by Emily Smith
“You need to give Pierce more credit. She’s strong. She’s loyal. She’d lie down and die for you if someone asked.”
“But she doesn’t know what’s ahead. She has no idea what it’s like to watch someone you love in a hospital bed, getting doses of cell-shattering chemo. What it’s like to hold someone’s hair back as they vomit the entire contents of their stomach day after day. When they lose their hair. When they fall into a deep, nasty depression because it’s not fair that they have to go through this again. She doesn’t know what it’s like to hear a doctor say ‘the treatment isn’t working,’ and ‘there’s nothing more we can do.’ She doesn’t know what it’s like to worry like that. To hurt like that. And I will never let her.”
Rowan threw her hands up in the air, the exasperation returning. “Fine. Then run. Break her heart. Break your own. But just know that by doing this, you’re already lying down to die. You’re already giving up.”
Chapter Nineteen
Hiding from Pierce wasn’t an option. The two of them had spent nearly every day together since their first kiss. Simply fading away wouldn’t be possible. But Cassidy still longed for the slow departure of love—the easy good-bye. Not that any good-bye with Pierce could ever possibly be easy. Every time she thought about it, she felt sick. A gnawing, turning sickness in the very deepest pit of her stomach told her everything she was planning to do was wrong. Maybe it was. But it was also right. The two, after all, aren’t always mutually exclusive.
The night was already awful. Once she’d made the point to Rowan and, more importantly, to herself, she couldn’t go back. She couldn’t just pretend everything was fine when she saw Pierce, although she’d certainly considered it. It felt dishonest not to tell her right away, now that her mind was made up. Then again, the whole thing was dishonest, wasn’t it? Cassidy was going to try to convince the woman she loved more than anything on this earth that she didn’t.
She had no other choice. She couldn’t love Pierce without destroying her. Rowan had called Cassidy nothing but a “cowardice martyr.” And she was probably right. Cassidy wasn’t doing this quite as much to protect Pierce, as she was to protect herself. She’d already watched people she loved fall apart because of her. And it had been the single most painful experience of her life—worse than nearly dying. She couldn’t imagine what watching Pierce leave would feel like.
Whoever she was doing it for, Cassidy was just glad she wasn’t going to give herself enough time to change her mind. If she waited too long, even one second too long, let herself look far into Pierce’s strong face or touch her sturdy shoulders, she’d never have the courage to go. The hold Pierce had on her was too strong. It would be a miracle if Cassidy even survived this at her own hand.
The sound of keys in the lock triggered a single deep breath that did nothing to cleanse Cassidy of the heartache she was already suffering.
As the door swung open, she allowed herself one last, long look at Pierce. She stood in front of Cassidy, a smile so pure and unknowing it nearly brought Cassidy to the floor. Her youthful green eyes were clear. Her shoulders were straight and square. Pieces of stray hair had fallen to frame her perfect face. In a movie-like montage, Cassidy saw flashes of that face every morning in bed. She saw that smile looking down on her with the city lights spread out behind them. She saw summer drives and coffee shops, and then, she saw the future they were supposed to have. One with fenced-in suburban yards and Sunday farmers’ markets, and maybe even the toddler in overalls Cassidy had never dared wish for. And the anger rushed her with such ferocity, she found herself unsteady. She would never have those things now. The future had been ripped away from her like last week’s bulletin on the wall—gone. Irrelevant.
“Hey.” Pierce was still smiling, and Cassidy realized she probably hadn’t been staring for nearly the eternity it felt like.
“Pierce. We need to talk.”
She knew that no more ominous sentence in the history of any relationship existed. But it didn’t matter. The subject was ominous. It was ugly. Cassidy just wanted to get it over with so she could cry. Alone.
“Okay…”
It wasn’t hard to see the color draining from Pierce’s ruddy cheeks. She paced jerkily near the sofa where Cassidy had sat, defeated. To Cassidy, the battle had already been lost. Pierce just didn’t know it yet.
“Sit down.”
