Unfortunately, option two—him moving without me—is too hard to even contemplate.
So, you see, I’m stuck in the middle, feeling like a fool for how torn up I am over this. We’ve only been together a few weeks, and yet the thought of him leaving drags me right back to the dark place I haven’t visited since I lost my parents. I’m up at all hours of the night, tossing and turning. Food has lost its appeal. I walk around in a malaise, trying and failing to put on a good front for Josie. I force fake smiles she sees right through.
She knows something’s up, but I haven’t told her about the grant. I don’t think I should until I know for certain what I’d like to do. She’s as attached to Matt as I am at this point. She insists upon writing him a thank you letter for her Christmas gifts and asks why he hasn’t come over for dinner this week. She even tucks The Hunger Games into my purse so I can drop it off for him at work. “Just in case he wants to read it!”
I was stupid to bring him into our lives as quickly as I did. I should have made sure this was a real, lasting relationship before I introduced her to him.
Now when he leaves, she’ll be just as heartbroken as I am.
Over the next few days, I spend untold hours researching Costa Rica. I have a password-protected folder on my laptop codenamed “very boring work stuff” where I’ve saved everything I’ve found so far: information about the MacArthur grant, articles highlighting Matt and his proposal. I look into the hospital, and I even find pictures of Matt on past medical mission trips. One in particular guts me: he’s leaning over a hospital bed, handing a teddy bear to a girl no older than ten. She’s hooked up to a million machines, but that doesn’t dull her megawatt smile. The caption below explains that she’s just undergone a life-changing procedure thanks to Matt and his team. She’ll get to live a fuller, more pain-free life because of him.
The picture proves what I already know: Matt has to go to Costa Rica.
On the Thursday after Matt and I had our fight in the on-call room, I’m sitting at dinner with Josie and I decide to broach the subject of moving.
“Do you like it here?” I ask, trying to sound vague.
She scrunches her nose, confused. “Like in this house? It’s fine. I mean, ideally I’d have a bigger room and more storage space for my books but—”
“No, here as in this city, your school—that sort of thing.”
She shrugs and takes a bite of spaghetti before she replies, “Yeah, it’s cool.”
Fourteen-year-olds are some tough nuts to crack.
I persist, trying to keep my questions general enough that she won’t grow suspicious. “Have you ever thought about living somewhere else? Like as a foreign exchange student?”
Her gaze flips up to me and she looks concerned. “Are you thinking of shipping me off somewhere? Because I know I said I’d put away the clean dishes before you got home from work, but I was doing my homework and—okay fine! I was actually finishing up a reread of Twilight, but I swear I’ll do it right now!”
Her chair screeches against the floor as she hops to her feet.
I shake my head, trying not to laugh. “No! No, nothing like that. I just remember when I was your age, I always thought it’d be cool to live abroad for a year or two. A lot of my friends traveled in college, but I didn’t get the chance.”
She nods and sits back down, finally understanding. “Of course. Duh. My friend Sarah went to live with her dad in France last summer and she came back with the coolest stories and a million cool pictures to post on Instagram—” She suddenly stops and glances up at me tentatively. “I mean, sure, it’d be fun, but all that stuff doesn’t matter. I like living here with you.”
She waves to our kitchen and I realize she’s trying to spare my feelings. To her, this conversation is all hypothetical. We don’t have the money for travel. The closest she’ll likely get to going abroad is watching a documentary on the travel channel.
I spend the rest of the night hunched over my computer, researching.
The next day at work, I head straight to the operating room. It’s been my M.O. for the last few days and it’s proven successful so far. By hiding out in here, I limit the chances of having any awkward hallway encounters with Matt. We only see each other when we’re scrubbed in, surrounded by a dozen people, ready to operate. I hide under my layers, glad for the mask and protective glasses. If we speak, it’s about the case at hand, though there are still subtle hints that let me know this distance is killing him as much as it’s killing me. I see it every time our eyes meet. A storm. A longing. The words that live and die on his tongue.
He doesn’t linger after surgery. He doesn’t try to corner me in the hall or ask me if I’ve thought any more about his offer, though now more than ever, I wish he would push a little. On Monday, I needed space. Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, I needed to get my head straight, but now—now it’s been five days since I’ve felt Matt’s mouth on mine, since his hands have been on my skin. I miss him in my bed. I miss having to make do with the tiny wedge of mattress between Matt’s body and the wall. Without him, it feels like I might as well be sleeping on a bed made for Shaq with the amount of room I have to spread out. I hate it. I miss him.
I won’t survive the weekend like this.
I don’t care about Costa Rica or our future. Responsibility shmonsibility. I want to be impulsive and dumb. I want to put a pin in my decision-making process and feel like us again, even if just for a moment.
