Thinking back over the past few weeks, I realize she did try to tell me about her really big secret. And like the hypocrite I am, I assured her she could tell me when she was ready. I went back on my word about always trusting her and believing in her. And I sucked at the “not keeping a record of wrongdoings” or the “rejoicing in the truth” part of the scripture that I preached to her. I let her down a thousand times worse than she could ever hurt me.
I lie down with my hands across my face. This is actually the first time since I found out about Stella that I’ve had the chance to contemplate everything that has happened. I’m a father. I. Am. A. Father. I have a daughter, and she is so sick, so sick she might die. No, I can’t let myself think that right now. I will not let her die. As long as I’m alive, I will fight to keep her alive.
A key rattles in the lock of my apartment. I groan. I should never have given Tommy a key. The door opens. Jennifer, Heather, and Tommy rush in, flipping on the lights, which burn my retinas.
I don’t even give them the courtesy of making eye contact. “Get out of here.”
Jennifer sits beside me on the couch.
“What are all of you doing here? Don’t y’all have your own lives?”
Tommy sits in the recliner by the sofa. “Come on, Theo. We don’t have to be here. We want to. We’re family.”
“How did you know I was here?” I ask Jennifer, who’s sitting next to my feet.
“We stopped by the hospital. Darla told us she shooed you away.”
“Figures.”
Tommy moves to the coffee table. I snap a glare his way. He’s way too close for comfort.
“I said get out of here.”
“Theo, shut up,” Jennifer says.
Heather heads for the kitchen and makes herself at home. Little sisters are notorious for the “what’s yours is mine” mentality.
“No more,” Jennifer says, wearing her big-sister attitude. That’s never a good sign. “Tommy’s here because he cares about you.”
I scowl. “Even you don’t believe that. I bet Tommy had a field day when he found out.”
My brother grimaces and opens his mouth to speak.
Jennifer motions for Tommy to stay silent before he can say anything. “You don’t mean that,” she tells me. “Stop being so sortatious.”
Tommy takes a deep breath. “Theo, she came over here the day you took her ice-skating to tell you, but you hadn’t come home from work yet. It took her a while, but she finally worked up the nerve to practice her speech on me.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He flails his arms around. “I didn’t know what to do. She promised me she would tell you. In fact, she said she was heading straight over to the hospital to tell you. I thought it was best coming from her.”
That was the day Mallory showed up at work, begging me for another chance. No wonder Darla was there. She had finally worked up the courage to tell me, and Mallory ruined the moment.
“If you could have seen the torment she was going through—”
“She kept it from me on purpose.” I stare at the ceiling. “First, Mallory lies to me and then this.” I clench my fists.
“It’s not the same, and you know it,” Jennifer says. “And for the record, I didn’t know squat until you stopped by my class that day.”
Heather enters the living room with beers for everyone but hands me a bottle of water. She tears open a bag of chips, and the three of them grab handfuls as though this is any other family night at the Edwards household.
“What are you so mad about, anyway?” Heather asks me, or at least I think that’s what she said. Her mouth is so jammed full of chips, I’m not even sure she was speaking English.
“What do you think?” I reply.
“I mean, are you mad that you have a kid, or are you mad that other people figured it out before you?”
I close my eyes to block out this unwanted intervention.
Heather keeps pushing. “I’m being serious. I don’t know the backstory, so help me out. Are you mad that you have a kid?”
I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with my little sister. “Of course not.”
“Okay, are you mad that Stella’s hers?” Heather asks.
“Definitely not,” Tommy answers for me.
I stare at them. I couldn’t disagree, even if I had the strength.
“Are you mad you didn’t know for so long?”
I move to a sitting position. “I don’t know. I mean, yes. I mean, maybe. But I’ve been here a month, and she still didn’t tell me on purpose. Who does that?”
“She has no self-esteem, Theo,” Jennifer says. “She tried to tell you.”
I snort. “She tried to tell him.” I point at Tommy.
Jennifer lets out a sigh. “Before that. Long before that. I’m talking about when she was pregnant. She sent you emails telling you about the baby.”
My head snaps to attention. I’m completely awake now. My eyes feel as if they’re about to bug out of their sockets. “I never got any emails. I think I would have remembered that.”
Tommy stands and paces the room. He stuffs his hands into his jeans pockets. “Uh, no, you didn’t get them… I did.”
I jump up, ready to punch my brother in the face, but Jennifer grabs my arm to hold me back.
I clench my fists. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying she thought she sent them to you. Do you remember a long time ago when I was getting a bunch of crazy emails? A friend of mine was pulling a joke on me, and I thought Darla’s emails were part of that, so I deleted them. And I might have told her to leave me alone. I guess she was doing what she thought you wanted.”
My mouth drops open.
