Maybe in Another Life

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  “Slowly, just try to ease the weight onto your right foot,” he says. I hang on to him but try to back off just a little. My knees buckle.

  “Slow,” he says. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

  “I don’t know if you should be using running terms to someone who can’t walk,” I tell him.

  But he doesn’t spit something back at me. Instead, he just smiles. “Good point, Ms. Martin.”

  When people are nice and sincere and they don’t fire back with smart-ass remarks, it makes my harmless sarcastic words seem downright rude.

  “I was just joking,” I tell him, immediately trying to take it back. “Use all the sports analogies you want.”

  “Will do,” he says.

  Dr. Winters comes in to check on us. “Looking good,” she says.

  I’m half standing up in a hospital gown and white knee socks, leaning over a grown man, with my hands on a walker. The last thing I am is “looking good.” But I decide to say only nice things, because I don’t feel that Dr. Winters and Ted the physical therapist are up for my level of sarcasm. This is why I need Henry.

  Dr. Winters starts asking questions directly to Ted. They are talking about me and yet ignoring me. It’s like when I was little and my mom’s friends would come over and say something like “Well, isn’t she precious” or “Look at how cute she is!” and I always wanted to say, “I’m right here!”

  Ted moves slightly, pushing more of my weight onto my own feet. I don’t feel as if I have balance, per se, but I can handle it.

  “Actually, Ted,” I say, “can you . . .” I gesture at the walker, asking him to bring it right in front of me, which he does. I shimmy off him and put both arms on the walker. I’m holding myself up. I don’t have my hands on a single person.

  Dr. Winters actually claps. As if I’m learning how to crawl.

  There is only so long you can be condescended to before you want to jump out of your skin.

  “Let me know when you want to sit back down, Ms. Martin,” Ted says.

  “Hannah!” I say. “I said call me Hannah!” My voice is rough and unkind. Ted doesn’t flinch.

  “Ted, why don’t you leave Hannah and me alone for a minute?” Dr. Winters says.

  I’m still standing with the walker on my own. But no one is cheering anymore.

  Ted leaves and shuts the door behind him.

  Dr. Winters turns to me. “Can you sit down on your own?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I tell her, even though I’m not sure it’s true. I try bending at my hips, but I can’t seem to get control properly. I land on my bed with more force and bounce than I mean to. “I should apologize to Ted,” I say.

  She smiles. “Eh,” she says. “Nothing he hasn’t heard before.”

  “Still . . .”

  “This is hard,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I tell her. “But I can do it. I just want to do it. I want to stop being treated with kid gloves or having people cheer because I can feel my toes. I know it’s hard to do, but I want to do it. I want to start walking.”

  “I didn’t mean it was hard to walk,” she says. “I mean that it’s hard not to be able to walk.”

  “You sort of tricked me,” I tell her, laughing. “Your sentence was misleading.”

  Dr. Winters starts laughing, too. “I know what I’m talking about,” she says. “This stuff is frustrating. But you can’t rush it.”

  “I just want to get out of here,” I tell her.

  “I know, but we can’t rush that, either—”

  “Come on!” I say, my voice rising. “I’ve been lying in this bed for days. I lost a baby. I can’t walk. The only time I can get up is when someone pushes me around the hideous hallways. Something as mundane as walking by myself to the other side of the room is unimaginable to me. That’s where I’m at right now. The mundane is unimaginable. And I have absolutely no control over anything! My entire life is in a tailspin, and I can’t do anything about it.” And Henry. Now I don’t even have Henry.

  Dr. Winters doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, getting a handle on myself.

  She hands me a pillow. I take it and look at her. I’m not sure I know where this is going.

  “Put the pillow up to your face,” she says.

  I’m starting to think Dr. Winters is nuts.

  “Just do it,” she says. “Indulge me for a second.”

  “OK,” I say, and put the pillow up to my face.

  “Now, scream.”

  I pull the pillow away from my face. “What?”

  She takes the pillow in her hand and gently puts it up to my face. I take it from her. “Scream as if your life depends on it.”

  I try to scream.

  “C’mon, Hannah, you can do better than that.”

  I try to scream again.

  “Louder!” she says.

  I scream.

  “C’mon!”

  I scream louder and louder and louder.

  “Yeah!” she says.

  I scream until there is no more air in my lungs, no more force in my throat. I breathe in, and I scream again.

  “You can’t walk,” she says. “And you lost a baby.”

  I scream.

  “It’s going to be months until you fully recover,” she says.

  I scream.

  “Don’t hold it in. Don’t ignore it. Let it out.”

  I scream and I scream and I scream.

  I’m angry that I can’t walk yet. I’m angry that Dr. Winters is right to clap for me when I stand up with a walker, because standing up on my own, even with a walker, is really, really hard.

  I’m angry about the pain.

  And about that lady just driving away. As if I was nothing. Just kept on driving down the street while I lay there.

  And I’m angry at Henry. Because he made things better, and now he’s gone. And because he made me feel stupid. Because I thought he cared about me. I thought that maybe I meant something to him.

  And I’m angry that I don’t.

