Ten
Ten
The waiting room at the local hospital’s ER is a scene from a postapocalyptic book. Or, at the very least, a leftover set from a B-list zombie flick. Every chair is occupied by some injured or ill person. Glimpses of infected cuts, oozing gashes, and limbs twisted at unnatural angles are on display, like a free art exhibit themed around pain. Bunny, who slipped back on her sunglasses and quilted jacket before Ellie all but wrestled her into the car ( I haven’t even finished my coffee! ), has her arms tight against her sides. Since they’ve arrived, she’s reminded Ellie at least a dozen times not to touch anything.
“I don’t understand why we’re here,” Bunny whispers as she awkwardly stands near—though not against—a wall. There isn’t a single vacant seat. In the last two minutes, Bunny has slid her hands beneath an automated sanitizer station three times. “The germs here, Ellie. We’re both going to leave with a disease.” She rubs her palms together, the overpowering alcohol scent enough to make a person sick. “I’m in my eighties. Are you trying to kill me?”
Ever since Bunny appeared on the porch, Ellie’s heart has been engaged in a full-on gymnastics routine. Her mother, a senior citizen who hasn’t traveled alone in decades, is now here, despite storms and nightfall and the unbendable rules of time. Ellie’s opening reaction—aside from shock—was that Bunny’s outrageous announcement and unplanned visit were meant to be a lesson about the sanctity of marriage. Of course, she quickly erased this thought from the whiteboard of ideas in her mind. Bunny had said she’d walked over one thousand miles through the night. And though her knees aren’t so bad for a woman her age—all those humid morning jaunts around the condo community have helped to prevent full-blown arthritis from eating away at her joints—the situation does not make sense. Which is how Ellie arrived at conclusion number two: her mother is in the midst of an extreme form of fast-moving dementia. But she half wrote off this narrative, as well. If her mother’s neurology is indeed short-circuiting, she would not have been capable of navigating the world of airplanes and taxis.
Honestly, Ellie does not have a clue.
As Bunny sat sipping her allegedly terrible coffee, the only thing Ellie could think to do was to call Frank from Bunny’s phone. Her call went straight to his voicemail box, which—no real surprise (he still hardly understood how to use his device)—was full. Left with limited options, Ellie threw her travel clothes back on—previously worn white T-shirt, wrinkled jeans, still-damp leather sandals, not a stitch of makeup—tossed on her book bag, and instructed her mother to put down the mug ( You don’t even like that roast! ) and get in the car.
Now, Ellie stands inches from Bunny, who inexplicably looks perfectly fine. Around them, humanity, on the other hand, appears to be falling apart at the seams, the air inside the ER just one stale, probably contagious cough.
“We need to have you checked out, Mom.” Ellie strains an ear toward the check-in desk, gathering information about wait times, half wondering if she is the one experiencing a health crisis, maybe a full-blown mental health break, a consequence of the trauma set off by the impending divorce. “Something’s not ... right.”
Bunny tugs up the neckline of her inky-colored blouse, pulling the fabric over her nose and mouth, like a makeshift face mask. “I’d certainly agree with that,” she declares, her movements shimmying her palm tree accessory like an exotic dancer.
“When did you get that pin, Mom?” Ellie’s eyes are focused on its jewels, a more preferable sight than their surroundings. “I’ve never seen you wear it.”
“What are you talking about!” Bunny practically shouts, the volume of one’s voice mattering less as one ages. “I wear this every day! It’s my Florida pin! You know that!” Her brows furrow like two disgruntled caterpillars. “The one that makes me think about my perfect retirement.” She pulls her face away from her shirt, a tortoise coming out of its shell. “Not that I’ll ever get it,” she mumbles.
“What does that mean?” Ellie feels her eyes taper at their corners. “Not get what ?”
“Oh, don’t worry about it.” Bunny reaches for more hand sanitizer. “Anyway, I’ve had this pin for years. Your father bought it for me on that trip.”
Ellie glances down at her twice-worn T-shirt, which she acknowledges smells less than fresh. She thinks about Jonah, about their trip, wondering about his morning. If he took a hot shower in his hotel, if he hopped on a train and headed into his office, if he’s spoken with Maggie. Or if, like Ellie, he is also up against some type of bespoke marital-inspired mental malfunction. She exhales long and slow, adding to the room’s decaying air, and wishes he were here, but she quickly brushes the thought aside. Handling situations like this is her job now. Bunny is her mother, after all, not his. She’ll call Jonah shortly, she decides, once she’s pieced together more concrete information about the puzzle that has been her morning.