“I’m so sorry, man. Darla didn’t even realize it until the day she was practicing her speech on me. She didn’t want you to be mad at me so she made me promise not to say anything to you until she had a chance to clear the air.” He reaches out and squeezes my shoulder.
I sink back down onto the couch and cover my face with my arm. Tommy sits on the coffee table in front of me. His words swim around in my brain, nauseating me. Darla really did try to tell me. My heart aches when I think of how abandoned she must have felt when she thought I didn’t want her or the baby. I can’t think like that right now. “But even so, that doesn’t justify not telling me now.”
“She’s not a mean person,” Jennifer says. “Forgiveness, Theo. Forgiveness.”
“Well, it’s your fault,” Heather says to me.
We all stare at her. “And how is that?” I ask.
She chomps down on another chip. “Condoms, dude. Didn’t Mom teach you better?”
Tommy laughs under his breath, and I punch him on the shoulder.
“Ow!”
“Heather, that’s not nice,” Jennifer says through a stifled grin.
Heather giggles. “I didn’t mean for it to be funny. What were you thinking? That you’d be immune to having babies?”
“Jeez, Heather, I didn’t plan for this. And yes, I did think I was immune, thank you very much.”
They all know what the doctors have told me. They all know how hard it has been for me to watch other people my age get married and have kids, knowing I was told I would never have that.
I sigh and sit up. “It was not my normal practice, okay? I don’t sleep around. She was special.”
“Is special,” they say in unison.
“Whatever. If I had known, I would have done the right thing. I wasn’t… I’m not a love ’em and leave ’em kind of person.”
Heather smirks at me. “Then explain to me why you’re leaving now.”
Tommy fist-bumps her.
Damn. The baby of the family is now the wise
one. That’s a hard pill to swallow.
Jennifer smiles at me. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”
Tommy continues. “It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”
Thanks a lot, Tommy. I’m going to remember this when some girl finally cracks his armor. It’s only a matter of time, and I’m going to make him eat his words.
Heather clears her throat. “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Oh, now my baby sister has to gang up on me too. I thought we were buds.
“Love never fails,” they all say together.
Ugh. The problem with having a pastor for a father is that every member of the family can whip out scripture at any time to suit their specific argument. But this passage hits too close to home. They’re right, and they know it. Damn it.
I rise from the couch and growl at them. “I need to take a shower and get back to the hospital. Let yourselves out.”
They have the nerve to do a round of high fives as I head down the hallway toward the bathroom.
“Assholes,” I mumble to myself.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Darla
Only three hours, forty-nine minutes, and thirteen seconds until I get to visit my Stella again. I’ve tried using the “I work here” card and the “I’m a nurse” card over and over to try to get in more often, but the ICU staff never cracks. Even the pouty lip doesn’t work. They go strictly by the book. So I only get to see her three times a day like everyone else. At least the doctor hasn’t rushed her back to surgery again. I’m going to put that in the win column of the Get Stella Better game. While I wait for the next visitation session, I obsess over every little detail of the waiting room.
There are seventy-two ceiling tiles. I know because I’ve counted them ten times today. The stain on the wall by the water fountain drives me crazy. I think I’m starting to see the image of Mother Teresa in it. It’s either her or one of those cartoon characters that Stella likes to watch on Saturday mornings. And there is not enough toilet paper in the ladies’ room to make it through the night.
One family left, and two more moved in here today. Each parent has the same glassy-eyed appearance, as if they have been hung out to dry. We don’t talk. We don’t share stories. We nod, and in that silent gesture, we empathize with one another. Isaac, Shelby, and Theo’s family left for the day, leaving me alone with too many thoughts.
I slip off my shoes and lie on the plaid loveseat, wearing my worn-out gray university sweatshirt that’s torn so much around the collar, I should probably be using it as a dusting cloth. This loveseat has been my bed since the beginning of this black hole of despair. The magazine I’m reading is six months old and dog-eared from all the readers it has had since it was left here by some other poor soul. Actually, I bet no one has read one complete article. I know I haven’t. I stare at the pictures and flip from one page to the next. Even the perfume sample still dangles from one of the staples.
A thump behind my head interrupts my literature time. I lean my head back to see where the noise came from. It’s Theo. He has a shy expression on his clean-shaven face. He’s wearing his old T-shirt that has “Don’t trust atoms. They make up everything.” printed on the front. He came back. It only took him a few hours, but he’s back, and the resting angry face has been washed away.
“Hey,” I say.
He sits down next to me. “Hey.”
“You shaved. It looks good. Not that the beard didn’t. You seem… younger.” Without his beard, he looks more like how he did in college. “I like the shirt too.”
He surveys the shirt and grins. I wonder if he’s thinking about the night I wore it, because that’s where my mind went.
“I’ve been doing some thinking,” he says.
