The words feel so foreign on my tongue. The only other person I’ve told the story to since it happened is Cooper, and I didn’t tell him everything. I haven’t told anyone the whole story. Not even my parents.
My hands stop moving, and I wait for the usual “Sorry for your loss,” or “She’s in a better place now,” but Reese says neither of those things. He says nothing. Just nods as if to say, I understand your pain, and surprisingly, I believe him. So I tell Reese the same thing I told Cooper—the “official” story.
“She was eighteen, just about to graduate high school. She was pregnant, and one night she wasn’t feeling well. She went to the hospital because she was having abdominal cramps. She told the ER doctor she was pregnant, but because she wasn’t bleeding and a stomach virus had been going around, the doctor assumed that’s what she had. Without any further tests, he told her to go home and stay hydrated. She died that night.”
In clinical terms, I explain what an ectopic pregnancy is and how it took her life. That part is easier, when I can pretend it’s something I read out of a book, instead of something I lived through. As if a life can be extinguished and the rest of us can simply turn the page.
“Wow,” he says when I’ve finished. “That must have been really hard on you and your family.”
“It was.” After a breath, I say, “It is.”
“So now you want to help other pregnant women,” Reese says.
“Yes,” I say. “My patients mean everything to me.”
Reese watches me with an amused expression until I realize I’m digging with unnecessary vigor, and I’ve shoveled more dirt into the grass than the flower bed.
“Oops,” I say, and stop.
Reese laughs and comes over to help me move the dirt back to where it belongs. His face is just inches from mine, and our fingers brush once, twice as we sweep it aside with our hands. Once we’re finished, I scoot away from him.
“I’m covered in dirt,” I say, rubbing my hands together in a vain attempt to clean them.
“What’s wrong with dirt?” He smiles and smudges the black soil across one of my forearms. Before I can react, he says, “Let’s step back and see how it looks so far.”
We both push off the ground and stand next to each other. I hold my hands out awkwardly at my sides so as not to smudge my pants. I can’t help the smile that tugs at my lips as I take it all in. The colors and sizes and the way Reese arranged the flowers has come together beautifully.
“Those aren’t evenly spaced,” I say, pointing to the section I planted.
“It’s fine.”
“It won’t take long to fix.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder like he thinks I’ll lunge at them before he can stop me.
“They don’t have to be perfect,” he says. “Life isn’t about perfection. Doesn’t make it any less beautiful.” He turns to me with a look in his eyes that makes my chest flush.
“Who are you? Buddha?” I ask seriously, but when he bursts into laughter, my hardened exterior crumbles and I laugh, too.
“So are you ever going to introduce me officially?”
I furrow my brow, and Reese points to the puppy.
“Oh,” I say. “He doesn’t have a name yet.”
“You’ve had him for weeks.”
I shrug. “He’s not mine to name.”
“Well, if I hear you call him ‘puppy’ one more time, I’m going to name him.”
I smile. “Fine. I’ll tell Cooper to name him.”
“I’ve always liked the name Spencer for a dog.”
“I’ll have him take that into consideration.”
The sun, getting hotter every day, beats down on the back of my neck, and a line of sweat trickles down between my shoulder blades. I’ll need to shower before I head back to the hospital.
“Twenty minutes is up,” I say.
* * *
“Where are we at with mom in room 1217?” I ask Enrique as I exit a delivery room and pull off my gloves. I blink as my eyes adjust to the bright lights of the hallway.
“Nine centimeters,” he says. He’s wearing his how are you going to pull this off grin, as if overseeing two deliveries at once is a challenge I’m being scored on, and there’s a prize at the end.
“Shit.”
Enrique and I step closer to the wall to allow a band of nurses to rush past, each one of them fighting to be heard over the other.
“Room 1215?” he asks.
“Eight. But it’s not going well.” The baby is still anterior, and it’s getting lodged farther into her pelvis with every contraction. I think we’re going to have to cut, but she’s insisting we wait. “I’m going to give it twenty more minutes. That’s as much as I can comfortably give her and even then... Any chance 1217 is going to shoot this thing out?”
