Chapter 19
Russell
Iwake up to a text from Jules.
Jules: Good morning :)
The texting is new and started when she sent me a screen shot of an email inviting Gus onto Today, Tomorrow. With the screen shot, she’d sent another text.
Jules: You’re the pediatrician—will I seriously mess my kid up by letting him go on TV?
Russell: As a pediatrician, I can confidently say that no child star has ever faced negative repercussions.
Jules: Ha, okay, message received.
Russell: Lol, no but I’m sure it’s fine. As long as he wants to do it.
Jules: He *really* wants to do it. He’s obsessed with being on TV.
Russell: Well, I don’t see how you can deny him his fifteen minutes of fame.
Russell: Besides, maybe they’ll get him whatever he asked for.
Jules: Yeah, maybe.
Now, I scroll back down from our earlier conversation—and everything that’s come after—sit up, run my hand over my head, and text her back.
Russell: Good morning. Want coffee?
Jules: Always.
Jules: Ugh, disposal is broken again.
I’ve gotten in the habit of picking her up a coffee in the mornings and leaving it at the front desk of her building. Tonight, we’re supposed to take Gus to a new dinosaur-themed kids-centered restaurant out in Rosemont.
While walking to the coffee shop, I stop at a crosswalk and text her back.
Russell: You and Gus could always move in with me.
It’s a joke—of course it is. But there’s a part of me that really likes the idea. I have more than enough space, and if we lived together, Jules wouldn’t have to deal with aging appliances and lazy landlords. None of my appliances have broken, but if they do, I’ll replace them same day.
As I cross the street, I let myself imagine it. The two of them in my huge living room, Gus’s toys strewn about. Jules sitting at the breakfast bar with him while I cook for them.
Jules in my shower, pressed up against the shower wall, her palms creating a little halo of fog on the glass from the heat while I stand behind her, wrapping her wet hair around my fist.
“Sir? What can I get you?”
I blink and look up, realizing that, while waiting for her response, I’ve moved to the front of the line. I make our order—mine black, hers loaded with cream and sugar, the way she likes. A holiday drink with green and red sugar sprinkles on top.
When I’ve taken my place at the end of the counter, waiting for our drinks to appear, I pull my phone out and see that she’s texted back.
Jules: Yeah, right. You could be a serial killer.
Jules: Or worse, you could leave little beard hairs in the sink after you shave.
Following that is a gif from a TV show of a woman shuddering, her face a mask of disgust.
Russell: I’m a grown man and capable of cleaning up my messes. My sinks are immaculate.
Russell: You should come to my place and see for yourself.
Jules must think about the fact that the last time I was at her apartment, I was cleaning up her messes, because she responds a second later, relenting.
Jules: Touche.
Jules: But you could still be a serial killer.
The drinks are set on the counter, my name called. I collect the carrier, holding it with one hand while texting with the other.
Out on the sidewalk, Chicago is alive with tourists and pedestrians, students rushing to class and people chatting outside the cafe. I weave around them and text her back.
Russell: I’m your fiancé, Jules.
Her response comes five minutes later, a sandwich of good and bad.
Jules: Thanks for the coffee.
What follows is a picture of her kissing the coffee, a shaky red heart drawn around her and the cup. I stare at it for far, far too long.
Then, her next text comes in.
Jules: Yeah, *fake* fiancé.
And I have to stash my phone in my desk drawer and head to the locker room to get ready for surgery, which is fine, because I have no idea how to respond to that, anyway.
The surgery is supposed to be a standard mitral valve repair, maybe three- or four-hours skin to skin, but it takes much longer than that. They have to cancel my other surgeries when the patient starts to crash halfway through.
We scramble to find the bleed, and once it’s cleaned up and the patient is stable, I can resume reconstruction.
All in all, I’m on my feet for nine hours, and find the exhausted, desperate family on the other side, the mother’s hands shaking as she asks what took so long, and when she can see her son.
“As of right now, he’s stable, and the repair was successful.
” As I’m talking, I can’t stop imagining Jules standing here instead, getting news about Gus.
Can’t stop thinking about that kid on the table, what it feels like to watch someone disappear into surgery and struggle with the thoughts that they might not come back out again.
By the time I get back to my office, the sun is setting outside, my back is stiff, and I still have paperwork to finish before I can leave the hospital. I grab my phone and find several texts from Jules.
Jules: What time do you think you’ll be done today?
Jules: Hey, are you still in surgery?
Jules: Russ, text me back when you can. Sorry, just worried.
My stomach growls as I text her back. I’m not used to someone noticing when my surgeries run long, and it feels good to know that she was thinking of me. That the OR isn’t always just a timeless nebulous I disappear into.
Russell: Surgery ran long. All good—I’m going to finish up some paperwork and run down to the caf for shitty hospital food.
Russell: Probably won’t make dinner tonight, enjoy without me.
