Chapter 35
T he wait for Octavia to come out of surgery was interminable.
And when she came out, other than her being alive, the report wasn’t great.
More infection than they saw on the CAT scan.
Larger bowel perforation. More bleeding than they wanted.
Not out of the woods yet with getting the infection fully under control since it’s in her bloodstream.
They didn’t return her to the floor the Fritz family had taken over.
They put her in the surgical ICU (SICU) and that’s where she’s been since Friday and today is Monday.
But the SICU has different rules and we’ve only been able to see her in small shifts for small periods of time.
None of us have slept more than a few hours here or there. I’m not sure we’ve eaten much either.
But slowly, steadily, she is improving and right now, that’s all I can ask for.
My father hasn’t left Dr. Fritz’s side unless he’s in with Octavia and most of the others are bouncing in and out of the SICU waiting room.
I’ve been bringing them coffee and tea and food.
Staying as busy as I can because if I don’t keep moving, I’ll start thinking and if I start thinking, I’ll start crying and if I start crying, I won’t be able to stop.
I’ve gone to practice, working on my solos because I don’t have a choice. Plus, again, I need the distraction. I also haven’t seen much of Luca. Passing texts and phone calls and him sneaking into my bed or me doing the same in his for a few hours together even if we’re sleeping.
But it’s Monday and with the world restarting after the holiday weekend, I find myself at children’s hospital for my music therapy group on the neuro floor.
Normally my neuro day is Friday, but the cardiac floor asked if I could switch with them and I’m grateful for it.
I’m hoping to see Luca, even if it’s just for a couple minutes.
“What are we playing today?” Mac, short for MacGyver—I’m guessing his mom was a fan—asks. Nearly every week it’s a new group of kids, which is both fantastic and a bit stressful since I have to try to remember new kids and faces, but Mac was here last week.
Part of me just wants to say “fuck it, play whatever the hell you want. I’m too tired and emotionally drained to come up with anything better,” but I obviously can’t do that or Pricilla will throw me out on my ass before the words even finish tumbling from my lips.
“How about music trivia?”
“Music trivia? What’s that?” a girl whose name I’ve already forgotten— Cara? Clara? Sara?— asks.
“I’ll hand out a sheet of paper and a pencil to each of you and then I’ll play a song. You tell me to stop when you think you’ve got it and write it down. The one with the most right answers wins.”
“Wins what?”
“I brought fidgets.” I dig through my bag and pull out the small bag of prizes I have in there.
“Cool. Yeah. Let’s do it.”
“I wanted to hear you play again,” Mac states with a look in his eye that is all flirt and an attempt at seduction. Sixteen years old, he’s creepily closer in age to me than Luca is. I shudder every time I think about that.
“I can play the songs for trivia instead of pulling them up on my phone, but that will make it harder.”
“Sure will,” he quips, earning a couple of snickers from the other guys in the room.
I pop a reprimanding eyebrow at him. “Can you hold in your hormones, or do you want me to get your nurse so you can go back to your room and hang out with your mom?”
“How about you call Dr. Grosspooper instead?” someone else suggests.
Dammit. I’m never going to live that one down. It’s been passed along from group to group. “Nice one. Now let’s play before we run out of time.”
The hour and a half drags on, but it’s fun all the same.
The kids get really into the trivia, razzing and laughing and smiling, and that’s obviously the point of this.
To have kids in the hospital undergoing the worst of the worst remember what it’s like to be a kid and not a patient. Even if just for a short time.
I say goodbye to the kids, haul my cello up onto my back, and head in the direction of Luca’s office.
I texted him about five minutes ago and haven’t heard back.
If he’s in the OR or with a patient, I’ll just leave him a note on his desk and go on to rehearsal.
But as I round the corner, a loud popping sound followed by shouts startles me, throwing me out of my groggy thoughts.
A gathering of about twenty people or so stands in the hall that leads to the attendings’ offices.
They’re popping bottles of sparkling cider and have balloons and flowers and even a cake.