“I’d really like to leave.” Bunny shakes her hands to dry the remaining alcohol foam. “I know my news is very surprising, though it does not, based on my current understanding, constitute a medical emergency.” She drops her voice. “Though I could probably benefit from some antacids. I have terrible heartburn and agita from that coffee you insist on buying.” She turns, but before she reaches the exit, a female nurse steps into the room.
“Adams?” the young woman asks, her eyes glued to her clipboard.
Bunny’s shoulders instantly perk up, pleased by the sound of her own last name, even though she gained it through the marriage she’s about to leave. She pivots, as if being summoned for a desirable dinner reservation (a knockoff Olive Garden, say) and not a seat on a springy hospital bed. “That’s us!” she declares with an amicable wave of her hand.
“Yup,” Ellie says, already dreading what the rest of the day may bring. “That’s us.”
The actual ER is a symphony of beeps. Bunny lies on a cot, which she’s made a point to let every nurse know is very uncomfortable. A blood pressure cuff and assorted wires dangle from her arms like tentacles. The only thing that separates them from the rest of the crowded room is a not nearly thick enough fabric curtain.
“Mom, what is going on?” Aside from some of Bunny’s planned surgeries, for which Ellie always flew to Florida, she has never sat with her mother like this. For a woman her age, Bunny is in good health. She remembers to take her medications. Ever since their big move, she’s enjoyed her daily walks, paired with late-afternoon swims. She likes her sweets (Who doesn’t?), though mostly she eats okay. “Give me something to work with here.”
Bunny tugs at one of her cords. “Your father and I are not happy anymore,” she explains, failing to mention her travel itinerary, as though her announcement is the most confounding part of this day.
While they talk, Ellie uses Bunny’s phone to contact Frank again. The calls go straight to voicemail. Her messages are trapped by a green line, like a type of electronic purgatory.
“I know it’s difficult for you to understand,” Bunny continues. Beneath the harsh hospital lighting, her skin appears pale, any hint of the sun-kissed color or creamy coral blush that brightened her face over the weekend now washed out from the fluorescents. “Marriage, Ellie—it’s—it’s harder than you can even imagine.”
Ellie feels her eyes widen, like a cartoon character faced with a stack of TNT. She looks at Bunny with a new sense of curiosity and confusion and tries to determine if her brain is powering down or if, in some very cruel and dramatic way, her mother is out to prove something.
“How are we doing in here?” The doctor pulls back the curtain and walks straight to Bunny’s bed. He has his back to Ellie as he notes the numbers on Bunny’s machines. “What brings you in?”
“Before we go any further, are you Catholic?” Bunny taps her cross necklace, not yet far enough inside the hospital’s innards for her jewelry to be removed. “Because if I die here today, I’d like to make sure someone knows to call in a priest to read off the last rites.”
Ellie feels her chest heave at this comment. “Mom!” Before she can apologize for her mother, the phone pings, an alert that her messages to Frank have finally gone through.
“I am Catholic, though I assure you it won’t matter.” The doctor chuckles. “You’re not dying today.” He pats Bunny’s IV-strung hand, then finally turns around to face Ellie. “And don’t worry,” he adds. “My mother would have asked the same thing.”
Ellie looks up, prepared to thank the doctor for his understanding, and hopefully to share a short-lived laugh in this awful place. But when she sees his face, the blood from her head rushes down to her feet—a vascular waterfall—as she takes him in: peridot-green eyes, cheekbones like arrows, square jaw, flaxen hair. Their gazes connect, and when they do, Ellie sees a flash of recognition steal across his expression, too.
“Jack?” Ellie asks.
And then she promptly blacks out.
When Ellie finally comes to, she’s on the bed. Jack—whom she has learned is known around the hospital as Dr. Collins—hovers over her, peering into her pupils with a pen-size medical flashlight.
“Welcome back,” Jack says, his smile a banner of perfect teeth. “It’s certainly nice to see you.” He tucks his light into the pocket of his medical coat and then leans back, giving Ellie some personal space. “Glad to see you’re okay.”
