Chapter 43
CHAPTER 43
OWEN
August 4
The long, slow trudge through the rest of the summer begins. The first two weeks of August are usually slow, with kids out of camp and not yet sharing germs at school.
But it doesn’t feel slow. Not to me. I keep myself busy, staying late to see extra patients and do follow-ups. I ride so many miles on the Peloton that I think the thing now sighs when I get on it. I offer to help my brother work on the sixty thousand half-finished house projects, even though I have the carpentry skills of hyperactive puppy. I even pick up a few shifts at my dad’s hardware store.
Anything to distract myself from the constant low thrum of stress that now exists beneath my skin.
Wyatt’s absence is like a wound I have to work not to pick at. I skip drinks with my brothers at the Half Pint. I make sure Fatima does Eden’s RSV follow-up.
But mostly I throw myself into work. I refer Avery Madison to an allergist for his persistent sinus infections. I send Kayla Marshall for a bone scan after two broken legs in six months. I take every open volunteer slot at the after-hours clinic and all the extra on-call shifts Fatima will give me.
And I wait for my life to go back to the way it was before Wyatt, when I filled my days with answering texts and calls from my patients’ parents, before I knew how fragile everything was.
Before I knew how destructive I could be.
I’m in my office planning an HPV vaccine clinic when Fatima pops her head in.
“Yo, I’m here to snag the on-call phone,” she says.
It’s sitting on my desk, the screen already lit up with messages. The office closed only twenty minutes ago, and I’ve already fielded a call about poison ivy exposure from Joseph Blake’s mother. He’s had it twice before, and each time it gets a little more gnarly, spreads a little more aggressively, so I told her I’d stay late and she could bring him in for a steroid shot.
“I can just keep it,” I say, clenching the phone in my fist. “I don’t mind.”
Fatima shakes her head. “Nope. You’ve had it all week, and while I appreciate the break, Daphne wants to watching 2001: A Space Odyssey this weekend. Do you know how boring that movie is? I’m fighting for my life to stay awake. The on-call phone is my ticket out.”
“Come on, that movie’s a classic,” I try, but I can hear the edge of desperation in my voice. I try a smile, but Fatima frowns.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I lean back in my chair and try to relax, like I need to prove it to her.
“Right. Fine,” she says, but I can tell she doesn’t believe me. She holds out her hand. “Give me that phone.”
I sigh. “Fine.”
“Seriously, what’s going on with you? You’ve been snappish with the front desk staff, and last night I drove by after dinner and your car was still here. And while I appreciate you taking the phone for the entire week of our anniversary, you seem off.” She pauses, then grins. “Are you not getting laid anymore?”
“Out,” I groan, pointing at the door.
“Try to relax this weekend, okay? Like, for-real relax, not whatever high school theater production version of relaxing you’re doing,” she says, waving her hand at my slumped form. “Remember, Owen, the body keeps the score.”
And fuck, I know that. My body is in knots. I’ve been sleeping like shit for weeks. Muscles in my back that I didn’t even know existed ache. Last night, in a fit of insomnia at three a.m., I decided my pillows were shot and ordered all new ones and a memory foam mattress topper.
I pull out my phone and check the shipping. They should arrive tomorrow, so hopefully a decent night’s sleep is only a day away.
Hopefully a decent night’s sleep is what I need to get back to normal.
Hopefully there’s a normal to get back to.
August 5
It’s Saturday night, and my brothers are all at the Half Pint. I told them I needed to work on a medical conference proposal, so now I’m home alone, searching the internet for medical conferences I can attend. Honestly, writing up a conference proposal sounds like a really good distraction.
This is what my life has become.
Is this what normal was before Wyatt? Was I extremely boring? Or am I being punished with this new pathetic normal for thinking I could be what Wyatt needed? Punished for being so wrong that I wrecked her?
I’m deep in the American Medical Association website when my phone lights up with a call from Francie.
A call, not a text.
My breath hitches as I answer. “What’s up, Frank?”
“How’s Wyatt?” That’s her greeting. And from the flatness of her voice, I realize I’ve been caught.
Francie has been busy with work and wedding planning these last few weeks, so we haven’t talked much, and I’ve been able to keep the truth to myself. I haven’t lied, only avoided.
“What?” I ask, the word sticking in my throat.
“How’s. Wyatt.”
“She’s, uh…she’s fine.”
“I knew it!” Francie cries.
“Knew what?”
“Something happened. I can tell. Your texts have been too careful, and you haven’t brought her up at all. Before, it was all Wyatt this and Wyatt that , and suddenly there’s nothing. Something happened, didn’t it? Don’t you dare lie to me, Owen McBride.”
I consider lying, but even though the thought makes my stomach clench. I’ve been telling so many lies lately, desperately trying to find some sense of normalcy again. So many lies, and not one of them has helped. Each one just feels like another stone in my pocket, weighing me down.
So for once, I go with the truth.
“We’re not together anymore.”
There’s silence on the other end of the line. I brace for the explosion I know is coming.
But Francie’s reply is calm. Too calm, maybe.
“Are you at home?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t move. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Francie, you don’t?—”
But she has already hung up.
