by P. J. Vernon
But this morning, it’s a hundred times worse. Kristian has destroyed my sense of security and possibly my relationship, and now Hector—Hector!—has surfaced like the undead. The psychological distance between us is tenfold the geographic space. Yet, here he is. Here’s Hector, and I’m overwhelmed by signing a fucking office birthday card.
“They look better.” Kimberly tosses a meaty folder into the tray marked return to chart room. “Your bruises.”
“They look worse.” This morning, the mirror gave me yellowed, sour green.
“That’s how bruises go. They take on more menacing colors and shapes as they heal,” she says, and I guess she would know. “How’s Nathan handling it?”
“He never got back to you?” I ask. Kimberly’s also never pried like this before.
“He did. To rant about that fight with his mother. He was dismissive about everything else going on.” She scrunches her face. “Kind of worries me. We usually don’t keep things from each other.”
The same can’t be said of Nathan and me; he certainly never mentioned that fight.
“He’s doing okay.” I offer a smile, which Kimberly returns before checking steps on her watch. Thankfully, her attention is elsewhere for the rest of the morning. She’s always on her phone between patients, but now I wonder how many of those back-and-forths are with Nathan.
The two of them must keep plenty of things from each other, I assure myself.
Right?
* * *
• •
It’s nearly noon when I see Hector behind my monitor. Standing before my reception desk in the lobby of First Choice Internal Medicine.
I’m speechless. Shocked by the sense of invasion. The expectation, the entitlement. How the hell did he find me?
“Hey, Oliver.” He parts his lips in a vague smile. The intent is that it be warm, gracious even, as though he’s to be applauded for taking the first step in our reconnection. It doesn’t help that he’s standing and I’m sitting. He’s literally the bigger person.
My heart climbs my throat, and I’m suddenly cold behind the chest bone.
“What are you doing here?” I stutter.
Hector’s dark hair is gelled into a side part. A loose lock, fallen from his bangs to that still-tanned brow. His clothes look expensive, fine, and contemporary, like they might be tailored. Nothing about this look squares with the man I know. Maybe I don’t know him. Or maybe it’s a front—in which case I very much still do.
“I’m in town like I told you. A work conference.” Hector emphasizes the word work.
“Said that a few times in your messages,” I reply, clearing my throat to make my appraisal of his sobriety plain. “Where are you working?”
My cheeks redden because I’ve asked Hector a follow-up question. One that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no. I’m already fucking this up. Paving the way for discussion. For the reunion I want nothing but to avoid.
“Pharmaceutical sales.” Even he can’t skirt the self-styled irony, so he adds: “Diabetes medication.”
“Wow.” I feign sarcasm, struggle to gain a foothold. “Congrats.”
“It’s been a while, Oliver.” It’s the second time he’s said my name in under a minute. Like he’s staking a claim. “You wanna grab lunch? I’m only in town for a few more days. No hidden agenda. I only want to see you, talk to you. Then I’m back to Indiana. Gone.”
Gone. I like that word. As far as he’s concerned, I’m gone. Been gone for quite some time. And from my perspective, he’s gone too. Tyre, gone.
I’m unsure if it was Hector’s intention, if he has the mental wherewithal to manipulate my feelings anymore, but no denying it works. Maybe he knows I’ll do anything to put him back there. Maybe he knows I’ll give a little to make him gone sooner.
“Starbucks.” I draw in a staccato breath. “There’s one in the lobby downstairs.”
“You don’t want to get a bite to eat?” He checks a leather wristwatch. “It’s lunchtime.”
I’ve given in to Starbucks, but he wants an entire meal? Hector’s never met a healthy boundary he’s failed to push.
“Coffee, Hector.” I use his name this time, let him see what that feels like.
Grinning, he gestures to the door as if he’s the host and I’m the guest. A quick scan for Kimberly because this is one thing that most certainly should be kept from Nathan. She’s nowhere to be seen and hopefully I’m the same to her. An imaginary breeze of vinegar and metal—the last smell memory holds of Hector—reminds me to call the chart room.
