You Were There Too

by Colleen Oakley

  But then he turns to his right to say something to the person sitting next to him, and I stop cold. I recognize her.

  The perky blonde we saw at Sorelli’s. Whitney. The patient whose life Harrison saved. The woman who is going through a divorce.

  I take a step backward and nearly crash into a man carrying a tray of beer. “Sorry,” I say, my face flushing red. When I glance back up at Harrison, he’s still engrossed in conversation. He’s smiling, laughing even, and I try to remember the last time he looked at me like that.

  And then, my brain unable to process anything else—or maybe it’s my heart that might explode—I turn and rush out into the dark, still night.

  Chapter 20

  Harrison doesn’t believe in soul mates.

  I asked him once, in the early months of our relationship, on the way to that wedding in Maine, Beau and Annie’s. Four hours into the eight-hour road trip, we had devoured a bag of sour gummy worms, two Pepsis, a container of cheddar cheese Pringles and a box of Mike & Ike’s, the evidence littering the floorboards at my feet.

  Harrison laughed.

  “What?”

  “That’s quite a leap from asking why I don’t like peanut butter.”

  “So, do you?” I asked.

  “Believe in soul mates?”

  “Yep.”

  “As in, two people who are destined to meet and fall in love over and over in all the past and future incarnations of their souls, forever and ever throughout the span of time?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “Nope.” He gave his head a firm shake, keeping his eyes trained on the road. Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye were filling in the gaps of our conversation, singing about the world being a great big onion.

  “Oh,” I said. I wasn’t surprised, necessarily. Harrison was more the logical one, the doctor, the science and math guy whose proofs require tangible evidence. I looked out the window. We were passing a service plaza on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

  “Wait, do you?” He glanced at me.

  “No, not really,” I said. I thought back—I may have at one point, but when you’re eleven and your mom divorces your dad and everything you think you know about love explodes, childish ideas like soul mates are collateral damage. And I learned happiness was a fleeting thing—something that’s here one minute and snatched away the next, like a shooting star or a moonbeam that can’t be caught or held or locked up in a cage.

  “So why did you sound so disappointed that I don’t?”

  I thought about it. “I don’t know. I guess I kind of hoped one of us did. I like the idea of it. That we were destined to be together. That some powerful universal force draws us to each other, time eternal.”

  “Huh,” he said. “I think the opposite is actually more interesting.”

  “How so?”

  “That in the random chaos of life, you and I met somehow. And out of everyone else in the world that we know, we choose each other. Every day.”

  I stared at him. “And here you’re always saying you’re not romantic.”

  “It’s actually you who says that.”

  I laughed. “You’re right.”

  We barreled down the highway a few more miles, passing trees, trees and more trees. Tammi and Marvin had moved on to their next greatest hit.

  “You know though, the past-life thing, I could totally buy into,” I said. “It’s so wild to think about—being somebody else, living an entirely different life. What do you think I was? Probably something really cool, like a pirate. Or maybe I had one of those weird jobs that no longer exist today—like a bowling pin resetter. Or a lamplighter. Or an orgy planner.”

  “A what?”

  “An orgy planner,” I repeated.

  “I don’t think that’s a thing.”

  “Yeah, in ancient Rome. That was a real job. Orgies didn’t just happen, you know. Someone had to invite the women, organize the food, book the kithara player.”

  “You are so strange,” Harrison said. And then, in the next breath: “Marry me.” It was the second time he had asked. I would have thought he was joking the first time and this one—we hadn’t been together that long and I hadn’t even told him I loved him yet—but his face was so serious, not even a hint of teasing. It sent a thrill through me.

  “Maybe I will,” I said.

  He jerked the wheel. I grabbed the Oh Shit handle. “Jesus, Harrison!”

  The car came to a stop in the emergency lane. He stared at me, eyes wide. “Is that a yes?”

  I shook my head, grinning. “No! You’re crazy.”

  “Crazy for you.”

  I groaned, but couldn’t help laughing. Couldn’t stop the thrill coursing through me at his words.

  He leaned over, palmed my face between his hands and kissed me. My stomach fluttered; my bones turned to rubber.

  Now, as I enter our dark house, I try to remember the last time he kissed me like that. Or maybe I’m trying to remember the last time I felt that way when he kissed me. And though I know that it’s only the natural progression of relationships—that it’s impossible to sustain that level of fresh excitement years in—I can’t help but wonder if Harrison’s stopped choosing me. If we stopped choosing each other.

  Without turning on a light, I pad to the living room and sit on the couch, staring at nothing, waiting for my husband to come home, so I can ask him.

  But he doesn’t.

  * * *

  In the confusion, that weird place between sleep and wake, I think the cat must be back. Every night for a week after we moved into this house, Harrison and I would hear a pitiful mewing right outside our bedroom window. But every time we’d go look—or once, offer it some milk as a peace offering in exchange for quiet—it would dart off, as if it had just been delivering a message and couldn’t stay to visit. It was like some weird welcome to our new life—a reminder that we were no longer “city folk.” That the late-night traffic and police sirens we had become immune to were suddenly replaced by wild animals—whining cats and crickets and the occasional owl—who don’t softly hoot, I’ve learned, but cackle like creepy children.