Pierce sat silently, keeping several feet of space between them. Maybe Pierce didn’t know exactly what was coming, but she knew it wasn’t good.
“Cass, just tell me.” The lids of Pierce’s eyes were already brimming with tears. It seemed impossible that anything was left of Cassidy’s heart to break.
“This won’t be easy to say. So I’m just going to say it. I haven’t been happy lately.” A taste of bile followed closely behind the words.
“What? What do you mean?” Pierce now bounced one foot rapidly against the hardwood floor. She had been hurt before, in a not nearly distant-enough past. Anxiety must have begun coursing through her at the thought of another good-bye, another ending. Pierce would be blindsided again too. But this was the choice, the only way.
“I really care about you.” Cassidy managed a patronizing hand on Pierce’s jittering knee, keeping her face cold and indifferent. “I just don’t think this is going to work. I can’t really explain it. It’s just…something’s missing.”
Pierce wasn’t going with softness and apprehension. She was going with a nuclear explosion. Cassidy had to blow her entire world up. And to do that, she had to sink as low as she possibly could. Pierce had told Cassidy exactly how Katie had phrased their ending. She knew how the ambiguity, the very idea that she just somehow wasn’t enough, would crawl under Pierce’s heart and lay roots, leaving her no other option but to give up on Cassidy.
“How can you say that?” The tears now spilled unabashedly out and onto Pierce’s jeans. This must have been what Rowan meant when she said watching Galen crying was like watching a great city fall. Pierce’s usual strength and unending fortitude, Cassidy’s safe place, had crumbled to the ground, now a defenseless child needing consolation.
“I’m sorry. I really am.” Cassidy had only a few more minutes before her own tears broke past the barrier of her lashes, like protestors threatening to weaken her pathetic stance.
“Are you saying that I’m not…” Pierce’s throat rose and fell visibly, her lap now damp, her breathing ragged. She finally uttered the fateful words. “I’m not the one?”
Cassidy squeezed her eyes closed, fighting off the tears that now beat at the gates of her defenses, slowly hammering their way through. When she opened them again, her composure had returned, her heart steadier, the haze in her vision now clear. “Yes. I’m so sorry, Pierce. I really am.”
Cassidy leaned near to kiss Pierce’s cheek, but Pierce jerked away, standing quickly. Cassidy wasn’t sure whether Pierce was going to yell, or storm out, or fall to the ground in a heap. But she did none of that.
She smiled a cordial smile, one that said she’d been expecting this all along, and turned around. Her coat still on, Pierce reached for the door handle, then back into her pocket, where she pulled out Cassidy’s spare keys. She handed them to her, their skin brushing in a way that reminded Cassidy so much of their first night at dinner that she couldn’t stop the tears any longer. They cascaded in sheets down her face, the pieces of her shattered heart surely expelling themselves from her body. It was all over. Now all she could do was hope Pierce would leave quickly, without a fight. Without any more tears.
“Goodbye, Cassidy.”
The door shut behind her. No keys turned in the lock. Pierce Parker was gone.
Chapter Twenty
A part of Pierce had always seen this coming. From the moment her lips first touched Cassidy’s, she’d envisioned a very likely possibility that she would end up here, walking the streets of Boston in the middle of the night, thick, muggy air suffocating her with every gasp. And her gasping wouldn’t stop be
cause the crying was too heavy, the gravity of her sadness rolling downhill too quickly to catch it. It didn’t matter anyway. The only people spotting the dimly lit street were the unaware vagabonds and the intoxicated college students too wrapped up in their own drama to care about the gush of tears pouring from Pierce’s eyes.
She didn’t know where to go. She didn’t know what to do with the hurt that smothered her like an all-encompassing poison fog. But she did understand this sense of loss, the pain. The knowledge that everything you’d hoped for had just crumbled to ash in front of you without so much as a calm before the storm was not new to Pierce. She’d felt it with Katie. And she’d known it was coming with Cassidy. Sooner or later, she was bound to lose. But this loss was so much worse than anything she could have anticipated. The bigger the love, the harder the fall. And Pierce had fallen, was still falling, spiraling, lost, wishing she’d never known what it had been like to love Cassidy.