Enrique snorts. “Crazier things have happened.”
I stop to take a breath, scratch my forehead in frustration with my scrub sleeve. “Shit,” I say again, shaking my head. Enrique offers me new gloves, and I let him put them on me. He follows me into the delivery room two doors down.
After performing one C-section and one assisted delivery, stitching up two women and waiting long enough to be sure neither of them showed signs of a hemorrhage, I miss Cooper again. I find him asleep in bed with his glasses on and a tattered copy of Lord of the Rings on the bed next to him. I pick up the book and slide his glasses off his face. My thumb brushes his cheek—the first time our skin has touched since our failed attempt at lovemaking. We’ve been walking on eggshells around each other, polite and cautious. Both of us waiting for the other to make the first move toward something more natural. As usual, my work schedule gets in the way, along with my guilt. I take solace, for tonight, that I’m not on call tomorrow. My phone rings in my hand—one of my dad’s occasional late-night calls, when he’s feeling lonely—so I slip out of the room quickly before I wake Cooper.
“Do you remember the night of the grand opening at the pizza parlor?” Dad asks without preamble, his deep voice filling my heart with warmth from his first word. I close the bedroom door behind me and muffle my laugh. Dad has brought up this memory so many times that I’m not sure I remember the day so vividly from my own experience of it or because the detailed recounting of his own memory has been so frequent that it’s permanently stitched to mine.
“Of course I do,” I say, but I don’t stop him from reciting it again. It was one of the happiest days of my childhood, and I love going back to it as much as Dad does, even if it’s only in our minds. I don’t think I’m the only one who wonders if life would have been different if we’d stayed in the city, living to the beat of our own drum. It was as if, when Dad chose to accept his predetermined path as heir of the family business he’d never really wanted, we all felt we had to do the same.
“I locked up after the final customer left and turned up the stereo, and you, Abby, Charlie and your mom all danced on the tables to... What was it?” he asks. He knows, but he loves to hear me say it.
“‘Dancing Queen,’” I say, a grin pulling at my lips. I open the back door and walk out into the warm night. The croaking of the frogs along the creek is so loud it almost overpowers Dad’s voice, but I move farther into the yard anyway, walking along the ditch that grows longer with each passing day. The colors of the flowers Reese and I planted together are muted in the dark.
“That’s it,” Dad says, and I can hear his smile through the line. I imagine him in his bed, buttoned up in his striped pajamas, leaning against his headboard, looking the same as he had when we’d talked so many times during my teen years, on the nights I couldn’t sleep either. I could always count on Dad to be awake, too, both of us with too many thoughts running through our heads to get a good night’s sleep. He would sigh and tell me I was so much like him, as though he was proud of me
and sad to have passed on the curse at the same time. “You girls looked so beautiful in those matching dresses your mom found. Your skirts swirled through the air.”
“Charlie hates that story,” I remind him.
“He danced to it, too!” Dad objects.
“Exactly,” I say, another giggle bubbling up from my chest.
“It was your idea, you know. The dancing. We were all tired and stressed out from the long day, but you wanted to make sure we remembered what a special day it was. You’ve always had that way about you. You could just change the direction of things, shift the mood entirely. Abby was always the center of attention, but you...you sneaked right in there under the radar and could change the energy of the whole room without people even realizing it. You’re a true leader, Dylan. I miss having that around here.”
“I love you, Dad. You’ve always seen me as better than I actually am. But I need that sometimes,” I say with a laugh.
“Uh-uh. I’m your dad. I’ve been watching you your whole life. No one knows you better than I do. Plus, I don’t care how old you get, what I say goes.”
“Ha!” I burst out. But then I say, “Yes, sir.”
Dad sighs, and I stop my pacing to look up at the sky. The moon is almost full, and so bright. For a moment, I feel so far away from everyone and everything that it’s like the moon and I have a divine connection. Like she’s trying to remind me of what’s really important, and the answer is on the tip of my tongue.
“You still have that skill,” he says, as if finding the words for me. “Don’t forget it.”
