Closer

by Mary Elizabeth

  I’m puked on, spit on, hit on, and cussed out, and that’s before lunch.

  When I’m not holding a ten-year-old girl’s hand while she gets sutures in her chin from a fall at school, or performing CPR on a man in cardiac arrest, I’m dodging sympathetic looks and questions from staff. They offer condolences and an ear to listen if I feel the need to talk.

  “It’s so unfortunate,” one nurse says, patting my shoulder.

  “What a terrible accident. You must be devastated,” a phlebotomist states, tilting his head in sympathy.

  “Joe was cool,” the janitor gushes, replacing the trash bag. “He used to buy me lunch for taking his garbage out.”

  “Get the fuck out of here, Paul. Pay for your own turkey sandwich,” I reply, walking past him.

  I buy him lunch.

  It’s not his fault Joe was thoughtful, and I’m a dick.

  Joe was also a liar, but I’m not going there.

  Their compassion ends abruptly when Ella shows up dressed in The Cat in the Hat scrubs, holding two large coffees and a smile that isn’t confused as friendly. Staff is aware of our friendship, but it’s common knowledge she was dating Dr. West when he passed. No one hides their looks of bewilderment when I hold her face between my hands and kiss her lips in the middle of the cafeteria for their viewing pleasure. They’re stunned stupid and gawking.

  “They’re loving this,” my caffeine dealer whispers against my lips, securing her arm around my neck. “The entire hospital will know by the end of the day.”

  “Fuck them,” I mumble, hiding my face in the crook of her neck. “Are you just getting here?”

  “Yeah.” She plays with the hair at the nape of my neck, looking at me from under her long lashes. “I’m here all night.”

  I check my watch and take another gulp of coffee. My shift’s almost over, but the thought of returning to an empty house alone after spending the last six weeks with her isn’t my idea of a good time. But adrenaline that’s pushed me through my first day back is dying down, and I’m exhausted.

  “Want me to wait for you?” I ask. There are bunks in the back for staff to sleep on during breaks. I can catch a few hours on one until she’s off.

  Ella shakes her head, pushing me toward the double doors. “No, but you have to leave before I change my mind. It’s going to be hard enough as it is. I don’t need the distraction of knowing you’re around.”

  “Phish needs me, anyway,” I say sarcastically, shrugging. “At least someone does.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Prick.” She smiles, and my heart explodes.

  Retreating though the doors to the hallway, reluctant to look away from my dream come true, I’m ready to turn around when I bump into something and stagger. Coffee spills over my fingers, and I drop the entire cup, hopping out of the way before dark roast soaks my pants.

  “Dammit,” I shout, shaking scalding liquid from my hand. A flash of anger lights me on fire, extinguishing at the sound of a voice I blocked from memory.

  “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! Let me get you a napk—Teller?” Melanie Garcia, a radiology tech, raises both eyebrows and freezes. “When did you get back? I was going to call you after I heard about Kristi, but…”

  “Today’s my first day back.” I feel my face pale, and I turn my eyes down, pretending to busy myself with cleaning coffee from my wrists and arms when Ella passes me a stack of paper napkins. Clenching and unclenching my hands nervously, the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and the weight of her curiosity compresses my spine.

  “Okay?” Melanie replies skeptically, giving me a once-over.

  “You know Nurse Mason, right?” I ask before she can say another word. Drilling my eyes into the blonde, I watch her mouth set into a hard line as she looks from me to Ella. “My fiancée.”

  Melanie’s blue eyes widen, but she recovers quickly, forcing her frown into a smile and offering a hand in greeting. “Actually, I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Mel.”

  “Gabriella Mason,” Ella offers, mirroring Melanie’s uneasy grin as she takes her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  The timer on my watch chimes, indicating the end of my lunch hour. It breaks the spell, alleviating awkward panic, giving us a reason to go our separate ways. I circle my arm around Ella’s shoulders and kiss the corner of her mouth, feeling my heartbeat pick up as she clutches my sides, eyeing Melanie as we mumble our goodbyes.