Somewhere around the 7-11 on Huntington Avenue, an overwhelming anxiety devoured the crying, one that prompted Pierce to remove her phone from her pocket and desperately swipe and click until she found Cassidy’s number. She wanted to call her, to beg her to take back what she said and love her again. She wanted to turn the clock back three, four hours, maybe even less, to a time when she was Cassidy’s, and Cassidy was hers, and this night was nothing but an irrational fear that haunted Pierce’s occasional dreams. But she couldn’t reverse time. And her power to make Cassidy love her was even weaker than that.
Pierce stared at her phone, the background photo still a picture of Cassidy, sunglasses-clad, smiling at her from the passenger seat of Pierce’s car. She mentally noted to change the photo immediately. But she wouldn’t delete it. She wouldn’t delete any of them, because a part of Pierce still couldn’t believe this was actually it. Instead of dialing Cassidy’s number, Pierce clicked the phone off and placed it back in her jeans pocket. She was no longer the serial monogamist so afraid to be alone that the mere thought of it sent her running to the closest embrace. She was in love with one woman, and one only. And that was the only embrace Pierce wanted.
Something else was different about this heartbreak, though. Pierce refused to call. She refused to beg or try to talk someone into wanting her who didn’t. She had done that with Katie and lost so much of herself in the process. The world was upside down and backward, tilted and shifted, reeling since the day she first touched Cassidy. Now that axis had shifted. Nothing was right. But Pierce was absolutely sure of one thing: she would never settle for anything less than being truly, deeply loved ever again.
* * *
1:19 a.m. 2:05 a.m. 3:32 a.m…The numbers on Cassidy’s cell phone just kept moving, changing, but she was stuck in neutral, the wheels spinning, screaming Pierce’s name. Taking control was supposed to make the hurt better. Wasn’t it? The illusion of sleep reminded her of the night after their first kiss, the clock ticking by with a similar slowness. But the delicious air of promise and excitement was missing. Now only emptiness filled her, a shallow, visceral loneliness unlike anything Cassidy had ever experienced.
She turned onto her right side, tucking one hand under her pillow and closing her eyes for the billionth time. The streets were unnervingly quiet, and even the clunking radiator seemed to be hibernating for the night. Cassidy longed for some noise, some stimulation, something to pull her mind out of the hole it was so hopelessly stuck in. This was going to be hard. The bigger the love, the harder the fall. And this love was enormous. Cassidy had anticipated this result. But the fall wasn’t the problem.
It was the impact. The sound of bones crashing onto pavement and disintegrating into dust. The air being sucked from every inch of her lungs. The anguish of the slowing of her heart until it stopped. She couldn’t have anticipated the impact. And Cassidy wasn’t sure she’d survive.
* * *
Days had passed. Or it could have been weeks. Or even hours. Pierce wasn’t really sure. Time had become irrelevant, marked mostly by waves of pain followed by small valleys of anger and tiny hills of hope. She was familiar with this pattern as well, the pattern of a broken heart. And after spending the first thirty-two hours in bed, blinds drawn, ignoring anything outside her bedroom, Pierce forced herself to get up, eat more than just a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and take a shower. She was a damned adult. An appropriate amount of time was allowed for wallowing, and then, life had to go on, at least superficially. Fortunately, she had a couple of days off from work before having to return to the ED. But the inevitable had finally caught up with her. She would have to cross paths with Cassidy.
Pierce spent the last several of her thirty-two hours in bed deciding how to deal with this. She had two options: ignore Cassidy at all cost, or act as if nothing had ever happened. Pierce didn’t like either option. Both felt childish and insincere. But she had one more. She could improvise, feel it out. Of course, if seeing Cassidy sparked a homicidal rage or a level-five meltdown in front of her coworkers, she might have to rethink things. But she would deal with that as it came. She wouldn’t run from Cassidy. This was her hospital too. And Pierce didn’t want to be perceived as vulnerable or fragile. She wanted Cassidy to think she would be okay, even when Pierce herself wasn’t so sure.
