You Were There Too

by Colleen Oakley

  “Well,” Harrison says. “We’ll put you on antibiotics—” He glances at the boy and chooses his next words carefully. “But the prognosis would not be good.”

  “How not good?”

  He clears his throat. “You would most likely not make it.”

  “Whaaaaat?” the boy screams. Tears immediately spring to his eyes. “Noooo!”

  “It’s OK, Gabriel,” Whitney says, putting her hand on her son’s arm. “Sweetie, it’s OK. I’m not going to die.” She turns to Harrison, wincing again from the pain. “We’ll do the surgery.”

  He nods curtly and then lays out all the risks of the surgery as quickly and quietly as possible, to not set the boy off again, then pats her hand. “We’ll take good care of you, and in a few hours, you’ll feel much better than this, I prom—”

  He stops and clears his throat. It’s the exact same words he said to Noah right before his surgery. And they were a lie. And he swears the boy, Gabriel, can see right through him, because he fixes him with another glare. “Don’t you kill my mom,” Gabriel says, his tiny hands in tight fists by his sides, as if he’s planning to hit Harrison if all doesn’t go well.

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to fix her right up,” Harrison says in a soothing voice. And then, even though he knows he shouldn’t, he looks him dead in the eyes and adds the words he couldn’t finish earlier: “I promise.”

  Apparently, it’s enough, because Gabriel reaches out with his stumpy fingers and grabs the Dum-Dum from the arm of the chair, unwrapping it in one quick motion and popping it in his mouth.

  Noah wanted grape.

  The memory hits Harrison like a line drive he didn’t see coming. The way Noah spied his pocketful of suckers and secreted the purple out when he thought Harrison was distracted in talking to his mom. Not till after your surgery, buddy, Harrison said chidingly, plucking it from his hand. And now, as Harrison eyes Gabriel, the head of the lollipop creating a perfect ball under the skin of his right cheek, he thinks: Noah never got his lollipop. Noah will never get another lollipop.

  He scrubs the morbid thought from his mind, steps out of the room and gives the orders to Sheila, the nurse assigned to Whitney. She has the consent form all ready to go, and Harrison signs it so she can take it in to the patient. “Oh, and Sheila?” he says. “See if there’s someone we can call for the kid.”

  “Not my husband!” the woman yells from behind the curtain. “Do not call him.”

  Sheila raises an eyebrow and purses her lips. “Yes, we’ve been trying her sister, who apparently works at the movie theater and gets off in an hour. Haven’t got a hold of her yet, though.”

  He lowers his voice. “What’s with the husband?”

  “Separated, according to her,” she whispers. “In the middle of some kind of custody battle.”

  He nods. “Send him down to the ped ward. Get him set up with some video games. That’ll keep him until the sister gets here.”

  “Will do,” she says.

  He pokes his head back in the room. “Gabriel—you a Need for Speed guy? Minecraft?”

  The boy’s eyes get big.

  “He loves Minecraft,” Whitney says. “Don’t you, buddy?” And then mouths, Thank you.

  When Sheila slips into the room, Harrison calls up to the OR, relaying all the information needed in a steady, calm manner. Then he goes to the doctors’ lounge and directly into the bathroom, which is thankfully empty. He puts a hand on either side of the sink and stares into the mirror.

  Gabriel’s plea echoes in his head: Don’t you kill my mom. Don’t you kill my mom. Don’t you kill my mom. Heart thumping, he turns on the faucet and splashes water on his forehead, his cheeks, and then lifts his head, watching the liquid drip off his skin, beading up on his beard.

  Then he leans to his right, grabs the trash can beneath the sink and throws up.

  * * *

  The first time Harrison lost a patient was two weeks into his residency. A car accident. An eighty-one-year-old woman, short of breath, was brought into the ER. She checked out OK and the attending said to keep an eye on her, to call out if he needed anything. Harrison sat at the side of her portable cot. The woman started talking about her husband, how he’d be worried she wasn’t back in time for dinner. Harrison held her hand, assured her that her husband had been called. “I don’t feel good,” she said, then closed her eyes. Her head rolled back.

