Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
N ow what? That had become Eli’s recurring thought. He planned to stay only a few minutes after Darby left recovery, to make certain she was settled. He filled her water pitcher, settled her with the remote, and gave her the lip balm he’d bought for her, trying not to see how small and helpless she looked on the bed. Awkwardness descended, as they tried to figure out how to say goodbye after such an emotional few hours. He opened his mouth to try and find the words when her nurse entered and handed him a stack of blankets for the makeshift bed.
“Er…” he stammered, holding them helplessly against his chest. He couldn’t stay all night, could he? He barely knew this woman.
Darby seemed amused by his befuddlement, if the gentle smile on her tired face was any indication. “You don’t have to stay, you’ve already done so much.”
Not I want you to go or this feels uncomfortable, but “you’ve already done so much.” He hadn’t, though, not really. All he’d done was sit in a hospital and buy some lip balm. Surely he could do more, couldn’t he? He could overcome his discomfort and be present for someone who had no one, right?
That was how he found himself unfurling a scratchy sheet in a stranger’s hospital room, tucking it onto the slippery vinyl couch that made a too-small bed. And that was when he began thinking, Now what?
She turned on the television, and they fell asleep. Every two hours when the nurse came in, Eli woke, too. It was impossible not to, but he also felt the need to check on Darby, to make certain she was okay and safe and didn’t need anything. He wished he’d paid more attention to the way his mother and sisters nurtured people because they made it seem effortless. Eli had to think and even pulled out his phone and Googled what to do for people who were sick.
“Are you texting someone?” Darby’s scratchy voice asked when she caught him staring at his phone.
“No, I was looking something up.” He tucked his phone away. “You should be asleep.”
“Yes, I should, but I think the hospital is running some kind of experiment on people to see how many ways they can deprive them of sleep.” As she spoke, an aid came in to check her IV, clattering a tray, before skittering back out again.
“Seriously, though,” Eli agreed. “We should make a game out of it, count how many ways you’re interrupted tonight.”
“I think that’s the fourth time someone has been in,” Darby said.
“Don’t forget the nurse who stood outside your room and did a Groucho Marx impersonation on her cellphone,” he said.
“I wish I could,” she said.
“You should ask if there’s a drug for that,” Eli encouraged.
“I’m not sure I should add drug seeker to my list of endearing traits right now,” Darby said. “Maybe later.”
“Given what you’ve been dealing with, I think you’ll receive a free pass for all inexplicable behavior,” he said.
“You’re nice,” she declared.
“Nah, I’m honest. Believe me when I tell you I have experience with crazy women. Until you’ve attempted to potty train a Guinea pig, you’re not even in the running.”
She laughed and clutched her stomach with a groan. “You say that like you fully believe I’m not in the middle of trying to train a Guinea pig. Which reminds me, could you stop by my apartment and let my Guinea pig out to go to the bathroom? We’re at a critical juncture, and I don’t want my hospital stay to set him back.”
“I think the trauma of having his pig mom in the hospital will outweigh any potty accidents,” Eli said seriously and then smiled when she snorted a laugh and clutched her stomach again.
“Stop it, I’m going to pop a stitch,” she said.
“You say that to all the boys,” he accused, and she devolved into a charming peal of giggles that made him smile harder. In that moment it was hard to believe she was the standoffish landlord who’d ignored him for two years, almost as if he didn’t exist. He’d thought she was a snob, but it turned out she was merely oblivious and dealing with her own problems. And she was a widow. Somehow that was the most shocking fact of all, that someone so young had already been married and widowed and he hadn’t even gotten started yet. “What are you going to do after this?”
“Probably go home and sleep for a couple of days,” she said.
“No, I mean in general. It’s like you’ve been given a second chance on life, and you’re young. What does your future look like?” He cozied into the uncomfortable couch, nearly slipping off the smooth vinyl.
“Oh,” she said slowly, eyes glassy with thought. “I don’t know.”
“Is this too personal of a question? After we watched Nurse Groucho Marx together, I thought we’d reached this level.”
“We definitely have, I just don’t know. I never gave my future much thought, when I was a kid,” she confessed.
“Why not?”
“Mostly because I never dreamed I’d have one. Where I’m from, it’s not great to dream impossible dreams.”
“Why impossible?”
