These Three Words

by Holly Jacobs

  I nodded.

  “You can sit with him until eight o’clock,” she continued. “Then we ask the families to go home and get some rest. You can come back in the morning refreshed and better able to cope with everything.”

  I looked at the clock. It was after four.

  I’d lost all track of time here.

  I had imagined that by now I’d have given Gray the papers and he’d have signed them. His signing the papers wouldn’t be enough to make our divorce official, but it would have been a symbolic end for me.

  And a new beginning.

  I’d thought by now I’d be sitting on the deck, watching the sun begin to set on my old life. I thought I’d be sipping a glass of wine and dreaming about what the next chapter of my life would look like.

  I hadn’t been able to figure out what I wanted that future to be, but I knew that the last year wasn’t it.

  “Mrs. Grayson, are you sure you’re okay?” the nurse asked.

  I nodded.

  Mrs. Grayson.

  The words felt like a lie, but I didn’t say that. I said, “Thank you,” just as I had other times today.

  “You can talk to him,” she said. “He’s under sedation, but he will hear you. He’ll know you’re here.”

  I was relieved when she left to go to her perch just outside the door.

  The ICU rooms were like the spokes in a wheel. From her station the nurse could see her patients, monitor their vitals, and was never more than a handful of steps away from any one of them.

  This was where they sent the most touch-and-go patients.

  This is where they sent the patients who were fighting for their lives.

  After a day surrounded by people and noise as I waited for news about Gray, the quiet sounds of this room felt disconcerting. The faint hum of the machines. The soft whoosh of the ventilator. The muted noises from the rest of the hospital.

  I looked out the long, narrow window. It wasn’t much of a window, but it was something. After spending much of the day in windowless rooms, I felt a small tremor of surprise that the world still seemed to be going on at its regular pace. Cars still sped along the city streets. The clouds obscured the sun, but I knew it was on its way down. The days were shorter in October.

  People still went about their day.

  Working. Playing. Laughing.

  JoAnn was probably still at the store, covering for me.

  Ash was probably still at his office, wheeling and dealing.

  Everyone was simply going along with the tasks at hand.

  My tasks had narrowed to just one. Gray.

  He was the only thing on my agenda and there was really nothing I could do but wait.

  I was here in limbo . . . just waiting. Along with Maude, James, and Harriet.

  Waiting to see if our loved ones recovered. Knowing there was nothing else we could do for them.

  “Here I am,” I said simply to Gray. “I’m here for you.”

  After months of not talking, those words said it all.

  Our relationship was damaged, maybe irreparably broken, but I was here for him.

  I didn’t hold his hand because of the IV in it, but I laid my hand lightly on his fingertips, reminding him that he wasn’t alone.

  I tried to think of something else to say, but couldn’t, so I slipped into silence.

  The light whir of the machines was a white noise. It was easy to be lulled by the sound. Occasionally the intercom squawked, pulling me from my almost trance, but as soon as it silenced, I let myself fall back into the hum.

  The nurse came in on occasion and looked at the machines. Once she shifted Gray on the bed, propping him on his side with pillows. “We want to prevent sores, so we’ll change his position for him.”

  I nodded.

  “Visiting hours are over in a half hour,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I replied because I wasn’t sure what else to say. I’d stopped counting how many times I’d said those two words by rote, not meaning them at all.

  “They’re going to make me leave soon,” I said to him. “But I’ll be back in the morning.”

  I pulled out the picture and swan that I’d taken from Gray’s office and set them on the stand next to his bed.

  I stared at the old photo. “We were so happy then. Where did we go wrong?” I asked myself . . . or maybe him.

  I still had my swan at the Ferncliff house, tucked away in my jewelry box.

  I’d seen him take his that night, but I hadn’t seen it since. Why had he found it and brought it out now? On his desk next to that picture?

  I looked at Gray in the picture, then back at him on the bed, hooked up to tubes and wires.

  The nurse sat just outside the room, presumably checking the monitors, ready to spring into action if anything happened.

  I pulled the chair right up to the side of the bed and slid my hand under his, so I didn’t disturb the IV. It felt dry and cool.

  I whispered, “I know I could live my life on my own . . . I’ve proven it over these last months. But, Gray, I don’t know if I can live my life on my own if you’re gone. I’ve been so mad at you. You let me mourn alone and then you let me go. But I can’t let you go. I won’t.”

  I don’t know how long I sat there, holding his hand, but the next thing I knew, the nurse was touching my shoulders. “Visiting hours are over.”

  I nodded and wordlessly rose. I realized I was still holding Gray’s hand. I kissed his fingertips. “I’ll be back first thing.”

  I gathered my purse and the stupid envelope. I stopped at the nurses’ station. “I think I gave all my information when I registered Gray, but to be honest, I’m not sure. I wanted to be sure you had my cell number. You’ll call me if there’s any change?”

  She took the card I extended to her. “I’ll check that it’s in the system, and I promise we’ll call if there’s any change.”

  I looked back at Gray before leaving. I don’t think I’ve ever walked so slowly.

