“At least if we were living together, I could take care of you,” I argued to Chris.
“I appreciate that,” he said wearily every time I brought up the idea. “But it would be impossible to isolate if I got sick. The Midwest is already seeing a surge. Edelman says it will get even worse this winter.”
My brain was hijacked by horrible visions. What if he collapsed in the hospital parking lot? What if he died all alone in his apartment?
“I’m moving back to Chicago anyway. Sarah called.” My mentor at Ravenscrest. “I got the job! I start teaching at the end of August.”
“If schools are even open by then,” Chris said.
Notthe reaction I’d been hoping for. “Sarah said we might be teaching remotely for the first few weeks. My point is, we can be together!”
“Honey, you know my shifts are crazy right now. I can’t sleep if you’re Zooming with a bunch of high school kids in the next room.”
“I’ll be quiet,” I promised.
“I’m sure you’ll try,” Chris said. “But I won’t expose you. I can’t expose my patients.”
So that fall, instead of moving into his Gold Coast condo, I signed a lease on a studio in Rogers Park with a separate, tiny alcove for a bed, where I holed up alone, learning to Zoom and order DoorDash and wipe down my groceries with Clorox wipes. I brought the outdoors inside, filling the window over the fire escape with straggling rescue plants. I ran errands for my elderly neighbor, Mr.Banerjee, and tried to connect with my students—whom I’d never met—online.
If I couldn’t save lives, like Chris, I could at least make them better. I could offer my poor confined students the hope and escape I’d always found in books.
But none of my classes at Northwestern had prepared me for sitting in a chair all day staring at a computer screen. I was overwhelmed by the online workload—moderating discussion boards, updating my course websites and resources,answering the dozens of emails from students and parents that came at all hours of the day and night. I missed the hints of progress, the tiny cues that only came from teaching face-to-face.
It was all worth it, I told myself. Because I had Chris. Once or twice a week, he came from his shift at the hospital, freshly showered and wearing clean clothes to avoid infection. Afterward, he slept like the dead, his body heavy beside me, his thick blond lashes shadowing his cheeks, while I listened to him breathe, my heart wrung with love and worry.
“Things will get better,” I told him (and myself). I wanted desperately for the world to return to normal, for us to go back to the way we were.
But even I had to admit that some things had changed forever. Or maybe the problem was they hadn’t changed at all. Two years later, our relationship was still stalled—stuck—in some pandemic Twilight Zone. “Of course I love you,” Chris had said when my lease renewed in August. “But we have to be reasonable. My residency is up at the end of the year. A move simply doesn’t make sense right now.”
He wasn’t wrong.
So the months passed. My plants withered slowly on the windowsill. My books overflowed my space.
My father died.
6
Anne
Chris called the night ofthe funeral. “Anne. How are you?”
The sound of his familiar voice made my eyes well up. All my grief, all my confusion, all the words I’d swallowed and stuffed away all day, burst out. “I’m fine. Well, not fine, obviously. I mean, my dad just died.” I stifled a groan.Me and my stupid mouth.“Which you know. Since I’m here. It’s just so unfair. Dad was only fifty-seven. Fifty-eight? I don’t even know. I’m a terrible daughter. But he wasn’t that old. He didn’t deserve to die.”
“No one deserves to die,” Chris said. Because he treated patients—children—who died all the time.
I swallowed. “You’re right. I only meant…”
“He could have had risk factors you didn’t know about,” Chris said.
“Yeah, like climbing on roofs.” But I couldn’t be mad at Dad. Dad was gone. It was easier, safer, to be angry with Joe. I snuffled. “That’s what he was doing when he had the heart attack. He was up repairing a roof and he fell.”
“Well. That was his job,” Chris said reasonably.
“I just…I can’t believe he’s dead.”
“It’s normal to feel a sense of shock when you losesomeone you care about,” Chris said in his bedside manner when what I really needed was a hug. Or a bracing slap. Or a muzzle. “You need to remember that life goes on, and so will you.”
“But I miss him,” I said. “I missed you, too. Imissyou.”