  There’s a look people get right before they die. Pale, yes. Weak. But it’s something else. Intangible. A knowing. Harrison didn’t have the experience to recognize it then, he just knew something wasn’t right. He shouted for help. The attending came over, called a code, started chest compressions. Harrison looked on, helpless.

  Time of death, 18:32.

  Every doctor has their first death story, and every one handles it differently. Harrison was in shock. Everything was moving too slowly and too fast all at once. He stood in the corner, watching the nurses efficiently disconnect the IV, scribble notes in charts, pull the sheet over her face. He knew they were doing their jobs, but had this distinct feeling that he was waiting for something more, though he couldn’t possibly think what that might be. The tolling of a bell? A reverent moment of silence? An acknowledgment of the life that was here and then—quick as a breath blowing out a candle flame—was gone.

  The chief resident appeared, and Harrison thought for a second, This must be it. What I’ve been waiting for. The chief looked at the attending. “Salisbury steak in the cafeteria.” He slapped the doorframe. “You ready for dinner?”

  There’s no class in medical school, no tips for dealing with death, mortality, grief. So you look to your elders and you learn, not how to detach, but that you must. Numb yourself. Some doctors pray, find consolation in believing that something or someone else is in control. Some drink. Some yell at their kids. Over time, Harrison found his comfort in the randomness of death. The fact that he can do everything exactly right, exactly as he’s been trained, but it’s not always enough. People die. And he can’t save everybody.

  But then, Noah.

  And he learned there’s a difference between people dying under your care and people dying because of your care. And the difference is as wide as an ocean. And he’s not entirely sure he knows how to swim.

  Chapter 6

  I shuffle into the kitchen, my eyes swollen and bloodshot, my body weak and sore. I pour a cup of cold coffee from the pot Harrison made before he left, and then dig through the pockets of the jeans I wore yesterday for the number Dr. Okafor’s nurse gave us for the reproductive endocrinologist. The first available appointment they have is nearly two and a half weeks out. I take it, hang up, and the too-tight corset that’s been constricting my lungs, my heart, for the past five days loosens ever so slightly.

  Gripping my mug, I wander aimlessly through the house, though my legs know exactly where I’m headed, taking me upstairs to the bedroom full of unpacked boxes. It’s masochistic, this ritual I’ve adopted after each miscarriage, but I’m compelled to do it—that is, if I can find what I’m looking for. There are at least four boxes labeled Misc. where, while packing, I threw all the things taking up space on our shelves and in our drawers that didn’t seem to have a specific home.

  I sit on the floor, digging through box after box, sifting through old medical journals, photograph albums, random items I found while out and about in Philadelphia and brought home over the years—the pink child’s mitten, a rusty hubcap, an old house key—but I don’t find it. The desperation begins rising up my chest like a wave picking up steam as it pushes toward shore. What if it’s gone? What if it got lost somewhere in the move or didn’t make it into a box or it got accidentally tossed in the trash? But then finally there it is, in the third box, the knitted corner peeking out from beneath an old game of Boggle.

  Relief courses through my veins as I tug it out, the tiny pink-and-blue-striped bean
ie, no bigger than a grapefruit. The first time we found out we were pregnant—the very first time—Harrison came home from his shift at the hospital the next day and knelt beside me where I was lying on the couch watching the Game Show Network. I don’t remember what was on—Family Feud or Wheel of Fortune or Supermarket Sweep—but I remember the way he gently laid the hat across my flat belly.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “I stole it.” He grinned. “From the nursery.”

  “Harrison!” I said, but I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “They won’t miss it. All these sweet old ladies knit them for the newborns. I just—I didn’t want to wait.”