  But as I start to get my bearings, I realize it’s not the cat. Was it me? Was I having a nightmare? Was I crying in my sleep? Groggy, I peer at the clock on Harrison’s nightstand, glowing 2:36 into the dark. And then I see him, perched at the end of the bed.

  “Harrison?” I whisper, my voice croaky.

  He doesn’t turn around and I know something’s wrong from the way he’s slumped over, not moving. I jerk aside the covers and crawl to the foot of the bed, put my hand on his back. And that’s when I notice the trembling of his shoulders. And then the wetness on his cheeks.

  Harrison is crying.

  I’m stunned, like I’m watching a plane fall out of the sky right in front of me. I’m not sure what to do and I just want to make it stop.

  “Harrison,” I say, moving my body to sit beside him in one swift motion. This close I can smell the alcohol fumes rolling off him.

  And my memory of the night comes rushing back. Harrison at the bar. With Whitney. My heart sinks to the bottom of my toes. Though I knew it looked bad, part of me thought there must be a logical explanation for it all. For why he was in a bar with another woman. Why he hadn’t told me he was going. Besides, I had been downtown with another man, too, and I hadn’t told him. Maybe that made us even. But now, he’s crying and I think maybe we’re not even. Not at all. “What is it?” I whisper, even though I’m not sure I want to know. That I don’t think I can handle hearing the words out loud.

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Harrison,” I repeat, and he flinches as if I’ve burned him. “Please talk to me.”

  He shakes his head, but his words are muffled by his hand.

  “What?”

  “I killed someone,” he says. The words
ring out clear and sharp into the still air. I’m momentarily stunned, my brain trying to process the difference between what I expected him to say and what he said.

  “What?”

  But he doesn’t respond, so I sit with the words, having lost all others.

  Finally, I ask, “What do you mean?” Was he in a car wreck? Did he hit someone? My eyes rake over his body, scanning for injuries.

  “I killed him,” he chokes out between sobs.

  “Who?” I say, panic gripping me afresh. “Harrison, you’re scaring me.”

  He just shakes his head, moaning.

  “Please, Harrison.”

  “I’m drunk,” he says into his hands.

  “Were you in a car wreck?”

  He shakes his head. Clutches his mouth with his hand, squeezing his cheeks together, then moves his fingers down his chin, smoothing the wiry hairs in his unruly beard.

  “Then what happened? Who died?”

  He takes a deep, quivering breath. “Noah.” And then he’s off again, deep, heaving sobs.

  “Noah,” I repeat. And all at once I remember. The boy in Philadelphia. The routine appendectomy. Harrison doesn’t lose patients often—especially on the table during surgery. And it’s even more rare for him to lose a child, since most of his patients are adults. This one rattled him, I remember. It was the reason he wanted to get out of Dodge for the weekend. The reason we took that spontaneous road trip to Hope Springs.

  “Harrison, that was months ago.”

  He sniffs, then lets out a slow, audible breath. “It was my fault,” he says. “That he”—his voice cracks—“died.”

  “What?” I say. “What do you mean?”

  He blows out a long breath. “’Member Boehner?” The frat boy in scrubs. That’s how I always thought of Harrison’s colleague, a doctor a few years older than him. He was charming, but in a smarmy kind of way, and carried his stereotypical God complex like a badge of honor. I nod.

  “Well, we had this ongoing . . . bet with appendectomies, who could do one the fastest. I mean, we did so many of them. All the time.” He’s slurring a little, talking low, and my mind races to understand. “Boehner was down to sixteen minutes and change and I knew I could”—he hiccups—“beat him on my next one.”

  “Oh, Harrison,” I say, all at once seeing where the story is headed, even without fully knowing. “Noah?”

  He nods. “Everything was fine—I made the incisions, got the trocar in. But when I got in there . . . he was really inflamed. Not the worst I’ve seen, but bad.” His words are running together, over each other, as if he’s talking to himself more than me, and I lean in closer to try to make them out. “I had to decide—in a blink—do I keep going or do I switch from laparoscopic to open?” He shrugs. “Got cocky. Thought I could do it and still beat Boehner’s time. But—” He shakes his head and the tears are freely flowing now, silently. “I just . . . I keep replaying that moment. Why didn’t I stop? And then the mom—” He swipes his palms beneath his eyes. “The way she wailed when I told her. Like this inhuman—animalistic . . .” He shakes his head again. “It’s all I can hear sometimes. All I can see.”

  I clutch at my heart, thinking of the mom. How horrific that would be. Both to hear those words and to have to say them. I can’t even imagine. I can’t imagine half of what Harrison does at work. But I know him—and even if he was thinking about that stupid bet, he never would have risked a patient’s life like that if he had an inkling it would end that way. It just sounds like he had two choices, and he made the wrong one.

  “Harrison,” I breathe. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He jerks his head. “I killed him,” he says, and it’s so raw, so full of emotion, that it finally hits me: He’s been walking around with this for months—months—and I had no idea. His shoulders are shaking in earnest now, his face a mix of wet tears and mucus. I put my hand on his shoulder.

