“Son of a bitch,” I snap, taking one hand off the steering wheel to reach for my purse that was tossed haphazardly in the passenger seat after my shift. Doing my best to keep my eyes on the road, I rifle through its contents, fingers fumbling for that tiny orange rattling bottle that carries the last ounce of hope inside of it. Just one more time, I tell myself. One more pill to starve off the anxiety and then I’ll quit it. I’ll find another job, another career altogether. Another way to manage this crippling anxiety that I can’t seem to shake.
I could have died.
I pass under the sign that reads Hart Family Farms, across the small bridge that covers the trout stream, and slow my speed as the pavement turns to gravel. A tractor is headed down the road, and I abandon my search for the pill bottle to reach for my sunglasses and quickly slip them on, not wanting whichever family member is headed out to the fields to see me like this.
With my head kept low, I briefly wave at what looks like Grayson’s dad as he passes, returning my wave with one of his own. I hiccup a cry, slapping my hand over my mouth to stifle another as I turn on Grayson’s driveway.
Once his front porch comes into view, my breathing starts to quicken, this time at the prospect of seeing him. And when I pull up to his house at the same time his front door swings open, and I see him standing on the front porch with his thermos and cooler for the day, I let the tears fall freely.
With my car barely in park, I fling the door open, not caring to shut it as I run to him. My feet are half-asleep, a mixture of fatigue and fear leaving my body nearly numb, and I stumble as I make the last few paces to him.
His thermos and cooler are discarded beside us. His arms are already reaching for me by the time I fall, and he catches me in his lap as we both hit the ground.
He holds me tight, my chest resting in his lap, as his large, strong arms reach to wrap around me. “Baby,” he rasps, holding me tighter, trying to pull my entire body onto his. “Baby, what’s wrong? What happened?”
He pulls my shoulders back so his hands can hold my face, and he swipes furiously at the tears that refuse to stop.
“I’m okay,” I choke out. “I’m…” the rest of my sentence dies on the dust that surrounds us and I sob, burying my face into his chest to stifle the sound. He holds me tight, gripping every part of me he can reach as I let go into his thick chest. “I think I just almost died,” I croak, and then the gravity of the situation hits me. How close I was to smashing head first into that semi. How that would’ve been it. My life as a thirty-something would have been over, and I’m realizing now how little I would actually have to show for it. I sink further into his embrace, muttering garbled details about my drive from the city. The tears. The oncoming semi.
“You’re okay now,” he repeats over and over as one of his firm hands brushes rough strokes across my back. “You’re safe with me.” His touch is so rough that my body sways with the motion, but it’s what I need to pull me back to the ground. I don’t know how long we stay like that. Me, wailing incoherently against his chest whilehe murmurs soothing words over me. I just know that eventually my tears begin to dry, my breathing evens out, and when I raise my head to look at his face, I can see the red lining his lids and the damp skin below his eyes.
He raises one hand, using the back of it to wipe both sides of his face, before he does the same to mine. “I’m not exactly sure what happened, and you don’t have to talk about it now,” he says, letting his hand fall to grip both of mine. “But we gotta figure something out, Holly, we can’t have something like that ever happen again, because I just found you.” He raises his hand to smooth the matted hair from my face. “I just found you, there’s no way I can lose you.”
I give him my best watery smile before leaning in, letting him pull me into his lap and hold me. He starts with a slow sway, the minutes that pass bringing some clarity back into my life. Eventually, my legs grow stiff and cramped so I adjust, stretching them out.
“I’m sorry I came,” I mutter, sitting up a little straighter to smooth the damp hair away from my face.
“I’m not,” he responds, reaching a hand up to squeeze my shoulder before moving up to grip the back of my neck. “Wanna talk about what happened?”
