It had been two months since Rob and I had the fight of the century. He never came home that night. And when I confronted him the next morning about it, he somehow found a way to turn it all around on me. It was a game I was growing tired of. I was so exhausted in fact, that I let him walk right past me, into our bedroom without even forcing an apology out of him. It was pointless becauseI knew our relationship was beyond repair.
Even though neither of us had said the words, I knew we were over. There was a cold, detached air about him. And even though I loved him, I hated him for doing this to us. Recalling the downward spiral of the last few months, I simply couldn’t find a single thing I’d done wrong. Which was surprising because blaming myself was one of my strong points.
Wes’s hand clapping down on my shoulder pulled me from my self-reflection. “You in there somewhere?”
“Huh, what? Yeah,” I rambled. “Here they are.” I’d stepped into the supply closet at work to grab a few supplies for the emergency room cart, or at least that was the excuse I gave him. We both knew stocking supplies wasn’t something the doctors did, but he let me go without saying a word.
Helaughed as I handed him a box of latex gloves. “Uh, thanks.” After tossing them onto the supply cart, he turned his attention back to me. “You okay?”
“What?” I pretended not to hear him as I turned my attention back to the wall of supplies in front of me, mindlessly looking at the labels, not reading a single word. “Sure. Yeah. I’m fine,” I lied.
“Like hell you are,” he decided. “Let’s go.”
“What? Where?” I rambled as he pulled me from the closet.
“Beer. Wings. Normal shit like that. And then you can tell me what the hell is going on.” Something about his easy demeanor, about the take-no-bullshit air surrounding him, made it far too enticing an opportunity to let go of the baggage of the last two months for me to pass up.
After finishing the last of our rounds, and clocking out,we left the hospital only two hours after we had originally been scheduled to leave, which was as close to on-time as I’d ever come.
We walked to the parking garage without saying anything and drove to some hole in the wall dive bar in the same fashion. After a crazy fourteen-hour day, it was a welcome silence for me. The music blasting from the radio offered me a much-needed distraction fromthe voices yelling in my head. And the warm, humid air blowing all around us with the convertible top down helped me feel alive for the first time in weeks.
It wasn’t until the waitress, in a far too tight mid-drift football jersey served us our beer and wings that Wes finally said something. That is if “What’s the fucking deal?” counted as a conversation starter.
Having tiptoed around the issuein my own head, and fuck, in my own home, for the last two months, I’d finally had enough. “Rob’s an asshole lately, and I don’t know what the hell is going on.” I let it out, feeling immediately lighter as some of my frustrations evaporated into the air above us. Releasing all the air out of my lungs felt cathartic. And drinking down nearly half the beer in one gulp was numbing in an extremelywelcomed way.
“What do you think the problem is?” Wes asked with his lips against his mug. He reached for a wing, keeping his attention entirely on our conversation and not the large-breasted waitresses walking around the place.
I’d done a lot of soul-searching in the last few weeks. Mostly alone. Mostly at night. Both of which happened at the same time—some fight or late-night work thing keepingus from sleeping in the same bed. There were a million ideas running through my head, wisps of ideas vaporizing like smoke about how we’d deteriorated. And nowhere in the mix could I put a finger on what had actually started it all. But whatever it was, it gave birth to such resentment on my end, and who the hell knew what on Rob’s end. Boiling it all down, doing the forensic analysis on a deadrelationship was a nearly impossible task. So recounting all the details, retelling all the stories, examining all the clues, it was simply something I didn’t feel like doing.
So instead of offering an explanation, I let out a sigh, chugged the last half of my beer and answered, “I stopped caring.” And I wasn’t lying. But my honesty didn’t help to enlighten Wes.
“I’ve been married a long time,”he started, pausing only to take a drink from his beer. “Long enough to figure out a lot of cryptic shit. But you’re going to have to help me out here. If you stopped caring about him, and you don’t love him anymore, then why are you walking around like some kind of Debbie Downer all fucking day? It’s like being paired with Eeyore.” He chuckled before mimicking, “Oh bother.”
