This surprises her. When he comes into the shop, stooping as he descends the first few steps to avoid hitting his head on the overhead beam, he keeps things brief, professional.
She tries to remember if he wears a wedding band. Or, really, what he looks like. He’s tall, of course. Tall like a basketball player. But “athletic” would be the least likely word she’d use todescribe him. He’s unassuming, stiff.Toostiff, really. Always so reserved and proper, always dressed in a dark suit, as if he’s coming from or going to a funeral. He doesn’t seem unkind, though—more socially awkward.
Vivian starts to type back,It’s ready now,but then stops.
She looks at the horse, then back at the text. Then she clicks the phone’s side button to bring up her lock screen: a picture of her mom. Her hair is pulled severely back in a bun; she wears a light pink lipstick that matches her Chanel tweed jacket, circa 1993 spring collection.
A childhood memory surfaces, and on its back, a wild, wild idea now forms in Vivian’s head. Chewing the inside of her cheek, she deletes the first message and taps out a different response:The horse is not ready yet. I’ll let you know.
And then, at the end, adds:Warmest, Vivian.
Taylor
By the time Taylor exits the hospital, it’s late. The only brave souls out on the streets are ushering along dogs in pet puffer jackets and knitted sweaters. Everyone else appears tucked away in their houses, likely sipping hot chocolate or cozying up by fires.
She pulls out her phone from her down lumberjack-style jacket, which is the least fashionable thing she wears but also the warmest, and powers it on. Taylor keeps her phone off during work, not because she’s averse to technology but rather because it’s depressing to be faced with how few people reach out to her on any given day. Her dad will ring her a few times over the course of a week, as will Aunt Gigi (if she hasn’t seen Taylor at the hospital), and Sam, her neighbor and friend, though he prefers to text. Occasionally a friend from back home will get in touch, but Taylor is surprised by how infrequently that occurs. It’s as if when she broke up with Grayson, she broke up with the entire life they’d had together. She’s on a group chat with nurses from the orthopedic rehab center where she used to work, but Taylor almost wishes she weren’t.Hey, T.J., they like to occasionallyask.How is it working at that fancy hospital in Boston? T.J., tell us a good ER story.Taylor feels pressured to paint some ideal picture, so she’s gone quiet on the chat.
And then there are the calls she’d rathernotreceive at all: a Visa credit card representative, the financial loan servicer of the community college where she’d gotten her nursing degree four years earlier.
The frigid air and empty streets make Taylor feel lonely in a starved kind of way. She doesn’t have any messages. It’s so freaking cold. She’s exhausted. She hasn’t eaten in hours, not since she wolfed down that turkey sandwich before Vivian arrived to the ER. And then once Viviandecompensated—a fancy medical term Taylor’s noticed her fellow nurses and the doctors like to use—there was no time to do anything. Only once Vivian had transferred to the ICU was Taylor able to catch up on charting.
She now wishes tocompensatewith wine, a lot of wine, because Vivian keeps clouding her thoughts.
How did her patient go south so quickly? Maybe if Taylor had paid closer attention to Vivian’s symptoms rather than to her clothes and jewelry…A guilt vibrates in her like the buzz of a low-level light.
Is the liquor store near her apartment still open? She checks her phone again; it’s nearing ten o’clock, so Taylor has about fifteen minutes. She might make it in time, if she picks up the pace.
Back home, she’d had a car to get around: a green 2011 MINI Countryman, with too many miles and a funky GPS system, which she was forced to rely on when her cell phone died, an occurrence that happened all too often with her dad’s hand-me-down phone. The car’s navigation focused insistently on the street she was on, never allowing her to zoom out enough to even see the lines of the next town, the next state. It felt like the thingwas taunting her:Good luck getting out of this place. You’re stuck here, T.J.
Then one day, when she wasn’t scheduled to work at the orthopedic center, she turned the navigation off and went for a drive without a destination. She ended up going north, along the thin peninsula of the Outer Banks, until the sea and bay no longer hemmed her in on either side. Stopping eventually at a coffee shop, she breathed deeply, the air suddenly lighter.
And that day started a series of long, aimless drives. She’d go for hours, trying to poke at the universe’s bubble. Wondering if she might drive far enough and long enough to shrug off the ennui that encircled her.
“You shouldn’t be making these long drives alone, T.J.,” her dad often remarked, when he called while she was on the road. Initially weary of the ten years Grayson had on her, her dad had mostly come around. “Where’s Grayson?”
“It’s fine, Dad,” she’d assure him, avoiding the question. “I’m listening to a podcast.” Then she’d end the call and crank up the volume ofDressed: The History of Fashion.She didn’t know how to explain to her father that since Grayson thought her directionless excursions were foolish, a waste of gas, she’d stopped telling him about them. And, almost to her surprise, Grayson stopped asking her where she was going when she disappeared for hours, sans her nursing scrubs.
And like that, they began to slowly slip away from each other, two swimmers curiously drifting apart in a flat, flat current.
She’s making good time to the liquor store. She turns right and rushes down the southwest corridor, careful to avoid black-ice spots, but then comes to a sudden halt when she reaches theintersection of Greenwich Lane. The most direct route dictates that she continue straight. But she hasn’t dared set foot on Greenwich Lane since moving to Boston.
Fuck it.
She takes a few halting steps, but almost instantly, a familiar panic engulfs her. It’s as if a giant is stepping on her chest, her stomach, all air and thoughts and sanity whooshing out of the way.
She backtracks, and the giant slowly releases his foot.
When she reaches the liquor store a few minutes later, having looped around, the man on the inside is turning the door sign toClosed. She tries the handle nevertheless, pleading with the man, but it’s locked. The man shakes his head, points to the sign.
When he turns away, Taylor is left staring at a vague reflection of herself, illuminated by the glow of a nearby old-fashioned streetlamp. She bites her lip, willing herself not to cry. The reflection mirrored back at her is vague, phantomlike, as if Taylor doesn’t quite exist.
An hour later, Taylor is curled up on the couch in her neighbor Sam’s apartment, relaying the injustice of the liquor store clerk who turned her away.
“And I was wearing these scrubs! You’d think he’d take pity on me. You know, a nurse working late and all.”
“He probably couldn’t see your scrubs,” Sam replies, topping off Taylor’s glass with more whiskey. Taylor prefers wine to hard alcohol, but tonight she’ll take what she can get. “I mean, you do have that apartment for a coat, and then your tall boots.”
“My coat is notthatbig.”