“Ten minutes. Tops,” I tell the nurse on the other end, but the message is meant for Hector. I’ll be missed if I don’t come back.
As I follow his footsteps out of Kimberly’s office, it occurs to me that Hector hasn’t mentioned my throat. His sudden appearance, out of nowhere like a malicious magic trick, made me forget. The bruises are conspicuous and finger-shaped and Hector hasn’t said one word about them.
Must be vindicating for him, something dark whispers. He always knew you liked being choked.
* * *
• •
The lobby’s an open space with plenty of glass for sunlight. Plants everywhere—the usual indoor kinds like peace lilies, white orchids, and majesty palms. The requisite Starbucks is tucked into a corner by a row of revolving doors.
I point to a table, the implication being that he sit while I go to the counter. When he fails to get it, I add, “Drink’s on me.”
As a barista preps two house brews, I keep Hector in my peripheral vision and fight against a hummingbird pulse. Turning my back to him feels no less dangerous today. When I return with coffee and claim the opposite chair, his first comment is on the blond joe: “I take coffee black.”
I was liberal with cream in the needling way I suspect Nathan is. It’s not as though I’ve learned nothing from him. “How’d you find me?”
He shrugs, takes a slow slip. “You live in DC. I’m here for a work thing. Thought why not try your number?”
Bullshit.
Crazy thing is, I’ve shared coffee with Nathan in this exact seat at this exact table. Hector was so fucking large in my life. All-consuming and abusive. He made me think I wanted his hands on my neck. He made me think his yard was where I belonged, and he wasn’t afraid to collar me. And sitting where Nathan had? Nathan is nothing like him. Nathan would never put his hands on me. Nathan who has never once touched me, entered me without a is this okay?
There is one man on Earth who can keep me grounded, and I was lucky enough to find him—and stupid enough to risk losing him. All the world’s relative, but Nathan definitively unmasks Hector for the abuser he is.
“How’d you find me?” I repeat. He knows I’m not going to let him skate by this question.
“It’s funny, really,” he begins, but it’ll be anything but. “Facebook.”
Again, bullshit. I have an account, hardly active, but I have one. Besides the odd online “Happy Birthday,” I haven’t engaged with anyone back home. My place of work and number aren’t listed in said account. But I’m positive of something far more relevant: “We’re not friends on Facebook.”
He buys time with a second, lingering sip before rolling up his sleeves. Instinct spikes, and I scour exposed flesh for signs. Bruises. Punctures. Track marks. It’s been years, and I want to know if Hector’s escalated to the needle yet. I think yet because that’s what they say in NA. Everyone makes their way to the needle. Fear of skin-piercing syringes can only hold off promises for so long. The false promises of harder, quicker drugs. Delivered straight into the bloodstream.
“I know we’re not friends.” On the underside of his wrist, the mark I already knew about says hello. I once sank teeth into him like something feral. “But you are friends with Blaire, and she told me.”
Blaire? The name snaps the present into sharp focus and the back of my neck frosts. Blaire didn’t know what happened because no matter how many times she begged, I never told her. Blaire never learned what happened in that thicket.
Hector follows my eyes to his wrist. “If you’re finished being cagey about how—”
“You message me out of nowhere. Show up at my work—”
“You finished?”
I’m not finished. Nowhere near it, but I don’t say this. “What do you want?”
Hector leans back, and the top of his chest peeks out. Black hair—just a stray strand or two—invites memories, transient and ephemeral. Hector shirtless. Hector naked. Sex with Hector. Lying languid on a floor mattress soaked in sex. While the bite on his wrist drips blood on bad sheets. My dick moves.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other.” He tugs his collar like he knows my groin’s swelling. “I dunno about you, but I’m past everything. I thought it’d be nice to see your face once before I go back.”
