by Nella Tyler
The truth was that while part of me had wanted to go to the party, I had ended the day tired, and I knew I wouldn’t be a very good addition to the festivities. I love the holidays—but being around a bunch of happy couples was not my idea of a great way to celebrate, and I knew that I’d be one of maybe five people at the party who didn’t already have someone. With odds like that, I’d either end up being chased underneath a fake mistletoe branch by a desperate guy for a “joke,” or I’d be in the corner most of the night, talking to whoever passed by but mostly just looking a little pathetic. I’d told Cynthia that I had a bunch of stuff to catch up on at the apartment, but mostly I was catching up on one of my favorite sitcoms.
I took my food out of the microwave and stirred it, checking the bottom of the Tupperware to make sure it had heated through. I decided that just because it was a night in, it didn’t mean that I couldn’t celebrate a little, and opened the fridge to get the half-empty bottle of wine out of the door. I doubted that the vintners that had bottled it expected for someone to pair it with a tuna casserole, but I figured that a white wine at least went with fish.
Glass of wine and Tupperware in my hands, I went back into the living room of my apartment and started the stream of my show up once more. There was a third and final load in the washer—delicates, including my underwear and a few dresses that I thought I might eventually pick out to wear for drinks with the girls at the office another time—and a stack of files that needed to be updated. I had to be careful about what parts of the files I updated from home; I couldn’t risk anyone seeing them, but there weren’t always enough hours in the day to get everything written down, and the office after hours was a creepy place. I didn’t bring any identifiable information home with me—just the narrative parts of the file where I could transcribe my notes about how a patient did at a particular task, how they were improving...things like that. I’d put them back the next morning and the woman responsible for digitizing them would get to them whenever they came up on her list.
I finished my dinner quickly, trying to get as involved as possible in my show; it didn’t seem to have the same allure as usual, but I kept hoping it would click, that I’d start laughing at one of the character’s antics and everything would be right with the world. I had started to work on my files, listening to the show more than watching it, and I heard by phone across the room, buzzing and ringing where it was plugged into the wall. “Huh.” I put the file I was writing on aside and stood up, able to feel the lingering fatigue in my legs. “Maybe I would have been better off hitting the gym instead of coming straight home,” I said, thinking out loud as I walked across the room to where my phone lay on a side table.
The number flashing on the screen was totally unfamiliar, and for a second I thought about just letting it roll over to voicemail. It could be someone from the clinic, or someone calling me from a friend’s phone because of an emergency. I took a quick breath and unplugged my phone from the charging cable, tapping the “accept” icon and bringing it to my ear all at once.
“Hello?”
“Mackenzie?” The voice was tantalizingly familiar but not enough for me to immediately place it.
“Speaking,” I said, taking the safe assumption that it had to be someone I didn’t know that well.
“It’s Patrick—Patrick Willis, Landon’s dad.” I smiled, walking back over to my couch and sitting down.
“Is something wrong? How’s Landon doing?” It had been a day off for Landon’s PT, so I hadn’t seen him earlier in the day.
“He wants to go ice skating this weekend,” Patrick said, sounding both amused and concerned. “I told him I had to check with you to make sure it was okay.”
“As long as he doesn’t overdo it, he should be all right,” I said, thinking about the question. “Stay close to him, if you’re going with him, and if he looks wobbly, get him off the ice for a few minutes. His muscles are still weak.”
“I remembered what you said about the stabilizer muscles,” Patrick said. “I just didn’t know if they’d stand up to a long day of skating.”
“Probably not a whole day,” I said. “He’ll tire out pretty fast on the ice, but it would actually be a good thing to do with him—functional therapy, they call it. He’ll work the muscles out in a way that we just can’t really duplicate in therapy.”
“Is that good?” I nodded even though I knew Patrick couldn’t see me.
“It is. Our goal with the PT is to get him up to natural functioning, so little things that he can do to further that are great.” I licked my lips and picked up my half-finished wine, taking a quick sip. My heart was beating faster in my chest. Down girl! He’s a patient’s parent—off-limits. “I would say if he wants to do something and feels up to it, obviously keep an eye on him, but he should at least try. Other than any kind of contact sports, of course.”
“Of course,” Patrick agreed. “Is—is skating not a contact sport?” I laughed and had to bite my lip to stifle it.
“Not strictly speaking,” I said, as soon as I could recover my composure. “I’m thinking of things like hockey, or soccer or football, things like that where he’s likely to end up getting hit or hitting the ground as part of the game.” I thought for another moment. “If you want to feel safer, I’d say get him one of those ACE bandage braces for his knee. He doesn’t have any real problems with his ligaments, but with the weakness he’s still got going on in the other muscles, it’ll give that leg some more stability.”
“Thank you so much,” Patrick said, and the relief in his voice was so intense it almost embarrassed me. “I didn’t want to have to tell him that he couldn’t go ice skating.” I grinned. He really is a good dad, all things considered.
