Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
JADEN
The whole drive to the clinic, Nyla looked like a frightened deer. Even now, after we’ve dropped the patient off at Halifax Harbor Hospital, the guilt is written all over her face.
Together we fill out the necessary forms at the ER coordinator’s desk.
‘You still need to sign here for the administration of the pain meds.’ I slide the clipboard over to her.
With her lips pressed together, she does what I asked, then looks up at me. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Everything turned out fine,’ I say. By now I know she’s exceptionally good at tormenting herself with all kinds of things, and this time she’s overdoing it again. No one was in danger, it’s not a big deal. ‘Let’s grab something to eat in the cafeteria.’
After the boozy night, my stomach is rebelling and the energy drinks are doing their part, even if I would never admit that to Nyla. She’d just give me a lecture, and she wouldn’t even be wrong. I’m actually not very nice to my body. But that’s just how it works for me. That’s how I work.
Together we take the elevator to the tenth floor. Nyla’s still unchanged, desperate expression gets to me, even though I try not to let it.
‘So, the thing is, I…’ Nyla begins, but doesn’t finish the sentence.
I glance at her briefly and recognize a kind of pain in her eyes I’m not made for. ‘Whatever that was about, it’s unimportant,’ I say soothingly.
The elevator doors open. Nyla nods awkwardly, we walk together to the cafeteria and weave our way between the other visitors to the refrigerated counter with the prepared delicacies.
Nyla chooses a quinoa salad, I take the biggest salami sandwich I can find. The fact that she eyes my lunch as if it were pure poison doesn’t surprise me, given what I know about her so far.
A little later we are sitting on stools at the counter that runs along the entire window front and offers a view of Halifax Harbor. Until now the sky has been nothing but gray, but now the clouds are breaking. The first rays of sun push their way through and make the ocean sparkle.
‘Believe me, I really would have liked to help.’ Nyla pokes around in her salad.
I can’t help but be puzzled by her yet again. Why doesn’t she just leave it behind her?
Searching for the right response, I bite into my sandwich and chew on it for as long as possible. ‘Digging around in the past makes no sense. You can’t change it anymore.’
She lets her fork sink. ‘Not change it, but understand it and grow from it.’
Once again I make the mistake of looking at her. She looks combative, the way she’s sitting on the stool and eating her bland salad as if it were a feast.
‘For a better future,’ she adds now.
My heart contracts painfully, which is crazy, because it feels a bit like longing. And once again she’s managed to confuse me. To get under my skin and, I don’t know, set something off there.
I’d like to crack a joke, but my head is strangely empty. ‘And what does a better future look like for you?’
A loving expression spreads across her face. ‘I want to be able to help people for a very long time to come,’ she says. ‘To give them time to make their dreams come true.’
Dreams, the word echoes inside me.
My chest tightens.
I set the sandwich down on the plate and raise my brows in a prompting way. ‘I see, and what do you do when you’re not busy helping people?’
For a moment she looks downcast, then she tells me about yin yoga sessions and long walks. ‘My roommates June and Olive always make fun of me—the two of them seem to run a marathon every week—but I need it,’ she says, taking a bite of her salad.
I try to picture her strolling through a park. ‘Isn’t that boring?’
She quickly shakes her head. ‘It’s meditative, it helps me wind down.’
Absentmindedly, I take a bite of my sandwich. Wind down… Part of me is fascinated by how enthusiastic she is when she talks about it. As if it were a good thing.
‘And what do you do then, when you’ve reached the bottom?’ I hear myself ask.
‘Well, I prepare myself for all sorts of things that might come my way.’ Her fingers wander to her napkin. ‘I think about how I might react in different situations, decide what I want to do and what I don’t. Things like that.’
So in her mind she’s always far, far away, imagining scenarios—presumably in their worst possible version. Yes, that fits her.
‘That sounds exhausting,’ I say.
She feels for her wrist as if she were searching for something there. The bracelet, maybe, that she’s not allowed to wear on duty. ‘It’s necessary.’