This is the most he has talked to me in weeks. I put my magazine down, not caring about the article “How to Tell if Your Man is Lying,” anyway. Apparently, if he swallows while talking, he’s lying.
“I’m very stressed out and about a quart low on blood.”
“What?”
“Never mind that. The thing is I’m still very hurt and angry. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over being hurt and angry.” He doesn’t swallow.
Uh-oh. I bite my lip. There’s going to be a permanent indentation where my teeth have been sawing my lip in half. I was hoping he was going to forgive and forget, but it doesn’t feel as if he’s headed in that direction.
He continues. “But we have to work together if we want Stella to get healthy again. She needs to feel that we’re a team.” He leans back and slides my feet into his lap. As if on autopilot, he rubs the soles of my bare feet.
Mmm, that feels heavenly.
“And we’re not doing her any good moping around, crying our eyes out every second of the day or snapping at each other. She wouldn’t want that, would she?”
“No, she wouldn’t,” I reply. “She would want us to laugh.”
His head bobs up and down like a little kid, like my… like our Stella. “That’s what I was thinking.” He slings my feet off his lap and drags his duffel bag over to him.
“Are you moving in?” Lord, how I wish he would.
He cracks a faint smirk. “I hope not.” He takes out the first item. “Operation.” He tosses me the game. I almost fall off the couch, trying to catch it. “Maybe Dr. Michaels could use some practice.”
“I hope not.”
Next, he plops the game of Sorry in my lap. “We are going to get that word out of our systems tonight.” He exhales. “I’m sorry I hurt you about the Hangman game. I really thought you were the culprit. I never in a million years would want to hurt you. And you have nothing to be sorry about. No more sorries. Got it?”
Gulp. “Got it.” God, I love him.
His eyebrows dance. “Now, as much as I wanted to, I didn’t bring the Twister game. I thought that might be a little racy for the waiting room.”
I haven’t seen his jovial side in a while. “Good thinking.”
“But…” His eyes get really big. I can only imagine what Christmas morning is like with him. “I did bring the dry-erase board.” He drags it out and shows me that he rewrote my puzzle, but with all the letters filled in.
I give him a high five. “Seems like you’ve gotten better at Hangman.”
He fakes a shocked expression. “Not really. You never could make it difficult. Oh, and one more thing.” He stands up and jerks his shirt up with one hand. With the other, he tugs the waistband of his jeans down. “Do you see what this is?”
Perhaps he should lay off the caffeine. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be seeing.”
He gets a hangdog expression. “You don’t see it?”
“Uh, I see your pump and some very bony ribs. How much weight have you lost lately?”
The beginning of a smile tips up the side of his mouth. “Not important right now.” He points to his underwear.
“You have on clean underwear, I hope?”
He motions for me to continue.
“Okay, they are tagless?”
“No. I mean yes, but that’s not the point. These, my dear, are my big-girl panties.”
I bust out laughing. “What?”
“You told me to act like an adult. So, I’m showing you I’ve put on my big-girl panties, and I’m going to try. I can’t promise anything because, well, you know me. I don’t adult very well. I haven’t had much practice.”
I slap my thigh. “That is hysterical.”
He stares at me. I stare at him. I think we’re both afraid to speak, afraid that anything we say may get in the way of the progress we’ve made in
the last five minutes.
“I’m not mad anymore. I know you didn’t keep her from me on purpose,” he says. “Give me some time to adjust, please?”
Whew. I can live with that. “Okay.”
He clears his throat. “So, pick your poison. What will it be first?”
“Hmm.” I survey all the goodies. “Sorry. I’m ready to pulverize you in a good ole game of Sorry.”
He opens the box and drops the game board on the coffee table. “In your dreams, Juliet.”
“Bring it, Romeo.”
If I didn’t know better, I would think we were back in that fraternity house bathroom, keeping score of our winnings on the mirror with lipstick. We had so much fun playing games. It was then that I knew I loved him. It was the night I lost him. It was the moment we made Stella. It was… perfect. I don’t know if I can ever get back that feeling, but right now, I’m loving the fact that he’s not ignoring me. That’s a huge step forward.
For two hours, we battle it out over the Sorry board. We accumulate an audience of ICU families watching us duke it out. As expected, most of them cheer for me. Ha! Take that Dr. Edwards. Theo loans the Operation game and the dry-erase board out to other families, and it’s nice to pass the time mindlessly and laugh. I forgot how much he could make me laugh.
He taps my game piece off the space it was on. He doesn’t even try to stifle a chuckle.
“Do you really think you’re going to get away with sending my game piece back home again?” I ask after he sends it back to the home space for the fifth time. “I don’t think so.”
“Sorreeeee,” he screeches.
I throw a Goldfish cracker at him. Of course, he catches it in his mouth. Show off.
An alarm sounds over the intercom, making me jump so high that I practically hit the ceiling.
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