by Hawke, Jessa
“Listen, I’ve got to run now, but maybe we can do lunch tomorrow? There are a few things I wanted to tell you about, and also maybe catch up. What do you say, are you free?”
Am I free to have lunch with Mr. Post-It? I know for a fact that I am not, but I was not raised to be that direct with anybody, especially men. There’s this awful churning feeling inside of my stomach, and I don’t know where to metaphorically run. So I open my mouth and say the only thing that I can say.
“Sure. That’d be great.”
I almost choke on the words. Eric gives me a huge grin and strides purposefully out of the room. He looks the same, except maybe a little sparser on top. I hate that I’ve always loved a man in scrubs; there’s something about the uniform that makes you feel as though you’re surrounded by people who are good men in storms. Even though Eric apparently cannot weather any kind of relationship storm, if our past history together is anything to go by.
I lower my head down to the desk and groan audibly. One of the nurses’ assistants looks at me oddly from the cubicle across the room. I lift my head up and give him an awkward smile. I am Nurse Caroline, God damn it. I am better than this. And I cannot afford to show weakness at a new job if I am to be respected. I am a grown woman. I can handle one measly lunch date with my ex-boyfriend. Even if he thinks we have things to discuss and I know for a fact that is not true. I can handle this.
Can’t I?
* * *
The restaurant is busy, which is no surprise, given that it’s about a block and a half away from both the urgent care center and the hospital that’s nearby. It’s where all the hotshot doctors who are sleeping with their interns and the nurses go when they feel like making a pretense that they’re actually dating. I can see why Eric chose it, but there’s something about it that makes me feel ill at ease. It’s close by and fancy, and the food looks scrumptious, but it seems so busy that I don’t see how we can catch up here. But here I am, so there is nothing to do but wait. Soon enough, I spot Eric coming in.
“Hi Caroline, thanks for meeting me,” he says gently, and sits across from me, draping the napkin across his lap.
“Hi, Eric,” I answer, smiling tersely.
We order our food, and I think about how strange the last few hours have been. I did not sleep well last night, waking up at odd hours, because I couldn’t stop thinking about what might happen today. Is he finally going to explain the Post-It? Was it another woman? Or, the more cliché example—was it simply just me?
“I know you were probably shocked to see me the other day,” he tells me. It seems that he’s developed a backbone over the past few years.
“You can say that,” I answer him, picking up my glass and lifting it up to my lips, a nervous habit of mine.
“I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
Wait, hold on. “So soon? You knew I was coming?”
Eric looks a little abashed. “Yeah. I recognized your name from the incoming staff roster, so I had a little time to prepare. I thought about calling you, but I didn’t know how to build that bridge. It gave me some time to think about what I wanted to say to you, though.”
“Well, isn’t that a nice luxury?” I ask him, aware I’m being rude.
A look of pain crosses his face. “I deserve that, especially after the way I left,” he tells me, and he picks up the napkin from his lap to dab at his lips. A few moments pass in absolute silence.
“So, what speech did you finally decide on?” I ask.
Eric looks nervous. Good. That puts him at a disadvantage, at the very least. “Towards the end, you know, things weren’t going so hot. I wondered for a long time why that was, because you were so great. I always liked that spark you had about you, how you seemed like you could command whole legions of people.”
“Comes with the job, I guess.”
He nods, smiling a little. “But the thing is, there was something about me that felt different, separate from the relationship. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, even though the idea was slowly taking place.”
“Oh God, you were a serial killer, weren’t you?” I’m teasing, but I know it’s a defense mechanism, that I’m doing it just to still the wild beating of my heart.
“No… I… ended up with Steve.”
“Huh? Steve?” Suddenly, I recall the blonde guy in the picture on his desk. “Oh, oh my God. Steve.”
Suddenly, Eric is all care and concern, flustering over me worse than a mother hen, rubbing my back and offering me his napkin. I wave him off; I haven’t been a baby in a while, and it will do wonders for my self-loathing if I let him carry on like this. Fool. But I don’t know whether I’m directing that word towards him or my own damn self.
He talks fast now, telling me how they started out as just friends, gym buddies, really. It happened while he and I were dating, and I’m starting to recall a friend he talked about often. It was always, “My buddy Steve” this or “Steve said the funniest thing.” Eric had been kind of a loner, and I was the girlfriend straight out of I Love You, Man, afraid that I was his only real friend. Now it turns out that friends meant friendlier. My ire rises, and Eric catches on by the look on my face.
“Caroline, I promise you, we did nothing while you and I were together. God, I was so confused by it all, you have no idea. On one hand, I had this great new friend, someone I could really do all this guy stuff with. But then I started getting all these weird feelings; like, I’d get jealous if Steve went somewhere without me, or I’d put on a pair of sweatpants and hope that Steve would notice the way I looked in them. It was all so, so—inexplicable, even to me. So how could I have brought that up to you?”
My heart is thudding again, but now there’s a mixture of sympathy for him in addition to my confusion and rage. I can see his point of view, and I wish that I couldn’t.
“Eric, I get that. You met somebody else. But at least you could have had the decency to tell me about it before you left.”