For a moment, I think it’s someone’s birthday until I hear rounds of congratulations and we’re so happy for you and you must be so proud, and we knew you’d get it.
I can’t get close enough to see who they’re talking to, and I stop one of the nurses who, like everyone else, is all smiles and clapping hands. “Hey,” I say to her. “What’s going on?”
“Dr. Fritz won the Treesprite Grant. It’s unbelievable.”
I blink at her, my breath feeling as though it’s been frozen in my lungs. “Treesprite Grant?”
She must misinterpret my question and befuddled expression for excited incredulous because she says, “I know, right? Amazing. I can’t believe he’ll be gone for two years, but wow, it’s such a tremendous honor.”
Two years? All that frozen breath flees my lungs and suddenly I feel like I’m melting from the inside out.
My face is hot. My muscles screaming at me as they tighten up.
Glancing over into the epicenter of the chaos, I spot him.
Luca is smiling, laughing, and talking with Grosspooper, who is shaking his hand and clapping him on the back.
They hand Luca a glass of the fake champagne and suddenly they’re toasting to Dr. Luca Fritz, winner of the Treesprite Grant.
But all I can think is, I knew it. I knew there was something he was keeping from me, and this is it.
It doesn’t even take a rocket scientist to understand why he did.
Even a simple musician and music therapist can figure it out.
He’s leaving for two years.
And he didn’t talk to me about it. Not once.
Shaky legs barely hold me up as I run out of here, heading for the exit. I need to get out of here. I can’t breathe. All I smell is hospital. All I hear is them congratulating him. All I see is his fucking smile that feels like the ultimate betrayal. A stab in the back. Or more aptly the heart.
I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him.
I knew I shouldn’t have let him back in.
My heads spins, my hand pressing into the side of the elevator, so I don’t pass out.
But the moment the shock of the cold late November air hits my face, reason starts to seep back into my clouded brain, and I take a calming breath.
Shifting over to the side of the building, I sit on a stone ledge, set my cello down beside me, pull out my phone, and make the call.
Kaplan picks up on the second ring. “Hey, babe, you okay?”
“Tell me everything about Luca and the Treesprite Grant.”
Within seconds, I’m learning all about the grant and foundation.
All the good it does in the world. How rare it is to be accepted into it.
How after Luca went back to Minnesota, he became obsessed with helping people who didn’t have proper access to healthcare.
Donating money and applying for grants that would allow him to make a real and direct impact.
It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for him.
Of that I have no doubt. Can I blame him for picking something like that over me? Over us?
I think about my job. My life. My goals.
I can’t go with him—not that he asked me to.
But I won’t offer it either. I love him, but I can’t be that eighteen-year-old girl again.
The one who lost sight of herself because of a man.
The one who never felt she was enough to make people stay.
Tears hit my cheeks and if I thought I was all cried out after the weekend I’ve had, I was wrong.
Two years.
What does that mean for us?
Was I always just the filler? The in-between girl until he found out if he won this grant? Was he even going to tell me? Finding out from a random nurse that my boyfriend won this grant is not what I saw coming.
God, how did we end up here again?
In a place where division is imminent. Where we’re dancing between two worlds, never quite lining up.
I think back on my time in London. On what those four years were like.
I had fallen in love with the right man at the wrong time.
Instead of trying to compromise or work through it, he ended it. A ruse for my own benefit, he swears.
How has this become our modus operandi?
Time ticks by as I sit out here. I know I need to go. That I’ll be late for rehearsal if I don’t. But I can’t go. I can’t leave. Quickly, I shoot off a text to Catarina, asking her to let Antonio know I’ll be a little late, and then I rise, grab my cello, and enter the hospital again.
The burning in my chest fueled by the mess in my head is enough to carry me back up to the neuro floor, down the hall, and over toward his office.
I don’t know what I’m going to say. What I’m even feeling about this.
I’m proud of him and devastated by him. I was living in a fantasy world.
But now I’m being torn from it, straight into the harsh reality that maybe, just fucking maybe, we aren’t as meant to be as I thought.
I know, going in, there is a very real possibility that I could lose everything. Again.