by Ruby Cruz
“Yeah, I was supposed to meet him at the restaurant and I waited there for about twenty minutes before he texted me. I thought it was strange that he didn’t call but I thought maybe he didn’t have time to talk.”
“Are you okay?”
Letting out a breath, she answered, “I don’t know. He just…he’s just been distant since the gala. Honestly, I haven’t spoken to him in person since then and it’s only been in short phone conversations or texts.”
“Did something happen at the gala you didn’t tell me about?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just reading too much into things. I mean, he’s been so busy with work and I know he’s been stressed out while doing his ICU rotation and dealing with one of the attending doctors and studying…sometimes I wonder how he has time to see me at all.”
I could hear the doubt in Jane’s voice, the uncertainty. I hated seeing my sister like this. She deserved so much better. I prayed that Charlie didn’t turn out to be another Loser Bob. “Why don’t you just talk to him? Face-to-face, you know, tell him how you feel.”
“Lizzy, we’ve only been dating a couple months. We don’t owe each other anything, I mean, I don’t even think we’re exclusive; we never really talked about it. I just know that when we’re together…it feels right.”
“Well, I don’t think you should worry about anything until you talk to him first.”
She gave me a half smile, then hugged me. “Thanks, little sis. I’m going to make some tea and then go to bed. You should, too.”
“I’m halfway there. Brandy’s out if you want some.”
~
The week didn’t improve. The next afternoon, Colin did post an email announcement to the entire hospital staff about his appointment as the clinical research coordinator in the clinical trials for the groundbreaking research being conducted by Dr. Catherine DeBourgh. What totally shocked me was the addendum to the email that Luke Carlos, RN, BSN would be joining him as the lead clinical research nurse in the New York office.
As soon as I read the email, I called Luke. “Where are you?” I greeted without preamble.
“I’m parking the car right now.”
Suddenly glad that I’d decided to forego going to the park with Jane and Chloe, I tapped my foot as I waited for him to come up the stairs and knock on the door. I swung the door open, pulled him inside, and poked him in the chest. “When were you going to tell me about this?”
“Ow. And hello to you, too.”
“Don’t hello me. Why the hell did I have to find out about this via email?”
“After you turned down Colin yesterday, the code happened and…he didn’t talk to me until hours after and…the timing just didn’t feel right.”
“‘The timing didn’t feel right?’ What the hell is that supposed to mean? So you thought the ‘timing was right’ when I opened up my email this morning?”
“Lizzy, you’re my best friend and I love you, but you were pretty vocal about your opinion of Colin. I couldn’t stand the look of disappointment that would inevitably cross your face.” When his light tone didn’t mollify me, he sighed. “You’re right. I should have told you in person and I’m sorry.” After a tense silence, he pushed, “Well? Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
“Congratulate you?”
“Yeah. Lizzy, I’m finally getting out of this town, moving to the big city, building my career.” At my blank expression, he clarified, “Lizzy, it’s my dream!”
“Your dream? To be working with that creepy idiot?”
“Colin may be a little weird but he’s not an idiot.”
“Oh, so now you’re defending him after he makes a pass at me and then offers me a job as some sort of consolation prize. I can’t believe you.”
Luke closed his eyes as if to compose himself. “Lizzy…”
“I mean, the guy tries to shove his tongue down my throat and then seems confused that I don’t ever want to speak with him again, then has the audacity to offer me a job working with him? He’s absolutely certifiable.”
“Lizzy…”
“We’ve been friends since kindergarten. I can’t believe that all it takes for you to desert me for some wackjob employer is a fancy job and change of address.”
“Lizzy…Colin wanted you because…he wanted you to be his beard.”
“Colin…he…what?” I sputtered.
He blew out a breath. “Look, Colin explained it all to me last night. He’s gay. He hasn’t come out to his family about it yet. All that stuff with you, the kissing, the job…he was hoping that forming some type of relationship with you would get his family off his back about finding some girl to marry. I could totally sympathize with him. You know what I’ve gone through with my mom.” I was speechless, completely thrown by Luke’s news about Colin’s sexual preference and my unwitting role in his family dynamic. He continued, “You know how religious his family is. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to come out to them if they thought you and he were together.”
“But why me? Why not Jane or anyone else?” Then I remembered. I was the only one who’d actually dated him in high school. Even though nothing remotely sexual had ever happened between us, our past history would make the deception somewhat more believable. “So what is his family going to think now that you’re taking the job? Aren’t they going to suspect that you and he…?”
“They shouldn’t. You know how I used to do all those odd jobs around town before I got my RN? His boss needs a part-time super for the apartment building he lives in and he thought I could do sort of double duty if I became his roommate. When we talked last night, he had a lot of questions. I actually don’t think he’s ever told anybody or talked to anybody before about being gay.”
“And he’s okay with you telling me this?”
“No, but he felt guilty about leading you on and thought you should know why he’d tried to kiss you. He was too embarrassed to apologize and explain to you himself but he said it’d be okay if I explained things to you, especially since I knew you’d probably be upset about the announcement.”