  He placed his palm over the hat on my belly, his fingers spread, nearly concealing all the soft yarn. “It’s your first hat,” he whispered to his hand, to the hat, to our baby. “Second one will be an Eagles ball cap, of course. But this is your first one.”

  “What if it’s a girl?” I said.

  He paused, looking at me in mock shock. “Why can’t a girl have an Eagles ball cap, too?” he said. “God, you’re sexist.”

  I laughed again. “Touché.”

  I pick up the hat now, and hold it to my face, the yarn soft and scratchy against my nose. The tears come again, fast and furious, and I wrap one arm around my legs, pulling them up to my chest, and rock back and forth, mourning that very first baby that never got a chance to wear it. And the second one. And the third. And I wonder, not for the first or second or third time—where did they go? My babies. Where are they? I feel desperate to find them, like I’ve lost my keys and if I look hard enough, digging down in the cushions of the couch or underneath the coffee table or through the clutter on my dresser, I’ll find them. They’re there, waiting for me. Somewhere. I just have to find them.

  My sobs turn primal, guttural, and I grieve in a way that I’ve never even let Harrison see. This is private, this bereavement, between me and my babies alone. And when I’m done, I’ll tuck the hat back in the box along with my sorrow, hiding it away for safekeeping. And I’ll do my best to set my sights on the next baby—the one that may actually get to wear it. Because what else can I do?

  When I’m finally drained, my body left feeling like a sheet before it’s hung on a line to dry—wrung out and beat, but somehow fresh and renewed at the same time—I gently place the hat back in the box. I inhale and exhale shakily and then take notice of the other things I disregarded when searching for the hat. The Boggle game, of course, an envelope full of old concert and movie ticket stubs, a loose picture of Raya from our first year at Moore—perched on her bed in overalls and a hat with a big flower on the brim. A stack of old sketchbooks I haven’t looked at since college. I pull them all out and slowly flip through the pages of my work, renderings of Rodin sculptures that I would draw from every angle, nudes of classmates who modeled to make extra money, including Raya. One book is filled with hands—pages and pages of fingers and clasped palms and bony knuckles—one of the hardest body parts to reproduce with a pencil.

  In the final book, papers falling loose, their corners sticking out the sides, I flip open the worn blue cover and my breath catches.

  Oliver.

  I don’t even remember drawing the portrait, but there he is, fleshed out in shades of gray, his eyes the intense dark of Nitram B charcoal. My skin turns to gooseflesh as I stare at this likeness, knowing now that the man is not a figment of my imagination. That I was drawing someone who exists. How is that possible? I quickly close the cover and tuck the book back into the box, placing the other sketchbooks on top of it, as if I’m trying to bury the evidence.

  But try as I might, as I drift through my morning, watering the garden, diligently distributing Epsom salt around the tomato plants, nibbling on a granola bar while watching Let’s Make a Deal in the den—I can’t put Oliver out of my mind.

  On a commercial, I grab my phone from where it was plugged in on the kitchen counter and tap on the web browser. I stare at the blank search bar and consider what to type, before finally starting on something broad and generic: Dreams.

  I read through some dry, perfunctory material about what dreams are (a series of images, events and emotions that occur involuntarily during sleep) and then scroll through the various sites that offer the meanings behind common symbols in dreams. It’s mostly a lot of obvious psychobabble: to dream of throwing away garbage means you’re ridding yourself of negative energy in your life.

  Still, I click on S and scroll to Stranger.

  A stranger in your dream signifies a part of yourself that is repressed and hidden. Alternatively, it symbolizes the archetypal dream helper who is offering you insight and advice.

  Clutching the phone in my palm, I glance up at Wayne Brady talking to a woman covered from head to toe in a bacon costume and sigh. I click back to the search engine and try to narrow it down.

  Dreaming of a stranger and then seeing him.

