Marking Time

by Marie Force

  He held her up from behind. “Get your bearings,” he said. “Okay?”

  “Yeah, but don’t go far.”

  “I’ll be right outside the door.”

  When she was done, she washed her hands and face and ran a hand through her hair. She was afraid to look in the mirror. A fierce coughing fit stole her last bit of energy.

  When he heard her coughing, Aidan came in and put his arms around her.

  “Can you grab my toothbrush for me?” she asked when the coughing had subsided.

  “Sure. Hold on to something.”

  He left her gripping the sink and returned a minute later with her toothbrush. Reaching into the medicine cabinet, he grabbed a tube of toothpaste and squeezed some onto her toothbrush.

  “Some kind of service at this hospital.”

  “We don’t mess around,” he said, holding her eyes for a moment longer than necessary.

  Clare tore her gaze from his to focus on brushing her teeth. As she brushed, she thought that being with Aidan in his bathroom in the middle of the night seemed so natural. She’d have to ponder the meaning of that when she wasn’t battling a fever.

  “Ready for a ride back to bed?”

  She nodded, and when he carried her back to the bedroom she curled her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder as if it belonged there. He had changed at some point into an old Red Sox T-shirt and sweats.

  He tucked her in under several blankets and got her to take two more Tylenols to stay on top of the fever. When he was satisfied she’d had enough to drink for a while, he got in bed with her. “Hot? Cold?”

  “Just right for the moment, but can we pretend I’m cold so you’ll come over here with me?”

  “We can do that,” he said, slipping an arm under her.

  She turned toward him and used his chest as a pillow. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Taking care of me. I don’t know how a cold got so out of hand so fast.” She ran a hand over his chest and stomach, discovering he was all muscle.

  “It’s probably pneumonia.” He captured her wandering hand in his and brought it to his lips. “You’d better cut that out, or I’ll be taking advantage of a sick person.”

  She snorted with laughter. “Oh, God, you’ve got to be kidding. I’m a disaster area.”

  He lifted her chin and kissed her lightly. “You’re sexy and beautiful, and I want you, sick or not. So behave.”

  Her chest contracted, and not because of her illness. “Does this count as our first date?”

  He laughed. “Go to sleep.”

  She squeezed his hand, snuggled closer to him, and was asleep a minute later.

  Clare slept through most of the next day. She awoke at one point to the thwack, thwack, thwack of an axe cutting wood and assumed Aidan was outside getting some work done. She couldn’t keep her eyes open long enough to check. When she woke up the next time, it was dark. Her head pounded for a moment when she pushed herself into a sitting position.

  Across the room, Aidan looked up from the book he was reading. “Hey, sleeping beauty, you’re awake.”

  She groaned. “I can’t believe I slept all day.”

  He came over to sit on the edge of the bed. “You must be starving. I tried to wake you up to eat earlier, but you weren’t budging.”

  “Sorry. I’m a little hungry but not starving.”

  “I have an idea. Why don’t you take a bath in the Jacuzzi while I make us some dinner?”

  “I’d love that. I feel so disgusting.”

  Kissing her forehead, he said, “You’re very cute when you’re sick.”

  “Jeez, O’Malley, you are hard up, aren’t you?”

  He laughed. “Yep, she’s feeling better. Come on, let me give you a ride.” He slid his arms under her to carry her into the bathroom. After he turned the water on and got her a towel, he went back to the bedroom for her bag. “Do you need anything else?”

  “I’ve got everything, thanks.”

  “Be careful getting in and out. You’re still weak. Call me if you need me.”

  “Thanks.”

  He left her alone, and she slipped off the sweats and long-sleeved T-shirt she’d been in for what seemed like a week. She moved with caution to preserve her limited supply of energy. The pulsing water in the tub felt heavenly against her aching body, and she uttered a deep sigh of pleasure. Using a bottle of shampoo that sat on a corner of the tub, she washed her hair. After soaking for a few more minutes, she started to feel light-headed again, so she eased herself from the tub and grabbed the towel he had left for her. When the simple act of getting out of the tub left her feeling drained, she sat on the closed lid of the toilet for a few minutes.

  “How you doing in there?” Aidan called from outside the door.

  “Fine. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Okay, come downstairs when you’re ready.”

  Clare found flannel pajamas in the bag and got dressed. She combed her hair and brushed her teeth. Before she could muster the energy to finish cleaning up the bathroom, she had to sit for another minute. She opened the door, and the smells wafting up the stairs made her mouth water. Suddenly, she was famished.

  She put her bag in Aidan’s room and went looking for the stairs. The house, an A-frame with several levels and rooms tucked into odd corners, was a wonder. The stairs hooked and curved, landing in the middle of a big kitchen where Aidan stirred something on the stove. The kitchen flowed into an inviting living room with a baby grand piano as the focal point.

  “This house is amazing!”

  He turned from the stove. “I’m glad you like it. Do you feel better after your bath?”

  “I’m a new woman.”

  He held out a chair for her at the bar. “Something to drink?”

  “Just some water, please.” She watched him move with ease around the kitchen, where terracotta tiles formed a decorative backsplash over a butcher-block countertop. Shining copper pots hung above the center island that housed the stove. “This is quite a kitchen.”

