19. Keeley
KEELEY
I know the moment I walk into the office that today’s going to go badly.
“Your schedule is totally full,” says Trinny, turning her computer screen toward me.
“I blocked off lunch,” I argue.
She gives me that combination of a wince and a shrug, the kind that says she was simply following orders. “Dr. Fox had stuff she needed to do.”
I swallow. I either nip this in the bud right here or I go home to get scolded by Graham once more. Which is worse?
“I have plans. Dr. Fox will need to reschedule those patients if she can’t make it in.”
Her eyes go wide. She’s scared for us both, now, and it just makes me mad.
Completing my residency was supposed to free me from this bullshit—from having no control whatsoever over the hours I work and the cases I take, from having people tell me how disappointing they find me.
And now I can’t seem to escape it. Not here. Not in my own apartment.
I’ve just left an examining room when Dr. Fox comes storming in, her hair freshly highlighted. Something came up, my ass.
“Can I speak to you?” she demands. Her voice is thin and high, the voice she normally reserves for support staff who’ve written something down wrong.
“I’ve got someone waiting,” I reply. “What’s up?”
“What’s up is that my whole day is a shambles now because I wasn’t informed until nine this morning you were unable to see my patients. I need to be able to count on you.”
“I wasn’t informed until 8:45 that I even had your patients. I haven’t had a lunch break in over a week, so I actually blocked the time off and I still—”
“Are you serious right now? I’m in here because you wanted a lunch break?”
I should tell her. I should just say, “I’m pregnant, and I can’t keep eating shit from a vending machine because you want to get your hair done . ” I can’t. Not yet.
“I need to be able to count on thirty minutes at some point in the day. You’re not the only one offloading patients on me.”
Her left eye twitches. “Don’t forget, Dr. Connolly ,” she says, spinning away from me. “You’re still on probation.”
The words hang over me for the rest of the day, and I can’t even plough through a bag of mini Snickers bars to deal with my sadness.
I do, however, plough through a quarter of the bag and then throw it in the trash, mad at myself, mad at Dr. Fox, and especially mad at Graham for whom this minor effort at self-restraint would be deemed laughable.
When Trinny warns me as I’m leaving that Dr. Fox has scheduled patients during my lunch break the next day, I don’t say a word.
At home, I stop to pick up the mail and Paul tells me his newborn grandson won’t eat. It could be anything—sensitivities, reflux, or something more serious like pyloric stenosis.
“They’ve taken him to a gastroenterologist?” I ask, and he says he isn’t sure.
It’s not my specialty, and I shouldn’t give him medical advice right now, but the real problem is that I can’t do it anyway, and in a few months, I might be the one in his position.
I might need to know, and I won’t, and I’ll have Dr. Fox throwing a fucking fit because I’m taking my kid to a specialist to save his or her life.
All I want right now is to curl up on my couch under a blanket for a while, but I can’t because Graham will be there—judging me, angry I skipped lunch, angry that I’m lounging and not stacking gold coins in a safe like Scrooge McDuck or whatever it is he thinks I’m supposed to do in my downtime—so I walk outside to see Mark instead.
“You look tired, Keelster,” Mark says. He opens the chair for me and I sink into it. The redistribution of my weight will soon make rising from this thing impossible.
“I think I’m about to get fired.”
He’s the one person I can admit this to. The one person who won’t say, “Keeley, you’re grossly irresponsible and anyone could have seen this coming. You probably deserve it . ”
“There are worse things,” he replies.
Mark used to be a stockbroker. He’s vague on the details, but I know he made a mistake, and a lot of people lost money. I’m still not sure how he got from there to here.
“Your friend with the dumb name seems to be looking out for you,” he adds. “I think you’ll be fine.”
I laugh bitterly. “He’s not looking out for me . He’s looking out for the baby. We’re currently in a hostage situation, and he’s the police negotiator, acting like we’re friends because he has no choice. Once this kid is out, he’ll have a SWAT team descend upon me.”
“It’s interesting,” he says, “that you see yourself as the bad guy in this situation.”
I swallow. I guess that’s the problem. I am the bad guy. I’m always the bad guy. It’s just been a long time since my actions hurt anyone but myself.
The realization leaves me deeply sad. I’ve been telling myself this is all a fun little jaunt outside my normal circle of comfort, like the week I spent sleeping on the ground at Burning Man.
That’s how I get through my life, by insisting things are an adventure and all adventures are good, even when they absolutely suck.
What’s different is that this time, the outcome matters.
If I get stranded in Tijuana or lose my friends at Coachella, it is what it is.
But with this adventure, there isn’t an endpoint.
Every decision I make now impacts this kid’s life forever, and if I think about it too much, I feel nothing but panic, because no one is less well-equipped to parent than I am.
“He’s worried about you, too, Keeley.” Mark folds the paper over his head to shield his eyes as he looks at me. “Just give him a chance to figure it out.”
I push myself to stand and whisper a goodbye, panicked I’m about to completely fall apart.
I just want someone to swoop in and save me from my own stupidity.
I want Khloe Kardashian to take me under her wing and give me life advice.
I was joking about the Saudi prince, but right now that sounds kind of good.
I want my problems fixed, and Mark’s as well, and I know neither of those things is likely to happen.
When I get home, I head straight to the Twinkies I hid in an empty container of Greek yogurt at the back of the refrigerator.
Graham walks out of his room just as I’m tearing into one, naturally, and I swear to God the look on his face is enough to make me burst into tears if I wasn’t already about to burst into tears.
“Don’t start,” I tell him, holding onto the Twinkie as if it’s a sword I may need to yield.
