Perfectly Undone

by Jamie Raintree

  “Don’t be.” He rests his forehead on mine and lets his hands fall to my shoulders. He squeezes me tightly like it’s taking all his strength to stop, then he lets me go.

  15

  There’s something my dad said when he visited me last that has stuck in my head ever since. He said, “Sometimes the hardest thing you can do is leave.” I think for him that’s true. He tried to leave his old life behind once, to open his pizza parlor and start a different kind of home with Mom. He left behind his childhood, the family business and the approval of his parents. Yet he returned without a second thought. He sold his business and resigned himself to living the life his dad had laid out for him. To him, it was easier to follow in those familiar footsteps than to create a new world without his father in it.

  For me, the hardest thing I could do is stay. Leaving is easy. Wiping away all the past mistakes and severing all connections to people who have seen me at my worst would mean a fresh start. Maybe I’d have a chance at forgetting my mistakes, too, if I wasn’t reminded of them every day, every time I walk into the hospital or into the house that has encapsulated every argument I’ve shared with Cooper and everything that could have been.

  Leaving with Reese would have been easy.

  But it wouldn’t have been honest. Like with Cooper, he would have only known part of who I am. And whether I like it or not, Abby’s death is, and will always be, a big part of what has shaped me into this person I’ve become. I thought keeping that from Cooper would give me a blank slate with him, away from my family, but all it did was put a wall between us that we were never able to overcome. Because keeping a secret doesn’t mean it never happened. My past is me, for better or worse.

  So when I get home that night, my hair still damp with river water, I make the hardest choice for me. I decide to stay.

  I get back to the clinic, easing my way in with my patients and keeping Enrique close during deliveries. He’s forgiving of my skittishness, and I try to be forgiving of it, too.

  I keep my appointments with Megan, even when she makes it easy for me to check out by calling to reschedule. For her August appointment, I offer to stop by her house instead.

  Stephen and Megan’s house is a warm country-style home outside the city, mere miles from mine and Cooper’s. Stephen rented an apartment near the hospital when he left, but I refuse to think of this place as anything other than theirs. The hum of wildlife in the leaves above is the only sound that greets me when I get out of my car. It’s one of the things I love most about living on the outskirts—room to breathe. I pull my bag out of the trunk.

  Something feels different as soon as Megan opens her front door, but I try to write it off as my own uneasiness. When she fumbles as she pushes the screen toward me, though, and nearly hits me with it, I realize it’s hers.

  “Come on in,” she says, her hair mussed and her lips pale with the lack of her usual red lipstick.

  “Look at you,” I say. Her face is aglow with pregnancy hormones and happiness. In fact, despite her restlessness, she’s never looked better. Her shirt is taut against the ball of her stomach, no longer a secret to anyone. “How are you feeling?”

  “Good,” she says. “Really good.”

  I reach out to rub her belly.

  “Hi, Dylan,” a man’s voice says behind me, and I jump, clutching at my heart. When I turn, Stephen emerges from the kitchen, looking proud and shrunken in uncertainty at the same time.

  “Hi,” I say breathlessly, then look back to Megan, worried I might have said something I shouldn’t have.

  “He knows everything,” she says.

  Stephen walks over and places one arm around her, a hand on her belly. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him. He looks thinner, the scruff on his face the longest I’ve known him to wear it, but the glow emanating from within him tells me he’s going to be okay.

  I stammer, “So...are you...” I waggle a finger back and forth between them.

  “We’re...considering our options,” Megan says.

  Stephen smirks but says nothing.

  “Tea?” Megan asks, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She goes to the kitchen before I respond. Stephen laughs softly.

  “She’s nervous about what her family is going to think,” he says by way of explanation.

  I nod. “They’re going to be thrilled,” I say, sadness creeping into my voice as I picture them all back together as a family. Without me.

  “Come here,” he says, holding open his arms. I set my bag on the coffee table and allow him to fold me up against his chest. “How are you holding up, kiddo?” he asks.

  “You heard about the baby, didn’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Is everyone at the hospital talking about it?”

  “No,” he says and runs a hand over my hair soothingly. “Aaron interned a couple of years behind us, remember? He knows we’re close, so he wanted to make sure you had someone to talk to.” Aaron is the neonatal nurse who looked at the baby after he was wheeled out, and who pronounced him dead not long after.

  “I’m getting through,” I say. “So you came home.” I step back so I can look at him.

  “I did,” he says. “I missed my wife. And I missed being a husband. Who would have thought?”

  We both smile. “Me. I’d hold on this time.”

  “I intend to. Don’t you worry about that. And what about you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you miss Cooper?” he asks.

  I huff out a dry laugh. “So he finally told you, huh?”

  “I can’t exactly be mad at the guy for taking so long. It’s hard to admit it to yourself when things don’t turn out the way you hope, let alone to other people. But you were right about me and Megan.”

  “That you’re meant to be?”

  “Something like that,” he says with a laugh. “So are you and Cooper, you know?”