  “I love to cook.”

  “Again you surprise me, O’Malley.”

  He smiled. “It’s become my goal in life to keep you off balance.” He brought two plates of steaming pasta to the bar, grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, and sat next to her.

  “This smells wonderful.”

  “Chicken Alfredo, a specialty of the house.”

  “It’s fabulous, and I’m impressed.” After she ate half of what he’d given her, she pushed her plate over to him and he finished it.

  “You look better.”

  “I have the energy of an infant, but otherwise I feel better.”

  He carried the plates to the sink and loaded the dishwasher. When he came back, he handed her the phone. “Want to call the girls?”

  She nodded, touched by his thoughtfulness. The girls were relieved to hear she was feeling better, and she promised to call them again in a day or two.

  After she hung up with Kate, he led her into a room off the living room she hadn’t noticed before. She could tell right away that he spent most of his time here. There was a desk with a computer and piles of paper she assumed were part of his business. A woodstove occupied one corner of the room, and a flat-screen TV was mounted on the wall. Aidan settled her on the sofa and covered her with a blanket before he tossed another log on the fire.

  “Warm enough?”

  She nodded, and he sat next to her.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  His handsome face was serious, and a ripple of fear went through her. At some point during her fevered state, she’d fallen in love with him and didn’t want to hear anything that would spoil it. She reached for him.

  He seemed relieved to move into her embrace and rested against her for several long minutes. When he finally looked up at her, his eyes were sad. “I lied to you about something, and I need to tell you the truth.”

  His distress touched her heart. “You
don’t have to,” she said, caressing his cheek.

  He kissed the palm of her hand, sending a jolt of desire through her. His eyes found hers. “Yes, I do. I need to tell you because I love you, Clare. For the first time in a very long time, something matters to me. You matter to me, and I don’t want to mess this up.”

  She leaned in to kiss him and was startled by the hunger she felt in his kiss.

  “Wait,” he said against her lips. “We need to talk.”

  She kissed his forehead and cheek. “I love you, too, Aidan, and there’s nothing you can tell me that will change that.”

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice heavy with emotion. “Hold that thought for a moment.” He got up, walked over to his desk, and came back holding a picture frame against his chest. “This is Sarah. She was my wife.” He sat down and handed the photo to Clare.

  Hiding her surprise, she studied the photo of the young woman with long dark hair and gentle eyes. “She’s lovely,” Clare said, giving it back to him. The pain on his face made his lie unimportant.

  Lost in memories, he ran his thumbs over the frame. “I met her when I was twelve, and her family came to Chatham for the summer. She’d been coming for years, but somehow we’d never met before. She and her sister hung out with us at the beach all that summer, and by the time she went back to Boston, we were best friends.” He turned the frame over. Taped to the back was a yellowed snapshot of twelve-year-old Aidan and Sarah, arm in arm at the beach.

  “We wrote letters during the school year, and once in a while, we’d get to talk on the phone. She came back the next summer, and we picked up right where we’d left off. My brothers used to tease me something awful about her, but I didn’t care. She was my favorite person in the world. They liked her, too, but they had to be jerks to me.”

  Clare smiled. “Of course they did.”

  Aidan put the photo on the table. “By the time we were fifteen, she was my girlfriend. We were stealing kisses every chance we got, and I was desperately in love with her. During that school year, my parents started letting me take the bus into the city one Saturday a month to see her. I lived for those days, and I worked the rest of the month to save the money for the bus fare.”

  Clare could see he was struggling to get through the story, so she took his hand.

  “Sarah’s dad was a doctor in Boston. He was always very nice to me and took an interest in my education. I hadn’t planned to go to college because my dad wanted me to work with him. But Dr. Sweeny knew I was a straight-A student, and he encouraged me to aim higher. By then Sarah and I were doing a whole lot more than kissing, and neither of us ever looked at anyone else all through high school. The summer before our senior year, we hatched a plan to go to college together. She had her heart set on Yale, so I applied, too. It was a total shock to me—and my whole family—when I got in. My dad was disappointed about the business, but he didn’t try to stop me from going to school, probably because I had three brothers coming up behind me.”

  “You went to Yale,” Clare said in a whisper as it set in that this man was so much more than a carpenter.

  He pointed to the framed diploma over his desk, above a second one just like it. “Dr. Sweeny encouraged me to try pre-med, and I was surprised to find I liked it. Sarah and I lived together after our freshman year in an apartment in New Haven. We thought we were getting away with it, but I found out much later that our parents knew but chose to ignore it. They’d learned by then not to fight what’d been happening between us since we were kids.”

  “It’s so sweet,” Clare said, touched by his story but filled with anxiety about where it was leading.

  His face twisted into a small, sad smile. “We got married in Chatham right after we graduated from Yale. It was the very best day of my life, and it was almost ten years to the day after we first met. I went on to medical school at Yale. She’d gotten her degree in fine arts, and she worked in the university’s art department. We were poor but happy. I decided to follow Dr. Sweeny into cardiology. I got through my internship at Yale-New Haven and applied for a residency at Mass General in Boston. We wanted to move closer to home because Sarah was finally pregnant. We’d been trying to have a baby for a long time.”