  I didn’t know where to go.

  Ferncliff? Glenwood? I knew the phone reception was spotty at the Ferncliff house. That fact hadn’t bothered me before, but I needed to be sure the hospital could reach me.

  I knew that Gray wouldn’t mind if I went to the house on Willow Lane, but I wasn’t sure I could face it.

  I started to walk toward the elevator, still not sure where I was going to go, but needing to move.

  “Addie?” someone said. I jumped at the sound of my name. It seemed to reverberate in the empty hall.

  I spun around and found Ash sitting in a small bank of chairs across from the elevators. “Ash?”

  I didn’t need to ask why he was here.

  His face was pinched with worry.

  Ash, the eternal optimist, was worried.

  He always believed the world was a wonderful place. And why shouldn’t he? He came from an affluent, loving family. He’d met Gray in college and they’d meshed. They were more than friends from the beginning. They were brothers. They’d built a successful business before either had reached their thirties.

  Ash was the other half of Gray in a way I’d never be.

  “They said I wasn’t family, so I couldn’t go back,” Ash said. He sounded mystified that the hospital wouldn’t deem him family.

  “You should have said you were his brother. We both know that’s the truth. Or you could have had the nurse tell me you were here. I would have come out and talked to them.”

  “No. I saw you sitting with him and knew you were what he needed. You’ve always been what he needed, Addie.”

  I snorted at that.

  Ash beckoned me to sit down and I obliged, more because I wasn’t ready to leave the hospital than because I needed to hear Ash’s pep talk. I could see him forming his rah-rah comments as I sat there. “I know
you two are going through a rough patch—”

  I stopped him by thrusting the now-ragged-looking manila envelope at him.

  “I was at his office today bringing him these.” Ash held the envelope as if he didn’t know what to do with it, so I said, “Go ahead, open it.”

  He opened the envelope and pulled out the papers. “Divorce?”

  “We’re well past the point of no return. I thought it was time. I asked for half our savings, my car, and my personal items, but everything else is Gray’s. The house. His stake in the company. I would never interfere with something you two worked so hard to build.”

  “You’re entitled to part of it.” Ash said the words I’d thought Gray would say. I know the image for businessmen is greed, but that wasn’t the case with either Ash or Gray. They might have different personal styles, but they both had honor that was bone deep.

  I liked to think that so did I. I shook my head. “No. The company is his and yours.”

  Suddenly, Ash’s expression hardened. “So you gave him the papers and he had a heart attack?”

  I shook my head. “No. He never saw the papers.”

  I could see that moment so clearly. Gray had looked unsure, but happy to see me. And then he’d collapsed in pain. So much pain. And I’d been helpless to stop it.

  Ash still eyed me suspiciously. “You can’t give them to him now.”

  “No. Not now,” I assured him. “Ash, I’m just not sure where we’ll go when he’s well. It’s been almost a year.”

  “No, it hasn’t,” Ash said, echoing JoAnn. “It’s been eight months since you walked out. Gray would probably be able to tell you how many weeks and days, but eight months is accurate enough. A year isn’t.”

  I refused to quibble about how long it had been since I left Gray, because, truth be told, he’d left me long before I walked out that door. “Regardless, it’s over. Until this morning, I hadn’t seen him for weeks. And last time I did see him, it didn’t go well.”

  I braced myself for Ash to say something hurtful, but instead he simply said, “Addie, he needs you.”

  “Right now, yes. But when he’s better?” I shook my head.

  “He loves you,” Ash insisted.

  “Maybe in his way, but I don’t think his way is the way I need to be loved.” I didn’t need someone who babbled about every little thing, but I did need someone who talked. Who shared something of himself.

  Ash didn’t try to argue my comment; instead he asked, “Do you remember your first date?”

  We’d been friends for so many years, and slowly we’d become something more, though neither of us had admitted it. We’d gone together to our senior prom and I’d thought something might happen, but nothing had. Not until . . .

  I thought about the swan that had been sitting in his office. Its twin still tucked up in my jewelry box at home. “Of course,” I said quietly.

  “Gray and I were assigned as roommates. And we hardly knew each other, but he came in that night with some stupid plastic thing and set it down on the windowsill in front of his desk. What the hell is that? I asked.

  “A reminder, he said. Addie, he looked at me and was so serious when he said, It’s a reminder of what I’m working toward. Then he smiled at me. I think it’s the first time I ever saw him really smile.”

  “I used to tease him that he was a smile hoarder,” I said. And sometimes when I teased him about it, he’d smile.

  “Yeah. Well, after that date when he came in so happy, I was a bit freaked out,” Ash said. “And I said something like What did you do tonight? He said, I went out with the woman I’m going to marry.”

  I knew that Ash had to be rewriting history. “No, he didn’t. I wasn’t sure there’d be a second date. We both worried about how it would affect our friendship.”

  “Yes, he did. He said he’d gone out with you and I said something about him knowing you all his life, but he clarified, Since the first day of kindergarten. As if he wanted me to be clear on it. As if he regretted those first five years he didn’t know you.

