Maybe in Another Life

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  “I retract my question,” I tell her. “You’re probably not open to helping me find him outside of the hospital, right? No last name, no phone number?”

  “That’s correct,” she says.

  I nod. “I hear you,” I say. “Could I leave a message? With my phone number?”

  She’s stoic and stone-faced.

  “I’m gonna guess that even if I did, you’d probably just throw it away.”

  “I wouldn’t waste much thought about it,” she says.

  “OK,” I say. I can finally see now that it’s not going to happen today. Even if I could get past this woman, he’s still not here. Unless . . . maybe she’s lying? Maybe he is here after all?

  I hit the up button on the elevator. “OK,” I say. “I read you loud and clear. I’ll get out of your hair.”

  She looks at me sideways. The elevator dings and appears again. I start rolling myself into it and wave good-bye. She walks away. I let the elevator doors close, and then I hit the button for the same floor I’m on.

  The doors open, and I take off. I wheel myself in the opposite direction from where she’s looking, past the nurses’ station. I’m at the corner before she sees me.

  “Hey!” she says. I take the corner and push with all of my might toward the end of the hall. My arms feel weak, and my heart is pumping faster than it has in days, but I keep going. I turn back to see her briskly walking toward me. Her face looks pissed, but I get the impression she’s trying not to cause a scene.

  In front of me are two double glass doors. They don’t open from my side, so I’m stuck. I’m dead-ended. The evil nurse is coming for me. On the opposite side of the doors, I see a doctor coming through. Any second now, he’s going to open the doors, and I can roll in. Maybe.

  I’m not sure what’s possessed me to do this. Maybe it’s my desire to find Henry. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been cooped up in a room for so long with everyone on the planet telling me what to do. Maybe it’s the fact that I almost died, and on some level, that has to make you fearless. Maybe it’s all three.

  The door opens, and the doctor walks by me. I roll myself through, praying the doors close before Nurse Ratched gets to me. But I don’t have time to stop and look. I keep rolling, looking in each room for Henry. I get right to the end of the hall. I turn left around the corner, and then I feel the grip of two hands on the back of my chair. Abruptly, I come to a complete stop.

  Caught.

  I turn and look at her. “What can I say so that you don’t arrest me?”

  She pushes me forward, but she doesn’t answer my question. Suddenly, with my adrenaline now fading, I’m realizing that my stunt was stupid and fruitless. He’s really not here. And unless I come back to this hospital tomorrow and try this again, I’m probably never going to find him.

  “I can push myself,” I tell her.

  “Nope,” she says.

  I laugh nervously. “This sort of thing probably happens all the time, I bet,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.

  “Nope.”

  We get to the elevator. She hits the button. I can’t look at her. The elevator opens.

  “Well,” I say, “I guess this is good-bye.”

  She stares at me and then puts her hands back on my chair. “Nope.”

  She pushes the two of us into the elevator and hits the button for the fifth floor.

  I sit in silence, staring forward. She stands next to me. When the elevator opens, she pushes me toward the nurses’ station.

  “Hi, Deanna,” she says. “Can you tell me what room this patient belongs in?”

  “I can tell you,” I say to her. “I’m right over here.”

  “If it’s all right with you, Wheels, I’d like to hear it from Deanna,” she says to me.

  Deanna laughs. “Hannah’s right. She’s just right there.” Deanna points to my door, and Nurse Ratched pushes me all the way to my room, where Gabby is waiting.

  Gabby sees the two of us and isn’t quite sure what to make of it. “What happened?”

  Nurse Ratched pipes up before I can. “Look,” she says directly to me, “everyone makes bad decisions sometimes, and this is probably a crazy time in your life, so I’m going to let this go. But you will not come down to my floor again. Are we clear?”

  I nod, and she starts to leave.

  “Nurse,” I say, and then I realize I shouldn’t call her Nurse Ratched to her face. “Sorry,” I say. “What was your name?”