  He sniffs. “It’s fine. I’m fine,” he says. His breathing slows and he wipes his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. “I need water.”

  “OK.” I feel grateful to have a task. My mind a jumble, I run to the kitchen barefoot in my tank top and underwear, opening the cabinet that holds our glassware in the dark. I grope for a cup, but there’s nothing there. Shit. I haven’t emptied the dishwasher. I fling open its door and retrieve a glass, not even needing to hold it up to the moonlight climbing in the window to see that it’s marred with fingerprints and lined with lip marks. Shit. I didn’t run the dishwasher. I hurriedly wash it out in the sink and then fill it with tap water.

  When I get back to our bedroom, Harrison’s lanky body is splayed out on the bed, his hand on his still mostly buttoned shirt, his feet hanging off the bottom edge. Guttural snores rattle in steady intervals from his slack mouth.

  I stand there and watch him for a minute, transfixed by this man that I have slept next to for eight years, as if I’m seeing him for the first time.

  I set the glass of water on our dresser, next to a handful of loose change. The ceiling fan spins lazily over our bed as I slip Harrison’s tan leather loafers off one foot and then the other. His glasses lie listlessly on the blanket next to his knee, and I pick them up, folding the temples down and setting the frames on his nightstand where he can easily reach them in the morning. I slide a hand underneath him and tug the blanket down the length of his body until it pulls free and I drape it up over him.

  And then I freeze, standing over him, as suddenly something clicks into place. This is what’s changed Harrison. It’s this burden, this guilt he’s been carrying around for months. It’s the only thing that makes sense, that explains his sudden eagerness to move to Hope Springs, the long beard, the long hours, the long runs and—of course—his full change of heart about having kids. Relief floods through me, the kind that only comes with sudden clarity.

  As I lie down next to my husband and turn out the light, even as I’m pained for him and all that he’s enduring, for the first time in weeks, I go to sleep with a pit in my stomach that doesn’t feel so much like despair, but a little bit like hope. And it’s growing.

  * * *

  The next morning, I wake up to Harrison sitting on the foot of the bed once again. I stare at the length of his knobby spine protruding through the back of a shirt—this one baby blue instead of the white he was wearing last night—and experience a weird form of déjà vu, briefly wondering if I dreamt everything the night before.

  “Harrison,” I say, my voice still thick with sleep.

  He turns, his face in Alfred Hitchcock profile. “Morning,” he says. “I need you to take me to my car.”

  I sit straight up now. Right. Harrison was drunk last night. Crying. Noah. “Where’s your car?”

  “I left it downtown. If it hasn’t been towed.”

  “How’d you get home?” I ask.

  “Whitney.”

  At the mention of her name, I prickle. “Whitney,” I repeat.

  “She’s that patient—”

  I cut him off. “I know who she is.” And even though I know this is the least of our worries right now, or the least of Harrison’s anyway, I can’t help it. “So you went to a bar with one of your patients?”

  “Not with her. I just ran into her there.”

  “Oh.” Still. I think of the way he was looking at her. How the tightness of his jaw was gone, the crinkle of his forehead smooth. Like he didn’t have a care in the world. The complete opposite of how he looks now. “Harrison, is there anything—should I be worried—”

  “What? Mia, no. That’s ridiculous.” He turns to me now and I see it in his eyes—the weight of the world, yes, but also that he’s telling the truth.

  And then he stands up. “I’ll be in the den.”

  “Wait!” He pauses, but doesn’t turn to look at me. “Harrison, last night—Noah.”

  He holds up a han
d. “It’s nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “It’s not nothing, Harrison. I want to be here for you. Please talk to me.”

  His head drops and his hands go to his waist. He sighs, lifts his chin. “I’ve got to get to work.”

  And then he turns and walks out of the room.

  “OK,” I say to the empty space left behind—even though nothing feels OK. Nothing at all.

  Chapter 21

  Caroline

  At first Caroline thinks it’s indigestion. She probably shouldn’t have eaten three chili dogs and an order of Tater Tots for dinner, but she’s been ravenous lately, and it sounded so good at the time. Two hours later, when the pain has gotten so bad she can’t ignore it anymore, she calls the doctor.

  Later, she calls Oliver. She hates to bother him again. Especially when he was just in Hope Springs three days ago putting together her crib, but the truth is, she has no one else. Certainly not Richard, the father of the baby, who unceremoniously dumped her and stayed with his wife after she told him. And she hasn’t exactly told any of her friends about the baby yet. Maybe she’s embarrassed, or maybe it hasn’t completely sunk in yet that this is happening. To her. She is having a baby.

  Anyway, as pathetic as it is when she really thinks about it, she has no idea what she’d do without her big brother, annoying as he may be most of the time.

  “I need you,” she says, her breath hitching, when he picks up.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “Cramps, I don’t know. Something’s not right.” She grunts again.

  “Did you call your doctor?”

  “Answering service. Told me to go to the ER if the pains didn’t stop in the next thirty minutes.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  She pauses, glances at the television, at an old episode of Law & Order. She tries to remember if this is a different episode than the one that was on when she called the doctor. She decides it is. “An hour, I think?”