“He’ll probably get tired pretty quickly,” I told Patrick. “It takes a lot more effort to do something like that when your muscles are still weak. Make sure he takes lots of breaks, keep his fluids up, and if he starts looking wobbly, insist on him sitting down until he can stand steady.”
“That all sounds good,” Patrick told me. I could hear him smiling somehow. “Thank you again for taking the call on your free time.” I smiled to myself.
“I’m not really up to anything tonight, so it’s no trouble to answer a quick question,” I told him.
“You must really love your work,” Patrick said, making it almost a question.
“I do,” I agreed. “I love working with kids—they’re so resilient, and they’re willing to work hard. When I was doing my rotations, before I finished the program, I worked with all kinds of patients…and kids were the ones that appealed to me the most.”
“Did you always know you were going to go into physical therapy?” I shook my head.
“No, I kind of fell into it,” I told Patrick. I knew that I should probably get off of the phone—the conversation was getting a little personal—but I couldn’t help myself. “I was a gymnast in high school, and I got a really bad torn ACL during a practice, and of course with that you have to have really aggressive PT.” I licked my lips and finished off my wine in a quick gulp. “That was how I got interested in it.”
“Not too different from how I got into my line of work,” Patrick said, sounding almost surprised. “I started off studying something completely different in college, but I took a summer job at an information security company and just sort of…stayed put.”
We chatted for a few more minutes, talking about the people we worked with, about how we’d ended up in our fields, and then I finally couldn’t ignore the fact that I was having a personal conversation with a patient’s father. I told Patrick that I had to get my laundry, but that I’d see him again at Landon’s next session, and he said he and Landon were both looking forward to it. I ended the call, and in spite of telling myself that Patrick was probably just one of those guys who liked to have a listening ear, that he was off-limits to me, I couldn’t help but feel a warm little tingle all over my body; I hadn’t felt comfortable or excited like that in months—maybe y
ears. I pushed the thought aside and finally did get to my laundry to fold it so it wouldn’t wrinkle before I went to bed.
Chapter Six
Patrick
After talking to Mackenzie about how Landon wanted to go ice-skating, I was glad to take my son to the park over the weekend. He’d had physical therapy the day before, but when he woke up in the morning he was so excited I didn’t think he’d miss the trip even if he somehow managed to break his leg all over again. I made him eat a good breakfast: oatmeal, scrambled eggs, bacon and toast along with some juice, and we went on our way to McKinley Park.
I kept in mind what Mackenzie had told me and before we left I’d convinced Landon to put on a knee brace under his long johns. It was getting colder and colder, and the forecast called for snow that night, but the day itself was sunny and bright when we got to the park and made our way to the rink. We’d gotten there early enough that it wasn’t super crowded yet—right after the park opened for the day—and I told Landon that as long as he didn’t try and get away from me, and as long as he was willing to stop for a while whenever I told him to, we could skate for as long as he wanted.
I kept an eye on Landon just like Mackenzie suggested, making sure I took him off to the benches when he started to get wobbly or looked tired, but he managed to keep it up for at least half the day, spaced out between his breaks. When he got bored of the skating rink—or, as I suspected, too tired to keep going, especially with the bigger kids on the ice zooming around without a care in the world—we wandered around the park for a little while. I bought him a hot cider and some roasted nuts, and we munched on our snacks while we wandered around looking at the decorations.
Finally as it was starting to get dark, I decided it was time to head for home. “We need to get you in a nice hot bath buddy, and get a pot of soup in you.” It was coming up on winter break, and the last thing I wanted was for Landon to get one of the flus going around before it was even his vacation, especially since that would mean he’d have to stay away from physical therapy for a week. I could tell he was tired out—the ice-skating had been tougher than he’d thought—but Landon was trying to pretend like he had as much energy as ever.
I got him into the car and we started back for the apartment, navigating the busy weekend traffic. “Dad,” Landon said, his voice sleepy from the back of the car. “Do you miss mom sometimes?” I felt as if the kid had kicked me in the stomach—something he hadn’t done intentionally in years.
“I do shrimp,” I admitted once I had my voice under control. It’s a natural question this time of year, when everyone’s with their families. “What brought her to mind?”
“Can you tell me a story about her?”
I clenched my teeth, breathing in slowly. I had known from the time that Joanne had died that I would have to tell Landon all about his mother someday; and part of me felt ashamed that I had sort of let her memory fall by the wayside over the years. I couldn’t even give myself the excuse that I’d been grieving, not anymore. Joanne had died only months after Landon had been born, from complications of cancer treatment. She’d been diagnosed when she was four months pregnant, and had put off getting treatment until after she delivered; she’d wanted Landon so badly that she was willing to risk it—though I couldn’t help but think that taking that risk had been exactly what had killed her.
“Your mom was a great woman,” I told my son, glancing at each of the mirrors to make sure I wasn’t about to hit someone. “Before you were born, she used to tell you bedtime stories every night before she went to sleep.”
