Chapter 43
Chapter Forty-Three
NYLA
‘Go home, Dr. Moore,’ I hear my boss say.
Yes, I probably should, because there’s no way I’ll be able to concentrate on work today. Besides, I have to find Jaden.
But what am I supposed to say to him? How can I make him understand that I get where he’s coming from, but that the tests are still the right thing for him? Only then will we have clarity.
‘Take your time to think everything over. We’ll talk again tomorrow.’ My boss looks relieved and sad at the same time.
I look at him intently. ‘I can do this, I promise,’ I say, whereupon he gives me a tentative smile.
We say goodbye to each other. I leave his office and, on my way to the locker room, pull the plastic bag out of the pocket of my lab coat.
Lilly’s bucket list.
Shredded into hundreds of tiny pieces of paper.
Broken, but not lost.
It’s the key, I can feel that, but I still don’t know where to find the right lock or how to get Jaden to open it.
I turn the bag in my hand, the plastic rustling softly. I barely register the throng of people in the corridor, I hear the calls only muffled, and I don’t feel the fleeting gusts of air my colleagues send my way as they hurry past.
Presenting something as certain when it actually isn’t was wrong of me. Even so, I have to do more than just hope he’ll decide on his own to get examined.
Brooding, I enter the locker room, get changed, and tuck the pouch carefully into my handbag. When I leave the room a little later, I still don’t have a single idea.
In my mind, I go through Lilly’s bucket list.
Adopt a dog from the animal shelter.
Get up in the middle of the night, hike up a mountain, and watch the sunrise.
Learn to dance tango.
Count the stars over Greenland.
Taste everything you’ve never eaten before.
Create the most beautiful garden in the world.
Walk across hot coals.
Maybe there’s something I can talk him into. While we’re doing it, he might start to realize that he has to keep his promise to Lilly. And that he needs the clarity the examination will give him in order to be able to do exactly that.
Maybe. Or not.
A wild mix of fear and longing takes hold of me. Maybe I was wrong and everything is fine. But what if he really is sick?
Agitated, I walk toward the exit.
I need help, I can’t get any further on my own. Maybe June is at home, we could go over everything together again. Turning up at Jaden’s parents’ place doesn’t make much sense. After everything he’s told me about them, they’d hardly advise Jaden to get checked out.
What else could I do?
The carousel of my thoughts is giving me a hellish headache. I massage my temples, remind myself to breathe calmly, and deliberately walk slowly toward the door.
Then I hear a deep growl. A motorcycle coming closer, way too fast for the clinic forecourt. I stop and watch the black bike through the glass doors, which are now closing in front of me again.
The rider is sitting upright, his shoulders tense. He’s not wearing a helmet. What the hell is wrong with him?
The motorcycle comes closer. Something about the sight makes me suspicious.
Dark hair, five-day stubble.
Damn, that’s Jaden!
My heart skips a beat, even though he isn’t looking in my direction. He probably doesn’t even notice that I’m standing here staring at him, even though we’re so close to each other.
Behind him, judging by the build, crouches a woman. She’s wearing a helmet, her long hair falling in soft waves down her back. Her ankle is wrapped with… what is that… a jacket?
Jaden brakes carefully and comes to a stop. With a focused expression, he helps the woman take off her helmet and get off the motorcycle. The moment her foot touches the ground, she lets out such a shrill scream that it sends a shiver down my spine.
‘I need help!’ Jaden calls.
I quickly grab a wheelchair and ask a male nurse to come with me. We hurry over to the two of them, and I can’t take my eyes off Jaden, who’s talking calmly to the woman and supporting her until I reach them.
‘Thanks,’ he says, still fully focused on the woman, and helps her sit down.
‘Patient, female, thirty-five. Fell while hiking. Severe swelling…’
Now he looks up.
Sees me.
I hold my breath for a split second, and that brief moment feels as if the world stops turning.
‘Hi.’ I try a smile; he swallows briefly.