  I’m angry that I ended up pregnant with Michael’s baby.

  I’m angry at myself for falling in love with him.

  I’m angry that my parents come and go out of my life.

  Right now, in this moment, it feels as if I’m angry at the whole goddamn world.

  So I scream into the pillow.

  When I’m done, I take the pillow away from my face, put it back on the bed, and turn to Dr. Winters.

  “Are you ready?” she says.

  “For what?” I ask her.

  “To move forward,” she says. “To accept that you cannot walk right now. And to be patient with yourself and with us as you learn how to do it again.”

  I’m not sure. So I take the pillow, and I put it up to my face. I scream one last time. But my heart’s not in it. I don’t have anything left to yell about. I mean, I’m still angry. But it’s no longer boiling to the surface. It’s a simmer. And you can control a simmer.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m ready.”

  She stands in front of me. She helps me stand up. She calls Ted into the room.

  And the two of them stand with me, help me, coach me, walk me through the art of balancing on two feet.

  When I get home, Charlemagne runs toward me, and I hear Gabby get out of her bed.

  She comes down the stairs and looks at me. She can see from my face that it didn’t go well. I can tell from hers that she’s been crying.

  “You’re home early.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “You told him?”

  “Yeah.”

  She gestures to the sofa, and we both walk over and sit down. “What did he say?”

  “Nothing? Everything? He’s going to think about it.” Then I ask about her. “Did Mark call again?” Mark has called at least ten times since he left. Gabby hasn’t answered any of them.

  “Yeah,” she says. “But I didn’t answer again. It’s not time to talk right now. I
have to get myself together and get ready for it. I’ll hear him out. I’m not writing him off entirely, I suppose.”

  “Got it,” I say.

  “But I’m also being realistic. He was having an affair for a long time. I can’t think of an explanation he could have that would change my mind about getting a divorce.”

  “You’re not tempted to answer the phone and scream at him?”

  She laughs. “Definitely. I am definitely tempted to do that. I will probably do that soon.”

  “But not right now.”

  “What does it get me?” she says, shrugging. “At the end of the conversation, I’ll still be me. He’ll still be him. He’ll still have cheated on me. I have to accept that.”

  “So at least we’re facing our problems head-on,” I tell her.

  She looks at me and smiles sadly. “At least we have that.”

  “We make quite a pair, don’t we?”

  Gabby huffs. “I’ll say.”

  “I couldn’t do any of this without you.”

  “Ditto,” she says.

  “I kind of want to just feel sorry for myself and cry,” I tell her. “Maybe for the foreseeable future.”

  She nods. “Honestly, that sounds great.”

  We both slump down on the couch. Charlemagne joins us.

  The two of us quietly cry on and off for the rest of the night, taking turns being the one crying and the one consoling.

  I think that through our wallowing, we are able to release some of our fear and pain, because when we wake up the next day, we both feel stronger, better, more ready to take on the world, no matter what it throws at us.

  We go out for breakfast and try to make jokes. Gabby reminds me to take my prenatal vitamins. We walk Charlemagne and then go buy her a dog bed and some chew toys. We begin to potty train her by bringing her to the front door when she pees. Every time she looks as if she has to pee, we pick her up and bring her to the front door, where we have a wee-wee pad. Gabby and I high-five each other with an unmatched level of excitement when Charlemagne goes straight to the wee-wee pad on her own.

  When Mark calls that night, Gabby answers. She calmly listens to what he has to say. I don’t eavesdrop. I try to give her space.

  It’s hours until she comes to find me in my room.

  “He apologized a million times. He says he never meant to hurt me. He says he hates himself for what he’s done.”

  “OK,” I say.

  “He says he was going to tell me. That he was working up the courage to tell me.”

  “OK . . .” Her voice is shaky, and it’s making me nervous.

  “He loves her. And he wants a divorce.”

  I sit up straight in bed. “He wants a divorce?”

  She nods her head, just as stunned as I am. “He says I can keep the house. He won’t fight me on a settlement. He says I deserve everything he can give me. He says he loves me, but he’s not sure he was ever in love with me. And that he’s sorry he wasn’t brave enough to face that fact earlier.”

  My mouth is agape.

  “He says, looking back on it, he should have handled it differently, but he knows this is right for both of us.”

  “I’m going to kill him,” I tell her.

  She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I’m kind of OK.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I think I’m in shock, first of all,” she says. “So take this with a grain of salt.”

  “OK . . .”

  “But I always just had this feeling that maybe there was someone better out there.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I mean, we’ve been together since we were in college, and then we both went on to more school, and who has time to really focus on dating then? Right? So I stayed with him because . . . I didn’t really see a reason not to. We were comfortable around each other. We were happy enough. And then, you know, I got to the age where I felt I should get married. And things have been fine between us. Always fine.”

  “But just fine?”

  “Right,” she says.

  “I mean, I don’t know,” she says. “I just sometimes hoped that I could have something more than just fine. Someone who made me feel like I hung the moon. But I sort of stopped believing that existed, I think. And I figured, why not marry a guy like Mark? He’s a nice guy.”

  “Questionable.”