  I can’t get out of the cafeteria fast enough, but regret refuses to be ignored, keeping pace behind me as I follow signs to the ER. My shoes squeak on the high gloss tile floors, and the smell of latex gloves and antiseptics burns my eyes.

  “Teller, stop,” Melanie demands, running to catch up with me. She grabs my wrist, immediately letting go when I turn to face her. “What’s going on? You’re going to marry Joe’s girlfriend?”

  Dipping my head back, I swallow hard and breathe before answering, “Ella isn’t his girlfriend anymore.”

  She draws her eyebrows together and says, “That’s because he died. How did she end up with your ring on her finger? I thought … I thought you and I—”

  Before I can backtrack to the one time I found myself in a bar with Melanie, my Chief Resident summons me to assist an intern set a broken wrist. It’s the out I need, offering Mel a sympathetic glance as I retreat, mouthing I’m sorry.

  “You do realize how fucked up this is, right?” she calls out, unconcerned with our audience.

  “Yes,” I say, pressing my palms together in a prayer-like gesture. “Forgive me. I really am sorry.”

  “Dick,” she mumbles, throwing her hands up. “It’s always the cute ones.”

  Three hours later, I’m walking through the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit after my shift. The atmosphere on this side of the hospital compared to the emergency room is as different as hot and cold. At this time of night, the lights are turned down low, and the only noise comes from muffled television sets, the hiss of oxygen passing through oxygen masks, and the steady beep from a heart monitor.

  “I’m looking for Ella,” I whisper once I approach the nurses’ desk. “Is she available?”

  “She’s in room 202,” a man replies in a soft tone, pointing me in the right direction.

  I stand in the doorway and listen to her read a book to a little girl hooked up to a ventilator in hushed tones and quiet animation. A bouquet of pink roses beside the patient’s bed releases a soothing, floral aroma that outweighs the traces of iodine and rubbing alcohol. Glow in the dark stars are glued to the ceiling, and a nightlight in the wall glows yellow and orange.

  She finishes the story, leading the girl to the land of dreams before I enter the room and stand behind Ella’s chair. Rubbing her shoulders, I bend down and kiss the top of her head, melting when she reaches for my hand and leans into me. We watch the steady rise and fall of her patient’s chest, a stark reminder of how fragile life truly is.

  “I told you not to stay,” she whispers, squeezing my fingers.

  “Like I could leave without you,” I reply, helping love to her feet.

  Ella pauses for a split second before she asks, “Who’s Melanie, Tell?”

  My response is instant.

  Thoughtless.

  A lie.

  “No one.”

  Now

  “Are you enjoying your day off?” Teller asks. I hear the busy hospital in the background—the rustling of paperwork, patients asking when they’re going to be seen, a crying child—never slowing down.

  “It would be better if you were here,” I say, loading the last plate into the dishwasher. I hold my cell phone between my ear and shoulder, drying my hands on a dishtowel. “But I needed a chance to get this place cleaned up. I’m too embarrassed to hire a maid when it’s this gross.”

  Teller laughs through the receiver, and I can picture the smirk curving his lips perfectly. The image shoots a bolt of excitement between my legs, and I close my eyes, exhaling slowly.

  “How lon
g have we been back from St. Helena?” he asks.

  “Almost five weeks,” I reply breathlessly. I blow loose strands of hair out of my face and distract myself with the mess that was once our living room before it became a closet. “I don’t understand how you managed to keep this place neat when you lived alone. You’re a slob.”

  Gathering discarded hoodies, flannels, and jackets Teller’s thrown over the couch, the recliner, and the coffee table, I pile them over my arm to carry the haul upstairs to our room when I see the box Kristi’s parents dropped off. It’s in the same place I last left it, knocked over on its side, collecting dust.

  “My mom used to come over and clean,” laziness admits, laughing.

  “You’re so pathetic.” I chuckle, layering the last sweater over my arm. “I can’t believe you had your mother pick up your mess.”