‘Hi.’ Longing floods his features, then he turns to the nurse. ‘Pain, limited weight-bearing. Pulse slightly elevated.’ He grabs the handles of the wheelchair and pushes the woman into the ER with that typical superhero manner.
I follow him. Even though I don’t know how to get through to him, I do know for sure that now I’ve finally found him, I can’t let him go.
‘Vitals stable, consciousness clear,’ he’s explaining to the triage coordinator just as I catch up with him.
‘Thanks, we’ll take it from here.’ My colleague nods to him, then hands the patient a clipboard. ‘Fill out the form,’ he says, and signals to the orderly to wheel the woman into the waiting room.
‘Thanks for your help.’ She hands Jaden the jacket that had been wrapped around her ankle earlier.
He takes it from her. ‘No problem. Get well soon.’
‘Jaden, can we…?’ I reach my hand out to him.
With a mix of wistfulness and hope, he looks at me. ‘Have you changed your mind?’
No. Not really. At least not the way he’d like it to be.
‘Shall we walk a little?’ I point toward the hospital park. We shouldn’t be talking about this here in the middle of the emergency room.
He nods silently, and on the way outside neither of us says a word. A little later we pass through the wrought-iron archway. In front of us the park spreads out like a painting. Trees whose leaves dance in the wind, birdsong, a hint of salt in the air.
It’s a little paradise in the middle of the city, and it gives me an idea.
‘Do you see that?’ I point at the light falling through the treetops onto the gravel path. ‘As if everything is full of glitter dust, isn’t it?’
He doesn’t say anything, but out of the corner of my eye I see that he’s looking.
A little farther on, a blackbird is chirping. I point at it. ‘As if it is giving a concert just for us,’ I say, glancing at him from the side.
‘What is this supposed to be, Nyla?’ The muscles in his jaw tighten.
‘We’re enjoying the moment.’ At least I’m trying to, even if it’s hard for me in light of what stands between us. I take a step toward him.
He clears his throat. ‘What for?’
Because I want to show him that I can see the world through his eyes too, but apparently he doesn’t understand that right now, or he doesn’t want to understand it.
I have to try a different way. But how?
Just telling him that I can understand his fear won’t be enough. But letting him know that he’s not alone would at least be a start.
I clear my throat. ‘When I got my diagnosis back then, my world fell apart,’ I begin quietly.
He stays silent, but at least he doesn’t shut down.
‘I had just finished my intern year, and I already had the job in the ER at Halifax Harbor Hospital in the bag.’ Thinking back to that time isn’t easy for me.
But I do it. For him. ‘I still remember how happy I was back then. How it felt as if the whole world was at my feet, as if absolutely anything was possible.’
Together we walk along the gravel path, our shoulders brushing now and then. I can feel how close he is.
He’s here with me. And he’s listening.
‘But from one moment to the next, nothing was possible anymore.’ My voice grows thinner and thinner. ‘When I think back to that time now, everything is shrouded in fog. So much crashed down on me, I couldn’t really grasp any of it.’
I look over at him, wishing I knew what he was thinking.
Maybe he’s already realized that he’s in a situation like that right now.
Or maybe his thoughts are back in a time when everything was already fogged over for him once before.
Lilly’s death and the medical degree he dropped out of back then.
By now he knows that was his way of running away, and that it didn’t bring him the happiness he’d hoped for.
Now he is once again at a point where he can either run away or stay.
The sun illuminates his shuttered face, a gentle breeze tugs at his hair. I squeeze his arm; he doesn’t react. ‘At first I thought going through chemotherapy—with the pain, the nausea, the weakness, the hair loss—would be the worst part,’ I say carefully, and finally he turns his head.
Our eyes meet. In the green of his eyes, a surge of constriction flares up. I feel it, and I feel him, with everything that makes him who he is.
‘But that’s not true.’ I draw in a sharp breath and look at him intently. ‘The worst part is the fear.’
His breathing speeds up.
