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The fact that I spent the entire train ride scouring the internet for kidney diseases, scaring myself with increasingly horrific medical scenarios, surely has not helped.
In reality, it’s been three and a half hours since she called. The hospital staff signs me in as a visitor, and I find the room where she’s staying.
She looks up as I come in. “Oh, thank god. My cell phone died thirty minutes ago.”
I give her a dirty look and a hug designed not to disturb her IV. “Here.” I plug the charger into the wall for her and hand her the business end. “Let me read your chart.”
“Did you suddenly become a doctor?”
“WebMD,” I say curtly. “I want to know what’s wrong.”
I look for the chart. I’m expecting some kind of unintelligible chicken scratch handwriting on a clipboard. Instead, there’s a computer in the corner of the room. I try to wake it up, but it’s password protected.
“TV medical dramas have been telling me lies,” I announce to the room at large.
“Or you could ask me.”
“Fine.” I pull up a chair and sit next to her. “What’s going on, Nana?”
“Some kind of kidney infection that I can’t pronounce.”
“Pyelonephritis,” I guess.
She snaps her fingers. “Yes. That sounds right. I’ll be fine once the antibiotics run their course. I’m only here because the infection also makes me vomit, and I can’t keep their stupid pills down. I just need a couple days on a drip IV and I’ll be fine.”
I look over at her. “Promise me there won’t be any complications.”
“Maria. You know I can’t promise that. But the internist did say it was unlikely.”
“Fine.” I swallow panic. “Okay. Sure.”
“Maria,” she says more gently, “you know you’re not really mad at me, right?”
I look into her eyes for the first time since I’ve arrived. She’s watching me carefully, probably as aware as I am that I’m panicking for very little reason.
People are allowed to have minor health scares. People get sick. It’s okay. She’s not going anywhere.
I reach out and take her hand. Her skin is a little looser than mine over the knuckles, but she’s still strong. I let out a breath, and try to release all the stupid medical knowledge I acquired on the way in as I exhale.
“I know,” I say. “I’m such a basket case about these things.”
“No,” Nana says. “You’re my strong girl.”
We sit without saying anything. I try to shove my feelings into an appropriate channel.
“Hey.” She interrupts me. “Stop blaming yourself.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were. You were telling yourself that you were a bad grandchild because you were making this about you, when I’m the one in the hospital.”
I look back at her. Fine. I was.
“Tell me what you were doing while I was on trial.”
I exhale again. “I seem to have acquired a boyfriend.”
“Does he have a name?”
“Jay. Jay na Thalang.” I swallow. “He knows Gabe from Harvard. He’s a professor at Berkeley.”
“Hmmm,” she says.
“He’s not in the country right now,” I tell her. “He has a conference in Melbourne. And I’m kind of ridiculously glad he’s not here for this.”
“Why? Because you’re afraid of how he’ll react if he knows you occasionally freak out?”
I already know how Jay would react to that. He’s witnessed it. I shake my head. I’m not entirely sure why I don’t want him around.
“It would be weird,” I say instead.
She doesn’t say anything.
“It would be weird,” I say, “to…you know. Lean on him. We haven’t been together that long. It would be weird if I could trust him with something like this so soon.”
“Weird,” she repeats.
I know how ridiculous I sound. “Weird,” I affirm. “It’s better that he’s not here.”
And because she knows me, she doesn’t push.
I walk out of her room forty-five minutes later, when a nurse gently suggests that visiting hours will be over soon and maybe my grandmother needs to rest.
Nana rolls her eyes at the suggestion that she may be human, but I leave.
It’s been good to talk to her. I’m feeling better. Less anxious, and the damned medical diagnoses I had rattling around in my brain have finally quieted down.
I make my way out past the check-in desk.
As I do, I hear my name. “Maria.”
My heart stands still for one moment, then it thumps, hard and fast. I turn around.
Jay is sitting in a plastic bucket seat. He has his laptop out. There’s a blue plastic bag on the seat next to him.
My mind isn’t working properly. I can’t explain his presence. He’s on a plane to Australia. It is not possible that he would be here.
“Jay?”
He shuts his laptop and slides it into his bag. “Hi.”
It is apparently possible that he is here. I wrinkle my nose suspiciously. “How are you here?”
“Gabe texted me when I was still in LAX.” He says this like it’s some kind of explanation for his presence. It still doesn’t make sense.
I try again. “Why are you here?”
He shrugs. “Your grandmother was in the hospital. Gabe was in Switzerland. Someone had to bring you soup.” He gestures to the blue plastic bag. “I hope you like Korean.”
I love Korean.
I try again. “But you were on your way to a conference.”
“It’s at the end of the week. I moved my flight back a couple of days.”
“But you were going to spend time with your co-author.”
“I called Vithika and explained. She said it could wait.”
“But why would you?”
“Seriously, Em?” He looks at me and I know the answer. I know the reason that I didn’t want him here. I wasn’t afraid that he would blame me or make fun of my anxieties. I wasn’t even afraid of leaning on him.
I was afraid he would understand without my telling him.
“Come on,” he says. “There’s a cafeteria down the hall. Let me buy you a Coke and feed you dinner.”
“But…you…” I trail off helplessly. “You’re here.”
“It’s just work,” he says. “Don’t worry. It’s not going anywhere.”
“But…” I trail off uselessly.
He gives me a half smile. “Come on, Maria. Have some soup.”
* * *
I let him feed me soup.
He was right about the Coke, too; I’d skipped dinner. Stress and low blood sugar, it turns out, really do not mix. It feels weird to let someone take care of me.
It feels weird that my grandmother’s in the hospital, but it’s only a minor thing. It feels weird that Jay would move his flight, lose time with someone he’s doing research with. I don’t have a better word for how it feels than weird. Unnatural.
He calls an Uber as we head out. We nestle together in the backseat, holding hands. I almost don’t feel present in my own body.
The lights on the Bay Bridge strobe through the car windows, on and off. We’re sitting thigh to thigh, my hand in his.
“What are you thinking?”
“Just how lucky I am. That this wasn’t worse. That I have you.”
All this luck is scaring me. Flip a coin, and have it come up heads, and it’s no big deal. Flip it again, and heads still isn’t a surprise. If you see Washington’s profile nineteen times in a row, though…something’s wrong with you. Or something’s wrong with the quarter. Luck is lovely, until it keeps going and going and going. Until all you can do is hold your breath, waiting for it to run out.
Jay shrugs. “You’re not lucky. This is just what life is like. Most of the time, it’s not that bad.”
I shake my head. He catches the movement, even though we are in a dark patch. He doesn’t say any
thing, but he rearranges our fingers and squeezes my hand more tightly.
He doesn’t speak again until we’re in Oakland on the other side of the Bay. “I saw your job spreadsheet the other day. When you handed me your computer.”
I look at him. My chest goes cold first, then my arms. I feel like ice all over. So. He saw that I have a job offer in New York. He knows I didn’t tell him about it. I glance at our driver, who has been thankfully silent.