Pierce hadn’t realized she’d acquired such proficiency in navigating a broken heart. But by the time Tuesday morning rolled around and it was time to face the world—and Cassidy, again—she was as ready as she’d ever be. Pierce spent a little extra time combing her hair and made sure the bags under her eyes weren’t quite as prominent as they had been, and as she dressed, she recognized the sizable part of her that was excited to see Cassidy. Pierce’s insight was one of her greatest attributes and also sometimes one of her most detrimental. She wished she could just ignore the fact that she was hoping Cassidy would change her mind. In the corners of her mind, she was silently daydreaming about the moment Cassidy would lay eyes on her again, only to realize immediately she’d made a monumental mistake and express her undying love again. As much as Pierce scolded herself for allowing such unrealistic fantasies to permeate reason, she realized this was just part of the process. So she allowed herself that sliver of hope, all the while reminding herself over and over again that she would not plead for anyone’s love ever.
* * *
Cassidy had done little more than force down a few crackers and several pots of black coffee over the last several days. But she awoke that morning with a nauseating heat bubbling up from the depths of her stomach, until what insignificant amount of food that was left in her threatened to expel itself. She’d been lucky enough to avoid Pierce at work since that night. She missed her with such a sickening fortitude that her soul actually ached. Not a moment passed that she didn’t fixate on every little thing about her and long to touch her skin and feather her hair one last time. Seeing Pierce again would only intensify that craving, maybe even push her completely over the edge into the abyss, where she stood no chance of return.
The bristles of Cassidy’s toothbrush threatened to provoke a gag waiting readily in her throat as she thought about seeing Pierce again. Her heart clenched, its usual slow cadence now unrecognizably quick. She spit the toothpaste into the sink, managing not to bring up anymore bile with it, and splashed some water on her face. The cold temporarily jolted her to alertness, distracting her from the unrelenting nausea and paralyzing anxiety. It was now or never. And never was not an option. Cassidy was a doctor. She had a job to do, and a broken heart was a sad excuse to be anything less than her best. This was not the self she’d worked so hard to build over her adult life—the self who put hard feelings aside for the betterment of her future and others around her. Besides, she’d broken her own heart, done this to herself, and she could have no regrets.
As she made her way through the ambulance doors, Cassidy could only pray for a busy day, not only offering her a valid excuse to avoid Pierce, but enough blood and illness to divert her from her own pathetic struggles. Her petty problems we
re nothing compared to the sick and dying splayed throughout the hallways, and Cassidy always found that reality helped her regain her perspective. Fortunately, the department was already brimming with people in need, even at eleven a.m. Each bed in the hallway was already full, and the waiting room occupied at least a dozen waiting to be seen. The fluorescent overhead lights burned shards of white into Cassidy’s vision, helping ground her back in the present. She could do this. She just had to keep herself buried in other people’s tragedies.
The bile had almost settled back down into the pit of her stomach, where it belonged, when Cassidy turned the corner to the locker room, nearly barreling into Pierce.
“Oh. Sorry…” Pierce, who was clearly headed somewhere in a hurry, raised her head, seeming to just now realize it was Cassidy who’d very nearly taken her out. The color had sifted out of Pierce’s face, and she was now as white as the fluorescents above, her green eyes wide and stunned.
“I’m sorry…I…hi…” The terror-inducing nausea that had been plaguing Cassidy for days had disappeared, and she was left with only a deep, permeating sadness. She had been pushed, no, thrown completely over the abyss. And there was no coming back.
“Hi…” Pierce managed a weak smile, but her own pain was so visible on her earnest face that Cassidy’s reserves crumbled further, until all her strength was depleted, leaving her deflated and hopeless. Cassidy wanted to wrap her arms around Pierce and be absorbed into her strength and grace she’d already come to depend on.
“How are you…you know, doing?” It was the stupidest question she’d ever asked. But she didn’t know what else to say.
“Good. You know, great. I’m doing really great.” Pierce’s face appeared to strain painfully as she forced her smile bigger.