Four Chambers: Power of the Matchmaker

by Julie Wright

  “So you didn’t invite her to protect her?”

  He didn’t answer right away, and I didn’t know what else to do but wait, so I waited.

  “Sort of,” he said. “At first. But then as the time came closer, I knew I didn’t want to come alone, and I was about to call her when you showed up, and then I knew I didn’t want to come with anyone else . . . but you.”

  We stared at each other for an undetermined amount of heart beats. He didn’t want to come with anyone else. He didn’t want to come with anyone else. He wanted me to be with him.

  His words were magnetized, pulling me in to him until I felt his breath on my face. “You didn’t have to lie,” I whispered. “I would’ve come either way.”

  A puff of breath passed over his lips, almost a gasp. Almost a sob. “You have no idea how long I've waited to hear you say that. How long I’ve waited for you to . . .”

  I closed my eyes and leaned in to close the distance, to stop him from talking and to lose myself in the kisses that had become my fondest memory, but it seemed no matter how far I leaned, our lips never made contact.

  I opened my eyes.

  Everett had pulled away and sucked in air hard. “But Liz doesn’t deserve this,” he said.

  I pulled back, too, snapped into reality with a truth that had to include a perspective beyond our own. “Right. Liz. Doesn’t. I’m sorry.” I started to get up, but his hand on my hand stopped me.

  “Don’t go. Not like this. Let me explain.”

  I felt insanely stupid and wanted to do the running I was used to doing when dealing with Everett. “Everett. There’s nothing to explain. You have a girlfriend, and she’s really nice. The last thing I want is to make some sort of Greg out of you so that Liz has an excuse to scrawl the word TOOL on your truck door. I just lost my head for a minute and you apparently lost yours too, but now we’re both in the right frame of mind, so we can forget this . . .” I tried to wave my arms and perhaps shake his hand off mine, but he held firm. He remembered well enough all the times I’d bolted and wasn’t about to give me that chance again now.

  “Andra, I love you.”

  I stopped trying to stand and stared at him.

  Why now? Why tell me that now after he’d refused a kiss and told me his girlfriend didn’t deserve to be cheated on?

  He continued once he realized I’d become a statue at the end of the pier. I couldn’t even turn away from him and look out to the ocean where wild waves offered more stability than the hard wood planks beneath me. A breeze kicked in over the water’s surface and a frothy chill over me.

  “I’ll break things off with Liz as soon as we get back.”

  Wait. What?

  “You’re . . . say that again?”

  “I mean it, Andra. Being with the wrong person is just wrong. It’s always been you. But I kinda gave up hope on you ever deciding on me again.”

  My head felt fogged over with too much. Just. Too. Much. “You can’t do that to her. She’d be devastated.”

  “No, what I can’t do is live a lie with her. She doesn’t deserve to be cheated on, which is the only thing keeping me from you. But she doesn’t deserve to be lied to, either. I’ll come clean, and then you and I—”

  “Can figure stuff out.” I finished his sentence for him.

  We were both on our knees smiling at each other over this new deal we’d just created.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’ll figure this stuff out.”

  In one swift motion, I leaned in and kissed his cheek. “That’s a totally lame confession of wrong-doing. Next time, I expect to hear about you stealing a sticker from a kid you gave a shot to.”

  “I’ll tell you about the time when I gave a shot to a kid who kicked me and I kicked him back.” He helped me to my feet.

  We walked to the house not touching each other, but warm with the potential of nothing barring our way in the future. How so much emotion could exist after so much back and forth staggered me. But it did. Maybe it was true when people said the third time’s the charm.

  Everett dropped me off at my door just down the hall from his. Our eyes were riveted to each other and I knew that Liz or no Liz, he had to go or I would end up kissing him. I gave him a little shove. “Goodnight, Everest without an S.”

  “Goodnight, Andrea without an E.”