Guilt blooms. What does he have to get past? I’m past everything! Time has done what willpower wouldn’t or couldn’t. Dulled the blade of Hector’s betrayal. Reframed that place in my life before I made the decision to save it. Before Nathan reached down into the darkness and grabbed my hand with his. “I’m doing okay.”
“Seeing anyone?”
“Yes,” I reply with a sureness meant to leave no room for doubt or footholds for Hector to grip.
“Me too.” He peaks an eyebrow. “Local guy here, if you can believe it.”
Quite the speedy accomplishment so no, I can’t. But the numbness in my chest overtakes curiosity, and Hector smirks as if reading my silence for blood in the water.
“Bit older than I usually go for.” He spins his cup and fixes his eyes to mine. “But hey, if somebody wants to take care of me, who am I to say no?”
Nathan couldn’t be more different from him, whispers that same taunting voice, but just how different from Hector are you?
“I’m happy for you,” I say, scratching both my arms. The sudden lust was a flash flood. As it drains, I’m thankful my hard-on didn’t mean a damn thing. “Glad you’ve gotten along so well.”
An awkward pause further stilts our conversation, and I remember it was always this way. We were never the furious lovers my mind tricked me into recalling. In this small way, Hector reinforces something important: No matter the lack of bedroom chemistry between Nathan and me—the endless comparisons to Hector’s heat and kink—the truth is Hector’s as dull as dishwater. Still strung out, probably, and not half the man Nathan is. A surgeon who saves lives while Hector only destroys them.
“So, where are you living?” Hector asks.
“Georgetown.”
“Fancy.”
In that moment petty bragging gives way to fear. Fear of giving away too much, fear of being vulnerable in my own home. Why did I tell Hector where I live?
“Sounds like you can’t say no either.” He sneers as I start searching faces again. “To being kept.”
The people in the queue to overpay for bad coffee and stale croissants. The sharp-jawed suit spilling cream. The couple talking mutual funds one table over. None of them are Kristian. None of them are ever Kristian. None of them are, until one of them is.
Hector shifts in his chair like my inattention irks him. My distraction and my accurately perceived disinterest. I don’t owe Hector a damn thing. In fact, simply talking to him is giving too much. He’s not Nathan. And I’d like to see him try to hurt something Nathan loves.
Something Nathan loves.
“So.” Hector drags a line across his own throat; the universal gesture for kill. “What happened?”
I want to lie, to mask any weakness. That I don’t want to admit I was mugged is richly ironic. Decadent even! I want to lie to Hector about my lie to Nathan.
“I was robbed.” Common sense over pride at last. “Last weekend.”
“Wow.” Hector narrows those dark eyes. “Sorry to hear that.”
“People who physically hurt others are weak.” I slam my cup on the table too hard. “I’m not worried about it.”
Thick silence grows between us like kudzu. Maybe Hector realizes it was a mistake to reach out. I hope this is what’s scrolling through his mind now. Our conversation is awkward and uncomfortable, and whatever he thought might be accomplished? Not happening.
“Well, this was wonderful.” I slide my chair back. “But I’ve got work. Hope you have a nice flight back—”
He grabs my arm, and I jolt. Fresh heat crawls up my back.
“It was good to see you.”
His eyes are knives. “Let go—”
“Too bad.” His grip tightens. My skin burns beneath his fingers. “Maybe I’ll see you again before that flight.”
I tear my arm from his hand and make for the elevators. Heart humming like it’s horse-powered. While the elevator dings its way down, those sharp eyes slip in and out and in and out of my back. So much so, I worry I’ll leave some of myself behind on the slick lobby floor.
* * *
• •
I collapse into my desk, breathless.
I don’t accept his explanation for finding me. My arm’s reddened from Hector’s grip and not for the fucking first time. I don’t accept that Blaire gave my info to Hector like, no big deal. She didn’t like him for all the right reasons. That boy’s got a meanness in him, she’d said once over a shared basket of food court cheese fries. He walks in a room and I get ten kinds of chills.