“You’re wrong.” Myanswer only added to his confusion. It was my intention to be ambiguous once again, but getting down to the bottom of it had my brain running in circles. It wasn’t until I actually spoke the words that I understood what had gone wrong. “I haven’t stopped loving him.” Wes’s brows knotted together in almost caricature-like fashion. He paused, his mug lifted halfway between the table and his lips,his silence prodding me to continue what was the most obscure conversation ever. “I stopped caring about trying to fix it all.”
There must have been something in my voice, or something written clearly across my face signaling him that there was no more to be said. So instead of carrying on and asking more questions, he reached for a wing, ordered two more beers from the waitress as she passed,and said, “The Rays suck this year,” as he tipped his head up to the baseball game playing on the gigantic television hanging above the bar.
Offering no more than a grunt in agreement, I grabbed for a wing. It wasn’t until I finished the first one that I realized I hadn’t eaten all day. My stomach growled, aching for food. And my mind reeled, aching for some kind of comfort, some sort of resolutionto the shit heap piling up around me. But rather than dealing with it, I ordered a burger and fries, saying “fuck it” to my clean eating, for the night at least. If I couldn’t lose myself to the indulgence of the man I’d once loved, who I still loved, then I may as well get lost in the gluttony of another evil.
An hour or so later, as I said goodnight to Wes, a wave of emotion I hadn’t expectedto feel crashed into me. He was heading home to his wife and young baby. They might not be up waiting for him, but they would be there nonetheless. He’d have arms waiting for him, a sleepy smile greeting him as he crawled under the covers. A toothless grin would greet him in the early morning.
And me? Well, it was simple. I had nothing.
Even if Rob was home, which he likely wasn’t, he wouldn’tbe reaching for me, searching my side of the bed to see if I’d made it home from work. There’d be no drowsy conversation about how he missed me over my long shift, no talk of upcoming weekend plans, of making up on the time we’d lost over stupid fights recently.
So when the hospital paged me, asking me to come in to cover for a shift, I instantly replied that I’d be right there. Laughably, whenI texted Rob to tell him I wouldn’t be home, my heart hoped he’d respond right away that he’d miss me, or something of the like. But no text ever came. The beer I’d had a few hours ago was long out of my system, so there was no reason for me not to go back to work.
And as I walked back to the hospital, I considered how sad it was that there was no reason for me to head home either.
Morning came around slowly, and while I was glad for a quiet night at work, having little to do made the time drag. All it did was remind me how I wasn’t at home, in my bed, with the one person I’d wished would call and ask me where I was. But no such call came. Even when I called Chelsea to check on the puppy, she told me Rob was nowhere to be found. All too many times, I sat thinking aboutwhy he didn’t care I hadn’t been home yet; turns out it was because he wasn’t even there himself.
But after a full twenty-four hours of work, my sleep-deprived brain couldn’t handle those thoughts. Exhausted, I fumbled with my keys. After finally getting the damn door opened, I was greeted by the puppy, who was gigantic now. “Hey, Katie girl.” Squatting in front of her, I scratched her head,making sure to get behind her ears. “Such a good girl,” I said against her soft fur. She wagged her tail so hard, she could barely stay upright. The house was quiet, but I guess I should have expected that much at six in the morning.
There was very little that was glamorous about being a resident, the least of which was the long clinical hours. After spending the last thirty-six hours at my emergencyroom shift, all I wanted was a hot shower, some sweatpants, and my bed. My body ached as I walked through the house, but I knew if I didn’t let Katie outside now, she’d wake me up just as I was about to fall asleep so she could go outside. “C’mon, girl,” I called as I slid open the glass door leading to the backyard. “I’ll get you when I’m done in the shower,” I told her, as if she cared.Her attention was already focused on the squirrel invading her property.
Shaking my head at her puppy antics, I closed the door and made my way toward the bedroom. I must have been so tired, I didn’t register the sounds coming from the room until I was standing in the doorway. For a split second, I thought my eyes were playing a trick on me. But nothing could blink away what was going on in frontof me.
The muscles on Rob’s back bunched and pulled as he grabbed the hips in front of him. A long, low, groan filled the room as he sank into the body being offered up to him. Shock and anger raced through my veins. With his back to me, he didn’t even know I was in the room. I even debated turning around and leaving before he saw me, but there was no way in hell I was letting him get away withthis.