  I finally felt like I could breathe once he’d moved down the hall. “Everett?” I whispered loud enough for him to hear, but hopefully not loud enough for anyone else.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You didn’t really kick a kid back, did you?”

  He laughed. “I’ll see you in the morning, Andra.”

  “Yes, you will.” I whispered as I clicked my door shut behind me.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I awoke to the sound of a doorbell. My brain still fogged with dreams that had to have been pretty good, because I sighed a satisfied sort of sigh and smiled to myself while checking the time on my phone.

  Just after ten.

  How had I slept so late?

  But I didn’t mind so much. The sleeping-in luxury seldom showed itself to me. I was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. With school almost over, a little relaxing made sense. But hanging out in my room when it seemed a whole life waited for me outside my door proved impossible. I dressed quickly and stuffed my belongings into my overnight bag in case Everett wanted to hit the road early to give us the day to spend time together, to talk and begin the figuring-out-of-stuff we’d talked about the night before.

  Then I thumped down the stairs, feeling content and incapable of keeping another satisfied sigh from escaping me.

  The sigh turned into a gasp when I hit the bottom stair. “Liz?”

  I blinked, but she wasn’t some figment of my imagination. She stood in the entryway.

  She smiled at me, but her lip quivered, and her smile felt like daggers of shame to my heart. “Hello,” she said. “Andra, isn’t it? Andrea without an E?” Her eyes closed briefly a moment as if she could find some sort of inner strength inside her eyelids.

  “Are you okay?” I shouldn’t have asked. Alarm bells and the muffling sound in my ears meant adrenaline flooded my body, that same adrenaline that demands flight or fight.

  I did neither.

  Hardly anyone ever mentions the third option of adrenaline—the kind that actually affects most people and animals. It is not flight. It is not fight. It is fright. That fright that makes a deer stand in the way when headlights from a truck hurtle toward it. That fright held me to the spot on the bottom stair as Everett’s girlfriend’s lip quivered with a sadness that broke my heart.

  Nothing happened, I could have said. But it would have been the kind lie. No, Everett hadn’t let me kiss him—not on the lips anyway, but something had happened. He had confessed his love to me, and I had accepted that love.

  Even my frosty, closed-off heart could not call such a confession and acceptance nothing.

  Everett came down the stairs, led by Hazel, the two of them hissing rapid whispers at each other until they came into full view of the two women in Everett’s life.

  The whispers cut off as if sliced through with a blade.

  “Liz . . .” he said.

  Apparently that’s all we had to say for ourselves. Her name. How eloquent.

  Liz’s gaze slid from me, to him, to Hazel. She tried at the smile again. “Congratulations on your new store, Hazel. I’ve heard all about it. I would’ve been there, but . . .” Her gaze slid back to Everett. “Well, I did get to see pictures of the launch on Facebook. A really great picture of Everett trying out a tea set.”

  Was I even breathing? Were any of us breathing? I could see everything from her point of view. I knew the moment of the tea set for what it was—another beginning of emotional floods. No one who witnessed that moment could have doubted how Everett and I felt about each other. And with the help of a photographer, there had been too many witnesses.

  “Liz, I . . .” His voice from behind so
unded like static in the muffled roaring of blood in my ears.

  “Can we talk?” Liz asked, interrupting whatever Everett might have been trying to say.

  “Sure. Sure. Let’s . . .” He finished descending the stairs, next to me, then passing me entirely. “Sure,” he said again. “How about outside. Let’s go to the patio.”

  He moved to touch her back to help guide her to where the French doors led to the stone patio, but his hand hovered, never quite making the connection.

  The door closed behind them.

  Hazel descended the stairs as well and looked at me. “She said she’s his girlfriend?”

  I swallowed, not knowing what words to say. I nodded.