‘What for?’ I ask.
Obviously, she doesn’t understand my confusion. ‘As I said earlier: for a better future.’
I would love to ask, and what if there isn’t one?, but I manage to hold back just in time. This is not a conversation we should be having.
‘And you?’ she asks now. ‘What plans do you have for your life?’
She’s asking the wrong question. She’s preoccupied with the wrong thoughts anyway, the wrong topics. ‘Look out the window.’
She frowns. ‘What does that have to do with your plans?’
‘Tell me what you see out there.’ I look at her expectantly.
She still seems flustered as she looks out through the window front. ‘The harbor.’
Oh, thank God, she’s going along with it. ‘Wrong. Try again.’
With a sigh, she lets her gaze wander. She may not even notice it, but I see her muscles relax. ‘The boats, the water, a few seagulls.’
‘Nope.’ Watching Nyla grow more and more confused but at the same time more and more curious is something I enjoy. ‘Still wrong.’
She lifts her shoulders and turns her head toward me. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
So she doesn’t turn back into that tense version of herself, I grin at her. ‘A good moment. That’s what you see.’
‘A… good moment?’ A thousand question marks dominate her expression.
Cute. Almost as cute as when she smiles.
‘Yeah. Think about it. We’re sitting here, warm, dry, with a view of the sea, and for the first time today the sun’s coming out.’ I look at her expectantly, but she still doesn’t seem to get it. ‘Nothing’s on fire, nothing’s collapsing, no one’s screaming for help.’
She grunts her agreement, her expression turning thoughtful.
‘This right here is a damn good moment.’ I don’t really know why, but I lean toward her.
‘If I were busy making plans, I would have missed it. Just like you just did.’ Just like she seems to miss an awful lot, awfully often.
Everything that’s fun, that makes you happy, that gives you the feeling of being alive.
Lost in thought, she turns back to the world outside the window. For a while, she silently watches the seagulls that seem to circle weightlessly above the harbor. ‘Yeah, I guess I did,’ she says then, without taking her eyes off the view.
A gentle smile plays around her lips, her features are soft, her breathing flows easily. Seeing her like this makes a warm feeling rise in me.
And all at once, I don’t want anything more than to put my arm around her and look out into the world with her, where the sun is fighting for more and more space in the sky and making everything glow.
To hold her, just a little, to hold on to this moment in which everything is good for both of us.
A few seconds of happiness.
Without thinking, I move closer to her.
A fraction of a second later, the ringing of my phone shatters this strange mood that has just built up between us. Like a sudden downpour that abruptly ends a summer’s day. I flinch and pull back. Still slightly disoriented, I take the phone out of the breast pocket of my jacket.
Mom.
Again.
I decline the call.
Nyla spears a cherry tomato with her fork. ‘Aren’t you going to answer?’
‘It’s not important,’ I say, turning back to my sandwich. But before I can take a bite, my phone rings again.
Mom again.
‘That sounds urgent.’ Nyla nods toward the phone, her expression worried again.
I mute the call and place the phone face down on the counter. ‘It definitely isn’t,’ I say, even though of course I can’t know that. On the contrary, Mom has been trying to reach me for days. She’s never this persistent, and still… I don’t want to pick up.
The phone has hardly stopped ringing when it starts again. Everything inside me tightens, and more than anything I wish I could relive that moment with Nyla from before. That instant when nothing else mattered but what we saw, smelled, felt, and tasted.
Nyla raises her eyebrows in challenge. ‘What’s wrong, you superhero? Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a phone call?’
‘Never,’ I insist.
‘Hm, that’s not what it looks like.’ There’s a curious sparkle in her eyes.
Damn.
Any second now she’s going to ask what’s going on—and that could end even worse than her finding out what Mom wants.
‘Okay, what …’
I quickly raise my hand to stop her. Then I suck in a sharp breath and, with no other choice, reach for the damn phone.