I smile. “Yes, sir.”
“So how are you?” he asks. He never dwells on anything serious for too long.
I turn my back on the moon and look through its reflection on my bedroom windows to see the outline of Cooper’s sleeping form on our bed. I feel so many mixed emotions, but the most prevalent is...grateful.
“I’m good, Dad,” I say. Taking his words to heart, I add, “I think things are going to be good.”
The next morning, I wake without my alarm before the sun has risen, though I stayed up late talking to Dad. I look at the time: 5:17 a.m. I watch the light creep into the sky until it’s rimmed with gold, and I hear the tentative chirp of the early birds outside.
For the first time in a long time, I allow myself to lie here and enjoy the comfort of my bed, the tepid air on my legs where they peek out from beneath the blanket. Soon, though, a quiet whimper comes from the other side of the room, letting me know the puppy is ready to go outside. I roll over and am shocked to see Cooper sitting on the edge of his side of the bed. I hadn’t felt him move, hadn’t heard him make a noise. He’s facing away from me, his body hunched forward. His breathing is so shallow I can’t hear it. I reach my fingers across the bed, and my arm is just long enough to allow me to brush the hem of his shirt.
“Hey,” I whisper. “Do you want me to take him out?”
I wait for him to tell me he’s already up, he might as well do it. Cooper may have been up many times during the night with the puppy already. So far, having a dog doesn’t seem all that different from having a child.
“Coop? Are you okay?” I ask when he doesn’t respond.
After a pause, he looks over at me. His face is puffy and swollen. His eyes are red.
“Cooper?”
His face crumples, and he hides his eyes again. I shoot up to a sitting position and push myself across the top of the sheets until I’m right next to him. Sweat prickles under my arms as I wait for him to tell me someone has died, or is in the hospital, or that he’s sick and hasn’t worked up the courage to tell me.
I run my hand across his shoulders, and my voice is firm when I say, “Cooper, tell me what’s going on.” I hate the speculation. My mind can run through a dozen things that are worse than the truth for every second that passes. Over Cooper’s shoulder, I see the puppy stand and stretch. He wags his tail, oblivious to the tension.
Cooper turns his face to me, his eyes closed, and rests his chin on his shoulder. He opens his eyes, leans forward and presses his lips to mine. It should reassure me—if someone was hurt, he’d tell me right way—but this stall tactic, instead, makes my stomach sink lower.
“Cooper, you’re scaring me,” I whisper, his face still so close our breath mingles together.
“I have to tell you something, Dylan.”
I stop breathing. They’re the words no one wants to hear, and yet, I still have no idea what he’s about to say. Is he leaving me after all? Did he finally realize he deserves more than what I can give him?
“I...” His breath catches, and I see the effort it takes him to continue in the crease between his eyes. He presses his lips together so tightly they turn white, then he opens them and says, “I slept with someone else.”
My head sways. My blood runs cold. My stomach churns.
No one died, I tell myself.
No one’s in the hospital.
Everyone is fine, so I wait to start breathing again, but I can’t.
My lips tingle, my fingers tingle, my lungs ache from lack of oxygen, but still, I can’t make myself exhale. Darkness invades the outer edges of my vision. Surely I misunderstood him.
With that small amount of hope, I breathe, “What?” The puppy whimpers again, but neither of us looks in his direction.
When several minutes pass, it becomes clear Cooper has no intention of repeating what he said, unable to force the words from his mouth again. He only stares at me, waiting for me to react, waiting to see how I feel about the fact that he lied to me—he has ruined us. There’s no fixing this.
“You slept with someone else?” I ask. My voice is surprisingly steady. I want to make sure there’s no chance of any further confusion. I want to make sure, before I walk out the door, that I heard him correctly and that I’m justified in driving away from our life together without looking back.
But this is Cooper. This is the man who promised me he would never hurt me. The man who proposed marriage to me and told me I was it for him. There must be some mistake.
Cooper bites his lip, and tears leak from the corners of his eyes. He gives a slight nod—such a small movement, but it changes everything. Absolutely everything.