Ellie blinks—one, two, three times—before she sees Bunny, who stands at the foot of the bed, gripping her gold cross.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Bunny proclaims the second she sees that Ellie’s eyes have opened. “What’s the matter with you?” She poses this question as if Ellie has self-elected to collapse. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”
“Mom!” Ellie hasn’t even sat up yet. “Are you serious? I’m forty-nine. And I’m—”
“Single,” Bunny quickly chimes in, a newly minted matchmaker. She gives Dr. Collins a look. “And Catholic!” She contorts her aging face. “Not fully practicing, but ...”
Ellie suddenly feels like she’s sixteen, like her mother has just embarrassed her in front of the cute high school quarterback.
“Well, it looks like I’ve kept my word.” Jack smiles and looks back and forth between mother and daughter, his cheekbones somehow lifted even higher than normal. “Everyone here is leaving perfectly alive and intact.”
“Thank God.” Bunny reaches for her jacket, still draped across the foot of the bed. “In that case, I need to excuse myself.” Behind Jack’s back, Bunny makes a dramatic nudging motion, as if Ellie should launch herself at him. “I’ll meet you near the main exit,” she says with a wink as she leaves through the fabric curtain.
“What’s going on with my mother?” Ellie asks the second she’s gone. Not Hello . Not How have you been the last two decades? She pulls herself up, remembering her appearance, and does her best to smooth her knotty, sleep-matted hair into a low bun. “What did her labs show?”
Jack’s face glows with the confidence of a man who’s about to deliver positive news. “Everything looks good. The nursing staff filled me in about what you told them happened earlier today.” He tilts his head at Ellie now, the attractive curves in his facial expression newly shaped like a question mark. “To be honest, what she told them seemed to check out.”
“No, no, no.” Ellie swings her legs off the uncomfortable bed. “That’s not right.”
“All the information is detailed in her medical history in the hospital’s computer system,” Jack explains, and as he does, Ellie is overwhelmed by a familiar prickly sensation, the feeling that he’s trying to convince her of something she already knows is not true. “The nurses triple-checked.”
Ellie thinks back to the last time she saw him. She was twenty-six and seated on that scratchy yellow couch, listening as he broke her heart into a hundred pieces, his announcement like a verbal hammer straight to her chest.
They’d dated for just shy of one year—which in the span of a whole life, isn’t very long, but when you’re in your twenties, it can feel meaningful. He’d attended Princeton and then stayed in New Jersey to attend medical school, which he was halfway through when he met Ellie. She sold him a copy of Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night , a fact that in retrospect probably should have been her first sign. They’d had a good run—reading books and drinking beer and going out for Indian food and sometimes saying “I love you,” and honestly for a while Ellie really believed she might marry him.
That morning, as she’d sat on his awful couch and listened to him talk about how he hadn’t cheated on her—though, he guessed he hadn’t not cheated on her, either, since he’d been driving back home to Westchester every Thursday for over a month to hang out with his high school flame—some part of her felt broken.
Back in the ER, a commotion erupts outside the fabric curtain. From what Ellie can hear, another patient—obviously in much worse shape—is screaming show tunes.
“I’d better go.” Already sensing that her choice to bring her mother here has been a waste, Ellie reaches for her book bag and slides the straps back on, right as a new question pops into her mind. “Have you lived around here this whole time?” she asks before she leaves, thinking back to the last time she saw him and that whole wild, transitional time in her life. Ellie is not the sort of woman to waste hours stalking people from her past on social media. She’s never crossed paths with him in their not-so-big town. Still, she feels like she should have known he was living here—not back in New York, near his own parents—all this time. “I thought you moved home all those years ago.”
He half smiles, revealing a sliver of his perfect, white teeth. “Change of plans.” He shrugs and stuffs a hand into his lab coat pocket. “I decided to stay.”
Ellie nods at Jack, a sort of thank-you for his time. “I’ll, um—I’ll see you around, I guess.”
Jack’s thin, pink lips remain in a subdued U shape as he steps aside so Ellie has the space to walk freely past.
She pulls open the curtain and takes a step.
“Hey, Ellie,” Jack says before she leaves, his green eyes narrowing with a thought.
She glances back at him over her bag’s shoulder strap, not sure she even wants to hear what he has to say.
“Despite the circumstances ...,” he tells her, his face quickly flushing, as if he’s downed a pint of beer. “Well, it’s just—” He bites his bottom lip. “You look good.”