When We Met

by Marni Mann

  At the locked door, I dug for my badge and swiped it into the card reader. After watching it gradually open, I bolted down the hallway.

  Fiona was standing in the center of the department, looking down each of the corridors, waiting to see which one I was going to come from. The second our eyes connected, she started bolting toward me.

  “Oh, honey,” she cried, throwing her arms around my neck, her palm clenching the back of my head, squeezing me with a strength I didn’t know she had.

  I gripped her shoulders, pushing her back so I could see her face. “What’s wrong?”

  There was wetness around her eyes, streaks down her cheeks, and my throat was getting narrower as she took her time to respond.

  “Whitney, I don’t even know how to say this …” She shook her head, her fingers finding mine. “Come on.” She pulled me down the rest of the hallway and around the main station.

  My heart was beating so fast as we left the section of open rooms that were separated by long curtains and arrived at the private area.

  “Sweetheart,” she said, stopping in front of a closed door. “I … oh God.” She was holding her chest with her other hand, her eyes filling.

  “Fiona, what’s going on?” The back of my throat was burning, where the anxiety was beginning to thicken.

  She wiped her face, covering her mouth for a moment before she said, “He was coding when he came in. We worked on him for over thirty minutes. We couldn’t get a pulse … we …” She swallowed, the tears now falling past her lips. “Dr. Montgomery tried everything.” She shook her head again, more wetness streaming down her face.

  “You’re not making any sense.” I wanted to hug her into my arms, but I couldn’t. Not while I was trying to process what she was saying and ignore all the other chaos happening around us. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  She reached for the knob on the door, holding it. “Whitney, it’s Caleb.”

  My heart stopped, and a wave of nausea passed through me, trembling starting in my core. “What?”

  “He was brought in by ambulance and—”

  I put my hand on top of hers, forcing the handle to turn, and kicked the wooden door to make it open faster.

  It took a few seconds before I could register what I was looking at.

  When it hit me, I felt like a tourniquet had been tied around my goddamn throat, and there was nothing left in my lungs.

  “Nooo!” I screamed, my hands clenching into fists, my feet no longer feeling the ground beneath them.

  If Fiona hadn’t been holding me from behind, I would have fallen to my knees.

  Air wasn’t moving through my body; sobs clutched me from the inside instead, gripping me like a set of shackles where I could do nothing but shout, “Nooo!”

  “I know, honey,” she cried. “I don’t know what to do, what to say. I’m completely broken for you right now.”

  Her arms stayed around my waist, taking most of my weight as I pushed myself closer to the table where he was lying, standing at the very edge.

  “Fi-o-na,” I sobbed, unable to say more, the wails bursting from my chest, spit covering my lips when they opened to scream again.

  “Baby, I know,” she wept.

  I found the strength to lift my fingers onto Caleb’s bare arm. Deep gashes marred his skin that was covered in blood. There was the empty line where they had placed the IV, the tape still stuck to his arm hair.

  My shoulders dropped, my head falling onto his naked chest. There was a stickiness from where they’d placed the paddles, the pads still present from where they’d monitored his heart.

  As I rubbed my cheek over the spot I had held so many times, there was no beat.

  No warmth.

  Just my skin against his.

  “Nooo,” I cried, this time a quiet whisper. “Ca-leb …” I pounded the bed with my hand, like I was trying to shock his heart back into rhythm. “Co-come back to me.”

  I watched my fingers crawl up his face. There were bruises under his eyes, deep wounds slashed across his forehead. I cupped his cheek, staring into his closed lids.

  There was no ocean blue gazing back at me.

  “Ca-leb …” Spit fell from my mouth onto his chest. “Don’t go, my lo-love.” My teeth ground together. A surge of air came through my throat, holding my chest prisoner, as I howled, “Do-don’t leave m-me.”

  I pushed myself up and put my knee on the table, extending my other leg over his waist so I could lie next to him. My arm wrapped over his stomach as I cuddled as close as I could get.

  I wedged my face into his neck, his woodsy scent long gone.

  “I-I love you,” I whispered.

  He didn’t slip his arms around me. He didn’t intertwine his legs with mine.

  He didn’t open his eyes.

  He didn’t tell me he loved me.

  He just stayed still on the table.

  Lifeless.

  His body turning colder by the second.

  I breathed, “I-I need y-you,” into his skin, waiting for a response, but I didn’t get one.

  There was only silence.

  And a breeze that wisped past us, carrying the sour smell of his blood.

  Thirty-Three

  “I got here as fast as I could,” Emily said, shutting the door to the private room we were in at the hospital. She rushed over to the bed and crawled in next to me.

  Fiona was on my other side, a place she hadn’t left since we’d run toward each other in the hallway.

  Before I knew my entire world had collapsed.

  Emily threw her arms around me, the basin wobbling on my lap, the nausea causing bile to come up every few minutes.

  “Oh, baby,” Emily said in her softest voice, holding me against her body. “I can’t believe this. How in the hell can I make this better for you?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” Fiona whispered.

  “What happened?” Emily asked her.