  I hit enter and the results fill the screen. As I scan them, I realize I was hoping for some scientific study to pop up, a biological or psychological explanation of this phenomenon that would make perfect sense and clear everything up in one fell swoop. To my great disappointment, it’s mostly links to forums and message boards. I click on the first one.

  It’s a question posted by DayDreamer06. I try not to cringe at the handle for what is most certainly a twelve-year-old girl who has Shawn Mendes posters papering her bedroom walls.

  Have you ever dreamt of a person and then met that person in real life?

  There are forty-seven responses. There are the expected No, that’s not possible and a few that say they believe it could happen but it’s never happened to them, but to my surprise, the great majority are personal anecdotes about their own experiences. From the very vague: About six years ago, I dreamt about a guy who I had a lot of feelings for but I couldn’t really picture his face. He whispered his name to me right before I woke up: Matthew. When I met my now-husband Matthew, I knew I’d been dreaming about him. To the very specific: I once had a dream about a little girl with an orange-striped bow in her hair and a unicorn T-shirt standing next to a cash register and the very next day I saw her in the mall, standing next to a cash register exactly as it was in my dream.

  I go back to the original search results and click on more links, all of which are filled with more stories like these. As I read through them one by one, what’s most astounding to me isn’t the details, it’s the sheer volume of people who claim to have experienced this very thing. After an hour or so, the words and the stories start blurring together, but I keep reading anyway, taking comfort in the fact that I’m not alone, even as I know none of these anecdotes will be able to tell me the one thing I want to know: what in the world it could possibly mean.

  * * *

  In the middle of my sixth or seventh chain of stories—this one a Reddit board—the words disappear and the screen fills with Raya’s face. She’s calling me.

  We typically communicate via text, so I slide my thumb quickly over the screen and put it to my ear. “What’s wrong?” I say.

  “Nothing,” she says. “What makes you think something is wrong?”

  “You’re calling me. You never call.”

  “Oh. Well, we haven’t talked since . . . you know. And I thought a text was kind of, I don’t know. Flippant.”

  “I like flippant.”

  “How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “Really?”

  “No.” I sigh. “I’m terrible. I’m also fairly certain I’m going insane.”

  “Going?”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “Why are you insane?”

  I take a deep breath. I’m hesitant to tell her, not only because it sounded so ridiculous when I said it out loud, but because I got the sense Harrison didn’t really believe me—or at least understand how shocking it was. I don’t want the
same thing to happen with Raya. But then, I realize, this is Raya. My friend who owns at least six different astrology books, burns sage with frequency and once buried quartz crystals in four pots of soil and placed them in the corners of our college apartment to “create a boundary of protection” when we thought she had a possible stalker. If anyone is going to believe this, it’s her.

  So I tell her.

  Aside from a few well-timed and incredulous whats, Raya doesn’t say anything until I’ve unloaded every single detail—from my first recollection of dreaming about Oliver when I was in college to seeing him in the Giant to meeting him in Dr. Okafor’s waiting room. Even then, in the silence that follows, I have to prompt her. “Say something.”

  “You’ve been dreaming about this man for years?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We lived together. How is this the first time that I’m hearing about this?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “The dreams always felt kind of meaningless—intense, but meaningless—until I saw him, anyway. It’s weird, right? I mean, have you ever heard of anything like this before?”

  “I don’t know,” she echoes, pausing to consider. “I mean, a few nights ago, I dreamt I went grocery shopping with Barack Obama. He kept trying to put this premade meat loaf from the deli section in my cart and I didn’t want it. I was getting so angry, but he wouldn’t leave it alone. He was all, ‘Take the meat loaf. It’s delicious.’ So I started screaming at him. At Barack Obama!”

  I wait a beat. “Was there a point hidden in there?”

  “I’m saying—dreams are weird. Inexplicable.”

  “OK, sure. But after your dream, did you then meet our former president in an OB/GYN waiting room?”

  “What would Barack Obama be doing at an OB/GYN?”

  “Raya.”

  She snickers at her own joke.