“Of course, I’m upset. I can’t understand why you didn’t talk to me first about this. I mean, do you really want to go into research, taking patient histories and using people as guinea pigs and Dr. Catherine DeBourgh getting all the credit? And now you’ll be living with Colin, who has to be the dullest, most self-important man on the planet behind Dr. Darcy, and be an unpaid, live-in handyman? How does that sound like your dream?”
“I’m leaving. You know how hard it’s been for me since I’ve come out. It’s not like there are gay bars at every corner around here and my dating prospects are practically nonexistent. I’m suffocating. Taking this job is my ticket out of here. I can put up with a few annoying monologues if it means getting to live and work in the city.”
“A few annoying monologues? You’ll be living and working with the man twenty-four seven!”
“Well, then I’ll have had a lot a practice turning a deaf ear.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on. All you’ve talked about lately is all the drama revolving around your sister’s love life. And before that, it was all about Chloe and feeding her and changing her poopy diapers and how tired you were. And now it’s your never-ceasing tirade about how much you hate Darcy.” After a beat, he continued, “You know I’m right. First it was about how horrible a doctor he was, how badly he treated you, the other nurses, how he gave George Wickham the shaft years ago.”
“I’m right about him, aren’t I?”
“Are you? Right now, I’m not so sure. I don’t think George is the warm and fuzzy guy you insist that he is and I think your negative feelings for Darcy are clouding your judgment.”
“You don’t know George.”
“And neither do you! You’ve gone on, what, three dates with the guy and now you know everything there is to know about him and his life and Darcy�
�s involvement with it?”
“You’re just jealous that I’ve finally found someone! If you want to go all the way to New York to go sow your wild oats, then fine, go! I’m sorry that my life has been so boring for you. But don’t tell me it’s because I’m holding you back.”
“I didn’t say that but I’m glad you did. This’ll make it much easier for me to leave knowing that I’m not leaving behind anyone who actually gives a shit about me.” Gone was the mirthful expression I’d been so used to seeing. I almost felt as if I were with a complete stranger, one filled with spiteful, biting remarks that hit just a little bit too close to the heart.
I blinked rapidly, my eyes suddenly blurry. “Well, good luck in New York. I hope it’s every bit as exciting and fulfilling as you hope it will be.”
Luke’s expression softened slightly. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but he just pressed his lips together, turned away from me, and left.
~
I felt like my heart was broken. Luke had been my best friend since kindergarten, ever since he and I had played dress up as Disney princesses in my mom’s basement (I had been Belle, he had been Cinderella). Our mothers had always wished we would end up together romantically. I would catch snatches of conversation during our high school years, excited whispers and murmurs about our eventual wedding. While Luke had taken me to junior prom, nothing between us had ever evolved into anything more than us holding hands or hugs, and even those had been no more sexual than the ones exchanged with my sister.
During our college years, our mothers didn’t give up hope that maybe our burgeoning adulthood would change something between us. Maybe it was ignorance on his mother’s part, maybe it was just the desperate hope that Luke wasn’t homosexual, but Mrs. Carlos always asked her son about his relationship with me or any other girl he happened to be associated with. Lately, she’d taken to dragging her son to our lame church socials in the hope of finding him a nice Christian girlfriend. While I had listened dutifully to Luke’s woes about being a gay man in a tiny, conservative town, and had joined with him in his criticisms of the close-minded population, I’d never fully appreciated how desperate Luke had been to escape. Sure, he’d talked about moving to the city, about all his applications to more urban hospitals and areas, but those had always seemed to stem from fits of frustration rather than real intent.
And now he was leaving, fulfilling his dream of moving to the big city. And he was leaving me behind.
Maybe that was why I’d been so critical of his move with Colin. Maybe a part of me, deep down, felt what he’d said was true - that my life was boring, that I had nothing more exciting happening in my life than my sister’s love life or caring for her daughter. Sure I’d had the distraction of sort of dating George, but even though I’d been hurt by his dropping off the grid without a good-bye, I wasn’t heartbroken. My ego had suffered much more than my heart.
Over the next couple of days, I tried to call Luke to apologize and mend the rift between us, but he avoided contact with me. Even the shifts we worked together at the hospital were filled with tension, so much so that he took assignments at the opposite end of the unit I was working. After a week, he requested to be taken off the schedule altogether and Lorna, one of our graduate nurses, was immediately hired to replace him, as if her presence could ever take his place. What hurt the most was not his coldness towards me, nor his avoidance of any contact. What hurt the most was that one day, after my mother had gone to church, she called me to tell me that Luke was gone, packed up and moved away without ever saying good-bye.
Leaving with no good-byes seemed to be the trend of the month. Not even two weeks after my fight with Luke and his subsequent departure, we found out that Charlie had accepted a residency position at Princeton University Hospital. Jane tried to call him to speak with him but he was gone before she could even try to understand what had gone wrong between him. Other than his sudden remoteness after the Nurses Gala, Charlie had given no indication to her that he was thinking of transferring to a different hospital; Jane had absolutely no clue as to why he’d decided to leave without any explanation to her.
