by K. P. Haigh
"Don't give up on him."
The nerves that had been wrapped so tightly around my heart release their grip. I didn't know I wanted to hear those words until they ran through my ear canals and had a dance party in my brain. I don't want to give up on him, but I don't know how to be me and still have him too.
"Bad timing doesn't mean it's not meant to be; it just means it's not meant to be right now." Evelyn reaches across and squeezes my hand. "Honey, I've been married twice, and let me tell you what I learned the second time around: when you find a good man, a truly kind and generous man who will be loyal to you, you do everything in your power to keep him. If he's as good a person as you say he is, he's not going to let you go. He might have let you fly off, but he's going to seek you out and make his case, because you're one hell of a woman."
I sit there, dumbstruck. She just smiles and stands up without another word, heading to the sleeping quarters…leaving me to ponder her words, this trip, and everything that has turned my life upside down these past few months.
I swear I can smell the exhaust fumes of Detroit before we even touch down at the airport. After having spent the last three weeks in the countryside of Ethiopia, my nose isn't accustomed to the smell of the city. It would be gross if it didn't feel so oddly familiar.
I'm coming home with the same clothes and the same baggage, but everything feels radically different. I finally did what I said I was going to do, and at times it was terrifying and uncomfortable, but it was also deeply freeing.
Travel is intoxicating, and now I know I'm a strong enough person to handle the inevitable stomach virus and accompanying can I please have my mom right now blues. I'm strong enough to figure out my way through a village when I only know how to translate the words bathroom, water, and hospital. I also know I can take stunning pictures that are worthy of the magazines and galleries I admire, and I know damn well I'm going to do my best to get them there.
I did what I have always wanted to do, and instead of scaring me, it makes me want to keep walking in and out of airports for the foreseeable future.
The contract went well, and I'm hopeful I'll get another with Collins Aid United, maybe even a full-time offer. No matter what happens, I'm going to figure out a way to get back out on the road.
I have to.
When I get to baggage claim, I don't have to look for Andie. She comes running at me like a screeching bat, arms stretched out wide. She reaches me and traps me in the best hug I've had in weeks, and I decide this might be my favorite part.
Home is the best place in the entire world when you return to it.
"Ahhh, tell me everything. How was the flight? How was getting the first stamp in your passport? Were there any cute doctors over at the clinic?" She adds the last question with a dramatic bite of her lip and wide eyes.
It makes me smile. "Nope. Forty-five, married, and balding isn't really my jam."
There is so much to tell her anyway, even if there weren't any great romantic escapades. The Internet was hella slow at the medical center when it even worked—not that I had time to pen great long emails about my travels.
There are so many stories I know she's going to find endlessly fascinating. I mean, I was working in a medical clinic in an extraordinarily rural region. Doctors live for that kind of stuff. How do you MacGyver medicine when there isn't a judge and jury to come after you if it doesn't work out exactly as well as you’d hoped?
I didn't know it was going to be Andie picking me up until I touched down and turned my phone back on to about a million texts from her. Half of them were composed of emojis, and the other half were in all caps. I also had one text from my mom.
We're sending Andie. We'll get you all to ourselves tomorrow.
Enjoy the night with your best friend. We couldn't be more proud of you.
I nearly choked up on the airplane, but my row was next in line to leave, and exiting an aircraft is no joke. I think the people behind me would have trampled me to get by if I had taken more than my unofficially allotted three seconds.
I get to spend the night catching up with my best friend. My parents are the absolute best.
"Okay, so where are we headed? I'm starving." Just ask the woman who sat next to me on the flight—it sounded like a pterodactyl hatched in my lower abdomen.
Andie looks at me with a sheepish grin. "I found a new place that has amazing wings."
She had me at wings, but I'm not going to let it go without some fanfare. "And how many TVs do they have?"
"Two or three," she says while she counts on her fingers, her eyes darting up to the corner of the ceiling in thought. She stops and looks straight at me. "Five tops."
I'm so hungry, I'm not even going to argue. "Done." The dinosaur in my stomach is taking no prisoners, and wings sound damn good.
What's a few TVs anyway?
A few TVs is enough to broadcast every major sporting event currently taking place on national television.
That includes the game between Seattle and Detroit, happening just thirty short minutes away from us, and of course, the hostess sits us down right in front of the giant screen that is blasting the game in its full high-definition glory.
Lovely.
I don't know what I did to the hostesses of the world, but I'm pretty sure I need to start bringing chocolate chip cookies with me or something to bribe them to seat me in the quietest, least sports-filled sections of their restaurants.
Is there something about me that screams sports fan? If so, someone should tell me. I'll tattoo right over that shit without a second thought.
There are only a few people in the whole place, so when the waiter walks over, I have no problem being honest.
"Can you change the channel, please?" I ask, sweetness dripping from each syllable. Just because I'm not ready to give up on Baron doesn't mean I want to stare at him on a gigantic television screen. Don't even get me started on keeping myself away from anything having to do with him on the Internet. I'm about two clicks away from taking my computer to the Apple store and begging one of those geniuses to figure out how to block me from drunk-searching him.
