“Car accident. About seven months ago.” He stood from his chair, went to the fridge, and pulled out two beers. “We didn’t have much before they died. Dad always struggled with work and Mom tried her best, but scanning groceries and packing shelves weren’t really enough to keep two teenagersfed.” His last words got me all panicked. As he slid my beer over to me, he registered the worry that must have been spread across my face. “Don’t worry, dude. I’m legal. Twenty-three, actually.” He paused to take a sip of his beer, but I had a feeling it had more to do with needing to gather his emotions. “How old are you, anyway?”
It seemed like an odd conversation to have given the circumstancesof our evening. “Twenty-eight.” Even if I had felt like doing so, there was no need to elaborate on anything. Besides, my mind was still reeling from the thought of him losing his parents and becoming one himself.
“After they died,” he continued around the mouth of his beer, before taking another chug. “We had to surrender the house to the bank, and since we had no other family really, we wereon our own.”
“Is that why you—”
He cut me off. “Yes, that’s why I work at Studs. But please,”—his eyes pleaded nearly as much as his words—“don’t tell Benny. He thinks I’m a bartender. I’d be mortified.”
I couldn’t put my finger on it, but satisfaction bloomed in my chest knowing that stripping wasn’t exactly his highest aspiration in life. It made me happy knowing it wasn’t what hewantedto do, but instead, it was something hehadto do.
“Promise,” I reassured him. “So what did you want to do? What were your plans before—”
“Before my parents died and I inherited this palace?” he joked humorlessly. I didn’t see it the way he did, but I knew it wasn’t the time to lecture him about how he was doing the best he could. So instead of saying anything, I simply nodded and waited forhim to fill in the blanks of his past.
“I was a semester away from graduating college. University of Florida. I was a top student in the business administration program. But once they died, I couldn’t finish school, and work, and take care of Benny, and worry about where we were going to live. Besides, Benny graduating high school and having as normal as an adolescence as he could… well, thatwas more important.” He finished the last of his beer and through the dim fluorescent light bouncing around his kitchen, ricocheting off every harsh angle and corner, I saw Chase in a new light. And with my new understanding, something deep in my chest, a part I’d thought was broken beyond repair, healed in a way I never thought possible.
It was the part that held fast to the idea that therewas still good in the world.
Between the way my relationship with Rob had crumbled to pieces and the horrors I saw on a daily basis in the emergency room, I had started to believe good was absent from the world.
But there it sat. Across from me, peeling the label off his beer bottle, was the definition of kind selflessness. “What were you going to do when you were done with college?”
He walkedto the garbage and dropped his empty bottle in the pail. When he flopped into the yellowing fabric, I saw the exhaustion wash over him. And again, that part of my heart that I’d thought to be so deeply broken it would never be repaired, healed in the oddest ways. Beyond interested in what he had to say, I folded one leg under the other and twisted to face him. Reaching my arm out along the backof the couch, I let my fingertips rest on his shoulder, a whisper of a touch, but it was enough to let him know I was there for him.
“Not sure. Something business-ey, I guess.”
And with that, his youth jumped out at me, scaring me like a little kid playing, jumping out from behind the basement door.
My sister specifically.
The door to my own memories opened in that instant, a tsunami of vividchildhood experiences I’d worked so diligently every day to keep submerged, hidden from everyone.
But the truth and genuine honesty of Chase’s words made me want to share my own journey. Just as it was. Because it was what brought me here, just as his was what brought him here.
“I can’t remember a time I didn’t want to be a doctor,” I stated plainly, even though he hadn’t asked. “My sister gotsick when she was ten. I was six. Leukemia. It was insanely aggressive.” Wanting to spare him of all the horrid details, I kept it as simple as possible. “I was homeschooled for all of first grade. She had a bone marrow transplant and did chemo and everything, but it wasn’t enough. I remember spending most of that year in the children’s hospital with her, squeezed next to her on that God-awfulbed. We’d watch television all day. She taught me some card games. When it got really bad, she told me about all the things she wanted in life. It was like she knew she was going to die. We talked about getting married and having kids. Where we would live and what kind of pets we’d have. Then one day, in the middle of a conversation about a future we both knew only one of us would have, she askedme what I wanted to be when I grew up. I hadn’t given it much thought before that point. I was only six.” I stopped, letting a soft chuckle fall from my lips. As I closed my eyes, she was alive once again. So real, I felt like I could conjure her up out of thin air just because I missed her that much.
“Her being sick made you want to be a doctor,” he finished for me.
“Yep.” I nodded, finishingthe last of my beer. I stood, walked over to the garbage, and dropped the empty bottle in. It clanked against his, a harsh noise amidst the soft memories we were sharing of the people we’d once loved and lost.
A wave of sadness washed over me, so hard, I felt as if I’d actually been knocked off balance. Leaning against the brown Formica countertop, I crossed my arms over my chest as if that actionwould keep my heart from tearing open the stitches that had been put there the day she died. “She spent the last year of her life in a hospital. So I vowed I would spend the rest of my life trying my hardest to keep peopleoutof the hospital. She died a few days before she turned eleven.” Rubbing my eyes hard, I tried my best to keep the tears from falling.
Through the fog of memories, bothhappy and sad, I heard Chase ask, “What was her name?”
“You’re going to laugh,” I mused, lifting my head to meet his sad eyes.
“Try me.” He smiled, his face lightening up.
“Katie.”
The single word sat out there between us, hanging in the midst of our sadness and humor. “You named your dog after your sister?” he asked through his light laughter.
I chuckled, too. It felt good to laugh, takingin Katie’s memory, sharing it with someone else. “I did when Rob gave me the puppy, it was a gift for becoming a doctor,” I said, recalling the only recent happy memory I’d had with him. “When I held her, I felt like a little kid. I was happy, like I was when I was playing on the playground, without a care in the world. I hugged that stupid ball of fur, and it was just like everything else thatI was worried about, well, it vanished.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, hoping desperately to keep the tears at bay. “So Katie it was.”
