“Mark is totally Cheerios,” Gabby says. But she doesn’t say it as if she’s in on the joke. She says it as if it’s a Zen riddle that has blown her mind. “Not Honey Nut, either. Straight-up, heart-healthy Cheerios.”
“OK,” I tell her. “So one day, when you’re ready, probably a bit far off into the future, you call Count Chocula.”
“Just like that?” she asks.
“Yep,” I say. “Just like that.”
“Just like that,” she says back to me.
We walk for a little while, and then she points to a series of lights shining in long rows.
“That’s the Urban Light installation I was telling you about,” she says.
We walk closer to it and stop just in front of it, across the street. I have a wide view.
It’s made up of old-fashioned streetlights, the kind that look as if they belong on a studio lot. The lights are beautiful, all clustered together in rows and columns. I’m not sure I understand the meaning behind it, exactly. I don’t know if I get the artist’s intention. But it is certainly striking. And I’m learning not to read too much into good things. I’m learning just to appreciate the good while you have it in your sights. Not to worry so much about what it all means and what will happen next.
“What do you think?” Gabby asks me. “It’s pretty, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I like it. There’s something very hopeful about it.”
And then, as quickly as we came, we turn around and walk back toward the car.
“You’re going to find someone great one day,” I say to Gabby. “I just have this feeling. Like we’re headed in a good direction.”
“Yeah?” she says. “I mean, all signs sort of point otherwise.”
I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I think everything is happening exactly as it’s supposed to.”
It’s early in the morning, and Gabby and I have been lying on the floor all night. The sun is starting to break through the clouds, into the windows, and straight onto my eyes. It gets bright so early now.
“Are you awake?” I whisper. If she’s sleeping, I want her to sleep. If she’s awake, I need her to help me get up and pee.
“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t think I slept all night.”
“You could have woken me up,” I tell her. “I would have stayed up with you.”
“I know,” she says. “I know you would have.”
I turn my head toward her and then push my torso up using my arms, so I’m sitting down. My body feels tight, tighter than it ever felt in the hospital.
“I have to pee,” I tell her.
“OK,” she says, getting up slowly. It’s clumsy, but she’s up. I can see now that her eyes are red, her cheeks are splotchy, her skin looks sallow and yellow. She’s not doing well. I suppose that’s to be expected.
“If you can get me up and bring me my walker, I can do it,” I tell her. “I want to do it on my own.”
“OK,” she says. She gets the walker from where we left it by the front door yesterday. She unfolds it and locks it into place. She puts it in front of me. And then she puts her arms under mine and lifts me. It’s sounds so simple, standing up. But it’s incredibly hard. Gabby bears almost my entire weight. It can’t be easy for her. She’s so much tinier than I am. But she manages to do it. She leans me on my walker and then lets go. Now I’m standing on my own, thanks to her.
“OK,” I say. “I’ll just be anywhere from three to sixty minutes. Depending on whether I manage to fall into the toilet.”
She tries to laugh, but her heart isn’t in it. I move myself slowly, step by step, in the right direction. “You’re sure you don’t want help?” she asks.
I don’t even turn around. “I got it,” I tell her. “You just take care of you.”
It feels as if the bathroom is a million miles away, but I get there, one tiny, tentative step at a time.
When I get back to the living room, I’m feeling cold, so I shuffle over to my things that Gabby brought home from the hospital. I rummage through the bag, looking for my sweatshirt. When I finally see it and pull it out, an envelope drops to the floor. The front simply says “Hannah.” I don’t recognize the handwriting, but I know who it’s from.
Hannah,
I’m sorry I had to trade your care to another nurse. I can’t keep treating you. I enjoy your company too much. And my coworkers are starting to take notice.
I’m sure you know this, but it’s highly unprofessional of any of us on the nursing staff to have a personal relationship with a patient, no matter the scope. I’m not allowed to exchange any personal contact information with you. I’m not allowed to try to contact you after you leave the hospital. If we were to run into each other on the street, I’m not even supposed to say hello to you unless you say hello first. I could be fired.
I don’t have to tell you how much this job, this work, means to me.
I’ve been thinking about breaking the rules. I’ve been thinking about giving you my number. Or asking for yours. But I care too much about my work to compromise it by doing something I’ve sworn not to do.
All of this is to say that I wish we had met under different circumstances.
Maybe one day we will end up at the same place at the same time. Maybe we’ll meet again when you aren’t my patient and I’m not your nurse. When we are just two people.
If we do, I really hope you say hello. So that I can say hello back and then ask you out on a date.
Warmly,
Henry
“He left me the house,” I hear from the couch. I tuck the letter away in my bag and turn to see Gabby crying, looking at the coffee table. She has the deed to the house in her hands.
“Yeah,” I say.
“His parents paid for the down payment. A lot of his own money went into the mortgage.”
“Yeah.”
“He feels bad,” she says. “He knows what he’s doing is screwed up, and he’s still doing it. That’s what’s so strange about this. That’s not like him.”
I set the walker in front of the couch and slowly let myself down. I really hope we aren’t moving from this couch anytime soon, because I think that’s all the energy I have for a while.
Gabby looks at me. “He must really love her.”
I look at her and frown. I put my hand on her back. “It doesn’t justify what he did,” I tell her. “His timing, his selfishness.”
“Yeah,” she says. “But . . .”
“But what?”
“He did everything he could except stay.”
I hold her hand.
“Maybe he just has a feeling about her,” Gabby says, echoing my sentiments from yesterday morning. Although, I’ll tell you, it feels like a decade ago. “Maybe he can just tell.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything.
“I was never sure he was the one. Even when you asked me the other day, I could sort of feel myself sugarcoating what I really thought. I just thought Mark was a smart decision. We’d been together for a long time, and I just figured that’s what you do. But I never had the moment when I just knew. You,” she says to me, “have that feeling.”
I dismiss her. “I’ve had that feeling before, though. For a long time, I had that feeling about Ethan. Now I have it about Henry. I mean, maybe it doesn’t count, if you have it for more than one person.”
“But I never had it. About him. He never had it about me. And maybe he has it now. It makes me feel a little better,” she says. “To think that he left me because he met the one.”
“Why does that make you feel better?” I cannot possibly conceive of how that could make her feel better.
“Because if I’m not his soul mate, then that means he’s not mine. There’s someone else out there for me. If he found his, maybe I’ll find my own.”
“And that makes you feel better?”
She holds her index finger and thumb together to form the smallest gap. “Ever so slightly,” she says. “So much it’s almost nonexistent.”