  Megan comes out of the kitchen, holding two mugs of tea, and hands one over to me, saving me from responding.

  “You ready?” she asks.

  I nod.

  Once we’re alone in her room, I palpate her belly and she stares at me.

  “You seem different,” she says.

  “What do you mean by different?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I can’t put my finger on it. Something just seems different. Calmer, maybe?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I guess you could say that.”

  “Have you found a new grant to apply to?” she asks. I focus on the Doppler as I find the baby’s heartbeat. It’s there, strong and steady.

  I shake my head. “Can I tell you something?” I ask as I wipe the jelly off the Doppler.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m afraid of getting approved for one.” I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but my focus has been elsewhere, and I wonder if that’s the way it needed to be. She’s right—something is different inside me, and I don’t know what it means yet.

  “Really? Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, thoughtfully. “I guess I’m questioning whether it’s still the right path for me.”

  I remember one of my conversations with Reese, about how the Universe is waiting on me to be ready for the grant. I feel like committing to sticking out this tough transition in my life is a step in the right direction, but there are still so many decisions to make, like what part my parents are going to play in my future, as well as to what extent Abby’s memory is going to guide my present.

  I stand up and cross the room to my bag to replace my equipment. I hesitate there for a moment.

  “You know how you can have a goal and be so focused on getting to it that you don’t bother to look around you? Just straight ahead?”

  “Sure. That’s why I
stubbed my toe yesterday on the way to get a bag of cookies from the kitchen.”

  I laugh and lean against the hard wooden dresser. “The thing is, I feel like I’ve finally stopped to look around and realize I wasn’t running toward something, I was running away from something. But I don’t think there’s anything chasing me anymore.”

  I thought by trying to save everyone, I could forgive myself for not doing the right thing for Abby. I thought if I could redeem myself by establishing the need for earlier pregnancy testing, I could finally admit to my parents what really happened the night before Abby’s death, and we could work through it. But after losing Erika’s baby, I realize saving everyone is impossible. I’m just going to have to find a way to forgive myself anyway.

  Megan narrows her eyes. “I’m not sure I follow.”

  I sigh and push myself off the dresser. “I don’t know if I do either. I just haven’t always made the best decisions. It’s hard to trust them anymore.”

  “Like with Cooper?” she asks. I raise my eyebrows in question. “Yes, I know. He told me.”

  “So he knows you’re pregnant, too? Are you okay?”

  “You’re worried about me?” She laughs. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Well, it’s been months.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” she says. “Stephen was gone half a year, and not a single day went by that I didn’t pray he’d come back. When you love someone, when they’re the one, you don’t forget. Those feelings don’t go away.”

  “No,” I say, sitting back down on the bed. “They don’t. I guess I wasn’t the one for him, though. He’s already moved on.”

  Megan furrows her brow. “Dylan? Honey? What the hell are you talking about?”

  I try to smile. “I heard her in the background on the phone when I talked to him a few weeks ago. She called him ‘Coop.’” I spit the word. “You and I are the only ones who call him that.”

  “When?” she asks, still skeptical.

  “I don’t know. The night his patient was diagnosed with cancer, I think.”

  Megan shakes her head. “You two. It was me. He came over after he left your house. He was so torn up about his patient and about you. He was afraid he did the wrong thing by almost kissing you, but more afraid he’d always regret it if he wasn’t honest with you about how he’s feeling.”

  This news sends an avalanche of emotions shooting through my bloodstream. I take a shaky breath. Megan reaches out and takes my hands in hers.

  “Don’t give up on Cooper, Dylan. I know he made the worst mistake a man can make, but he loves you. That deep, walk-to-the-ends-of-the-earth kind of love. The kind of love that only comes once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. The only woman he wants—the only woman he’s ever wanted—is you.”

  My eyes tear up, and I nod. I know this. I’ve always known this. That’s what scares me.

  “So why does it have to be so hard?”

  Megan reaches out to touch the tips of my hair, loose around my shoulders for once, and says, “Because that’s the only way to discover how strong you are.”

  I smile. “Where did you learn that?”

  “In my birthing class,” she says and we burst into laughter.

  I stand up and grab my bag, ready to head home for the day. Before I leave the room, she stops me.

  “If it means anything,” she says, “I support you. With your grant and with Cooper. No matter what you choose, I know you’re going to do great things. You can’t help it.”

  I turn her hand over and kiss it, lean over to kiss her belly. “It means everything,” I say.

  * * *

  “What are you doing here today?” I ask Enrique in the clinic one morning later that week.

  He keeps his head down as he sorts through charts. “Jenna needed the day off, so I covered her shift.”

  “Weren’t you scheduled to work in Labor and Delivery?”

  Enrique shrugs and hands me a stack of charts—my appointments for the day. There are a few missed call slips on top. “They’ll survive without me.”

  “I doubt that’s true,” I say over my shoulder as I walk to my office. He winks.

  I sort through my missed calls and nearly drop the charts when I see the second to last one. A patient called yesterday to schedule an early morning meeting with me today, which is exactly why Enrique is here. Erika is already in my office waiting for me.