The first thing she does when she walks through the door is envelop me in a hug. And I really do feel enveloped, even though she’s barely five feet tall and her head doesn’t even come past by chest. We always called Francie “the tallest women in the world” back in medical school, and this is one of the reasons why. Her presence is big .
And this hug is warm and reassuring.
I don’t realize how badly I need it until my eyes grow watery.
Without a word, she leads me into the living room and pushes me down on the couch. She’s in her pajamas, her hair tucked into a pink silk bonnet, her dark skin shiny and smelling like cocoa butter, like calling me was her last task before bedtime. She settles in beside me, tucks her feet beneath her, and places a throw pillow on her lap.
“Okay, walk me through it,” she says.
“Through what?” It’s not that I don’t know what she’s asking. It’s that suddenly there’s genuinely too much to tell. My emotions feel like a broken spigot, ready to spray in an unexpected direction at any moment.
“What happened with Wyatt?” she asks, patient.
I sigh, slumping back into the couch. “I don’t know, Francie. Everything just …” I scramble for words, but they only recede even further into the recesses of my brain. My heart begins to pound, sweat pricks at my temples, and then suddenly the words are there. They’re everywhere , loud inside my head.
You lost focus. You tried to do too many things. You broke it. You broke her. It’s your fault. You messed it up. You need to pay attention. Focus. Try harder next time. Don’t ? —
“Owen.”
I realize my hands are in Francie’s hands. She’s squeezing gently, the pressure pulling me out of my spiral.
And then I’m talking. About Eden and that night in the hospital. About what happened in the hotel room before that, how Wyatt finally said she loved me. About her history and how we exposed that clown Griffin Stone for the phony he is. About walking into the bar that night in January when I was supposed to meet Francie for a drink but instead my life changed.
I tell her about how Wyatt protects her people so fiercely, always takes care of them.
And about how I couldn’t do the same.
Francie listens to all of it, nodding and hmmm -ing but otherwise not saying a word. And when I finally stop, she waits to see if there’s more before she speaks.
“Did you ever tell Wyatt about Dylan Anders?”
My stomach curdles. “No,” I say, but then the memory surfaces of her begging me to talk about it right here in this room, asking about third year like she had any idea. And I yelled at her.
I feel like I’m being run over by a truck repeatedly, by bones being ground to dust, my insides flattened into a noxious goo.
“Well, she asked me about it at the engagement party. Apparently that witch Mina mentioned it but didn’t spill the details. So Wyatt asked me.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said it wasn’t my story to tell,” she answers, her eyes sad. “But I saw how close you were, how much you cared for her. I assumed you’d tell her eventually.”
“I didn’t,” I say, then shift uncomfortably. “It wouldn’t have made a difference.”
“Why not?”
“I guess it would have helped her understand why I ended things with her, why I can’t be in a relationship.”
Francie nods. “Say more about that.”
I shrug. “Well, you know. You were there when everything went to hell. I tried to be a good boyfriend to you and a good doctor and a good student all at the same time, but it was too much. I couldn’t focus on everything. I made mistakes. I killed Dylan Anders.”
Francie’s eyes go wide, then narrow. “First of all, no you did not. You did not . He had a freak accident at a playground, and any doctor in the hospital would’ve ordered the same treatment you did. You’re holding yourself to a standard you can never, ever reach and then punishing yourself for it, just like you did then.”
“I—”
Francie holds up her hand. “No, I’m not done.” She breathes in and out, a long, calming breath. “I already knew that was an awful time for you, but hearing you tell it now, I realize it was even worse than I thought. Because in your toxic stew of memories, you’ve gotten one crucial detail wrong.”
“What?” I ask.
She waits for me to see it, but I don’t.
“We broke up before Dylan Anders,” she says.
I rear back, trying to make sense of that.
“What? No. I?—”
“Yes. Your brain has reordered events to fit the faulty narrative you’ve been telling about yourself. That you failed at everything that night in the ER. That Dylan Anders was the inciting incident, that your anxiety came from that.” She squeezes my hands. “But you were struggling well before that, Owen. You weren’t sleeping, you were barely eating, you were working way too much. You were vibrating at a frequency so high it’s a wonder you didn’t achieve liftoff. And I tried to talk to you about it, but every time you’d just plaster on a smile and say everything was fine. We drifted apart because I didn’t want to be in a relationship with someone who couldn’t be honest with himself, much less with me, and that was that. Josh and I had our first date the night before Dylan Anders died.”
“How is that possible?” I say, wracking my brain for information that will make everything fall into place.
“You told yourself your anxiety was a result of what happened with Dylan, but I don’t think that’s it. I think you were anxious well before that,” she says. “Maybe even the whole time.”
Something inside of me cracks, and tears stream down my face.
“God, I’m such a fucking wreck,” I say, shocked to hear sobs between my words.
Francie pulls me to her, wrapping me up in another hug, and I sink my face into her shoulder as I cry.
“You’re not. You just need help, Owen. You need to let yourself be a little bit broken for a while and not try to handle everything alone,” Francie says, her voice catching. “ Please . Let me help you.”