“I don’t—” I raise a hand to my face, rub my hand across my forehead, feel the stiff residue of the glue that holds my cut together. “I don’twant to argue.”
“Sweetheart,” he says, and I—I havegotto get him out of here. I’m hurting and I’m tired, and I don’t want to do this with him, notnow. Not ever.
“The thing is, I do get to make this decision,” I say, bracing myself to look right at him now. “I want to be alone, and I know you understand that, at least. I told you before. You can’t do this with me, and the problems we had before this are the same problems we’ll have after this.”
It’s too much, to see the hurt and confusion on his face. I dropmy eyes again.
“We don’thaveproblems.” He stands from his chair, moves to the foot of the bed, so it’s harder for me to avoid his eyes. He waits and waits, until I look at him. Now he looks coiled, tense, frustrated. Hehatesbeing told what to do. He hates not being in control, having his fate decided for him. He hates being stuck. That’s all this is, this fight he’s putting up.
“Alex—”
“We have a—relationship,” he says, emphasizing the word, as though he’s been practicing it. “I told you last night, I can make changes to my life, to the way I work. To the way Ilive. It’s what I want to do. I can do a hundred other things with my life. I don’t care if I never take another fucking photograph.”
For a long moment, I let that sit in the air. What a ridiculous, offensive lie—a swatting, aimless, feckless attempt to get what he wants from me in this moment. What a show of all the things he hasn’t truly thought about, if he’d actually propose giving up his career. Not even his career—his calling. A part of his soul I’ve seen in those pictures. It’s an absolute, dead-end confirmation for me. If this is what Alex is thinking about his future, about our future together, we’d never, ever make it. Not even for the time it’ll take for these bruises to heal, for this cast to come off.
I look back down at my hands, one curled into the cast, one spread over my gown and the textured white blanket atop it. I worry I’ll lose my resolve, that I’ll look at him—see the face that’s smiled at me, the arms that have held me, the hands that have touched me—and say,Stay, and that afterward, I’ll always wonder if this is it between us, that we trapped each other. That he stayed to take care of me, and that I—in spite of everything I’ve worked for, in spite of all the freedom and independence I’ve been chasing—let myself be taken care of,again. Always.
So I look up at him, making my eyes and my voice as vacant as I can, and say the words Iknow will work.
“I don’t believe you.”
Chapter 18
Alex
Kit finds me in the hospital cafeteria, at a table that’s empty of everything except for my phone.
I don’t notice her coming, because I’ve been staring at that black screen for the last hour, since Greer sent me out of her room with a look final enough to convince me that it’ll never light up again. I feel formless, fatigued. There’s a distant ringing in my ears. My elbows, resting on the slightly sticky laminate surface, each weigh ten tons; they’re pulling my entire upper half down, curling my spine, and if I didn’t hear Kit’s voice interrupt me, I’m pretty sure I’d lay my forehead down right onto that shiny, black, rectangular void in front of me. I’d disappear there, hoping, hoping, hopingshe’ll call me.
“Alex.” Kit slides into a chair across from me, lets out a gusting sigh of relief that I feel brush across my knuckles. I curl my fingers in, thinking of how Greer’s hand had held mine overnight, how cool her fingers had felt.“Are you okay?”
“No.” There’s a new reflection on the black screen, a winking light from Kit’s glasses in the upper right corner.
There’s a long, strange pause—the time when anyone else might say,What can I do, orHow can I help, but of course Kit must not be thinking of any of that right now. Greer’s her best friend, after all, so she’s probably not okay either. I look up, finally, because it’s still there, that instinct—to make sure my sister is all right, and I see her tuck two fingers underneath the right-side lens of her glasses, pulling down and to the side, the same way she’d do when she was a kid, tired and upset.
“I’m sorry,” I say to her, though I don’t really know why. Maybe I’m sorry fornot being okay.
“Sorry for what?” she says, lowering her hands, setting her elbows on the table too, so we’re mirroring each other. “It was an accident. It’s just that for Greer, an accident is bad news.”
“They say she’ll be fine.” I’m trying to mimic the conviction the doctorseemed to have.
“Yeah. She—” Kit’s voice catches; her chin quivers for a second. “She looks terrible. It’s scary.”
I lean back, sick to my stomach, entirely unable to comfort her. When I close my eyes, I see Greer in that bed, stiff and bruised and pale, and I feel like I won’t ever sleep again.
For the first time I notice that Ben’s here too—over by the counter, filling up Styrofoam cups of water and setting them in a cardboard caddy. I wait for him to come over, try to come up with some bland greeting that’ll conceal the fact that my heart’s broken inside my body. But once he’s done stocking up he only nods my way, a look in his eyes that makes me think he can see what I’m trying to hide, anyway. A quick wave from Kit and he’s gone, heading back, I’m guessing, to where everyone waits for Greer’s discharge to come through.
There’s something familiar about the quiet in here. Inside this cafeteria, Kit and I are basically alone—there’s a couple in the corner who sip coffee and look at their phones, nothing unusually urgent or sad about their postures. All around us, though, is noise—voices, elevator dings, PA announcements, muted rings and beeps from phones. What I can’t hear I can feel: the chaos of a hospital, people sick and in crisis, family and loved ones desperate for answers and reassurance. Doctors and nurses, all kinds of caretakers, stressed and fatigued, hustling from one task to the next. Kit and I never spent much time in hospitals before, at least not before my dad’s stroke. But finding quiet in chaos? Making a safe space out of justthe two of us?
That’s right inour wheelhouse.
“Kit,” I say now, fractionally calmed by the familiarity, but tentative about trying something else with it. I’ve never been the one to look to her for help, and I’ve done it twice now, about Greer. I take a deep breath before I continue. “I don’t know what to do.”
I meet her eyes—those black pools of light I know so well—and see something change in them. A trace of something like resolve, something like—pride, maybe. Gratitude that I’ve asked. “Tell me what you need,” she says, her voice serious and calm and…familiar. It’smyvoice, really. It’s something I’ve taught her.
“She doesn’t want me here. She asked me to go.”
Kit gusts out a sigh, rubs her eye again, and nods. “She doesn’t much want us here either. She’s never liked people knowingshe was sick.”
