“You haven’t answered any of my calls,” he said. “I’ve been extremely worried about you all.”
I noticed then that he was carrying a gigantic bouquet of flowers—white roses and purple lilacs and tendrils of green ferns.
I had on sweatpants and a sweatshirt. It was January in Los Angeles—sunny and cold.
“We’re totally fine. You didn’t need to come here.”
“You won’t answer me.” He leaned in closer. He looked like he hadn’t slept. “I want to be there for you.”
Hugo offered the flowers to me, but I could not take them, they were too heavy—a thick ceramic vase held them together. They looked like they weighed thirty pounds.
“They’re beautiful,” I said. I shook my head.
“Daph,” Hugo said. “How is he?”
And that’s when my dad came jogging up the steps, fresh off his run, his baseball cap lined with sweat.
“Hey,” he said. “Hugo! What a nice surprise.”
Hugo looked from me to my dad and back again. I could see the confusion in his eyes, trying to compute what he was seeing.
“Do you want to come in?” My dad jogged up a few more steps and put a hand on Hugo’s shoulder.
Hugo shook his head. “It’s nice to see you, Mr. Bell. You must be feeling better.”
My dad cocked his head at Hugo and then turned his attention to me. He nodded once, slowly. He understood. This was not the first time.
“All right,” my father said. “I’m going to head inside. Would you like me to take these?” He did not wait for a response but plucked the flowers out of Hugo’s arms and disappeared through the door.
When he was gone, Hugo turned to me. He didn’t say anything, just looked at me. I could see it all there—his confusion and bewilderment and the pain of being lied to.
I felt a rage seize up in me. The unjustness of it all. The anger at my father being able to run, to jog up these stairs so freely and easily. The fire at Hugo just showing up, thinking it was simple. That whatever flimsy emotion he was feeling mattered,couldmatter. That all he had to do was get me through this little rough patch and we could go back to brunch.
Everyone had a body that worked. Everyone but me.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Hugo asked. He didn’t sound angry, not exactly. He sounded measured. If I’m honest, he sounded scared. He knew now that I had been lying, he knew whatever it was wasn’t small.
I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want to tell anyone. I had made it to twenty-eight without ever revealing my diagnosis to a single person I dated. I hid my illness in quiet corners, wrote my scars off as ancient relics, rolled my eyes at exercise. But I couldn’tnow. I’d been caught. And I didn’t know how to get out of it—the answer was, I wasn’t strong enough to climb.
“Yes,” I said. “I just need a few minutes. Can you meet me at my apartment tonight?”
“No,” Hugo said. He wasn’t angry or harsh or even impatient. “I want to know what’s going on now.”
I sat down on the stone steps. All at once, it felt too hard to stand. Like gravity was pulling me down, pulling me toward the center—folded in two, where I belonged. “I’m sick,” I said.
Hugo’s gaze softened, but he didn’t say anything, not right away, then: “And I’m guessing it’s not the flu.”
I laughed. I didn’t mean to. It came out in a short burst of air. “No,” I said. “Not that. I have a heart condition.”
I had told so few people the truth in my life, but I had said those words so frequently. To new doctors, to nurses drawing blood, to teachers, administrators, once, to the postman about a particularly heavy Amazon box. But I had never told someone I might love.
“Daphne,” he said. “Like from when you were young? What kind of heart condition?”
“I had a sudden cardiac arrest when I was twenty. The kind that most people don’t survive.”
“Jesus.”
“I was in and out of the hospital for two years after. I have a congenital heart disease, which means it was there since birth, I just didn’t know it. My heart doesn’t work very well.”