I spend half an hour in my office, distracting myself with paperwork, before I finally decide to head back down to the cafeteria for more quinoa. It’s not the worst hospital food I’ve ever had—the place where I did my residency specialized in dry and overcooked—but it’s not good, either.
When I walk into the dining hall, the lights outside around the fountain reflect over the room.
Dinner service is just about finished, and I’m so busy scoping out the station with the “healthy” offerings to see what they have left that I almost miss the two people at a table against the windows, waving their hands at me.
“Jules,” I say, when I get close enough to the table, hoping I’m not hallucinating after nine hours of staring at blood and making incisions.
“Russell!” Gus says, getting to his knees on his chair, leaning forward, and raising his voice, “We’re getting dino another night. Mommy said we should come here today.”
“I see that,” I say, eyes shifting to Jules, who moves side-to-side in her chair, looking abashed.
“Sorry, if you didn’t want visitors,” she says, clearing her throat and twirling a braid around her finger. Today her hair is in two French braids, pulled back from her face, and she looks well rested. Happy. “I thought you might want something other than sh—than silly hospital food.”
She censors herself to keep from cursing in front of Gus, and I feel something in my chest inflating. There’s a plastic bag on the counter, and she pulls it down to reveal two deli containers.
“Turns out, I really liked the food from that place that you brought over when Gus was sick,” she says, smiling as I sit down across from her. “Thought this might be just the thing after a long surgery.”
Looking at her, and at Gus reaching for the bag, talking about how hungry he is, I have a modicum of understanding for my dad’s expectations. Why he might push this settle down with a family thing so hard.
There was nobody to bring him food when surgery ran long. No friendly face waiting for him in the cafeteria. No small human sitting across from him, pulling his mind away from the precise, exacting pressure of surgery.
Gus tells me all about what he did at school today, and Jules dishes out the food, pulling the sandwich into little bites for him, disappearing to the counter to fetch little Styrofoam bowls.
Carefully, she deposits a serving of soup in each one, pushes a full bowl with a compostable spoon in front of me.
That feeling in my chest is only getting bigger. Bolstered by the smell of the deli soup, her soft smile, the way she reaches out with a hand on Gus’s back to keep him from falling out of his chair when he gets too excited.
“Well, look who it is.” A deep voice sounds to our left, sounding amused.
I blink out of my daze and turn as Orie walks up to the table, a Saran-wrapped sandwich in his left hand. He’s in scrubs and a surgical cap.
Gus stands up on his chair and sticks his hand out before Jules or I can speak. “I’m Gus.”
Orie laughs and shakes his hand, darting a glance at me like get a load of this kid. I raise my eyebrows back, thinking yeah, he’s smart.
Like his mother.
“Nice to meet you, Gus. I’m Orie.” Turning to us, he tilts his head and says, “Still not used to seeing Russ acting all lovey dovey. Especially not at work. Remember when you used to tear into Gomez for calling his girlfriend on his breaks?”
I wave my hand, “We were interns. And we are not acting lovey dovey. We’re just sitting here.”
“I could feel the love and the dove all the way over there,” Orie says, gently pushing against my shoulder. “It’s sick.”
Jules laughs, but it doesn’t come out quite right. “Well,” she says, pushing back her chair, her gaze darting between Orie and me. “I should get Gus home before bedtime. Orie, it was nice to see you again.”
“And you. Nice to meet you, Gus.”
Just like that, Jules and Gus are gone as quickly as they appeared, and I’m blinking at the absence, the empty chairs.
“You know,” Orie says, sliding into the empty spot Jules just occupied, shaking his head as he wrestles with his sandwich. “It’s the weirdest thing—don’t you think Gus and Ray look kinda alike?”
I let out a breath, but the moment Orie says it, I know it’s true. Orie came back here last year during the holidays, and met Alena and her kids, and he’s right. Gus and Ray have the same nose.
My father’s nose.
My nose.
Surely, it’s a genetically common trait. A phenotype that’s passed down across ethnic groups. I could walk past any other white man on the street and expect to see that nose.
Without warning, my mind reminds me of that night years ago, the night my father announced his cancer diagnosis. The woman on the balcony. How she disappeared and I never saw her again.
But it’s a stupid train of thought, and I’m not going to follow it off the cliff. That woman was too old to be Jules. And, besides, I know better.
Even if she’d lied about being on birth control, or if we’d fallen within that percent of error for protection, I couldn’t have gotten her pregnant, anyway. It’s not biologically possible. I have the world’s best built-in contraceptive.
“Russell?” Orie asks, waving his hand, and I look up at him. We stare at each other for a second, then he says, like it’s not the first time, “You wanna share some of that soup?”
“Yeah,” I laugh, shaking my head and running my hand through my hair. “Go for it, man.”
But even after we eat and clean up, even after I go back to my office and bury myself in paperwork, I can’t stop thinking about Gus’s nose. The similarities there.
And I can’t stop thinking about what a pointless waste of wishful thinking it is to linger on it, either.