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I stab the treadmill’s touch screen, upping the pace, and force myself to run faster, to push harder. I’m aware that there’s no point in getting jealous over a younger woman I can never have, no matter how mouthwatering she is.
It’s a damn good thing she isn’t my patient. If treating her once has the power to make me lose my mind, imagine what seeing her on a regular basis would do to my sanity.
For God’s sake, she’s practically the same age as my son.
Thinking about Oliver seems to knock the sense back into me. I check the time, mentally calculating how long it should take me to get home, get ready, and drive to the restaurant.
A familiar apprehension fills my stomach. The irony of a doctor who delivers babies having a strained relationship with his own child isn’t lost on me. The sad fact is that I haven’t been a good father to my son in a very long time.
Oliver’s mother and I were barely nineteen when he came along, and while our relationship didn’t last, we made every effort to co-parent our son as friends. It was easy when he was little; all I had to do to get him laughing was blow a raspberry on his stomach. But as he got older, our relationship shifted. We couldn’t be in the same room for more than ten minutes without the conversation turning into an argument.
After a while, I stopped making the effort to see him between holidays. Short vacations became shorter visits, family dinners devolved into quick meals, which withered into even quicker phone calls. I know it’s my fault; I should have tried harder to work through our communication issues. That’s why I decided to move back to Knoxville, for Oliver. Forus.
An ache unrelated to my warmup makes me turn off the treadmill anyway. I move to the mat to stretch, but the tightness in my chest remains.
I’ve wasted so much time I could have spent getting to know my son, time that I can’t get back. I wish I could say that I came to the decision to repair our relationship on my own. But in fact, it was the loss of a friend and colleague that set me straight.
I worked alongside Dr. Sam Abernathy at my former OB/GYN practice in Virginia for eight years. He was a good man and a skilled surgeon. He did everything right. Ate healthy, worked out, and never forgot his vitamins. He took care of his family. But none of that mattered in the end; he suffered a fatal heart attack ten days after his fortieth birthday.
I’ll be forty-one in six months.
The shock of Sam’s loss was a wakeup call for me. It jostled my priorities and turned the spotlight on my regrets. Moving back to Tennessee to be closer to Oliver was the logical next step.
I may have missed out on my son’s high school prom, his sports’ games, his first heartbreak…but I’m determined to be present now, assuming he’ll have anything to do with me.
* * *
I arrive at the restaurant a few minutes early, encouraged to find Oliver already seated at the table. He’s talking to someone I can’t see from where I’m standing, and I recall that Oliver did mention inviting a friend to join us. I shoot a prayer to the patron saint of polite family discourse that all of us make it out of this meal unscathed.
My son glances up at my approach and offers me a small smile.
Off to a good start.
As I move closer, his companion comes into view—a woman in a red strapless dress, with long chestnut-colored hair flowing down her back. She turns to look at me, and my early optimism dies a painful death.
No. It can’t be her.Anyone but her.
“Hey, Dad.”
My son gives me a half-hearted wave. I manage a tight smile in return as I take the empty seat across from him.
“Good to see you, Oliver.” I steal a glance at a very wide-eyed Natasha. She looks about as shocked as I feel.
“Yeah. You, too.” He gestures to Natasha. “This is my friend, Nat. I’ve told you about her. We go to school together.”
I vaguely recall him mentioning a college friend named Nat during our brief phone conversations, but he never said her last name—not that I would’ve recalled it even if he had. Years ago, Oliver took on his stepfather’s surname when his mom remarried, which explains why Natasha didn’t make the connection this afternoon.
“Nat,” he says to Natasha, “this is my dad, Dr. Evan Ransom.”
Her gulp is audible as she meets my gaze head on.
Before either of us can respond, the waiter arrives to take our drink orders. While Oliver asks about the restaurant’s IPA options, I steal a glance at Natasha. She studies her menu intently, as if the laminated pages might hold the answer to life’s most important question: why has the universe conspired to torture us?
As soon as the waiter leaves, I clasp my hands in front of me and wait to take my cue from Natasha as to how I should approach this meeting. Finally, she sets her menu down and reaches her hand across the table.
“It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Ransom,” she says.
She wants to pretend we’re strangers.It’s just as well; why complicate an already awkward situation with the fact that I know she has a small brown mole on her inner thigh?