  She laughs. “Right. Now it’s questionable. But at the time, I didn’t think twice about it. You know? I was in a good relationship with a stable man who wanted to marry me and buy a house and do all the things you’re supposed to do. I didn’t see any reason not to take him up on that just because I felt like he was a B-plus. And I was perfectly happy. I mean, I doubt, if this hadn’t happened, that I ever would have verbalized any of this. It just wasn’t on my mind. I was happy enough. I really was.” She starts crying again.

  “Are you OK?” I ask.

  “No,” she says, getting hold of herself. “I’m absolutely devastated. But—”

  “But what?”

  “When he told me, I just kept thinking that if I met someone out there who was better for me, who I felt passionately for, I’d want to leave Mark. That’s the truth. I’d want to leave. I don’t think I would have done what he did. But I’d have wanted to.”

  Charlemagne comes into the room and curls up in a ball.

  “So what now?” I ask.

  “Now?” Gabby says. “I don’t know. It’s too hard to think long-term. I’m heartbroken and miserable and sort of relieved and embarrassed and sick to my stomach.”

  “So maybe we take it one step at a time,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m really craving cinnamon rolls,” I tell her.

  She laughs. “That sounds great,” she says. “Maybe with a lot of icing.”

  “Who wants a cinnamon roll with only a little icing?” I ask her.

  “Touché.”

  “Maybe right now, all we have to do is go get cinnamon rolls with a lot of icing.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Me and the pregnant lady, putting back a half dozen cinnamon rolls.”

  “Right.”

  She leaves to go put on her shoes. I put on a jacket and flip-flops. You can do that in Los Angeles.

  We get into the car.

  “Ethan hasn’t called you, right?” Gabby says.

  I shake my head. “He will when he knows what he wants to do.”

  “And until then?” she asks.

  “I’m not going to wait around for some man to call,” I say, teasing her. “My best friend wouldn’t stand for that.”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says. “Extenuating circumstances.”

  “Still,” I tell her, “if he wants to be with me, he’ll be with me. If he doesn’t, I’m moving on. I have a baby to raise. A job to start. I’m going through a lot. I don’t know if I told you this, but my best friend is getting divorced.”

  Gabby laughs. “You’re telling me! Mine is pregnant with a baby that isn’t her boyfriend’s.”

  “No shit!” I say.

  “Yeah!” Gabby says. “And she came home the other day with a dog she decided to adopt out of the blue.”

  “Wow,” I tell her. “Your friend sounds nuts.”

  “Yours, too,” she says.

  “Think they’ll be OK?” I ask her.

  “I know I’m supposed to say yes, but the truth is, I think they’re doomed.”

  The two of us start laughing. It’s probably much, much funnier to us than it would seem to anyone else. But the way she says we’re doomed makes it clear just how not doomed we are. And that feels like something to let loose and laugh about.

  After eleven days in this hospital, I’m leaving today. I’m going to end up right back here in forty-eight hours, albeit in the outpatient center. I’ll be seeing Ted, the earnest physical therapist, several times a week for the foreseeable future.

  Dr. Winters has been prepping me for this. She has gone over all t
he details with me, and I know them backward and forward.

  Gabby is here helping me pack up my things. I’ve got enough on my plate just trying to get to the bathroom on my own. But I’m making my way there slowly. I want to brush my teeth.

  I use my walker to get close enough to the sink.

  I stand in front of the mirror, and I truly see myself for the first time in almost two weeks. I have a faint bruise on the left side of my face, near my temple. I’m sure it was a doozy when I got here, but now it’s not too bad. I look pale, certainly. But if I had to guess, I’d say that’s as much from being inside the same building day after day as it is from any health concerns. My hair is a mess. I haven’t taken a proper shower in what feels like forever.

  I’m looking forward to sleeping in a real bed and bathing myself, maybe blow-drying my hair. Apparently, preparations have to be made to make that work, too. Mark installed a seat in the shower. Oh, to clean myself unaided! These are the things that dreams are made of.

  Now that I’m leaving the hospital, I am starting to realize just how much this has set me back. Weeks ago, I would have guessed that by now I’d at least have gone out and bought a car or started looking for a job. Instead, I’m not where I started but even further behind.

  But I also know that I’ve come a long way in my recovery and as a person. I’ve faced things I might not have faced otherwise. And as I stare at myself in the mirror for the first time since I got here, I find myself ready to face the ugliest of truths: it might, in fact, be a merciful act of fate that I stand here, unencumbered by a budding life inside me.

  I am not ready to be a mother.

  I am nowhere near it.

  I slowly brush my own teeth. They feel clean and slick when I am done.

  “Why is there always pudding in your room?” Gabby asks me. I turn myself around in slow spurts of energy.

  She has a chocolate pudding cup in her hand. I don’t know when it got here. But I know it was Henry.

  He left me pudding at some point in the past day. He left me chocolate pudding. Doesn’t that mean something?

  Gabby is over the pudding. She has moved on to other things. “Dr. Winters should be here soon to check you out,” she says. “And I read all the documents. I’ve even been doing research on physical therapy rehabilitation—”