Four and a half years of queasy uncertainty.
“Is that close to the truth?” he asks softly.
“I hate my job,” I whisper incredulously.
“But you don’t hate being a doctor.”
I shrug, helpless. “I don’t know.”
“Sometimes, it lights you up like nothing else.”
I think about the ways his eyes can burn like fire when he looks at me. Do I sometimes feel that way about medicine?Yes.Without hesitation. But the endlessly complicatednegotiations of working with a dozen conflicting personalities has drained me. And the people management part of being chief resident has destroyed me. And the way I had to throw myself into my residency, all or nothing, ruined my relationship. “Oh, my God, Garrett, what am I gonna do?”
“I don’t know. Probably get mad some more.”
I make a helpless sound that’s part laugh, part sob. “That actuallyisunbearable.”
He slides his fingers into my hair, gentle as can be. “No, mad I can handle. Mad is at least acknowledging that there’s a problem here, even if we don’t want to name what it is. The unhappy is…there’s no fix for that. But mad, there are fixes for that.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know that part yet. We— we’re gonna sort that out.”
We.
“I like the sound of we,” I admit.
“Me, too.” He takes a breath, then lets it out in a rush, and it’s like a dam bursts. “I want you back. I regret leaving so much. I knew that I made a mistake immediately.”
Both of us react to that. He snaps his spine straight, sitting up taller. Maybe he’s surprised that he said that out loud, but I’m so glad he did, because I lean in and touch his arm, all the fight leaving me.
I don’t want to play games.
I don’t want to fight.
I want to know where we went wrong, and why we couldn’t fix it last spring.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “Tell me more.”
He gives me a look like he’s not sure he believes me.
And frankly, I don’t blame him.
But when I don’t look away, he starts talking again.
“Moving out was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” he admits, his voice rough. “It felt like I was tearing myself in two, leaving the most important part of myself behind and stumbling out into the world as half a man.
“But I also knew that my happiness couldn’t hinge on your happiness or on you, period. I needed to find something in myself, for myself, of myself. For the first time ever in my adult life, I got to ask myself the question, what do I want?” He stares at me now, really intently. More intently than he’s ever looked at me before. “And at no point.At no point,were you not that answer.”
I can’t breathe.
He drags his hand to my shoulder, anchoring himself to me. “I’ve always wanted you. I will always want you.”
“But…?”
The look on his face is so fragile.
I push up on my knees and wrap my arms around him. So he doesn’t have to look at me, but he can hold me as he continues.