  I turn to see him watching me with a frown.

  “Thank you,” I mouth. He bows his head in a subtle nod, then returns to his work.

  I take a deep breath and open my office door slowly, prepared for anything. There she is, sitting upright in one of my chairs, the picture of grace in a skirt suit, her legs crossed, hands in her lap.

  “Hi, Dr. Michels,” she says with a weak smile.

  “Hi, Mrs. Martinez.” I close the door and unload the charts onto my desk. I need another minute—or year—to prepare for this moment. In truth, I’ll never be ready. Still, I’m not running.

  “How are you?” I ask, my gaze still on the charts. I walk around my desk and sit down. There’s a long pause that sends a chill down my spine.

  “I’m okay,” she says. Her voice is soft, but I hear the strength there that I’ve always seen in her. “It’s hard to be here again.”

  Her honesty prompts my own. “Yes, it is.”

  I finally look at her. Her eyes are distant, and she’s still carrying much of the baby weight. This bothers me more than anything else. Her body went through all the changes a mother goes through to develop a fetus, but she has no child to show for it. And yet she looks every bit the mother she still somehow is.

  I sit in silence as she tells me about the therapy she and Andrew have been going to together. She says they’re both taking some time off work to focus on their relationship, so the loss doesn’t come between them. She tells me how they’re coping at home and that they’ve decided to wait a year to try for another child. They want to love their next baby in a new way, not as a way to grieve the one they are without.

  The hardest part about the conversation is that she and Andrew have always reminded me of the way Cooper and I could have been if I’d been courageous enough to let him in, if I’d asked for help with my pain instead of keeping it bottled up inside me. Erika and Andrew have gone through one of the worst experiences a couple could ever face, and somehow, they are making it through.

  I nod in all the right places, but I can’t find the words to respond. How can I tell her she amazes me and that she’ll make the best mother when the time comes? That time should already be here, and there’s nothing I can say to make it better.

  “Dr. Michels,” she finally says, her voice lowering an octave or two. She fidgets with the hem of her skirt, pulling it farther down. “I’ve been wanting to say something to you since that day.”

  I put on a brave face and sit up more attentively, but I feel the blood drain from my cheeks.

  “I just wanted to thank you,” she says. Her eyes swim with water. Mine do, too. “That day was the best and the worst day of my life.”

  A gasp escapes my lips, and I press my fist to my mouth to keep myself from dissolving.

  “Losing Andrew Junior is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to face. The hardest thing I hope I’ll ever have to face. But I want you to know, I never blamed you. I saw what you did for him, and I know you did everything you could. And you were there for me in a way you didn’t have to be. For that, I can never thank you enough.”

  I was prepared to carry her heartache and anger for the rest of my life, right next to my grief over Abby, but I never could have prepared for her gratitude or the heavy load of guilt that falls from my shoulders with her words. My throat aches with unshed tears. My arms ache to hug her.

  “I can’t tell you...” I
take a deep breath. “I can’t even begin to tell you what that means to me.”

  “You’re an amazing doctor, and because of that, I figured this has probably been hard on you, too. I wanted to make sure you knew you have nothing to be sorry for. I hope when the day comes, you’ll deliver my next baby. And all the ones after that.” It’s too good. This isn’t real. “Yes, it’s been unbearable to lose my sweet angel, but Andrew and I...we’ve never been stronger. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this, it’s that you can’t blame yourself for the things life throws at you. So don’t let this or anything else hold you back, Dylan, okay?”

  I nod, and through my tears, I smile.

  * * *

  Since the night of my parents’ anniversary—the night I discovered my father’s infidelity—my mom has called every couple of days, without fail. At first I didn’t answer because I was too angry to hear any more about her side. When Dad came to my house to ask for forgiveness, he explained some of the deeper issues in their relationship that I couldn’t understand as a teenager, but old habits die hard, and I still didn’t know how to speak to my mother.

  Eventually, as she continued to call, the anger melted into shock. It had been more than a decade since Mom had tried to reestablish our relationship, and I didn’t know how to take it. My anger for my mom has become as much a part of my identity as Abby’s death, as sad as that is. I didn’t know what it would mean to let go of that. Would it mean letting go of Abby, too?

  Once the shock wore off, I ignored her calls because I felt ashamed of my behavior. Time with my mom was all I had ever wanted—here was my opportunity, and I was letting it slip by. I was cruel to her in our last conversation, and it was just another thing I owed her an apology for. I may have had a right to be angry, but that hurtful, combative Dylan isn’t the Dylan I want to be. Erika’s forgiveness reminded me of that.

  On Saturday morning, I drive to my parents’ house. I let myself in, and my tennis shoes squelch against the tile floor in the foyer. I don’t know what I expected to see or how I expected to feel when I came here for the first time without Dad in the house, but as I look around, it doesn’t seem all that different. The decor, the photos, the furniture—they were all Mom’s choosing. Dad would have no use for them anyway in a downtown apartment by himself. When I peek into his study, it’s empty.