  “Then he said something like I didn’t know I was going to marry her until tonight. We sat at the table together and I put my arm around her. And I thought, I could spend the rest of my life listening to her and holding her. That’s when I realized I loved her.” Ash paused a moment, then added, “He said he thought he’d always loved you.”

  Ash stuffed the papers back into the envelope and handed it to me. “He’ll never sign them.”

  I couldn’t imagine Gray saying any of those things. Maybe Ash saw my skepticism, because he nodded. “The thing about Gray is, he doesn’t say much, so when he does say something, people pay attention. I’m pretty sure I’m close to perfect on what he said. He loved you. He still does. And he’ll never sign those,” Ash said with complete conviction.

  His utter certainty shook my own.

  “Gray’s a man who likes things orderly,” I said hesitantly. “He’ll see the logic in divorcing now when we might go back to being friends.”

  When I’d talked to JoAnn this morning, I’d believed that. But now? I wasn’t so sure of Gray’s reaction, and I was even less sure about what I wanted.

  “You were never his friend. You were—are—the love of his life.” Ash got up and said, “Were you going home?”

  I still didn’t know which place to go to. Neither felt right. “No. I’m staying for a while longer.”

  “You’ll call me if you need anything? If anything changes?”

  I nodded.

  “Did he really say all those things?” I asked, needing to hear Gray’s words, even if they were coming from Ash.

  Ash nodded. “Addie, I know it’s been a rough year and I’m so sorry for everything . . .” He stopped as if he didn’t know what else to say.

  Most people didn’t know what to say about what happened.

  Not even Gray.

  Ash continued, “. . . but you should know, it took everything Gray had not to come after you. He was giving you time and space, but he never stopped loving you, and he never stopped believing you two would find your way to the other side.”

  “I did find my way to the other side,” I said simply, not that there was anything simple between the two of us. I found my way to other side and discovered it didn’t include Gray.

  Ash started to walk to the elevator and then turned around. “He’s started listening to Broadway.”

  “Pardon?” Gray listening to Broadway tunes sounded implausible at best.

  I had season tickets to Erie’s Broadway series. Most of the time I took JoAnn. But when she couldn’t go, I dragged Gray with me, kicking and screaming.

  “Broadway tunes?” I repeated, sure I must have heard wrong.

  “Yes. It kinda freaks me and the staff out. He said you sing songs from your favorite shows a lot and he missed them. So he plays them.” He paused a moment then added, “And he said you taught him that sometimes the music can say things more eloquently than words. I don’t know what those show tunes were saying, but I just thought you should know.”

  “Thanks,” I said, not sure what I was going to do with that information.

  “Call me,” Ash said as he got on the elevator.

  “Yes.”

  I tried to imagine Gray listening to Broadway musicals, and it just seemed too incongruous. He was not a music fan. He didn’t turn on the radio for background noise. He didn’t even turn it on when he was driving.

  He never seemed to mind when I did, but I don’t think he’d have ever done so on his own.

  I felt odd sitting in what was nothing more than a nook in a hallway, so I got up and thought I’d go get some coffee.

  As I got off the elevator and turned toward the cafeteria, I realized I didn’t want coffee.

  I saw the double doors of the chapel I’d noticed earlier.

 
No one would notice just one more person sitting in there. So I made a beeline.

  There was only one other person in the room. Her hair was like an announcement—look at me, the fire-engine color said.

  The rest of her said, don’t look. She had on black yoga pants, an oversize sweatshirt, and UGGs. Her head was bent, so her hair spilled over her shoulders, shrouding her face.

  I sat behind her, trying to give her space. I thought about Gray listening to Broadway tunes and tried to have that make sense.

  Suddenly her shoulders heaved and she made a quiet, low, keening sound.

  I reached out and started to put my hand on her shoulder, then thought better of it. Instead, I said, “Are you all right?”

  She sat up and turned around. I realized that she was my age . . . maybe a little younger, but she was somewhere in those ambiguous years between youth and middle age.

  She wiped at her eyes and nodded. We both knew it was a lie.

  “Okay then,” I said, not wanting to intrude.

  I sank back in my seat and she surprised me—surprised herself as well, if her expression was any indication—by saying, “How do you miss someone you hardly know?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. The utter longing in her voice reminded me of my own longing. I’m not sure I recognized how much I missed Gray until now, until I had no way of reaching him.

  “I don’t know her. My mother. My birth mother. And he said—her husband—he said that they’d been waiting for me. I believed him, but I thought it was waiting like waiting for your vacation, or even like a kid who’s waiting for Christmas. I thought she was looking forward to meeting me someday. But that’s not it. She wrote this”—she held out a worn leather journal—“and when I read it, I can feel her . . . aching. That’s the word. She was aching with the waiting.”

  Her hand went to the locket around her neck. She clasped it tightly, as if it were a lifeline. “I occasionally thought about finding her, you know. But I put it off. I knew I’d look for her someday . . . but life got in the way. And she was out here waiting for me. Aching.”

  I understood what she was saying today more than I would have understood it yesterday.