“No one leaves, no one gets out, no one gets better. You live a tiny life in a tiny town, and then you die. I assumed the same would happen to me. But…” She trailed off.
“But you’re really pretty,” he supplied for her.
“I guess so,” she agreed uncomfortably. “People used to say I should go to Hollywood, try to act or something. But I never wanted that. I never wanted anything, really. And then Ham happened along, and it opened up this new world of possibility to consider.”
“Was it what you wanted it to be, your marriage?” he asked. He wasn’t trying to be nosy, but her life interested him.
“I didn’t really have a frame of reference for marriage because no one I know is married. My dad took off when I was too little to remember him. My mom tries hard, but she’s so beaten down by life she doesn’t have a lot of extra to give. If I told her this was going on, she’d probably try to come. But she’d have to leave her job and all her responsibilities. In the world I’m from, when you’re scrambling to make it from minute to minute, all it takes is one thing to break everything apart. If she didn’t work, she’d lose her job. If she lost her job, she’d lose her house, her car. Her life is so precarious. That’s what I came from, and then Ham brought me here, where poverty is a theory millionaires discuss in Congress. When I first arrived, I thought Ham was so rich. Now I know he wasn’t, it’s just that we were that poor, so poor that being stable feels like being wealthy. I’m stable now, secure, and the relief of that has been so immense that I haven’t been able to see beyond it.”
“I grew up poor,” Eli admitted. It was something he’d never talked about with another living soul, something he rarely admitted, even to himself. “Maybe not the same way because we never felt that precarious, like one bad thing could break us. But in retrospect I wonder if that’s because my parents made it seem like we were more solid than we were. My mom chose not to work, so she could be home with us. It made our family feel unbreakable, but we lived on a razor’s edge of poverty, no frills, no extras, no vacations. None of us did sports because we couldn’t afford the fees or equipment. No music lessons. No vacations. No braces.” He pointed to his mouth. “Sometimes when I’m feeling philosophical, I wonder if I could put a price on everything we gained by having that family connection, a mom who was always there, who could be with us when we were sick or attend all of our school events. I was the only kid who had that, but I never had any of the other things those kids did, and I felt left out in a different way.”
“It must be hard to know, when you’re a parent, how your particular brand of mess will affect your kid,” Darby mused. She paused. “Ham wanted to have kids. I put him off, because I was a kid myself, and I knew that. And then when he died, I was relieved that I didn’t have to worry about raising a child alone. I’m pretty certain that makes me a terrible human being.” Her eyes watered. She bit her lip to press back the tears, sniffing a little.
“I’m pretty sure it makes you a realist. Your mom was a single mom, so you got an up close glimpse at how hard it was. Why would anyone want that? And you’re still so young, plenty of time for kids.”
She shook her head. “I’m never getting married again.”
He blinked, surprised by her vehement admission. “Why? Was it so bad, being married?”
“No, nothing like that. It feels mercenary to say, but marriage was my ticket out. It’s like I won the lottery, and now that I have that financial freedom, there’s no more reason to be married.” She realized it was an ugly admission, but there was something about the current scenario that lowered her ambitions and loosened her tongue. She was telling Eli things she’d never said out loud before, but the background noise of the hospital and the last dregs of anesthetic in her system worked like a truth serum on her. Maybe she was lonelier than she realized, or maybe she’d already reached rock bottom with him and he hadn’t fled. If the burglary and midnight collapse hadn’t scared him away, she doubted revealing her inner flaws would do it. “What about you? Is marriage on your horizon?”
“I hope so,” he said. He tried to arrange the thin blanket more snuggly around him and almost slipped off the couch again. “My parents were so solid, such an inseparable unit. I guess I always assumed I would find the same thing, but it’s been harder than I thought it would be. When you’re a kid, you assume it will happen naturally, that you’ll wander into the love of your life and live happily ever after. Part of becoming an adult is realizing that nothing is free or easy.”
“Then, for you, I hope it happens,” she said, raising her sippy cup of juice in toast.
Eli picked up his water and raised it to her. “For you, I hope it doesn’t.” They took a sip. “That sounds so wrong and vaguely mean, ‘I hope you don’t find love.’” She snorted and slapped a hand over her mouth, trying to keep the juice in. Eli smiled, watching her. It was a strange time and place to connect with someone, but here he was. You never knew what life would bring, until you arrived.