His arms fold across his chest. He looks like Superman when he does that, except he’s way hotter than Henry Cavill. It might distract me on a better day.
“Let me guess,” he says. “It’s the first thing you’ve eaten all day.”
I’m done. I’m completely over this entire situation.
I’ve been trying to be polite to him, to establish some kind of civil relationship between us, and he is fucking impossible .
I’m done. “Is this why you’re here? So you can sit around in my apartment all day, then criticize me for doing my best when I walk in the door? ”
He smirks. “Are we seriously claiming this is your best ?”
“Fuck you. There was nothing else here to eat anyway unless you’ve got more fish on the grill, God forbid .”
He raises a brow. “I figured I’d better run the menu by you first so you don’t just drop it all off with Mark.”
He knows I gave Mark my shitty lunch, and I feel like a kid again, walking home to find my stepmother waiting with the eggs she made me that morning sitting beside her, the ones I buried deep in the trash.
“I don’t like fish, Graham, and I don’t like breakfast. That doesn’t make me a villain .”
He digs his hands into his hair. “Do you think I enjoy this, Keeley? This situation is a fucking nightmare for me and it’s never going away! It’s a responsibility I’ll take to the grave. So stop acting like you’re the victim.”
I step backward, stung by the vehemence in his voice, the sheer disgust, and wondering fleetingly, irrationally, if the baby heard this.
If the baby is somehow taking in my complaints or hearing her father call this situation a “fucking nightmare”.
Will he or she come into the world already feeling like a mistake, already feeling unloved?
My hand goes to my belly. His gaze follows the motion.
This poor fucking kid. Of all the Keeley messes I’ve made, this is by far the worst.
I turn, walk straight to my room, and slam the door behind me, climbing into bed and curling up on my side.
My chest aches. Being the center of my parents’ fighting was miserable. And being the offspring of me and Graham might be worse. We never cared about each other in the first place.
“I’m sorry, little Bean,” I whisper, stroking my palm over my small, rounded belly as tears drip down my face. “I want you. I just don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m really scared I’m going to mess things up.”
There’s a knock on my door and then it opens before I can pull myself together enough to tell him to go away.
The bed sinks under his weight as he takes a seat beside me.
“I’m sorry,” he says with a heavy sigh.
“It’s okay.” My voice comes through a thick fog of tears.
I can feel him shift then turn toward me. “Are you crying?”
“No.”
“Keeley—” His hand lands on my hip, so large it feels like it covers half of me.
How the hell did this man and I ever have sex in the first place?
He’s twice my size. “I didn’t mean it. I misspoke.
” He sounds…distraught, which surprises me.
It’s not something I’d have expected from him, unless he’d just lost money.
“You didn’t misspeak,” I reply, wiping my face on my pillow before I roll toward him. “You meant every word of it, and I’m offering you an out. Why won’t you just take it?”
He stares at the bed between us, and as the moment stretches out, I realize that I want him to agree, but I’m also terrified he’ll agree.
Because I don’t want to have to answer to someone…
but I also don’t want to do this alone. Just a few days of him helping out here—carrying in groceries, dealing with meals, changing the lightbulbs—has made me realize how hard it all seemed before, how daunting.
And much of that is only going to get worse.
“I can’t just walk away,” he chokes out. “I have my own reasons for not wanting kids, but it doesn’t have to do with not liking them. I grew up without a father, and I can’t do that to my own child intentionally. Please tell me how to fix this.”
Tears slide down my face once more, because I have no idea what to tell him.
This past week has felt a lot like the months after my mom died, when I’d spend the entire school day barely holding it together, and then come home to Shannon and her lectures.
It felt as if there was no safe place for me to be.
As if nothing I did would ever be enough.
It’s still as if it’s not enough. I haven’t had a drink in months.
I haven’t had sex once. I haven’t even gone dancing.
As terrible as my eating is, it’s a thousand times better than it was.
Every single thing I enjoyed about my life is pretty much gone, and some of it might be over for good, but all I do is mess up, in his eyes.
“This is harder than it looks,” I tell him.
“You think I’m not trying at all when I’m trying more than I ever have.
” Tears well in my eyes, but I swallow and blink to hold them in.
“I’m returning the bras. And I’m a picky eater…
it’s just how I was born. I’ve never been able to eat breakfast. A lot of foods make me gag, literally, and fish is one of them. I’m not trying to be an asshole.”
I roll away from him and his hand returns to my hip, giving it a squeeze.
“God, Keeley. I’m so sorry. Please stop crying. You’re killing me here. Tell me how to fix this in any way that doesn’t involve leaving.”
He sounds genuinely desperate to make this right. I’m sure the impulse won’t last, but for now, he means it.
“I get treated like I’m barely cutting it at work every single day,” I explain. “I can’t deal with coming home to the same thing. I really can’t. I need to be able to watch some dumb television and eat some crap without anyone making me feel like I’m less than because of it.”
I brace for him to pull a Shannon on me: to tell me I’m spoiled, to tell me he refuses to coddle me like a child.
Instead, he squeezes my hip once more. “You’re exhausted right now, so I’m gonna go to my room and let you pretend I’m not here. And tomorrow night when you come home, I’ll make us a relatively healthy dinner and then we’ll eat Twinkies and watch some dumb TV.”
I roll toward him. “No way you are eating a Twinkie.”
“No,” he says, his eyes lighter as he reaches out to brush a tear off my cheek with his thumb. “But I’ll pretend I am and then give it to Mark, which is apparently okay around here.”
“Yeah,” I reply, smiling through my tears. “That’s totally okay around here.”