  “Hannah,” she says.

  “For heaven’s sake! I’m trying to apologize. I’m just asking your name.”

  “I know,” she says. “My name is Hannah.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Sorry.”

  Hannah looks at Gabby. “Is she always this charming?”

  “This appears not to be her best day,” Gabby says. I think that’s as close as she can come to defending me. So I appreciate it.

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry for giving you trouble. I was wrong to do it.”

  “Well, thank you,” she says. She turns to leave.

  “Hannah,” I say.

  She turns back to me.

  “I’m a stalker.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s not Henry’s fault,” I tell her. “That we got too close, I mean. He was nothing but professional, and I basically stalked him. He kept making it clear that we had a professional relationship and nothing more. And I kept pressing the issue, trying to get him to change his mind. It’s me. He’s not . . . I’d hate for him to be considered unprofessional because of the way I behaved. It was me.”

  She nods and leaves. I’m not entirely sure if she believes me, but my actions today sort of support the claim that I’m at least a little delusional. So I have that going for me.

  I turn to Gabby. “He wasn’t there, and I caused a scene.”

  “No big speech?”

  I shake my head. “There was a chase, though.”

  “Well, I guess that’s enough drama for one day. Dr. Winters came while you were gone. She says we’re good to go.”

  “So we’re leaving?” I ask her.

  “Yep.”

  “What do I do about Henry?” I ask her. “I can’t leave knowing I’ll never see him again.”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe you’ll run into him sometime? Here at the hospital, during a physical therapy appointment?”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “If it’s meant to be, you’ll find each other,” she says. “Right?”

  “Yeah,” I tell her. “I don’t know. I guess.”

  Instinctually, from muscle memory, I put my hands on the armrests of the wheelchair, as if I think I’m going to stand up. And then I remember who I am. And what is going on.

  Deanna comes in. “You ready to go?” she says.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I tell her.

  Gabby has my things. Deanna pushes me to the elevator. She stays with us as we start to move down. I wonder if Deanna is doing this because it’s protocol or because I’m a flight risk. The elevator opens for a minute on four, as an older woman gets in. I can see Nurse Hannah standing at the nurses’ station talking to a patient. She looks at me and then looks away. I swear I see a smile crack on her face, but I see what I want to see sometimes.

  When we get to the lobby, Deanna tells me that the wheelchair is mine to keep. For a moment, I think, Cool, free wheelchair, and then I remember that I am a person other people give wheelchairs to. Shake it off.

  “Thanks, Deanna,” I say as we exit onto the street. She waves and heads back in.

  Mark pulls up with the car. He gets out and runs toward me. I realize it’s the first time I’ve seen him since the accident. And that’s sort of weird, isn’t it? Shouldn’t he have visited me? I would have visited him.

  Gabby and Mark put my stuff into the car, and I wheel myself to the door. I try to open it myself, but it’s harder than I think. I wait patiently for one of them to come around to the side, and as I do, I look up at the buildi
ng.

  I may never see Henry again.

  Gabby opens my door and helps me into the backseat. Mark puts my wheelchair into the trunk. We drive away.

  If I’m meant to find him, I’ll find him. I guess I do believe that.

  But sometimes I wish I got to decide what I was meant to do.

  Gabby left early this morning to go spend the day with her parents. Mark is coming later to pick up the rest of his things, and she doesn’t want to be here.

  Mark has only come by one other time since he left, to grab a few suits and some odds and ends. Neither Gabby nor I was here, and it was a bit creepy, to be honest, coming home to see the house picked through. Gabby changed the locks after that. So now Mark needs one of us to be here while he moves his stuff out. It seems quite obvious that I am the woman for the job.

  In his e-mail, he said he’d be here by noon, but it’s early enough that I figure I’ve got some time to kill. I decide now is the time to call my parents and tell them the news. At this hour, I can probably grab them before they head out for dinner in London.

