entire goddamn life, Nick. And now I feel like all the blood has been drained from my veins. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. And the worst of it is, I know better. I should have known better.”
He looked, in some way, as if he understood. But before he could say something, keep the conversation flowing, his sighed.
“I can’t stay,” he told me. “I’ve still got patients waiting for me.”
“Okay,” I said, vaguely morose.
“Go home,” he repeated. “And get some sleep, man. You need it.”
As he stood , I watched him brush the imaginary bits of lint or whatever from his knees.
“Nick,” I said. “One more thing.”
“Sure,” he said.
I paused, eyes cutting towards the window again. But I didn’t meet my own gaze.
“Do you miss your wife at all?”
Dr. Weisman chuckled, but the sound hung heavy with a kind of mournfulness.
“Not yet,” he confessed, his voice giving way to what might have been a slight uncertainty. “Goodnight, Al.”
When he was gone, and it was just me in the silent room, I mulled everything over. I aligned everything, every little notion and desire in front of me as if the thoughts and feelings themselves were chess pieces spread out on a checkered board.
What was I expecting, really? A future? Would Mia be my wife, or the mother of my kids? Would I be the one she saw when those church doors opened, and she came walking down the aisle?
No. And the truth is, I knew it from the fucking get-go. I was just too selfish, too consumed to acknowledge it.
She had fallen into my hands like a snowflake, only to melt in my palms. Our meeting meant only one thing – that were destined to say goodbye.
The door was open half-way when I got home. Startled, I stepped inside carefully, quietly. And while I was expecting – desperately hoping, even – for it to be Mia…it wasn’t.
Cait stood in the kitchen, holding the same glass with the pink smear of lip gloss on the rim.
When she saw me, she set it down.
“You’ve had company,” she noted quietly. “It’s scattered around this place like little love notes.”
“Get out,” I told her. “Now.”
She walked over to the window, looking at the hand-prints on the glass. She ran a fingertip over them, pressing her lips together bleakly.
“You’ve lied to me this whole time,” she said.
“You’ve officially lost the right to talk about lies,” I said coldly.
“And what if this was your baby?” she asked. “What then? Were you never going to tell me?”
“We aren’t together,” I told her. “There’s nothing I need to tell you. You live your life, I live mine. And now, please, I would like you to go.”
She nodded. She looked hurt, but it was impossible to quite make out what was going through her mind.
“I came to apologize,” she said. “I had to beg Mason to stay home. He was ready to follow me here and exchange the blow you gave him for a full-on blood bath.”
“I couldn’t give less of a shit if he showed up here wearing boxing gloves,” I snapped. “Now leave. I won’t say it a fourth time.”
“Why won’t you let me apologize?” she asked. “I’m trying to tell you…I’m just trying to say, horribly, that I’m sorry.”
We looked at one another. We looked at one another from a distance of maybe several feet, standing in a place that she had once shared with me. But all of that was over. We were strangers now. More than strangers.
I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me, either.
“I forgave you back at your apartment,” I said. “You’re forgiven, Cait. Now leave.”
“Who is she?” Cait asked. “Who was here with you?”
I pulled off my lab-coat, ignoring her. I tossed it on the one of the bar stools, walked into the kitchen, and poured myself a straight Maker’s Mark.
Cait watched me drink. When I set the glass down, I asked her:
“Would you like something?”
“I asked you a question,” she said. “You won’t answer.”
“Because it’s none of your business,” I said. “It seems like you have your own basket full of problems to concern yourself with. Keep your hands away from mine.”
“You’re such a fucking asshole, Alex.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Now leave.”
She was glowering at me, her eyes narrowed, sphinx-like and riveted.
“I don’t love him,” she said, as if saying that the weather was hot, or it the clouds looked ominous. As if it were a simple, stated fact. “I don’t love Mason.”
“You don’t love me, either.”
“I’m scared,” she said. “I’m scared, Alex. I don’t know what to do.”