  “I didn’t ask her to,” he says. His carefree tone sets loose butterflies in my stomach. “But I didn’t ask her not to either.”

  “Do you mind if I go through this box, or do you want me to put it somewhere until you can open it yourself?” I kick it upright and turn toward the stairs with a hundred pounds of cotton in my arms.

  “The one from Kristi’s apartment?” he asks absentmindedly. Teller talks with someone from the hospital about X-ray results on an eighty-three-year-old woman who took a fall and may have fractured her hip. “Baby, I have to handle this. I’ll see you when I get home.”

  “Wait,” I exclaim, dropping his belongings onto our bed. If I don’t take care of this now, the damn thing will sit beside the door for another month. “What do you want me to do with the box?”

  “Burn it, unpack it, throw it away. Do whatever you want, Smella. Who knows what’s even inside of it. I didn’t stay at Kristi’s a lot.”

  “Okay, sounds good.” I sigh, lifting the basket of dirty laundry under my arm to lug back downstairs. “Hurry home.”

  The next few hours pass in a blur of glass cleaner and Soft Scrub, and this house is way too big for the two of us. But once I get started, there’s no stopping me, and for the first time since Joe passed, an entire afternoon goes by that I don’t think of him. I concentrate on the music playing from the surround sound and the way my heart pitter-patters when I see my belongings next to Teller’s.

  Which leads to me remembering the night before.

  My cheeks redden.

  My heart rate jump-starts.

  My lips turn up.

  I can almost feel his breath on my neck, his hand tied in my hair … the way he entered me from behind, all at once.

  Those thoughts are swept away once I tackle the refrigerator and open a takeout container. The smell nearly knocks me on my ass, stinging my eyes, and tickling my gag reflex. It’s not a mistake I make twice, and instead of checking anything for freshness, if I deem it questionable, it goes right into the garbage can.

  By the time I’m done, we have a bottle of ketchup, butter, and a few oranges.

  “We can’t keep living like this,” I mumble to myself, tossing a stack of carryout menus into the trash.

  I scrub the showers, dust the ceiling fans, and mop the hardwood floors before opening the sliding glass door to consider the backyard. Teller has a pool boy, but going by the amount of leaves in the water, he hasn’t been here in a while. Leaving that for last, I pull weeds from the grass, sweep the porch, and throw away plastic cups and beer bottles, which have been out here since who knows when.

  Flopping onto the couch, I rest my feet on the table and exhale a large breath through my lips, admiring the cleanliness. My skin’s sticky, my hair’s shampoo-needy, and my fingers hurt from the amount of scrubbing I did today, but I’m proud of my accomplishments, and this place feels more like home than it ever has.

  Teller should be home within the hour, and we have vague dinner plans, so I sit up to take a shower, only to remember the damn Kristi box.

  At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be anything of much importance inside of it, but I make a trash pile and a keep pile instead of tossing the entire thing into the dumpster. Another one of Teller’s hoodies goes into the keep pile and a birthday card from last year goes into the trash pile. I trash an old toothbrush and keep a bottle of cologne and a watch. Setting a heap of photos to the side for Tell to deal with, I keep a set of headphones and trash a pair of Kristi’s earrings they must have included on accident.

  I roll my eyes, tossing one more pullover into the keep pile, wondering how many sweaters one man can own when I see the pile of letters at the bottom of the box. Recognizing the penmanship right away, the sheet of paper falls from my hand a few sentences in.

  A few of my most vivid memories of Joseph are the letters he wrote. He’d leave long declarations of affection taped to my bathroom mirror or folded on my pillow after a sleepover, and hide small notes in my jacket pockets or between book pages to discover at the most unexpected moments. I left a shoebox full of Joe’s messages at the apartment with Emerson, unable to part with his unique gesture completely.

  But now I know they weren’t as special as I thought they were.

  I’m not as extraordinary as he convinced me I was.