“But how did I hear her if I wasn’t born?” I grinned to myself. It was so easy to picture Joanne, curled up in our bed, one hand on her big, pregnant belly, the other one holding a book. She had read to Landon religiously in the womb; even when she was exhausted, even when she was in pain from the cancer she didn’t want to treat until the baby was out, she read to him before she finally went to sleep for the night.
“She said she was sure you could hear,” I told him. “She said you used to kick around inside of her when she would start, and then you’d slowly calm down until you fell asleep.”
“Is that why you always read to me, Dad?”
I smiled again. “It is shrimp. She asked me to do that for you when she knew she wasn’t going to be with us much longer. She wanted to make sure that you had something that she’d always done with you, for as long as she knew you.”
“What books did she read me?”
I laughed in spite of the pain I could feel inside of me, remembering the woman I had loved. “She read everything,” I said. “She loved to read you Dr. Seuss books especially—she said you always kicked the hardest when she’d start on The Cat in the Hat or Hop on Pop. But if she was really tired she’d read those Peter Rabbit books you like so much now.”
“Do you think I like them because mom used to read them to me?”
“Well—I think you like them because they’re good books, mostly,” I said. “But it probably helps that you were hearing those stories before you were even out in the world.”
“Did Mom look anything like Mackenzie?” I frowned at the question.
“What makes you say that?” I glanced over at the rearview mirror; Landon was sprawled out as much as the booster seat would allow, his head resting against the back of the seat.
“I don’t really remember her,” Landon said. “You showed me her picture, but I’ve never seen her before.”
“You were really little when she died, bud. You were just a baby.”
“I know,” Landon said, nodding. “But there’s this way that Mack talks sometimes and it’s like I almost remember Mom.”
A shudder worked through my spine. “Does it make you feel bad or good?” I asked, almost afraid of what his answer would be.
“It makes me feel good,” Landon said, nodding a little bit. “I like her.” He went silent for a while and I tried to pay attention to the world around me instead of thinking about my dead wife; I had to keep my eyes on the road, I had to keep my son safe. “What was Mom’s favorite food?”
“She loved a good steak,” I said, smiling to myself. “When we finally had you, and we knew that she was going to be going into treatment, so she couldn’t nurse you herself, we went out and got her a great big, rare steak at her favorite steakhouse to celebrate.”
“Can we have steak for dinner tonight, Dad?” My throat felt like it might close up on me, like I might suffocate right there in the car. I turned the heat down a little bit in the front—I kept it on full blast in the back for Landon—and nodded.
“Yeah, we can have steak for dinner,” I told my son. He reached into the bag that I kept in the back seat, full of toys for him to play with, and he was off in a world of his own, talking back and forth between two action figures. I drove us the rest of the way home from the park thinking about my wife, missing her, feeling the pain of her absence.
Mackenzie really wasn’t anything like Joanne—not in the way they looked, anyway. Joanne had had the same dark hair my son had inherited, and dark eyes to go with it. She was tall and sturdy instead of being short and curvy and slim. I’d fallen in love with her in college; we’d both been scholarship students, studying in different areas, but we’d met at a meeting for the fencing club, and before long we’d spent more time flirting with each other than actually learning how to fight with a foil.
It had taken us a few years to get pregnant with Landon; Joanne had been determined that she wanted to have a baby—a son, and if we could have a son first, she wanted a daughter to follow. Just when we were about to give up on the idea of conceiving and start looking for a baby to adopt, Joanne had finally conceived, and we’d been so happy. I’d run out of the house at all hours of the night to pick up whatever she was craving—whether it was dressed hot dogs with a strawberry milkshake on the side or sauerkraut and chocolate. I was glad to see her so happy, glad that everything seemed to be going so well for her pregnancy.
By the t
ime she was somewhere between four and five months along, though, things started to go bad. She was tired all the time, and her back ached more than it should for just the typical pregnancy. Her OB-GYN sent her to get tests done to make sure she didn’t have something going on with her spine, and that was when we’d discovered what it was that had made it so difficult for her to conceive; she’d had a tumor. How they could have missed it when we’d been tested for everything else under the sun before Joanne finally got pregnant I would never know, but they said it had been steadily growing, right along with the baby inside of her, throughout the pregnancy—that the hormones that had coursed through her had created the perfect conditions for it to develop faster.
Joanne had done what she could to keep herself healthy after that, because she had wanted to stay alive long enough to at least give birth to Landon. When they’d done the C-section to take him out, they’d gone ahead and removed the tumor too, but it had already metastasized to different parts of her body. A week after she gave birth to Landon, she’d started treatment with aggressive chemo, and in spite of the fact that our son was as healthy as could be, the three of us spent months in and out of the hospital, until finally she decided that she just couldn’t take anymore. She went on pain medication and the last night of her life, she’d lain with Landon in her arms, singing to him as they both fell asleep; she didn’t wake up the next morning, and there I was, a single parent, all in the span of a few months.