I turned to her. She wasn’t looking at me anymore. Her eyes were on the polished wood floors, empty, her blonde hair covering part of her face.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “But I can’t help you.”
“You have,” she said. “I still want to pay you back.”
“I don’t want you to,” I told her.
“What do you want, then?” she asked. “I need to give you something in return. Words aren’t enough. You can’t do anything with words, Alex.”
“You’re right,” I said. “That’s why I want you to leave. I want you to leave my apartment, right now, and never speak to me again.”
Her mouth dropped, her bottom lip quivering like that first quake before the sobbing erupts. But she sucked in a long breath, wiped the hair from her face, and nodded.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll leave.”
She walked in slow footsteps over to the couch, picked up her sweater, and tugged it on. It was slightly too small, and the fabric strained against her stomach as she tried to button it up.
When a knock suddenly rattled against the door, she halted, startled.
“It’s nearly midnight,” she said.
“Ignore it,” I said.
The truth is, I didn’t even think it would have been Mia. But I wasn’t too sure who I had imagined it to be, because frankly, I wasn’t sure about any single fucking thing in my life aside from the arresting fact that I was a miserable man, who had engaged in a miserable fucking deed, and had lost the one thing I had ever truly wanted.
The one thing I would have never truly been able to keep.
Slinging her purse over her shoulder, she walked to the door.
I stayed in the kitchen, draining the rest of my cocktail.
And that’s when I heard it:
“You’re the girl,” Cait said. “You’re his patient, aren’t you?”
Chapter 25
MIA
I stared at her. Silent and glued to the floor. There was nothing I could say. I tried to size up exactly what was going on; to try and place the shattered pieces together like a water-soaked puzzle. But the gears in my head had slowed down, freezing entirely.
Blond, tall, visibly pregnant. She looked familiar. I knew I had seen her somewhere, but the points weren’t clicking. All I could do was blankly stare, the friction mounting, before finally something came sputtering out my mouth.
“You’re the secretary,” I said. “From the office.”
The woman looked at me – at first in surprise – but then, she began laughing. Not loud, or brass-like; there was a soft, treacherous lilt to it.
She turned to Dr. Greene, eying him sharply.
“Secretary?” she asked. “Is that what you told her?”
He appeared in front of the doorway, looking sick, with his face bled of any color.
He didn’t look at me.
“How long?” the woman asked. “How long have you been seeing each other?”
Alex shook his head defeatedly. He seemed smaller, then – as if fear were a spell that had made him shrink.
“This is none of your business,” he said lowly.
“You told me she was nothing,” the woman spat. “You said she was just a patient. This isn’t some girl you picked up at a fucking bar, Alex. This is a patient. What the hell is wrong with you?”
I felt like all I could do was stand there, watching the two of them. It felt unreal; like watching two actors have it out a television screen. Two very grown adults standing in front of a child, with hands at each other’s throats.
You told me she was nothing.
I could have thrown up. My heart felt wrung out; nothing but shredded tissue paper.
“I…” I started to say, but the woman heard none of it. “I’m not sure what’s going on.”
She had turned to face Alex completely, throwing blows at him with each cutting glance. Her fingers curled into her palms.
“I can’t believe this,” she said. “So, if this baby was yours, were just you just going to keep fucking this girl on the side-lines? Did she even know?”
“What?” I asked, mouth agape. “”What are you saying?”
The woman turned to me, her lips pressed together, her body heaving.
“Cait,” Alex said sternly. “You need to leave now.”
“Oh, fuck you,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m a terrible human being. I’m sorry I lied to you. But you were lying to me, too. Neither of us, up until this point, was any better than the other.”
She paused, moving straight past me. As she stood in the doorway, she gave me one last glance, her expression looking like someone had slapped her straight across the face.
“The only difference,” she added. “Is that I might have done something shitty, but I was going to tell you. I swear I was. But this – what you’ve been doing to her – what did you think was going to happen? Who do you think you are?”