I scroll Facebook on my phone, search Blaire in my friends list. What I find gives me ten kinds of chills.
Two profiles. Same profile picture, but two Facebook accounts. I’m friends with duplicate Blaires.
The first contains endless posts. Check-ins. Vacation photos. Inside jokes and motivational memes and apparently a toddler named Gabriel. I open our private messages. One from me wishing her a happy birthday. One from her wishing me the same. A few iterations of we should catch up neither of us followed through with.
I open the second profile. The profile pic is the same, but that’s it. This second page has no wall or timeline posts. No photos. No details. No children. I open the private messages. A single, brief exchange between this Blaire and myself not even a couple of weeks ago.
Hey Oliver! Lost my phone. Need your number again!
Blaire! Sure thing and no worries! Hope you are well!
Deep in my chest, panic uncoils and the tips of my ears burn. Because I know exactly how Hector found me: I gave him my number.
24
NATHAN
“Dr. Klein.” A third-floor nurse rings just as I ready myself for my next case. “Jeremy Mackey’s out of post-op and recovering in room 314.”
“Great. Thanks.”
Mr. Mackey’s airbag deployed on the George Washington Memorial Parkway when he mistook an off-ramp for an on-ramp and veered into a barricade to miss oncoming traffic. The airbag kept the steering wheel from opening his chest but buckled his face inward because high speeds and concrete do things like that.
“Pain control?” she asks.
Mackey’s mistake was wholly due to a blood-alcohol level of .32 and however many tabs had been in the bottle of hydromorphone on his floorboard. Likely a lot, since the script was filled yesterday.
“IV morphine as needed.” Pen uncapped, I note my instructions on his chart. “Send him home with three days of Lortab, thiamine for vitamin B deficiency, and—”
“Patient’s intermediate-stage liver cirrhosis. Lortab has acetaminophen,” she says warily. Right. Acetaminophen’s brutal on anyone’s liver but especially one on the cusp of failing.
“Guess he gets the good stuff straight, then. Five milligrams every four to
six hours. No more than three days.”
“Roger that, Dr. Klein.”
I hang up and return the chart to the pre-op tech for data entry. Like Jeremy Mackey, Oliver’s also an addict. Unlike Jeremy Mackey, Oliver doesn’t have the excuse of losing his leg to an IED outside Mosul. The phantom pain’s got nothing on the emotional fallout, and grain alcohol and narcotics relieve both with tragic efficiency. I get Jeremy, but Oliver? He was bored. Nothing but a bored fucking kid in Tyre fucking Indiana.
No question, forty-one-year-old Jeremy will burn through three days of pills in his first three hours at home. Had I not saved him, Oliver would’ve done the same. Or Oliver would be dead.
Most might judge my relationship as recklessly unethical. Misguided at best and unquestionably wrong at worst, like divorce attorneys fucking clients fresh from bad marriages. You don’t mess with people in recovery. The power dynamic is far too unbalanced to ever form a healthy foundation. When one’s into prescription pills and the other writes for them all day long? If I didn’t maintain control, Oliver would discover what vomit settling in his airway felt like.
Undoubtedly, he was also warned against relationships without a full year of sobriety under his belt. But he needed far more support than outpatient detox provides. That was immediately clear to me. Helplessly lost as I was in Oliver Park’s eyes, I still observed a weakness that both scared me shitless and strengthened my resolve. Twenty-four hours in a day, and no one to hold him accountable for the twenty-two he wasn’t at the hospital.
He would need love. And he would need to be watched.
He was a cafeteria regular and it wasn’t difficult to determine why. One slice of pizza and a Diet Coke courtesy of a free meal ticket the same time every day like clockwork. Way too early for my own lunch, I began showing up for coffee instead. He cycled through three T-shirts—solid pink, solid black, and white with thick blue stripes. One pair of jeans because the tear in his left back pocket gave the game away. He was in trouble, but I let him catch me staring exactly three times on three separate days before making a move.