  Clare gasped as it registered that whatever had happened to his beloved wife had taken a child from him, too. Oh, God. I can’t hear this. The tortured look on his face broke her heart. “Aidan, honey, maybe that’s enough for now.”

  He shook his head. “I need to finish this.” After a deep breath, he said, “She was two months pregnant when she found a lump in her breast.”

  Clare whimpered.

  “Her father pulled strings to get her in with the best oncologist in the city. Within a day, we knew it was bad—stage-three breast cancer. She was twenty-nine.” He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it, even all these years later. “It was aggressive. They wanted to admit her right away and start her on chemo, but they’d have to terminate the pregnancy.”

  “Oh, Aidan.” Tears spilled down Clare’s cheeks.

  “She wouldn’t do it. I pleaded with her, but she wouldn’t kill the child we’d wanted so badly. I told her it was her I couldn’t live without, and we could have other babies when she got well.” He shook his head and brushed at a tear on his face. “I yelled and screamed until I was hoarse, and then I begged, but I couldn’t change her mind. Over time, I’ve come to understand that she knew she was going to die, and she didn’t want me to be alone.”

  Clare wanted to touch him, but he was so far from her just then that she was afraid she would startle him.

  He stood up and walked over to the window. “So I had to sit back and watch as our child grew and she slowly slipped away from me. She insisted I keep up with my residency. The people at the hospital knew what I was going through, and they were good to me. We moved in with her parents because she couldn’t be alone when I was working. I kept hoping I’d wake up from the nightmare my life had become. I was all churned up and frantic, but Sarah was so calm and serene. She loved feeling the baby grow inside her. He was busy, moving all the time.” Smiling at the memory, Aidan turned back to Clare.

  “What happened to him?” she asked in a small voice.

  “She got to thirty-six weeks and was having trouble breathing because the cancer had spread to her lungs. Her OB scheduled a C-section, but the night before, she started to bleed. I rushed her to the hospital, and they took her right into the OR. They whisked her away so fast I can’t remember the last thing I said to her or what she said to me. It’s a total blank. They put her under to do an emergency C-section. The baby…” Aidan’s chin dropped to his chest, and he shook his head.

  Clare got up to go to him. A wave of dizziness hit her when she stood up too fast, but she fought it off and put her arms around him.

  Sobs racked through him. She held him until he finally pulled himself together and looked down at her with shattered eyes. “He was stillborn.”

  “No,” Clare whispered.

  “He was perfect with all his fingers and toes. They let me hold him, and I tried to convince myself he was only asleep. We’d already decided to name him after Colin—he was Sarah’s favorite of my brothers. She never came out of the anesthesia, and she died two days later. The only comfort was she didn’t know her sacrifice had been for nothing.”

  Clare led him back to the sofa.

  After a long period of silence, he took a deep shuddering breath. “They were buried together, but I wasn’t there,” he said, his voice reduced to a whisper. “I couldn’t go. My parents and hers took care of everything. I’ve never even been to the cemetery, which drives my mother crazy, but they go for me. I quit the residency. I couldn’t stand the smell of the hospital or knowing that even with all my training I hadn’t been able to save the two people I loved the most. It was just as well, because I spent most of the next year drunk anyway.”

  “How did you end up here?”

  “Sarah’s grandmother left her some mone
y, and we bought this land a year before she got sick. We were going to build a weekend place up here eventually. She made me promise I’d use the money to build the house. When I failed to drink myself to death, I didn’t know what else to do, so I came up here and built this place. I had planned to sell it when it was done.”

  “How come?”

  “I figured it’d be too painful to be here without her, but we hadn’t spent much time together here, and no one in town knew her. By the time the house was finished, I’d started to feel at home. I did a few construction jobs on the side, and before long word got out that I knew what I was doing. I had a business and a house, so I stayed put. The only person here who knows I was once a doctor and that I lost my wife and son is Bea. She’s been a good friend, but even she doesn’t know the whole story.”

  “Thank you for telling me. I’m so terribly sorry for all that you lost.”

  He kissed her hand. “I’m sorry I lied to you when I said I’ve never been married. I feel so disloyal to Sarah when I tell people that, but it’s easier than talking about it. After all these years, the lie just comes so easily. When I lied to you, though, it was the first time it ever felt wrong. Forgive me?”

  Clare reached out to hug him. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  He held on to her, seeming to need the comfort she offered after sharing his painful story.

  “You must be getting tired,” he said after a long period of quiet. “Let’s get you back to bed.” He took her hand to help her up and lead her upstairs.

  She made it to the first landing before dizziness forced her to grip the railing.

  Aidan picked her up and carried her the rest of the way. “You still need to take it easy,” he said as he helped her into bed.

  “I can probably go home, though. I’ve put you out enough.”

  “I like having you here. I probably shouldn’t tell you that you’re the first woman who’s ever been here.”

  She smiled. “Really?”

  “As you would say, don’t let it go to your fat head,” he said with a weak grin that was in sharp contrast to his earlier sorrow.