The look on his face is heartbreaking; I want to forgive him, I do, but then I recall that for the past two years, the one thought that’s been nagging at me has been what the hell he needed to think about when he left.
There are a few moments when neither of us says anything. Then I ask, “So, what, you’re like exclusively into dudes now?”
“No,” he answers, and then with a deep breath, words seem to just spill right out of him. “I thought at first that’s what it was, but the fact of the matter is that I’m still attracted to women. I mean, I’m with Steve, but like hypothetically speaking…”
I stop listening. It’s all just too sickening. Because now I know, you know?
It wasn’t that my boobs disgusted him. It wasn’t that he couldn’t bear the thought of touching me. It was that Steve, with his gym-going and non-scrubs wearing, was just better than me in some way that had nothing at all to do with the nature of my genitalia.
I get up and toss my napkin onto my plate. I never finished the steak I ordered, and the fat has congealed around it in globs. It looks as disgusting as I feel. I can’t bear to stay here a moment longer.
“It was me, all along. I see,” I say. Eric tries to cut me off, he’s looking at me from the seat as if he’s afraid I might run, and he’s got good reason to do so; it’s exactly what I’m about to do. “Save it, Eric. There’s nothing you can say to make this better.”
I waltz out of the fancy restaurant as if my heart hasn’t been broken all over again.
* * *
There are chocolates, caramel-filled, truffles, turtles with clusters of nuts underneath their smooth dark skin. I throw these out, even though I would like very much to eat them. Stuffed animals follow, little fuzzy bears with "#1 Nurse!” written on the little white sweaters they wear. I don’t know what to do with these, but I’m not a monster00I can’t throw out anything with a face, so I donate these to a local children’s center. I would like to give it back, but the times I try, Eric just tells me that it’s all part of his campaign fo
r us to be friends again.
“How about I break your heart and we’ll see if a teddy bear can help mend that,” I hiss at him and leave the gray confines of the cubicle.
So what does he do? He buys me flowers.
Tulips. The minute I see them, waves of nostalgia flow over me, and I sit down, helpless in their purple-and-write presence. Damn it, Dr. Eric, you play dirty.
In the first bloom of our relationship, I told Eric all about how I normally date. I told him all the concerns I had about us starting all this so fast, without becoming friends first, and after I was done, he was so silent that I asked him if he thought I was crazy. He shook his head, but said nothing, so I didn’t believe him, and for a full month, I walked around, terrified that he was telling all of his friends—now I know it was basically Steve—that his tough nurse girlfriend was crazy.
Then, this one day, I come home and find the dining room table overwhelmed by lavender tulips, so many that their thick floral scent almost chokes the air. I don’t know how they made one green ribbon hold together the whole bunch, but somehow, the florist did. Eric had been in the kitchen, making Moroccan vegetable stew, so he didn’t hear me when I called out, asking who the flowers were from. Instead, I walked over to the couch and picked up the embossed card that was propped up against their stems.
“To Caroline: (it said)
I don’t know how to tell you this the right way, so I’ll just be direct. You are my best friend, no matter how little time we’ve been dating, and no matter what happens in the future. I love you. Eric.”
Well, then.
It was more than that was the first time he told me he loved me. He also calmed all my fears, and I really began to trust the man. Seeing the tulips in front of me now, I understand the message he’s trying to send, and it’s thawing my frozen heart a little.
Because here’s the thing. I know he wouldn’t keep trying or reach out at all if he didn’t think we were friends. He can’t help that in the end, he fell for somebody else. And my insecurities, the fact that I as blindsided, are not his fault. He didn’t know any better than I did that he was attracted to men at the time. We all know what it’s like to not be sure of your feelings; when you’re not sure, you’re afraid to put the wrong words on the situation, even to yourself, let alone to somebody you’re afraid of hurting. I get it. And maybe it’s time I let that go.
Because the fact of the matter is, I miss him. I miss those funny brown eyes, that oddball sense of humor. So what do I go and do? I go and forgive the boy. Because frankly, I am tired of the stony silence between us every single time that he requests a nurses’ assistance and I walk in there.
I pen him a little note and leave it on his desk.
“Promise to always be straight with me?” I ask, then go about my duties.
“Yes!” I receive back, with a slew of smiley faces that would be corny if they were from anybody else, but I know Eric well enough to realize he’s actually sending me smiles.
What follows is a relief. I realize that for a whole two years, I’ve been hanging on to my dislike of the situation so strongly, it’s almost crushed my poor little nurses’ heart. I drowned myself in work, and ran away, but I never like, dealt with the situation. It starts off slow. Eric and I sit together at lunch, swinging our legs off the edge of the broad fence that surrounds the flowers outside of the urgent care center. He tells me about all the counseling he went to after the whole mess between us and before he even announced his feelings to Eric. I’m gratified to learn that it didn’t happen overnight, that he waited about eight months after he had left me to make his move. He deserves to be happy.
Then we become the known team at the urgent care center. Whenever there is a real emergency, somebody comes in bleeding or has a gunshot wound or something, we’re the pair to call. We are almost like that pair on television you see where the doctor goes:
“Scalpel.”