“Nothing happened, really. Nothing that isn’t out of the ordinary for me, anyway.” My eyes well again, andI take in a full, shuddering breath. “I can’t do this anymore,” I confess, reaching out to grab the hem of his shirt. I fist the fabric in my hands, taking out my frustration. “Ihatemy job. Ihatebeing a doctor. Ihateworking in the ER and…” I trail off, not knowing how to explain how this feels. “I hate feeling so helpless all the time.” I pull my feet out from under me, moving to sit on my butt so I can face Grayson, who is seated firmly in front of me, his long legs spread to surround me. “I hate going to work every day, wondering if every hushed conversation among coworkers is about me, if they think I’m going to panic again. I hate having to pop a sedative just to function at the job that I spent twelve years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on. I hate losing patients.” My voice cracks at that one, and Grayson’s hand comes up to squeeze my shoulder. I reach for a rock in the gravel, grasping it between my pointer finger and thumb to drag it through the dirt. The smaller rocks part in its path, and I draw an S, exaggerating each curve as it winds to one side, and then the other. “I feel like such a failure,” I finally admit, keeping my voice so low he might not hear me over the shuffling of dirt.
Grayson doesn’t say anything for a long time, but I can feel him thinking, watching, breaking down my words as he watches me draw swirls in his front drive.
After a long time, he stands, reaching a hand down for me. I peer up at him through tear-soaked lashes, and the look on his face is hard to place.
“Come with me,” he finally says when I place my hand in his. He hoists me to standing, and we simultaneously lean down to brush the gravel off of my scrub pants. “I want to show you something.”
I take his hand, and we stroll toward his front steps. I expect him to pull me inside, but instead, he tugs on my hand and we take the small worn path around his house.
He leads me through a lush green field, and we walk in silence, the only sounds are of the early morning birds chirping their hellos. I let myself get lost in the scenery, in the breeze that rolls over the dewy morning grass and the slight chill that follows.
We walk through the entire back field and a small thicket of trees. Just as I’m about to ask him where he’s taking me, we come across what looks like a single lane gravel road, a trail of some sorts.
“This used to be a railroad track,” he says, tugging my hand to turn me to the left. We walk hand in hand down the center of the old tracks. “My grandma used to take us kids here when we were younger. We’d be fighting or wrestling and my mom would be ready to throw us out of the house. She’d tell us to go find our grandma, andshe would always make us go for a walk.” I chuckle at the image of my stoic, quiet man wrestling with his brothers.
“I don’t remember when the tracks were still here,” he continues. “But I remember being real young and finding a random tie or stake sticking out of the gravel. We’d fight over who got to keep it, like it was some hidden treasure we stumbled across.”
I release his hand only to wrap my arm around his, moving closer so I can rest my cheek against the swell of his shoulder as he talks. He slows his pace not to bump my head too badly, turning to place a kiss on the crown of my head.
“It became almost therapeutic for me as a kid. Not that I realized it at that time, but when I’d start to get restless, irritated with my brothers, whatever it was, I’d ask if she wanted to go for a walk with me. Then when the walks got harder for her, I just started going by myself. I often find myself headed this way at the end of a stressful day.”
He stops and we turn. He points over the edge of the bank and down a ravine that has a decent-sized pond. Grayson lets go of my hand to look around at the gravel below our feet. He bends to scoop up one rock, and then another, balancing the weight of each of them in his palm before handing one over to me.
I do the same, balancing its weight in my hand, wondering what he means by all of this when he starts again, “Every time I’m here, I plant my feet and look around at the rocks surrounding them. I choose the biggest one that’s within my reach, and that’s my worry rock.”
“Your worry rock?”
He nods, gently tossing the stone up a few inches, letting it fall back into his broad palm. “I study it real good. I feel its weight, focusing on each little divot it might have. Or maybe it’s smooth, a rock that looks as if it spent its life in a shallow stream, having cool river water run over it. I like to feel the warmth of it, the ones that have spent the morning baking in the sun.” He gestures with a look to me, and I do the same with the rock in my hand.
