by K. L Randis
I nodded, understanding her position but also angry that any of my co-workers would think it necessary to bring the rumors to her attention to begin with. Unless, of course, they were vying for my job. A majority of the scheduling was based on seniority and how much the Nurse Manager tolerated you. I was fortunate enough to have both things on my side, allowing me for a fairly reasonable schedule as far as working as a nurse at a hospital goes. I knew Lisa wouldn’t have snitched on me, but it would have been nearly impossible to keep Jackson’s charts all to herself for the time he was admitted. I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone connected his delirious cries to me.
“The truth is…” I started.
Jacob barged in the door in that moment. “Boss, we have an emergency.”
“My gosh Jacob, can’t you see that—”
“There’s a man in the emergency room from the prison, he shanked a guard and hit a nurse in the face, she’s unconscious. The prisoner ran into a kid trying to escape and the father is threatening to sue for his injuries, it’s an animal house down there.”
“Oh, can’t there just be one day,” Joanne said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’ll be down in a moment.”
Jacob nodded—eyes wider than a softball—and closed the door behind him. His footsteps echoed down the hallway as he ran back to the E.R.
“Okay Pippa, let’s fast track this. Do you have an ongoing relationship with this Jackson character?”
I opened my mouth, ready to defend myself and why he was in my life. That’s when I realized he no longer was.
“I haven’t seen him in weeks,” I said out loud, the heaviness of the truth resting like an elephant on my chest. The last time I saw Jackson was when he left the hospital, Dylan’s hands entangled in mine. A mixture of emotions from the attack, the betrayed look on his face that day, and a realization I may never be able to tell him the truth about us kept me from texting or calling him afterwards.
“Perfect!” Joanne said, raising her hands up as if to praise the hospital Gods. “If there’s no relationship then the rumors I’m hearing are just rumors. Thanks for your time, Pippa. I need to get down to the emergency room, you may go.”
I coasted down the hallway on autopilot, not caring that every co-worker I passed was staring at me to gauge how the meeting had went. Thankful the staff locker room was mostly empty, I changed out of my scrubs and grabbed my jacket to head home.
I closed my eyes when the elevator doors closed, transporting to the lobby in solitude. Picturing Jackson’s face on the last day I saw him, my heart ached, wondering where he was and what he had been up to. I had opened my phone, twice, to text him after coming home. I stared at the screen for so long that three familiar dots danced across the bottom at one point. Almost as if giving me my answer, nothing was sent, and I was left to wonder why it was so hard for him to talk to me when he needed to the most.
The doors beeped and I stepped out of the elevator, making my way to the front of the lobby.
“I thought you moved?” a voice called behind me, stopping me in my tracks.
When I turned Jackson was inches from my face with red cheeks, either from shock or panic, I couldn’t tell.
“Jackson!” I yelled, alarmed at his presence, immediately thankful I had changed out of my scrubs. “You thought I moved?” I asked, not following.
“I went to your place, twice,” he said. “You weren’t there both times, your car gone, shades drawn. I drove past one night after work and it was completely black, I thought you up and moved.”
“I’ve been staying with Meg temporarily,” I answered. “She’s been having a hard time with—” I looked around the lobby, the bustle of people around us telling me it wasn’t the place or time to have heavy conversation. “She just needed a friend,” I said, thinking about how our one-night sleepover had morphed into a long-term slumber party ever since I returned home. Neither of us wanted to be alone with our thoughts. “I planned to head home sometime next week.”
“Oh, okay. Well…okay.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked, scanning the lobby. “Are you okay?”
My face flared. “Just some follow up stuff, not a big deal.” I tried to keep it vague. “What are you doing here?” I asked, looking around to see who was witnessing me talking to Jackson moments after telling my boss we had no contact.
“It’s really nice to see you, Pippa” he said, ignoring the question entirely.
“Why? So you could remind me I was a terrible person for letting Dylan be there for me?”
“Don’t be like that Pip, of course not. You needed everyone there for you. I needed to…I mean I wasn’t sure if I should text you…” He looked away, his eyes searching in the space around us for any reason to run away. “I wanted to tell you…”
“Pippa?” said a voice directly behind me.
I stiffened, turning slowly, not wanting to face the reality of who it was.
Joanne smiled at Jackson warmly, but her face told me she was boiling with questions. “May I ask who your friend is? I’d love to be introduced.”
I shook my head, not having a valid explanation and sensing in my gut that it would be the last time I would ever step foot in that hospital as an employee.
When I opened my mouth to respond, Jackson spoke over me.
“I was just asking where I could get a copy of my medical records.” Jackson said smoothly.
I glanced from Jackson to Joanne, then back again. I wasn’t sure what he was covering up, until I sensed a level of embarrassment in his voice. Taking notice of Joanne’s professional getup, I think he assumed we were friends, not co-workers. He was trying to save me the embarrassment and complication of not knowing how to introduce him.
“I want to make sure my doctor has the most updated ones,” he said.