The nurse repeats to him, “Scalpel,” as she hands him the necessary equipment.
Eric and I are heavily amused by this, and by the fact that everyone we work with calls us husband and wife. It stings a little at first, but because we told nobody about our previous relationship, I slowly come to laugh with them. Because nobody means anything bad by it. Besides, it’s not like Eric keeps Steve a secret, though nobody thinks twice about his orientation, and nobody really asks. Only I know the truth, and this is what keeps me cocooned with Eric, just the two of us in a world only we know something about.
And then Eric asks me if I want to meet Steve. It seems like the logical progression, doesn’t it? That’s what I try to convince myself of when I say yes, that it’s the most natural thing in the world for my best friend to want to introduce me to his partner because I matter. It bothers me that I seem to hinge on the “I matter” part more than anything else.
I dress to kill to meet Eric and Steve for reasons I cannot put into words. We meet at this fancy little hibachi place and I’m not too happy to find that I like Steve. He’s sweet, polite, and tells the most interesting stories. He was in the Peace Corps. He’s seen the world. He works for a non-profit. He’s six two with the body of a Nordic god. If I was into my ex’s partners, Steve would so be the guy I took to bed.
Except for the fact that every time he touches Eric in some little way, I want to lop his hands off. Every time he puts a hand to his back or touches his wrist, or makes some comment about some trip they took, there’s this weird feeling inside of me like someone’s squeezing my insides into a fist, and that fist wants to reach out and make a mess of Steve’s face.
It’s only when Steve offers Eric a sip from his drink and I make a gagging noise, intending to sound funny, but judging from the men’s faces, not coming off that way, do I realize that I’m jealous. That when I look at Eric’s skinny little body, I want it for myself. That I want to grab his face and suck his lips off, Steve or no Steve. And all those times that Eric and I have checked out guys together have served, perversely, to make me feel as if we are closer together than ever. I hurriedly excuse myself and run from the restaurant, catching myself gasping and bending over, the fist in my stomach having punched up to my chest. Minutes later, Eric joins me outside, and his hands on me as he tries to comfort me—because he knows, he knows, he knows, he’s seen the look on my face—are almost too much to bear.
The conversation Eric and I have outside of the restaurant haunts me for the next two weeks. It’s like some terrible dream where the anxiety just grows and grows and you can no longer remember the exact words used, the right phrases, but you do remember how the whole mess made you feel.
I ask him what he’s felt about us in the past few months and he says he doesn’t know. He says he feels closer to me than ever, like him telling me about Steve was the last thing that stood in the way of us being completely honest with each other. And that honesty is sexy. And that he’s confused.
And that’s the worst part. The knowledge that he feels something back, too, but can’t make head or tail of it, either. Because what the hell are we both supposed to do about this? How can I TRUST HIM AFTER HE LEFT ME FOR Steve, and now he seems like he’s this great big pendulum, swinging back to me, but taking his sweet time about it? And who knows that in another year or two, he won’t go swinging back to another gym buddy of his?
Damn you, Eric. Damn you to hell. I walk into my house, furiously sorting through the mail, barely seeing whatever I’m tossing into the trash. And that’s when I notice this huge packet from South Africa on the floor. And I know that my life has, once again, flipped its odd self upside down.
* * *
Around the same time I applied for the job at the urgent care center, I also happened to take this certification course offered at the hospital. Most of the nurses who took it thought it sounded all too good to be true, but I wanted a few more letters tacked on to my nursing degree, so I took it.
The lecturer was this nursing manager from South Africa who told us all about these deplorable cond
itions over there, and how about ninety percent of the population lacks the proper medical care necessary to make it through another farming season. He reviewed techniques with us so basic that it made me bite my lip to keep from crying out. So instead, I offered opinion after opinion on how they could improve the program until the professor suggested that I come join them. I thought it was in jest until he approached me after the course with an application that he helped me fill out and wrote me a recommendation on the spot.
It looks like now, after waiting for who knows how long, they’ve accepted me as lead nurse in their organization. The pay isn’t as good as at the hospital, but neither is what they’re paying me at the urgent care center, and the upshot of South Africa—besides helping the needy, all those poor children with kwashiorkor—is that there is no Eric and no Steve there.
On the other hand, the upside of being in the urgent care center is that Eric is there.
I let out a groan of frustration and sink down to my backside against the wall in the dark apartment. I am not looking forward to tonight.
I’ve always been a very sensitive sleeper, and whenever I’m stressed out about something, it affects my sleep cycle. Tonight, even though I try to relax in a hot bath, the decision I have to make weighs heavily on my mind and I toss and turn like a madwoman in bed, my body and rain begging out for release until I settle into an uneasy, hazy kind of sleep.
It’s the damndest thing, but the first thing I think of is Steve. I think about him and what he would look like stripped bare to the waist, his muscles gleaming in the light. I see him on a bed, rolling over and frolicking as if he’s this great big puppy, and I like the way the embossed duvet looks against his skin. But then someone else enters the dream and I fidget, trying to right my body in alignment with my thoughts.