“Right,” I say.
I look out the window without seeing anything as my mind searches for the piece of the puzzle I somehow missed. I thought I knew everything about the man sitting so close to me that I can feel his heart beating, but with one revelation, I realize I know nothing. I know nothing about what’s going through his mind, what must have been going through his mind when he made the choice to do something we’d never be able to recover from, and I know nothing about how to cope with this. So I crawl across the bed and stand.
“It was just one time,” he says, reaching for me, but I shake him off. “Dylan, wait. Please. I never meant—”
But I don’t want to hear it. Any of it. Who she was, when it happened, what he was thinking. None of it matters.
I lock myself in the bathroom, dress and brush my teeth. The entire time, I try to remind myself of what my dad told me the night before. I could change the direction of things. I could shift the energy. But not in this situation. In this situation, the damage has already been done. Our relationship is already broken. So when I leave the bathroom, I walk right past Cooper, out the front door, and I don’t look back.
8
I drive down our street toward the city, though I don’t know where I’m headed. The morning sunlight flashes between the tree trunks like a strobe in my peripheral vision, causing the pain on the top of my head to swell. My jaw is so tight my cheeks ache, and my hands grip the steering wheel with a force that originates from deep within, my knuckles bulging and angry. The hurt and indignation push against the screen in my mind. I swallow hard.
Th
ere’s only one place I can think to go to clear my mind, so as I approach the city limits, I continue east and roll down the driver’s-side window to allow the warm breeze to still my shaking body. I merge onto Interstate 84, through the heart of Portland and out the other side, and with every mile I put between our home and me, the easier it becomes to fight the raging river of emotions inside me. After an hour of driving, I exit Highway 26 and turn down an old dirt road, rolling up the window to keep the dust out. The car jumps and stutters over the rain-beaten path, but I don’t slow down until I reach the familiar tree that marks the path Cooper, Stephen and I used to take down to the Sandy River during med school on many Friday nights.
I stumble out of the car and follow the overgrown path between the trees with memory as my only guide, leading me in a dance around every rock and every protruding root of the large Douglas firs. The humidity in the air grows heavier with every step deeper into the forest. I breathe it in, breathing out a bit of the ache that has settled beneath my sternum. I still can’t think the words to myself, I just feel it—that deep emptiness inside me. It’s the first time since I met Cooper that I’ve felt that sense of loneliness that haunted me after Abby’s death, when everything I thought I knew about life was ripped away like a curtain to the truth.
Then the questions start.
Why?
What did I do?
What did I not do?
Was there some clue I missed?
Is there anything I can do to fix this?
The last question startles me so much, I stop, examine it, then shake my head until it floats away. No. I won’t be that sad woman who thinks she’ll be the one that’s different, the woman who thinks she’ll be the one to change a man.
I slog on.
I stop when I reach the break in the trees. It comes up fast, and I nearly slide down the small drop that leads to the clearing where the remnants of our fire pit still creates a mangled circle in the center, but I catch myself on a branch above my head. My heart races and my chest heaves with each heavy breath, but for the first time in years, it’s because I feel alive, not because I feel like I’m slowly dying. I let go of the branch and shoot down the bank, whooping the entire way. I reach the bottom unscathed, but I can’t stop my voice from releasing every emotion that will no longer fit inside my skin. What starts off as an excited howl turns to a frustrated screech to an angry roar. I imagine Cooper standing in front of me, and I scream at him for abandoning me like this. Because that’s what he’s done. We may not have stood in front of all our family and friends to make our vows to one another, but he betrayed all the promises we made in the dark, under the covers. He may not have moved out of our house, but he took his heart back and every other part of him I used to be able to claim as mine. Different people get different parts of him each day—his patients, his coworkers, his friends, his parents—but there was a deeper level of intimacy that was only mine to sink into. And now there isn’t. Someone else has touched him the way I touch him. Someone else has whispered to him the way I whisper to him. Someone else shares his secrets. I have to swallow back the tears and bile in my throat.
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