Chapter 31
Russell
Itold Jules to let me know if she heard anything, but I get the page from Orie before she hears from the hospital’s notification system.
He’s in the recovery room, Orie texts. Doing well.
Gus’s surgery goes perfectly.
I read the notes as I look for Orie, and when I find him in the locker room, I grill him while he’s changing. Maybe I’m a little too direct with the questions about his approach and finish, but I have to be sure.
I need to assure myself that it was the right decision to have my friend do the surgery instead of doing it myself. The longer Jules and I kept that thing up, and the closer I got to her and Gus, the more I realized it would be an ethical dilemma for me to operate on him.
So, I was already in the process of briefing Orie on Gus’s case, making sure he would be able to do the surgery to the same quality as I could. Then, after that day in the park, I knew there was no chance I could literally hold Gus’s heart in my hands.
Orie runs me through the surgery from skin to skin.
Gus’s abnormality—the hole in his heart—really was a small one, and Orie did a great job fixing it.
There wasn’t a single complication—which tracks.
Orie is a good surgeon. I knew that, and I know that, but it’s hard to get it through your head when you’re watching the kid you’ve come to care a lot about get rolled away into the OR, and you have no control over how things go.
“Now,” Orie says, slamming his locker shut and turning to me, eyebrows raised nearly into his scrub cap. “Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on with you and Jules? It was very awkward in there, man.”
“I’d better go check on her,” I say, dodging the question and slipping back into the hallway.
I find Jules in Gus’s hospital room. While it is a standard surgery, we always keep cardio-surgical patients for the night, just to keep an eye on them. Her bag rests against the bench, and I’m already wincing at the thought of her sleeping on the pseudo-couch under the window.
As though it’s a major fuck you from the universe, Jules is even more beautiful today, her hair looped into a low bun, her curves evident under a soft pink sweat suit.
She looks tired, which just makes me want to hold her.
More than anything, I want to fold her in my arms and tell her that everything is going to be okay.
I want to make everything okay.
Earlier, when she was crying, it fucking killed me not to pull her into me and let her rest her head on my chest.
But I can’t let myself get close now. She might just keep asking me questions. Keep pushing about Gus and that DNA test.
And I already decided this morning, before coming here, that I had to be done with this.
Jules deserves more than a man like me. More than someone who can’t bring himself to face the truth of a paternity test. A stronger person would be able to look at the negative result without flinching. But I know, deep down, that I’m just not that person.
“Russell?”
It’s Gus who sees me loitering in the doorway first. I scan him over quickly, looking for any sign, the surgery might not be taking. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes a crash can occur even after the recovery room, even when we think the patient is in the clear.
As a pediatric cardio-surg patient, Gus will likely be in this hospital room for several days, until the staff can be sure he’s doing well.
Now, he looks pale and slightly weak, not his energetic self, but it’s surprising that he’s awake and out of the anesthesia, awake enough to talk.
Even though his chest was split open just an hour ago, Gus gives me the winning smile that’s been winning people over online. Of course, he’s already won me over.
“Hey, little man,” I say, stepping into the room and keeping my eyes off Jules. I can’t look at her right now—if she’s crying again, it’s going to fuck over all my carefully laid intentions to leave her alone. “How you feeling?”
“Tired,” Gus says, letting his head loll to the side, and I can’t help it—I chuckle. He’s way too charming for his own good. Then, before I can say anything else, Gus says, “But I’m still doing my Christmas play. Mommy says I’ll be good enough to, since it’s so many sleeps away.”
“That’s great,” I say, stomach flipping at where this might be going.
And sure enough, Gus asks, “Are you coming to my play, Russell?”
I bite my tongue, and this time, I’m unable to keep myself from glancing over at Jules. She sits up straight in her chair, staring at Gus. Her eyes are damp, and I force myself to look away.
“I, uh—” I scrub my hand over the back of my head, feeling, again, like a major ass. But I can’t do it, not to myself, and not to Jules. The best thing to do is let this go, let them go. “Not this time, buddy. But—”
Before I can change the subject, wish him well and get the hell out of there, Gus looks up at me with blue eyes so pale they’re practically gray. Wide and confused, he asks, “If you were my dad, would you come to the play?”
The air is knocked out of me. I stand by his bed and stare down at him, mouth open without a word to say.
Without warning, images flash back to my mind—the test results. The look on Margot’s face when she realized I could never get her pregnant. The way she’d looked at me, and how she’d eventually tried to let me down easy, though all it did was make me feel defective.
Could I recover from Jules’ looking at me like that?
She needs me to take the DNA test, desperately wants to put a name and a face to Gus’s father. Or maybe she thinks the only way our relationship would ever actually work is if we were tired together with a biological offspring.
And what if I take the DNA test, survive the negative result, and his father does show up? What if Jules wants a perfect little family, and I’m no longer part of that equation?
For a moment, there’s nothing but the gentle beeping of Gus’s heart monitor, nothing but soft breathing and the rustle of bare branches outside the window.
I can feel the weight of Jules’ stare on me, the tension in the room stretching, stretching—too taut. It’s too much.
“I hope you feel better soon, buddy,” I say, instead of answering his question. From behind my back, I reveal the stuffed dinosaur I got for him weeks ago—planning to give it to him after his surgery.
“Thanks,” he says, and before he can ask me another brain-ending question, I turn and force myself to leave the room, feeling Jules’ gaze on me the entire time.