  Hazel grunted and gave me a hug. “Don’t think this is how I am. I hardly ever hug anyone, but I’m working on being more open to people’s energy. Your energy is screaming for reassurance right now, so let me give it to you. Everett has never mentioned this girl. Not once. And honestly, the way she stood on the porch like a frightened mouse means my mother will act like a hawk in search of a meal if she ever meets her. You’re okay. Girlfriend title or not, only one girl here has his heart. I would stay and give life advice all day, but I have to go to the store. You okay? You got it?”

  I nodded some more.

  But I didn’t have it, whatever it was. Was I a bad person? Nothing happened. Everything happened. Were we wrong? I didn’t know and hated not knowing. I finally forced myself down from that bottom step. I rounded the banister railing and came in full view of the couple outside through the windows.

  In an odd detached kind of way, I watched, like watching a movie, or a play performed for me alone. Liz was a lovely crier. Nothing snotty or messy about it, just perfect round tears rolling down slightly flushed cheeks. Her wet lashes darkened with the tears, making her eyes seem brighter than before. A dull ache sucked my breath from me when his arms wrapped around her and her head went to his shoulder as he tried to comfort her. She held him hard, like she might never let go.

  Nothing happened.

  Everything happened.

  It was time to leave.

  I called a cab.

  Cabs in Maine moved with a much higher respect for time than they did in Massachusetts because the yellow vehicle idled in front of the door almost before I’d returned from grabbing my already-packed bag from my room.

  I looked back to the patio. Liz still held Everett. Everett still held Liz. I gripped the leather handles of my overnight bag and stepped onto the front porch.

  Maybe we could sort it out later. Maybe he would tell her the truth, kind or apathetic, and she would have her disappointment and everything would be okay for us.

  I transferred from the cab to the train station, where I boarded the Amtrak to Massachusetts. It was after the train released its brakes and rolled forward that a text came.

  I expected to see Everett’s name in the tiny screen, not my brother, Nathan’s. The words all in caps fuzzed through my already clouded mind.

  COME HOME NOW. IT’S GRAMS. SHE’S SICK.

  The Fourth Chamber

  The red string of fate may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.

  —Chinese Legend

  Seven Years Later

  Chapter Sixteen

  Grams suffered a heart attack. I arrived at the hospital barely in time to hold her hand, feel her soft fingers on my face, and whisper a sobbing goodbye as the red line on the monitor spiked lower and lower and lower and then not at all.

  For all the knowledge of the heart we had in our family, we were helpless to keep hers from stopping.

  I don’t know what happened after that. Not really. I know I graduated medical school, my fingers reaching for the necklace that wasn’t there. My heart reaching for the person who wasn’t there.

  The one thing I remember with any clarity was Miss Pearl. She had grieved with me in a way that no one else seemed to be capable. At graduation, she patted my cheek, much like my grams would have if she had been there to do so, and she said, “I must go and help others now. I can see you need time to marinate in your current situation before you’re ready. But when you are ready, you can guarantee I will be there. I won’t forget your heart, Andra Stone.”

  But what good were emotional hearts? I threw all my focus in the only kind of heart I knew how to save: the physical heart. And the loss of Grams proved I didn’t even know how to save that one.

  Humans have an innate sense of rhythm; from the very beat of our hearts, the lifetime companion of every man, woman, and child is a constant cadence keeping time of the seconds—even the ones missed while we’re not looking.

  My entire time in residency was spent not looking.

  I did my residency at Massachusetts General. I don’t know where Everett did his. I can’t remember ever saying goodbye to him, or saying anything to him really. He never called or broached communication of any meaningful kind. The static fuzz in my ears that began with Liz at the bottom of the stairs never really went away.

  I finished my residency, received my board certification in pediatrics, and went to complete my surgical residency at the Boston Children’s hospital—the place I had wanted to work all along, the place Everett and I had discussed as our top pick all those years ago in study groups where I never saw him because I’d been looking in the wrong direction.

  After surgical residency, I was hired on as a pediatrician specializing in cardiology. I hoped to be able to work my way up to surgeon.

  I half-expected to see Everett the first day of work at Boston Children’s. But he never turned up. With the extreme passage of time, he likely was married with a mortgage, a dog, and a child or two.