The waiter smiles like he doesn't give a shit. "What? You date the quarterback and he broke your heart or something?"
"No. It was the wide running end."
The waiter drops his head and slowly shakes it. "There's no such thing."
"Whatever," I say impatiently. "Can we just change it?"
"Honey, this is the biggest game on television right now. If you want me to change it, you're going to have to convince every single one of these fine people sitting here watching it."
A few heads turn around to look at me and scowl. Fine, I get it—I'm the only one who hates football. From now on, I'm going to have to double-check how many televisions a restaurant has before I walk in the door.
I turn back to Andie, and she has a massive smirk on her face.
"What?" I snap.
"Nothing." The way she coos when she says that word makes me feel like Hulk Smash.
"Ohmygod, just say it already. I know it's in there." I'm being harsh, but I can't seem to stop it from pouring out.
Her face turns serious and she's silent for a second, debating whether or not I want to hear what she has to say. "You still love him."
I press my face into the palms of my hands, letting my fingers snake up into my hair. "Yes." It comes out as a muffled whisper; that's all I can manage.
I kept myself as busy as I possibly could on my trip. I spent every waking hour taking photos or helping in the clinic. Life was easy when my hands were moving, but the minute they stopped, my mind swerved off directly into Baronland.
There wasn't a single moment I missed Seattle. I missed Ann Arbor and my old studio, I missed my parents’ house, but I never missed a single thing about the city of Seattle.
Except for Baron.
The way it felt to have his arms wrapped around me. His half-asleep smile when we woke up in the morning and he kissed my fore
head.
And then Evelyn waved oxygen toward the tiny little candle that was barely holding on in a windstorm, and my brain has been on a nonstop Baron trip for the last two days.
"Okay, what are we gonna do about it then? We can get drunk and try to forget about him. We can road trip to Detroit and make a giant sign that says I STILL LOVE YOU BARON. Whatever we need to do, I'm there, you just have to tell me which way to point the compass."
I shake my head. "It's not that simple."
Andie throws her hands up in the air, and for once I'm glad we're in a bar that’s blasting sports—no one's paying any attention to us. "Come on, Monty! Yes, it is. You love him. So, we figure out how to get over it, or we figure out how to win him back."
"I love him, but I don't love his life. I was miserable out in Seattle, and he had no freaking clue. None. Isn't that a hallmark sign of a bad relationship? You can't even figure out when your girlfriend is ridiculously unhappy?"
"But did you ever tell him?" Andie asks softly as she leans forward.
Mic drop.
I scramble to come up with a response. "Shouldn't he have noticed?"
"He's a football player, not Miss Cleo. He doesn't get paid to read minds."
Our waiter walks up, oblivious to the conversation at hand, and asks for our orders. Suddenly the bar goes catatonic. Every single person—except for Andie and me—stands up with their hands on their heads and shouts at the television. I can't help but turn to see what's causing the commotion, even though I'm sure it's just a bad call or a fumble or something.
All I see are a bunch of people huddled into a circle on the field—what's weird about that?
A replay starts, and I almost look away, but I notice a familiar number: 43. I stared at that number enough this summer to know its significance.
Baron.
You couldn't pay me to look away now. I don't know what he has to do with the group of people huddled together, but my heart races while the replay scurries to connect the dots for me.
The bartender grabs the remote and turns up the volume.
"We don't know the extent of his injuries, but that couldn't have been good," one of the commentators explains.
"Okay, watch the upper right corner of the screen," a second voice instructs. "That's Arrant coming in at full speed and Davis coming up on his side."
I watch, unable to breathe. All three players collide, sending Baron in an upward arc. The replay slows the speed of the video down, and I watch each and every drawn out second until his head connects with the ground.
My hands fly to my mouth as I take my first sharp breath in. Oh god, he's hurt. How badly is he hurt?
The screen cuts back to Baron lying on the ground surrounded by at least a dozen people, half in football uniforms, half in polos and khakis. Then someone wheels a stretcher out onto the field.
I turn back around to the table and grab my phone, pulling up Georgie's contact info.
Can you find out what hospital they're taking him to?
I'm in MI. I need to be there with him.
I shove my phone back in my purse, and Andie hands me her keys before I even have a chance to ask.
"Go," she urges. "Don't worry about getting the car back to me. Just keep me posted."
She pulls me into a quick hug and I race out the door to her parked car.
I don't know where I'm driving yet, but I'll check every hospital in Metro Detroit if I have to. That's what you do when you're in love.
And I never stopped loving Baron, not for a single second. We may be two different people, but he has my heart. Forever and always.
I'm driving eighty-five miles per hour, and I still can't get to Detroit fast enough. I should slow down; this isn't my car, and if I get pulled over, it's just going to put more time between me and him.
He's hurt. I saw it on the screen, heard the sound of the crowd go silent when the other two players got up and he stayed down. I don't know how bad it is, but I have to be there. I should have been there when it happened. I should have been riding in that ambulance instead of standing in a bar arguing with the bartender about turning the TV off.