  I was relieved she didn’t want me to share the story. One that had taken some time to even listen to, where I was unable to stop screaming long enough to hear Fiona tell it.

  “Caleb—”

  “Nooo,” I cried from the sound of his name, my eyes closing, my body feeling so heavy from the Valium Dr. Montgomery had given me.

  Emily leaned back to look at my face, my head then falling against the pillow. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re going to get through this.” My chest tightened to the point where I couldn’t breathe, and she looked at Fiona and said, “Go on.” Emily’s hand found mine, fingers clenched around my palm.

  “He must have gone out for a run early this morning before he was supposed to come pick her up.” As Fiona paused, the drips began falling down my cheeks again, only a short break since the last round. “A woman blew through a red light. She must not have seen Caleb in the middle of the intersection because she hit him at full speed. There were several witnesses; each had the same version of the story.”

  Emily’s fingers clasped mine even harder as Fiona continued, “The paramedics worked on him until he arrived here, and that’s when my team took over. We did everything, Em. Literally everything in our power.” She shook her head, her stare dropping, as though she had failed me. “Nothing worked.”

  I squeezed my lids shut, feeling the burn behind them. “If I hadn’t come to work last night or if I hadn’t agreed for him to pick me up this morning, he would have gone running at a different time, and then—”

  “Stop it,” Emily said, shaking my shoulder. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for this. You didn’t cause this accident. You’re not at fault here, do you hear me? Don’t put that guilt on yourself. I won’t stand for it.”

  I couldn’t stop the sob from breaking through my chest, its intensity wrapping around me, driving every feeling to the surface. “Emily!” I shouted, the pain gnawing in a whole new way.

  She lifted my back off the bed, holding me against her again, her arms circled around me. “Oh, my Whitney.”
She rocked me back and forth, a rhythm that reminded me of the ocean and the waves.

  And Tampa.

  “Fuck,” I wept. “I-I can’t, Emily. I can’t handle th-this. I ne-need him. I-I need him now.”

  “Baby …”

  I found her shoulders and dug my nails into them, needing someone to bear some of this agony, gripping like I was about to fall off a cliff. “We were o-only at th-the beginning of our story.” I buried my face into her sweater. “We had-hadn’t even gotten st-started.” Ice was moving through my veins as the shaking took hold of me. “And n-now, it’s over.” I tried to find air, my lungs empty, my chest too caved to fill it. “The d-day after I-I finished moving my things into his co-condo.”

  Fiona was rubbing my arms, trying to put warmth back into me. “I’m so broken for you right now and so, so sorry this happened.” Tears spilled from her eyes as fast as they flowed from mine.

  The ache was moving into my head, surrounding my throat, dipping as low as my fucking toes.

  “He’s not coming back,” I whispered, having to remind myself that this wasn’t just a horribly tragic dream. That the body I had lain next to on that table was Caleb’s. That the phone call Fiona had made to his parents at Hunt Financial actually happened. That I’d really watched his family rush into the emergency room and crumble at the sight of him.

  Emily pushed my face further into her neck, still swaying us. “We’ll get through this. We’ll fight our way out of this sadness, and we’ll survive it.”

  “How?” I pulled back to see the truth in her eyes. “How can I-I possibly move on, Emily? I l-love him, and he’s not coming ba-back.”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll find a way.”

  “I never thought anything could hurt as b-bad as losing David, but my God, I was s-so wrong.”

  I pushed my hand against my chest. The torture in my heart was too much. I didn’t know how to make it go away. How I could ever take a breath again without thinking of Caleb.

  “It’s going to take a long time, Whitney. But I promise, somehow, this will get easier,” Fiona said.

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t believe that.”

  Emily put her hand on my cheek. “Let’s get you home, okay? I think you’ve had enough hospital for a while.”

  I grabbed her arm. “None of my th-things are there. They’re at Ca-Caleb’s.”

  I saw the realization pass over her face, the emotion she was now trying to hide so she could be strong for me.

  She glanced toward Fiona and said, “The key to Caleb’s place is in Whitney’s bag. I’ll give you the address. Will you go there and grab a few of her things, enough for a day or two? I’ll get the rest of her stuff when I can leave her long enough to go there myself.”

  “Of course.” Fiona got off the bed, finding my bag on the table beside us and the keys that were inside. “Just text me his address, and I’ll meet you at your place.” Her hand went to my leg, running her fingers over my knee. “I’ll see you in a few minutes. I love you.”

  “Love you,” I groaned.

  Once Fiona left, Emily took out her phone and typed something onto the screen before quickly slipping her cell back into her pocket. She then held my face against her chest, gently swinging us. “My Whitney,” she sang, brushing the hair off my cheek.

  The only noise in the room was the sound of us moving over the mattress. There was no window to look through, only a fluorescent light overhead, making everything a sickly color. Even Emily’s perfume couldn’t drown out the scent I remembered coming off of Caleb’s skin.

  “I can’t stop seeing it,” I told her. “Smelling that sour scent. Hearing the stillness in his chest.” I swallowed as another wave of nausea passed. “I keep reliving every moment of walking into that room, where he was lying on the table.”