  I dial their landline, prepared to tell them I’m pregnant the moment one of them picks up. I’m just going to blurt it out before I start to worry what they will say.

  But the voice I hear on the other end of the line, the voice that says “Hello?” isn’t my mother or my father. It’s my sister.

  “Sarah?” I ask. “What are you doing at Mom and Dad’s?”

  “Hannah!” she says. “Hi! George and I are here for the weekend.” She pronounces it “wee-KEND.” I find myself rolling my eyes. I can hear my dad in the background, asking who is on the phone. I hear my sister’s voice turn away from the handset. “It’s Hannah, Dad. Chill out . . . Dad wants to talk to you,” she says.

  “Oh, OK,” I say back, but she doesn’t give up the phone.

  “I want to know when you’re coming to visit,” she says. “You didn’t come last Christmas like you normally do, so I think we’re owed.”

  I know she’s joking. But it irritates me that she assumes I should always go there. Just once, I’d like to be important enough to be the visited instead of the visitor. Just once.

  “Well, I’m in L.A. now,” I tell her. “So the flight is a bit longer. But I’ll get there. Eventually.”

  “OK, OK,” she says to my dad. “Hannah, I have to go.” She’s gone before I can even say good-bye.

  “Hannah Savannah,” my dad says. “How are you?”

  “I’m good, Dad. I’m good. How are you?”

  “How am I? How am I? That is the question.”

  I laugh.

  “No, I’m fine, sweetheart. I’m fine. Your mother and I are just sitting here discussing whether we want to order Italian or Thai takeaway for dinner. Your sister and George are trying to get us to go out someplace, but it’s pouring out, and I’m just not in the mood.”

  My plan to blurt it out has failed.

  Or has it?

  “That’s nice. So, Dad, I’m pregnant.”

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  I swear to God, it sounds as if the line has gone dead. “Dad?”

  “I’m here,” he says, breathless. “I’m getting your mother.”

  I hear another voice on the phone now. “Hi, Hannah,” my mom says.

  “Can you repeat what you said, Hannah?” my dad says. “I’m afraid that if your mother hears it from me, she will think I am playing a joke on her.”

  I have to blurt it out twice?

  “I’m pregnant.”

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  Silence again. And then a high-pitched squeal. A squeal so loud and jarring that I pull the phone away from my ear.

  And then I hear my mother scream, “Sarah! Sarah, get over here!”

  “What, Mom? Good Lord. Stop screaming.”

  “Hannah is pregnant.”

  I hear the phone being rustled from person to person. I hear them all fighting over the handset. I hear my mother win.

  “Tell us everything. This is marvelous. Tell us about the father! I didn’t know you were seeing someone serious.”

  Oh, no.

  My mom thinks I got pregnant on purpose.

  My mom thinks I’m ready to have a baby.

  My mom thinks there’s a father.

  My mom, my own mother, is so unaware of who I truly am and what my life is like that she thinks I planned this baby.

  That is one of the funniest things I have ever heard. I start laughing, and I keep laughing until the tears in my eyes fall to my cheeks.

  “No father in the picture,” I say between fits of laughter. “I’ll be a single mother. Entirely accidental.”

  My mother quickly adjusts her tone. “Oh,” she says. “OK.”

  My dad grabs the phone from her. “Wow!” he says. “This is shocking news. But great news! This is great, great news!”

  “It is?” I mean, it is. It is. But they think it is?

  “I’m going to be a grandpa!” he says. “I am going to be a phenomenal grandfather. I’m going to teach your kid all kinds of grandpa things.”

  I smile. “Of course you will!” I say it, but I don’t mean it in the slightest. He’s not here. He’s never here.

  Sarah grabs the phone from my dad and starts talking about how happy she is for me and how it doesn’t matter that I’m raising the baby on my own. And then she corrects herself. “I mean, it matters. Of course it matters. But you’re going to be so great at it that it won’t matter.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  And then my mother steals the phone from Sarah, and I can hear the background din changing as she moves into another room. I hear the door shut behind her.