  I dated.

  I even liked some of them.

  I even liked some of them a lot.

  But when it came time to commit, I reached in to find my heart to give it away and found that it was simply missing.

  So I’d become a frosty tyrant after all. But not too frosty. I bought toys for my favorite patients and for patients who weren’t even mine but who I felt needed a pick-me-up.

  Of course, I bought the toys from Hazel Covington’s online store, Second Childhood, figuring the purchases to be a win-win since the toys I bought went to sweet children in need in my hospital and also paved the way for other toys to go to sweet children in need on the other side of the world. Boston Children’s motto was until every child is well. I took it a step further and figured until they really were well, they were mine. I took care of them accordingly.

  Shortly after I stopped one of the other physicians from giving painkillers to a young patient who’d suffered an aneurism, a new position opened up at the hospital. The physician had been fired for the negligence that could have turned out very badly. His error came from the fact that he’d given in to the temptation of indulging in narcotic pain killers for himself. His addicted mind reasoned that pain killers were the answer to everything. But they were not the answer to a brain aneurism. How would we gauge the teen’s ability to think if her head had been glazed over with drugs known to cause hallucinations?

  We were short-staffed with the firing of that physician, and a new-hire was sorely needed. I ached with the length of time the administration took to interview and search out a reasonable replacement that could be sufficiently vetted for the insurance companies and had all the appropriate background checks done. I ached because it seemed I never went home or got a break.

  I ached even more when the replacement showed up.

  Everett, like a poltergeist pulled from my past, stood in the hall of my hospital and stared at me as if he, too, saw a ghost.

  Everest without an S.

  He blinked at me until a voice from farther down the hall called out, “Doctor Covington, if you’ll follow me.”

  He was gone again. My mouth hung open, caught somewhere between greeting him and stammering out some pathetic noise.

  “What was that all about?” Becca asked. She eyed me and then eyed the two figures dis
appearing down the hall.

  Becca had quickly become my favorite nurse. Her sassy attitude of flipping her curly blonde hair when doctors or patients gave her grief, and her uncrackable calm, even under the worst emergency situation, made her everyone’s favorite, but she'd also become my best friend.

  Becca was the girl I called when my brother made it onto The Food Network’s show, Chopped. She watched it with me, threw popcorn at the screen when Nathan’s rivals were back-biting monsters, and jumped up and down with me screaming when Nathan won. Becca went to concerts with me, even when they were classical music concerts, but more especially when they were her favorite band, Mystic Planets. Becca laughed at the fact that the hospital expected me to keep people alive even when I couldn’t seem to manage to keep any of my houseplants alive. The fact that she had a not-so-secret crush on my brother meant that maybe I’d land the girl as a sister.

  In spite of all that, Becca witnessing my first encounter with Everett made the entire thing worse and more confusing to me. When I didn’t answer, she rounded the corner of the nurse’s station, crossed her arms over her Winnie-the-Pooh scrubs and narrowed her eyes at me. “Maybe you didn’t hear me ask, so I’ll do it again since I’m accommodating like that. What was that all about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know, or you don’t want me to know?”

  “Both. Neither. I don’t know.”

  Her eyes suddenly went from narrowed slits to wide, mascara-framed moons. “Is that the guy?” She spun to look down the hall again, though Everett and Doctor Ferran were well beyond visual range. “Is it? THE guy? The one you take a second helping of ice cream over whenever we watch romantic comedies? Is he that guy?”

  “No.” I flustered. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  Her mouth fell open, and she started to bark out some kind of laugh. “It is! He is!" She whisper-yelled in the way only Becca could pull off. “That’s second-helping-ice-cream guy!” She grabbed my arm and began to shake it as if she was a child trying to get her mother’s attention. “I can’t believe it! Here! In our hospital! This is the most exciting thing to happen, since . . . I don’t even know. Nothing this exciting has ever happened.”