Joanne nodded, not taking her eyes off Jackson. “Your doctor should know how to submit the request, no need to come to the hospital to get them Mr….?” She left the floor open for Jackson to provide his name, but he was skeptical of her digging. Reaching forward he extended his hand to her, shaking it when she offered hers, and then put his hand in his jean pocket.
“Perfect,” he replied. He backed away, putting up a hand. “Again, sorry to waste your time.” He was speaking directly to me, his eyes burning into mine, an agonizing look crossing his face. “It was never my intention to waste your time.”
The gravity of his words lumbered at me like a sledgehammer. He nodded at Joanne, not bothering to look at me again as he started for the exit doors.
“Handsome man,” Joanne replied, watching him disappear through the lobby. “If I didn’t know any better, that’d be the elusive Jackson everyone is talking about. It doesn’t look like he needs any medical attention and he never gave me his name though, so what do I know?”
I glanced at Joanne.
“It’d be a shame to lose your job over a rumor, wouldn’t it, Pippa? I’m sure we won’t see him here again,” she cautioned.
My focus returned to a disappearing Jackson. I nodded, watching him walk away for the second time, this time not bothering to hide the quiver in my bottom lip.
***
Dylan had reappeared in my life just after the bombing, sporadically bringing me lunch at Meg’s and keeping me company when he had the time. We poked fun of his nose brace and watched the news together, sometimes holding hands as the courthouse proceedings gave updates. I don’t know if it was the thought of losing me that day, but something scared him into wanting me back in his life romantically. Somewhere around the three week mark of Jackson’s absence and Dylan’s overwhelming presence I told Dylan I needed space to focus on myself and so I could figure out was coming next.
The problem was, I had no idea what was coming next.
Chapter Twelve
“You’re sure she had no idea I was gone?” I asked Meg, half heart-broken, merging onto the highway toward the nursing home.
Meg sighed through the Blue
tooth call we were on, her voice hinting that she didn’t want to go over it again. “Pip, I checked in on her once a week personally. We had tea together. She showed me her running sneakers, the purple comforter you gave her last Christmas and we talked about all sorts of things yes, but… none of those things was you, darling.”
“So what did she talk about?”
“Soup, mostly. She said she wanted some soup that didn’t taste like toilet water. Oh, and she asked if I could bring her to the beach.”
“What’d you tell her?” I asked, nervous that she had become upset when Meg told her no.
“I told her sure, no problem. We’d go first thing after lunch.”
I smiled. “You’re a good friend.”
“I knew she wouldn’t remember by the time lunch rolled around. I didn’t want to lie to her, but it was the happiest I saw her all day. If those few minutes were all she had to believe she’d be going to the beach, I’d lie to her over and over.”
Meg was the kind of friend who knew how to give tough love when it was warranted, but she spent the weeks I was in the hospital looking after my mom without even asking if it was what I needed. It was never a question. She made sure the nurses knew that I was injured, and that she would be stopping in to check on her as often as she could.
She was a forever friend, the kind that implodes your heart with gratitude because you never knew how you survived before without them by the constant light they shined into your life.
“Thanks, Meg. So no mention of me?”
She sighed. “None. She did ask me to ‘tell her one good thing and one bad thing’, but I didn’t know what that meant specifically.”
I smiled, knowing that was Mom’s way of shining through. “What’d you say?” I said, laughing.
“I told her the bad thing was I haven’t been laid in a while, but the good thing was that it just meant that there was no way I could be pregnant.”
“Meg!”
“Kidding!” she said, laughing. “I told her one good thing was I enjoyed having her to talk to, and one bad thing is I wish I could talk the same way with my sister again.”
“You make my heart ache, woman.”
“Yeah, well…time for me to go be a productive human being. You wanna binge on pizza and wine later? I’ve been in a funk and it’s been a hot minute since we had a sleepover,” Meg replied, deflecting.
“Is there any better way to spend a Sunday night?”
“Red or white?”
“Wine? Both, duh.”
“You got it, see ya later.”
I hung up with Meg as I pulled my car into a parking spot at the nursing home. The nurses at the front desk were happy to see me, and my heart quickened in anticipation of seeing my mom, whether she remembered me or not.
She was wrapped in her purple comforter when I poked my head through the door, an immediate smile lighting up her face.
“Hi there, stranger,” I sang.
“Hi!” she said, pleased to have company regardless of who it was.
“Can I visit for a while?” I asked, pulling off my coat and setting it on the edge of her bed.
“Oh, I’d like that very much,” she said, patting the bed beside her. “Can I get you some coffee? I just went grocery shopping today, I picked up this wonderful pumpkin roll.”
Always worried about other people.
“I’m okay. Are you feeling all right?” I leaned forward, brushing a strand of white hair from her brow.
“Tulips,” she said, staring at the batch I held in my hands.
I nodded, handing them to her.
She glanced at the flowers in her hands, turning them over and rubbing her fingers over the soft petals. Losing herself in this process, she looked up at me eventually and seemed surprised to see she had company. Her eyes darted from the flowers in her hand to me sitting on the bed beside her, and I could tell my presence of being so close to her when she didn’t know who I was had her feeling uncomfortable. I stood up, slowly, and made my way over to the rocking chair a few feet away.