If I had gotten my way, I wouldn't have even seen it happen.
I could have gone my whole night without knowing the love of my life is in the emergency room right now.
I haven't seen Baron Richards in over a month. I walked out of his apartment five weeks ago, but I didn't know then what I know now.
When you find the love of your life, you have to fight to keep them. I gave up, and now I have no idea if I'm too late.
My phone dings, and I look down to see that Georgie texted me the hospital. I know exactly which one she's talking about; I took photos there once when the Michigan robotics team visited the children's wing to do an interactive demo.
I pull into the massive parking lot twenty minutes later, and I race to the front entrance. I remember there's a large circular desk near the entrance where the staff directs you on where to go, and I get there as fast as my flip-flops will take me. I think about ditching them for a hot second, and then I remember that I'm walking into a hospital. I don't know if I'd be bringing germs in or walking into them, but either way, my feet stay sandaled, even if it isn't exactly appropriate sprinting attire.
The desk is right in front of me, and I stop in front of the counter, nearly out of breath. I'm in great shape; it's not my lungs that can't keep up here. My heart is taxed out. Emotion is keeping it from running this race in a calm and orderly fashion.
The woman behind the counter looks up and seems unimpressed, or at least unaffected by the big eyes I'm trying to give her, the please help me eyes I've used on my parents and grade school teachers for years.
Okay, new strategy.
"Hi, my boyfriend, Baron Richards, is here. He was just injured, and I said I would meet them here." It's not exactly accurate, but I doubt Baron is angry enough to deny my exaggerated claims outright.
The woman nods without a single lick of an emotional response and starts clacking away on her keyboard. I worry for a second that maybe he's listed under a different name. I mean, I know celebrities do it at hotels—is that a thing in hospitals? A million and a half people know he's injured right now; what's stopping the crazed fan that thinks she's his girlfriend from showing up wanting to see him?
I mean, yes, I sort of just lied about currently being his girlfriend, but I was his girlfriend at one point, which is more than some stalker with posters of him on her wall can say.
Wait, can I get posters of him for my wall? Ahhh, focus.
The woman looks back up at me. "He's in the emergency wing right now. You can wait in the ICU waiting room until he gets transferred. Through that corridor over there and second hall on your left."
I offer her a hearty thanks and race toward the maze of hallways. I know I'm running to sit and wait, but I can't stop my body from acting out the urgency I feel coursing through every single inch of me.
When I get to the waiting room, I check in with the nurse at the reception desk and tell her I'm here to see Baron. She tells me she'll keep an eye out for when he gets transferred. I walk over to the 80s geometric print chairs and plop down. I quickly check my phone: the battery is at just above thirty percent. My charger is out in my duffel bag in the car, but I don't want to lift my butt out of this seat for a single second. I would rather stare at a blank white wall than miss the message that Baron is ready for visitors.
Fortunately, there's a stack of magazines on the table next to me. I may have to use a whole bottle of hand sanitizer after I flip through them, but this is a hospital—I'm pretty sure they've got the market cornered on disinfecting materials.
I start to thumb through my options when out of the corner of my eye, I see someone sit down next to me.
"Um, are you Monty?"
I look over and recognize those eyes immediately. I smile, already knowing who I'm talking to. "Yes. I am."
She sighs with relief. "Okay, good, ’cause
I thought I recognized you from a picture Baron sent me, but I didn't know because, you know… Anyway, I'm Devon, his sister." She stretches out her hand. "He's going to be really glad you're here."
My heart skips at her assertion. I didn't know what to expect. I ran here on adrenaline without much thought to whether or not Baron would actually want to see me. I shake Devon's hand, grateful for the camaraderie. Who needs a magazine when you have a friend sitting next to you who is just as freaked out and trying just as hard to avoid freaking out?
We get lost in conversation about everything: Devon's time at school, my time in Ethiopia, what it was like growing up with three brothers compared to growing up as an only child.
Devon stops in the middle of telling a story about her brothers trying to make her football pads out of packing peanuts so she could play with them. She looks over at me and laughs. "I'm glad I finally have another girl around. I've put up with their tomboy-ing me for way too long."
Her words clasp around my heart and squeeze. I want to be around. I want to be the one Baron brings home for family dinners. It scares me that I might have screwed up my chance at that.
"I hope I can fix it," I whisper. It's scary to say the words out loud.
Devon wraps her arms around me. "You can. I know you can." She pulls away and wiggles her nose, as if she's trying to decide whether or not to continue. "He couldn't stop staring at you, you know? That night you two met. The whole time I sat with him at Halftime, he kept looking over and smiling, like he was in on the joke you were telling."
I laugh, remembering it as perfectly as the beer haze I had that night will let me. "I was reading in the middle of a sports bar."
"Yeah, but it was more than that. You were being unabashedly you in that moment, and he couldn't take his eyes off you. He loves you—the real you—and I know things didn't work out in Seattle, but I know you two can fix it. When you love the heart of someone, you figure out how to make the rest of it work too."