“Cait,” he repeated again, weak and unhinged. “Please just fucking leave.”
“I should go straight to the board and tell them. On ethical principals alone,” she said, then turned to me. “Did he touch you?”
“Excuse me?” I balked. I was frightened, to be honest. This woman was frightening. Like some wicked, frost-haired Ice Queen.
“Did he have you sex with you?” she asked. “Were you two lovers?”
I said nothing. I didn’t need to. I didn’t want to. The woman just shook her head, hanging heavily in disgust, and raised a hand.
“Wow. Wow,” she muttered, full of disbelief. “Anyway, I’m sorry. Pregnancy hormones. My womanly propensity towards irrational behavior. Call it what you want,” she said. “But I am sorry. I am.”
“I don’t care what you are right now,” he said. “Get out. I’m not going to put my hands on you. I’m not asking you, either. I’m telling you.”
“You’ve officially tossed all reason away,” she muttered. “Good luck with this, Alex. Goodbye.”
She navigated around me as I slipped through the doorway, feeling much smaller and younger and in over my head than I had ever contemplated was possible.
And as I looked at him, as he looked at the floor, I felt as if I were holding all the broken pieces of my heart, like shards of glass, in my hand.
When all was quiet, nothing but dead silence, I finally spoke.
“What is this?” I asked him quietly.
“Mia,” he said, barely a whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He sat down on the white sofa, hands clutching his knees. He still wasn’t looking at me. He didn’t even seem to be inside his head; just a husk of the man I knew, with his mind floating elsewhere.
“She’s not some secretary, is she?” I asked.
“No,” he answered bleakly. “She’s not.”
I could have broke down right then. I could have dropped to my knees, sobbing. But I tried to remain composed.
“Who is she?” I asked. “And don’t you dare lie to me.”
“An ex,” he answered. “That’s who she is.”
I took a long, slow breath. Dizzy, I leaned against the foyer wall, begging myself not to faint.
“
And are you going to be a father, Dr. Greene?”
“It’s not my baby,” he swore.
“But you thought it was, didn’t you?” I asked. “You thought it was. And you never told me. You were keeping this from me.”
He nodded, leaning forward as if weak. Hunched over, he looked frail and feeble.
He stayed that way for a long, long time. Saying nothing. His hands eventually reaching out to conceal his eyes.
When they fell, as I still sat there, my backside aching against the polished wooden floors, I saw that his cheeks were wet.
He let out a shuddering sob; his breath a twisted, painful noise.
“You told her,” as I spoke, I felt my own face begin to burn. “You told her I was nothing.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said, his throat straining. “I’m so sorry, Mia.”
“You told me that you cared about me.”
“I do,” he choked. “I swear I do.”
“No,” I told him. I made myself stand, my knees wobbling, and I pressed my hands against the wall for balance. “Don’t you fucking say that to me. You have no idea what it means to care about someone.”
“I do!” he repeated. His voice raised with a broken anguish. “I swear to God I do.”
He stood, walking over to me, his hands recklessly clinging to my shoulders. I fought against him, but he was stronger, and held me against his chest.
He smelled like hospital. Like chemicals and earthy sweat and men’s shampoo. He smelled like him.
I felt warm tears fall down my cheeks in tiny rivers.
I felt his hands clutching me, both painful and pained. Like he was afraid to let go.
“I love you,” he said softly. “I love you so fucking much.”
There it was. There were the words I had been longing to hear. And here they were, spoken on the same night where all had come to surface that Dr. Alex Greene wasn’t just a fucked-up Cardiologist who fucked his patients, who deceived them, who kept the notion of fatherhood tucked away like a forged prescription in his back pocket – but a very vagrantly defiant, damaged man.
“I don’t love you,” I whispered into his shirt. “I hate you. I hate you so much.”
We were clinging to each other. I began weeping silently; fingers digging into his shirt while he held me so tightly my bones could have splintered.