“Tell me one good thing and one bad thing,” she said eagerly, straightening up in bed and readying herself for my reply, the tension from seconds earlier already forgotten.
I always thought it was amazing that she couldn’t recall the important things: who I was, what year we were in, or even just remembering she was in a nursing home. Somehow, whether by repetition or some other unexplainable phenomenon, she would often remember to ask whoever was visiting the same question. It was a question she poised to me every day after school; then again when I was older, everyday after work or college classes. Maybe the things I deemed important that I wanted her to remember were selfishly only for me. She obviously remembered what she did for a reason, and I was still learning to accept that our ideas of what was important would be vastly different.
She taught me that if it was the end of the day and you couldn’t identify a ‘good thing’, it meant you had to create your own good by doing something for someone else. Some days would have more good than bad things, more bad than good, or they would balance out. It was a checks and balances game she created for life to keep good things in the world revolving. She taught me that I should create some good for someone else when I couldn’t see any good in my own life.
“My good thing for today is that I got to bring my mom flowers.”
I would sometimes purposefully not call her Mom. Too many times the title gave her anxiety or confused her because she didn’t know why I would be calling her that. It was easier to show up as a friend, just someone who wanted to talk and visit, rather than remind her over and over of who she forgot she was.
“Oh, I bet she loved that.”
“She did,” I said smiling at her. “She loves tulips, so she made me bring her flowers every Sunday to teach me to remember her at least once a week.”
“Oh, well I think you should remember your mother more than once a week,” she chastised, wagging a finger.
“I agree, and I do for sure. She wanted me to get into the habit of remembering her for when she wasn’t here anymore. I would be so used to bringing her flowers on Sundays, I’d do it even when she was gone.”
She nodded, staring at the tulips still clutched in her hand. “That’s a lovely notion.”
“It is.”
There was a moment where it was silent, her fingers gently caressing the petals, when she looked up.
“And your bad thing?”
Surprised she remembered asking the question in the first place, I wiggled in my seat. “There’s a lot of those lately, I almost don’t know where to start.”
“Mmmmm. Sounds like things are unbalanced.”
“That’s an understatement,” I said, moving back to the bed to sit by her side, judging her face to make sure it was okay. “I’ve hurt someone without them knowing I’ve hurt them.”
It was a gesture that made my heart turn as warm and soft as her hand felt, when she picked mine up and placed it in hers. “How have you hurt someone? Did you apologize?”
“There’s nothing to apologize for because he doesn’t even know I’m hurting him. I’m keeping something from him, a secret.”
“Mmmmm,” she said.
I wasn’t sure if I had lost her in conversation again so I continued on. “He has been there for me more times than I deserve, but I never fully return the favor. I’m still hurting from what happened with Dylan, but now Jackson is paying for it. He should know more about me but I can’t let him in. I’m too afraid.”
Mom exhaled slowly and patted my hand. “Yes, I can tell you’re afraid. You don’t have to be afraid.” She gave my hand a little squeeze, and even if her understanding of what I was saying was out of context it was exactly what I needed from her.
“What would you do about Jackson?” I asked.
Mom smiled. “Well, have you told him?”
“Told him what?”
“That you love him.”
I was taken aback. Her percept
ion of love sounded so normal, so easy. Maybe it was. Maybe loving someone wasn’t based on the things they did or didn’t do to prove it, but instead was weighed more by the void you felt when you weren’t in their presence.
“No, Mom, I haven’t. Wait, how did you—”
“I would tell Jackson that you love him, Pippa. Life is too short to not be with the one you love. When Roger flew off to Cambodia with you only two months grown in my belly I thought there was no way we could make it work if I just showed up to another country pregnant. Now I wish I had gone to him, who knows what kind of happiness I missed out on.”
“Mom?” I asked, tears welling up in my eyes. “Do you really know who I am?”
“Of course I do, baby. And I’m sorry I made the decision for the both of us to miss out on Roger in your life, you didn’t deserve that.”
I threw my arms around her neck, sobbing into her hair. “Oh, Mom! Oh, I’ve needed you so bad…”
My shoulders shook and she patted my back. I was a child again, crying to my mother as though I had fallen off my bike. She patiently waited for my sobs to subside and pushed me away from her.
“I’m right here, Pippa. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I hope you know that I’m always here.”
I nodded as she turned to her nightstand. “Speaking of that, I want to do my ‘something good’ for the day,” she announced. Reaching inside the drawer, she brought out a small, glass cylinder. She opened my palm and placed it inside, closing my fingers around it. “I want you to have this.”
Bringing the vial up to my face, I turned it over in my hand, suddenly remembering my lunch with Meg from months ago when the same exact thing appeared on my lunch plate at The Inlet. “Mom, where did you get this? Who gave this to you?”
“I don’t know, actually,” she said pensively. “I just want you to have it.”
“Why?”
“It’s the beach,” she said, pointing to the granules inside. “I am always so happy when I am at the beach and you look so sad. You can carry it with you, so you always have a bit of happy.”