“I’m gonna come out there to help after the surgery. I texted you about it.”
“No!” My yell echoes in the small space.
There’s silence on the other line for a breath, then another. “Look, Nutter, I know you think you can handle this on your own. But you can’t. You and I both know how overwhelmed you get. You take after your mom like that.”
I feel frozen under his scrutiny and judgement. Just like I did as a little girl.
The elevator moves, but I don’t.
“You know it’s not a problem for me to catch a flight out there,” he continues. “I can work from anywhere.”
“No.” The word is thin, small, mirroring how I feel. “Please don’t. I think it would make Mom uncomfortable.” I feel bad for throwing Mom under the bus, but I’m desperate to curb his false need to take care of me, his assumption that I’m weak. Maybe I am weak. Or maybe he made me that way by never believing I could handle anything on my own.
“I really am sorry, baby girl. You know, I love her, too. And I hate that you’re both going through this.”
Yeah, because cheating on someone for years, divorcing them, and then marrying the other woman is really an act of love. I want to laugh, but I bite my cheek and hold it all in. Like I always do.
“How about I check in with you again after the surgery and come out to help then? I don’t think you understand how much work it can be to take care of someone like that.”
“Okay,” the meek little mouse in me says, and I hate myself for it.
The doors open on the first floor, and a woman with a beautiful silk scarf wrapped around her head steps inside. She pushes the button that holds open the door, waiting for me to get out. It’s nice of her, but the first floor isn’t where I’m going. I smile and cover the phone with my hand, telling her I’m going up. She gives me a quizzical look, but when I don’t add more information, she pushes the button for the seventh floor and pulls out her phone.
“Well, I’ll call in a few days, okay?” Jeremy says. “You’ll answer your phone, right?”
“Okay.” I hate this version of myself. The versionthat feels frozen in time, a child with no voice. The version that can’t stand up for herself, or even express what I want.
“Love you, Nutter.”
“Okay,” I repeat numbly.
There’s silence on the other end of the line. He’s already hung up.
I hold myself together like a tightly wound ball of yarn until the woman gets off the elevator on the seventh floor. No one else gets on. My body shakes with pent-up energy.
As soon as the doors close, I drop to the floor in the corner and unravel. I don’t care that it’s filthy. I’m crying too hard, and I’m not sure why the tears won’t stop. Sure, talking to Jeremy is always emotional, but it was a good night overall. Shouldn’t that weigh more in the grand scheme of things than a conversation that only lasted a few minutes?
Cosmos almost kissed me. He wrote me a poem. He likes me. So, why the hell am I sobbing on the elevator floor?
I can hear Jeremy’s voice in my head:‘You’re being ridiculous. Get up and pull yourself together.’
But I can’t. Why couldn’t he ever see that I can only hold myself together for so long before I just don’t have the energy?
I want to crawl under a desk in a dark, quiet room. Go somewhere safe and small. Turn off the world. The night comes rushing back to me like a tidal wave that’s spit me out on a foreign shore. Exhaustedfrom the noise, the emotional ups and downs, the uncertainty of it all.
I drop my head to my knees and close my eyes, letting it all wash over me. A feather thrown to sea.
When the elevator finally moves, called by some late-night visitor or overworked doctor, I force myself to my feet and push the button for the fourth floor.
Chapter Seventeen
Hospitals are mazes. Everything is fine as long as you stick to a known path, for example, Mom’s room to the elevator or the elevator to my car. The moment you veer away from the path, it’s all too easy to end up at a door that won’t open without a keycard with no idea how to get back to the elevator.
I shouldn’t have been looking at my phone. If I’d been paying attention after I left the hospital’s financial aid office, this wouldn’t have happened. But I was feeling stressed about my thesis, so I let myself get sucked into internet research land.
At first, I was only looking up how long the average divorce took in the 1920s, but that just made me think of my parents’ divorce, which made me angry, so I decided to do research for my romance novel instead. I still haven’t decided on the profession of my main character, so I fell down a hole of internetarticles about weird and wacky jobs. Ash artists, gum scrappers, duck trainers, chocolate tasters, and even professional snugglers, which has me wondering if that’s actually what they do or just code for something else.
If I hadn’t gotten so distracted, reading while I walked, I’d be back at Mom’s room by now. Instead, I’m standing in a hallway that looks almost identical to all the other hallways, except for the artwork on the wall.