  Standing at the kitchen counter with Joe’s letters to Kristi stacked in a neat pile, letters her parents must have supposed Teller wrote, black ink teases me, retelling their affair one sentence at a time.

  “We can never tell them…”

  “I don’t know if I’m in love with her…”

  “I’ve never met anyone like you…”

  Teller walks through the front door as I drop my face to my hands and my elbows to the granite countertop, smearing secrets with my devastation.

  “They did this to us. They pushed us together…”

  “I can’t stop thinking of you…”

  “Maybe we should come clean…”

  He steps into the kitchen cautiously, stopping where hardwood meets tile. The glow in Teller’s eyes dims, and his eyebrows come together. “What’s the matter, baby?”

  “Why are they dragging us along?”

  “Do you see how they look at each other?”

  “We have nothing to feel guilty about.”

  Sucking in a large breath, my chin quivers, and I don’t bother hiding ruin from their unknown accomplice—their secret keeper. “Why didn’t you fucking tell me?”

  “Say the words, Kristi, and we can be together.”

  “Nothing compares to being inside of you.”

  “Not even her.”

  Caught red-handed licks his lips as guilt immediately glistens in his eyes. “How did you find out?”

  Laughing bitterly, I crumple the written skeletons in my hand and throw them at him. Six months of lies sashay in the space between us, gliding from one side of the kitchen to the other before sliding beneath the table, next to the coffeemaker, into the sink, and at his feet.

  “How could you do this?” I ask, clutching my broken heart. “You son of a bitch.”

  “Do you think Teller knows?”

  “Melanie Garcia…”

  “Has he said anything to you?”

  Pinching the bridge of his nose, Teller lowers his hand and looks to me with the corners of his mouth turned down. He approaches me cautiously, reaching with a shaky hand. “I was going to tell you, baby.”

  What should I do when I’m about to lose the love of my life? When the only person who can fix me can no longer do it?

  Scream.

  “When?” I shove him away, smacking betrayal across the face, clawing at his throat. “After I fucking married him?”

  “We should take it easy.”

  “Let’s slow down.”

  “I can’t lose her. I know that now.”

  Hammering my fists into his chest, Teller comes back for more, following me around the counter. I chuck him into the kitchen table, and he stumbles into the chairs, only to trail me into the living room. He captures my wrist, ducking when I swing my arm around, aiming for his head.

  “This
was a mistake.”

  “A lapse in judgment.”

  “Nobody has to know.”

  Stronger and faster than me, determination pulls my back against his chest, circling his arms around mine so I can’t get away. I cry out, breaking into a million pieces, incapable of keeping it together. He presses his face against mine, cheek to cheek, whispering apologies and promises.

  “Forgive me, baby. Forgive me.”

  His words ring familiar, sparking a fire that incinerates me from the inside out. The pain’s unimaginable, crippling, soul-taking. “I’m done, Teller. I can’t do this again. I don’t have anything left.”

  “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

  “I love her.”

  “Forgive me.”

  Turning me around in his arms, he clutches the front of my shirt in his fist and pushes me into the wall. Teller’s hands shake, his arms, his shoulders, his eyes. He strengthens his grip on the worn cotton, like I might disappear if he lets go.

  “Please don’t do this. I’m begging you, Ella. Please don’t leave me again.”

  Driving his body flush against mine, Teller lifts me from my feet, but I don’t wrap my legs around his waist. I clench my teeth shut when his tear-soaked kiss touches my mouth and his tongue sweeps across my bottom lip. Turning my head away as his lips journey down my throat, I ask, “Melanie from the hospital. She’s Melanie from his letter?”

  “Yes,” he admits somberly.

  “When you found out Joe was sleeping with Kristi, instead of telling me, you fucked her?”

  Teller squeezes his eyes shut, resting his forehead on top of mine. “I didn’t have sex with her.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I shove him away, burrowing my elbow in his chest, pushing the palm of my hand under his jaw, and pulling his hair. He won’t budge. His touch is torturous, his words twisting, and all I want to do is comfort him despite the damage he’s done.