The door to the OR swings open and Matt steps in. My breath catches in my throat and an electric feeling buzzes through me. It’s painful—being this close to him every day, keeping my thoughts carefully contained. He greets the team and checks in on the patient. Meanwhile, I stand at the operating table, unable to tear my eyes away from him. It takes him five and a half years to cross the OR and step into the gown I’m holding open for him. When our gazes meet, my stomach tightens. It’s a sucker punch every time.
“Morning Bailey,” he says with a nod. “Everything set?”
“Let’s not fight and I think you should go to Costa Rica and I wish I could go, but I don’t think it would work with Josie and we only just started dating and that navy scrub cap really brings out your eyes and I think I’m falling in love with you even though we haven’t talked in days. And were you serious about me coming with you because I might just be insane enough to take you up on the offer.”
Those are the things I leave unsaid as I clear my throat and look down at the trays I finished setting up a few moments ago.
“Everything is ready to go.”
“All right then, let’s get started.”
“Excuse me, are you the woman who was assisting Dr. Russell in the OR earlier?”
I pause in between bites of my sandwich, annoyed that someone is interrupting my lunch. I’ve learned my lesson—I can’t eat in the staff lounge. All anyone wants to talk about is Matt and his grant and how I feel about it and are we dating and are those new diamond earrings really from him? So today I planned ahead and went down to the hospital’s lobby to eat my lunch. I’m tucked away in a massive leather chair in a corner near the front windows. I thought I was hidden pretty well, but apparently not.
I hold a hand next to my mouth and hold up a finger—the universal sign for, Just one second, I’m chewing.
“No worries.” The woman laughs softly. “I’m the one interrupting your lunch break.”
I gulp down my bite and then force a smile. “It’s fine, really. Um, in answer to your question, yes, I was assisting him earlier.”
She grins, pleased with my answer, and then she takes the seat opposite me.
Alrighty then. Help yourself.
I was sort of hoping this would be a two-second conversation—yes, I was in the OR. Okay, bye now—but apparently not. I longingly look down at the second half of my sandwich, and then I force my attention back to her. I notice then that she doesn’t really fit in with NEMC’s usual crowd. For one, she’s a total hippie. She’s beautiful, but not in an intimidating way, more in a salt-of-the-earth, ethereal-art-teacher way. The pattern on her long maxi skirt is made of abstract swirls of magenta and blue, and her cream turtleneck stretches adorably over a very round baby bump.
So, you see, I’m stuck in the middle, feeling like a fool for how torn up I am over this. We’ve only been together a few weeks, and yet the thought of him leaving drags me right back to the dark place I haven’t visited since I lost my parents. I’m up at all hours of the night, tossing and turning. Food has lost its appeal. I walk around in a malaise, trying and failing to put on a good front for Josie. I force fake smiles she sees right through.
She knows something’s up, but I haven’t told her about the grant. I don’t think I should until I know for certain what I’d like to do. She’s as attached to Matt as I am at this point. She insists upon writing him a thank you letter for her Christmas gifts and asks why he hasn’t come over for dinner this week. She even tucks The Hunger Games into my purse so I can drop it off for him at work. “Just in case he wants to read it!”
I was stupid to bring him into our lives as quickly as I did. I should have made sure this was a real, lasting relationship before I introduced her to him.
Now when he leaves, she’ll be just as heartbroken as I am.
Over the next few days, I spend untold hours researching Costa Rica. I have a password-protected folder on my laptop codenamed “very boring work stuff” where I’ve saved everything I’ve found so far: information about the MacArthur grant, articles highlighting Matt and his proposal. I look into the hospital, and I even find pictures of Matt on past medical mission trips. One in particular guts me: he’s leaning over a hospital bed, handing a teddy bear to a girl no older than ten. She’s hooked up to a million machines, but that doesn’t dull her megawatt smile. The caption below explains that she’s just undergone a life-changing procedure thanks to Matt and his team. She’ll get to live a fuller, more pain-free life because of him.
The picture proves what I already know: Matt has to go to Costa Rica.
On the Thursday after Matt and I had our fight in the on-call room, I’m sitting at dinner with Josie and I decide to broach the subject of moving.
“Do you like it here?” I ask, trying to sound vague.
She scrunches her nose, confused. “Like in this house? It’s fine. I mean, ideally I’d have a bigger room and more storage space for my books but—”
“No, here as in this city, your school—that sort of thing.”
She shrugs and takes a bite of spaghetti before she replies, “Yeah, it’s cool.”
Fourteen-year-olds are some tough nuts to crack.
I persist, trying to keep my questions general enough that she won’t grow suspicious. “Have you ever thought about living somewhere else? Like as a foreign exchange student?”