My sister tried to pretend she wasn’t affected by Charlie’s leaving. She shrugged at me, saying, “We made no promises to each other. We weren’t even technically exclusive. We didn’t owe anything to each other.” But I knew her and knew that, deep down, a world of hurt existed in her heart. She’d opened up to him, had allowed herself to love him, and that was a luxury she hadn’t allowed herself since Bobby. I would be surprised if she ever allowed herself to get close to a man again.
Not surprisingly, my mother was taking the news far worse than Jane was. After Jane told her, Hal said that Mom stayed in bed for three whole days and wailed the whole time about how she would die without ever knowing her daughters were secure and settled in marriage, and about how her daughters were never going to be happy. Her only consolation was the fact that Lydia’s relationship with Dr. Forster had ended in spectacular fashion (a scenario involving flying medical equipment and counseling from human resources), and Hal’s ex-wife couldn’t boast of having a daughter involved with another handsome doctor.
PART TWO
NEW YORK
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Luke 2.0
In a way, I felt fortunate that with autumn came the promise of fall festivals with Chloe, apple picking, and Halloween – all distracting activities which were becoming increasingly more fun as Chloe discovered more and more about the world around her. I lost myself in my work and family by volunteering for extra shifts when I could, encouraging Jane to go out with her mom’s club friends, organizing and reorganizing our home so that it was a model of cleanliness and efficiency. I went running or hiking every chance I could get, so much so that I began to get comments from my friends that I was getting too skinny. Lydia and the crew made numerous attempts to get me to come out with them but I always found some excuse. Going to Riley’s just seemed pointless without Luke to temper the silliness. No matter how busy I kept, I felt the void that Luke had left behind and desperately hoped that he and I would be able to make amends somehow.
My extra shifts meant extra time spent dealing with Darcy and the other doctors. I didn’t know how Jane handled it – every time she had to work she was probably reminded of Charlie and how they first met. Every shift was presumably torture for her and the realization of that fact had me wishing for him a prolonged and painful death. Every time I saw Darcy at work I was reminded of Charlie and his cowardly way of leaving Jane so I avoided conversation with him whenever possible. After making a few rebuffed attempts at polite conversation, Darcy took the hint and kept all dealings between us strictly professional.
As Thanksgiving approached and the late season warm weather gave way to more frigid temperatures, my mother began to fret about her Thanksgiving meal. She spent hours poring over cooking magazines and watching Ina Garten and Rachael Ray on TV. I suspected she invested so much time in her cooking as an attempt to forget how her daughters had failed so miserably to find suitable husbands before the holidays.
Jane was scheduled to work the night before Thanksgiving while I was scheduled for Black Friday, a fact which meant that neither of us would escape Mom’s dry turkey and bland stuffing this year. More importantly, neither of us would escape her wrath on remaining single for yet another family holiday.
Hal resolutely parked himself on the sofa and watched football while Mom busied herself in the kitchen as usual. Jane entertained Chloe by fashioning pilgrims and colorful turkeys from construction paper and foam and using them to decorate the house.
Mom’s sister, Aunt Jo, had made the drive up from the Philly area to spend Thanksgiving with us. I liked to think of her as the anti-Mom. She and I got along really well because she enjoyed needling my mother and lambasting her screwed up priorities as much as I did. Before her husband had died, she used to come up and visit us often. She and Uncle Jim hadn’t had any kids so they’d go
tten their kid fix in by taking Jane and me to the zoo, the park, the science center, or wherever she thought we would have fun and annoy our mom the most. Mom very rarely had taken us out like that; she’d argued that those places were a waste of money and her daughters didn’t need to run around and get dirty and get diseases from animals and unsanitary playground equipment. This Thanksgiving, Aunt Jo decided that her place was best served annoying Mom in the kitchen.
After spending an hour chopping vegetables and listening to the two sisters bicker about julienne versus chop, I gave up helping. Aunt Jo and Mom were like two sides of the same coin: opposites but cut with the same stubbornness and tenacity that Jane would argue I possessed. Before I could escape, Aunt Jo asked me, “Lizzy, how’s the job going? Still torturing those patients of yours?” Her needling didn’t stop with my Mom; with all the health problems Uncle Jim had suffered before his death, she’d come to distrust the medical community and didn’t appreciate that Jane and I were a part of it.
Instead of answering her question, I asked another of my own, “Still checking your blood sugar like you’re supposed to? I don’t think those chips are low carb.”
Aunt Jo stuffed three potato chips into her mouth and crunched them loudly. She was a diabetic and enjoyed flaunting her non-compliance in my face whenever I caught her with sugar cookies or sneaking a candy bar or extra helping of dessert. I hated to think of what her blood sugar at any given moment was because she never seemed to be following her prescribed regimen. “Sure they’re low carb,” she said after she swallowed enough to speak again. “Potatoes are a vegetable, aren’t they?”
“You keep telling yourself that when you end up in the hospital in a diabetic coma or kidney failure.”
“Aw, quit trying to scare me, Lizzy. I’m a big girl. A little chip here and there isn’t going to hurt, right?”
“That’s right, Lizzy,” my mom chimed in. “You leave your aunt alone. It’s Thanksgiving. No one should be on a diet during Thanksgiving.”