  “Mom?” I say. “Are you OK?”

  I hear her brace herself. “You should move home,” she says.

  “What?” I ask her. I don’t even understand what she’s talking about.

  “We can help you,” she says. “We can help you raise a baby.”

  “You mean I should move to London?”

  “Yeah, here with us. Home with us.”

  “London is not my home,” I tell her, but this doesn’t faze her in the slightest.

  “Well, maybe it should be,” she says. “You need a family to raise a baby. You don’t want to do it on your own. And your father and I would love to help you, love to have you here. You should be here with us.”

  “I don’t know . . .” I say.

  “Why not? You just moved to Los Angeles, so you can’t tell me you’ve built a life there. And if there is no father in the picture, there is no one to hold you back.”

  I think about what she’s saying.

  “Hannah,” she says. “Let us help you. Let us be your parents. Move into the guest room, have the baby here. I’ve always said you should have moved to London with us a long time ago.” She has never said that. Never once said that to me.

  “I’ll think about it,” I tell her.

  I hear the door open. I hear her talk to my father.

  “I’m telling Hannah it’s time for her to move to London.”

  “Absolutely, she should,” I hear him say. Then he grabs the phone. “Who knows, Hannah Savannah, maybe you were always meant to live in London.”

  Until this very moment, it never even occurred to me that I might belong in London. The city my own family lives in, and I never considered moving there.

  “Maybe, Dad,” I say. “Who knows?”

  By the time I get off the phone, my parents are convinced I’m moving there as soon as possible, despite the fact that I very clearly promise only that I will consider it. In order to get them off the phone, I have to promise to call them tomorrow. So I do. And then they let me go.

  I lie there on my bed, staring at the ceiling for what feels like hours. I daydream about what would happen if I left Los Angeles, if I moved to London.

  I consider what my life might look like if I lived in my parents’ London apartment with a ne
w baby. I think about my child growing up with a British accent.

  But mostly, I think about Gabby.

  And everything I’d miss if I left here.

  It’s noon before Mark shows up.

  I answer the door quickly, my hands jittery and nervous. I’m not nervous because he intimidates me or I don’t know what to say to him. I’m nervous because I’m scared I might say something I’ll regret.

  “Hi,” he says. He’s standing in front of me, wearing jeans and a green T-shirt. As I hoped, he’s alone. He has broken-down boxes under his arm.

  “Hi,” I say. “Come on in.”

  He steps into the house, lightly, as if he doesn’t belong here. “The moving van is coming in a half hour,” he says. “I got a small one. That’s sounds right, right? I don’t have a lot of stuff, I guess.”

  “Right,” I tell him.

  I watch as his gaze travels down to Charlemagne, the two of them foes in the most conventional sense of the word. The house isn’t big enough for the two of them.

  Mark rubs his eyes and then looks at me. “Well,” he says, “I’ll get to packing, I guess. Excuse me.”

  He’s more uncomfortable about this than I am. His vulnerability eases me. I’m less likely to scream at a repentant man.

  I sit on the sofa. I turn on the TV. I can’t relax while he’s here, but I’m also not going to stand over him.

  The movers ring the bell soon after, and he rushes to answer the door.

  “If you guys are going to be in and out,” I tell him, “I’ll keep Charlemagne in the bedroom.”

  “Great,” he says. “Thanks.” The movers come in, and Charlemagne and I stay in my room.

  I feel like crying for some reason. Maybe it’s my hormones. Maybe it’s because I never wanted Gabby to have to go through this. I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard to tell anymore what’s my real reason for crying, laughing, or standing still.

  When he’s done, he knocks on my door. “That’s the last of it,” he says.

  “Great,” I say back.

  He looks down at the floor. Then up at me. “I’m sorry,” he says. “For what it’s worth.”

  “It’s not worth very much,” I tell him. Maybe it’s because he has the audacity to try to apologize that I no longer feel for him.