Her gaze flips up to me and she looks concerned. “Are you thinking of shipping me off somewhere? Because I know I said I’d put away the clean dishes before you got home from work, but I was doing my homework and—okay fine! I was actually finishing up a reread of Twilight, but I swear I’ll do it right now!”
Her chair screeches against the floor as she hops to her feet.
I shake my head, trying not to laugh. “No! No, nothing like that. I just remember when I was your age, I always thought it’d be cool to live abroad for a year or two. A lot of my friends traveled in college, but I didn’t get the chance.”
She nods and sits back down, finally understanding. “Of course. Duh. My friend Sarah went to live with her dad in France last summer and she came back with the coolest stories and a million cool pictures to post on Instagram—” She suddenly stops and glances up at me tentatively. “I mean, sure, it’d be fun, but all that stuff doesn’t matter. I like living here with you.”
She waves to our kitchen and I realize she’s trying to spare my feelings. To her, this conversation is all hypothetical. We don’t have the money for travel. The closest she’ll likely get to going abroad is watching a documentary on the travel channel.
I spend the rest of the night hunched over my computer, researching.
The next day at work, I head straight to the operating room. It’s been my M.O. for the last few days and it’s proven successful so far. By hiding out in here, I limit the chances of having any awkward hallway encounters with Matt. We only see each other when we’re scrubbed in, surrounded by a dozen people, ready to operate. I hide under my layers, glad for the mask and protective glasses. If we speak, it’s about the case at hand, though there are still subtle hints that let me know this distance is killing him as much as it’s killing me. I see it every time our eyes meet. A storm. A longing. The words that live and die on his tongue.
He doesn’t linger after surgery. He doesn’t try to corner me in the hall or ask me if I’ve thought any more about his offer, though now more than ever, I wish he would push a little. On Monday, I needed space. Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, I needed to get my head straight, but now—now it’s been five days since I’ve felt Matt’s mouth on mine, since his hands have been on my skin. I miss him in my bed. I miss having to make do with the tiny wedge of mattress between Matt’s body and the wall. Without him, it feels like I might as well be sleeping on a bed made for Shaq with the amount of room I have to spread out. I hate it. I miss him.
I won’t survive the weekend like this.
I don’t care about Costa Rica or our future. Responsibility shmonsibility. I want to be impulsive and dumb. I want to put a pin in my decision-making process and feel like us again, even if just for a moment.
The door to the OR swings open and Matt steps in. My breath catches in my throat and an electric feeling buzzes through me. It’s painful—being this close to him every day, keeping my thoughts carefully contained. He greets the team and checks in on the patient. Meanwhile, I stand at the operating table, unable to tear my eyes away from him. It takes him five and a half years to cross the OR and step into the gown I’m holding open for him. When our gazes meet, my stomach tightens. It’s a sucker punch every time.
“Morning Bailey,” he says with a nod. “Everything set?”
“Let’s not fight and I think you should go to Costa Rica and I wish I could go, but I don’t think it would work with Josie and we only just started dating and that navy scrub cap really brings out your eyes and I think I’m falling in love with you even though we haven’t talked in days. And were you serious about me coming with you because I might just be insane enough to take you up on the offer.”
Those are the things I leave unsaid as I clear my throat and look down at the trays I finished setting up a few moments ago.
“Everything is ready to go.”
“All right then, let’s get started.”
“Excuse me, are you the woman who was assisting Dr. Russell in the OR earlier?”
I pause in between bites of my sandwich, annoyed that someone is interrupting my lunch. I’ve learned my lesson—I can’t eat in the staff lounge. All anyone wants to talk about is Matt and his grant and how I feel about it and are we dating and are those new diamond earrings really from him? So today I planned ahead and went down to the hospital’s lobby to eat my lunch. I’m tucked away in a massive leather chair in a corner near the front windows. I thought I was hidden pretty well, but apparently not.
I hold a hand next to my mouth and hold up a finger—the universal sign for, Just one second, I’m chewing.
“No worries.” The woman laughs softly. “I’m the one interrupting your lunch break.”
I gulp down my bite and then force a smile. “It’s fine, really. Um, in answer to your question, yes, I was assisting him earlier.”
She grins, pleased with my answer, and then she takes the seat opposite me.
Alrighty then. Help yourself.
I was sort of hoping this would be a two-second conversation—yes, I was in the OR. Okay, bye now—but apparently not. I longingly look down at the second half of my sandwich, and then I force my attention back to her. I notice then that she doesn’t really fit in with NEMC’s usual crowd. For one, she’s a total hippie. She’s beautiful, but not in an intimidating way, more in a salt-of-the-earth, ethereal-art-teacher way. The pattern on her long maxi skirt is made of abstract swirls of magenta and blue, and her cream turtleneck stretches adorably over a very round baby bump.