  “It will dim over time.”

  She was wrong. Those images were forever. The same way I could recall what David had looked like when his light-blue lips fluttered, spit stringing between them as he took his last breath. And all of the patients who had coded on me, who I had tried to revive over the years.

  They were permanently etched in my brain.

  And today would be too.

  “Emily …”

  “I’m right here.”

  I closed my eyes, feeling the emotion crowd my chest. “Do you remember when you came into the shower the morning of the marathon and you told me the hospital was calling?”

  She caressed the back of my hair. “Of course.”

  “You gave me all this shit about it being my first day off all week and how we’d made these plans to go to the bar and then go out and watch the race. How I shouldn’t answer the phone because we knew my supervisor was calling to ask me to come into work.”

  “God, that seems like it was yesterday.”

  “I wish I hadn’t listened to you.” I pulled away, staring into her eyes. “I wish I had answered the phone and gone in.” A wail burst through my lips, clawing at me, like a tiger ripping across flesh. “Then, I wouldn’t have met Caleb, and he would still be alive right now.”

  Part Three

  They say everything happens for a reason.

  What if it doesn’t?

  Epilogue

  Emily

  “Can you please lift your seat? We’re getting ready to land,” the flight attendant said as she stood next to me.

  I pressed the button on my armrest, the chair lifting several inches until my back was fully straight. I watched her move down the next few rows, checking each one before reaching the front galley. She was putting away the champagne she’d poured not too long ago and the glasses she’d recently collected from our trays. First class was an entirely new experience for me and probably one I’d never have again. But for this flight, I’d gobbled up every course that was offered and accepted all the refills of wine even if beer was more my thing.

  The warm buzz in my body reminded me of the time Whitney and I had gotten drunk on the way to Cancun. It’d happened a bunch of years ago, a spring break trip during college, and it was Whitney’s first time flying. She was so anxious about the flight. I fed her beers at the airport and champagne once we boarded. Within an hour, she was asleep on my shoulder and didn’t wake until we landed. But that was the moment she fell in love with flying and had dreams of seeing the world. She talked about it endlessly, kept lists of all the places she wanted to go.

  As she got older, those dreams didn’t make it out of her notebook.

  My best friend didn’t know how to live.

  She only knew how to work.

  That was why, when her phone rang the morning of the marathon, the number for Mass General showing on the screen, I debated about what I should do. I just wanted my girl to have a little fun, and I’d planned a whole day of it. So, while I listened to that obnoxious ringtone jingling away in my palm, I wondered if I should send the call to voice mail and secretly delete the message. Or if I should run into the bathroom and tell her who was calling. The problem was, Whitney wasn’t like me; she had an impossibly difficult time saying no. She had the biggest heart in this whole world, and her patients meant everything to her. Therefore, I knew, if I gave her the choice, she would go into work.

  But I couldn’t be a shit friend who took that decision away from her, who hacked into her phone and deleted messages. I had to give her the option.

  So, I went into the bathroom and told her who was calling, and I followed that up with every reason why she shouldn’t answer. I was convincing as hell—I should have been a lawyer, not a teacher, as I knew how to negotiate with the best of them.

  By the fourth ring, she’d made up her mind.

  I remembered her answer so distinctly. The look that had crossed her face at the time, the suds of soap bubbling around her neck. The high, messy bun that she hadn’t wanted to get wet since I’d shown her the glorious invention of dry shampoo.

  I sighed, shaking my head, thinking how that day felt like only yesterday. Yet, in many
ways, it felt like a hundred years ago.

  I glanced out the plane’s small window, the ground getting closer, the sky a hazy, dark orange, as the sun was just starting to set. I watched the clouds move higher above us, the runway closing in as the wheels eventually touched down. We were zooming across the pavement until the brakes slowed us, and we taxied to the gate. I reached under the seat in front of me and grabbed my bag, setting it on my lap. When it was time to stand, I slung the strap across my shoulder.

  I smiled at the woman who had sat across from me. “Good flight,” I said, as we’d spoken a few times while we were in the air.

  “Glad we’re finally here,” she answered.

  “That makes two of us,” I heard from behind me, a hand patting my empty arm as I stood in the aisle.

  The door opened, and I was one of the first to get out, slowly making my way across the short bridge before arriving at the gate. I’d never been to this airport, so I paid close attention to the overhead signs, making all the necessary stops before getting to baggage claim.

  I’d forgotten how long it took when flying internationally.

  I saw Whitney when I was halfway down the escalator. She was even tanner than normal, and her hair had gotten longer; she was wearing it in a braid that hung over her chest. She had on a BU T-shirt, cutoffs, and flip-flops. Of course, there was a pink Boston Red Sox cap on her head.

  As soon as she spotted me, the biggest smile filled her face. One I hadn’t seen in almost a year. And as I got to the bottom of the escalator, she lifted her hand to wave, and she came running toward me.

  But the arms she jumped into were Caleb’s. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her hands clinging to his back, her face buried into his neck. I was sure she was inhaling his cologne that I’d smelled during the whole flight here to Chile.