‘No one who has never been through something like this can imagine how intense it is.’ It’s hard for me to go on speaking, but I do it anyway. ‘How it sinks its claws into you, steals everything from you that is good and beautiful and precious. How it turns you into a person you don’t want to be.’
He nods almost imperceptibly.
I place my hands on his cheeks. ‘It took everything from me, and even when my doctor declared me healthy again, it didn’t stop.’
Maybe he, too, is thinking right now of the Nyla he met a good two weeks ago: the health fanatic whose thoughts revolved solely around risks and dangers.
‘The opposite was the case. After I was cancer-free, it actually got worse. I was healthy… but I still wasn’t living.’ And that’s exactly what will happen to him if he runs away now.
No matter how much he pretends he’s fine, the uncertainty will crush him. It will force him into the moment, make him blind to everything else.
What if it’s not a life anymore?
He asked me that not all that long ago, so he knows. Deep down he has always known that his constant being-on-the-run isn’t a life.
Gently I stroke my thumbs over his five o’clock shadow. ‘It wasn’t the doctors and the treatments that ultimately gave me a new life. It was you.’
For a while he is silent, then he exhales slowly. ‘The moment the therapy started, my life would be over, and we both know that.’
So he is allowing for the thought that he might actually be ill. That’s progress.
‘Lilly’s story isn’t automatically yours as well.’ My voice is quiet and full of caution.
Absentmindedly, he lets his gaze wander.
‘We’ll do the biopsy and the CT scan, then we’ll see whether you even…’
‘Knowing wouldn’t make any difference, you understand?’ He lays his hand on my cheek, strokes my skin with his thumb and looks at me in a way that makes it hard for me to breathe.
‘How do you mean that?’
‘What if we just enjoy what we have?’ His tone is so desperate, so full of longing for deliverance. ‘Day by day. Moment by moment. No more, but no less either. Remember?’ He moves closer to me. ‘Just us.’ His lips find mine, tender, questioning, hopeful. ‘Just now.’
Just here.
Just us.
Just now.
I see the desperation with which he yearns for it, and I too want to be with him in that way. Weightless, so lost in the moment that nothing else matters. Without fear, without worries, without a future, without questions.
There is nothing I want more. Still, it’s wrong, and we both know it.
‘It would just be an escape.’ I wind my arms around him. ‘But we can’t run away from this. It will catch up with us.’ And when that day comes, it will drag us down into the abyss with it.
He kisses me as if he were a drowning man clutching at the only thing that can save him. Then he pulls back just far enough to look at me. The tips of our noses touch; in his eyes I see how fiercely he is fighting with himself.
‘Don’t you want to see the garden come into bloom? Don’t you want to experience how the plants grow and the trees bear fruit?’ I ask.
‘And what about you?’ He lays his index finger on my lips. ‘Do you really want to sit at my sickbed instead of dancing with me? Do you want to watch the strength drain from my body instead of visiting the Grand Canyon with me?’
‘We’ll do all of that.’ My voice is too hoarse to sound convincing. ‘Get yourself examined, then we’ll see how we can go on.’
A wistful smile flits across his face. He brushes my hair back from my forehead. ‘Come on, let’s run away together. See the world, save sea turtles, climb Vesuvius, cuddle with koalas.’ There is so much longing in his gaze, and I understand what is driving him.
He no longer ignores the fact that he might be ill; he just has a completely different idea than I do of what our future should look like in that case. I’ve seen too many patients die after months in the hospital not to be able to understand his thoughts.
At the same time, I can’t agree. ‘That would be wrong.’
‘Come with me.’ He begs me as if he hadn’t heard me. ‘Let’s just be happy together.’
‘That’s not enough for me,’ I reply sadly. ‘I still want to sit with you in the garden in ten, twenty, thirty years. I want something that is more than just the moment: a future.’
He presses his lips together. ‘But that’s what I want too.’
Yes, it makes sense to him, but not to me. ‘But I can’t be happy with you when I know that this happiness could be an illusion.’ Like a shimmering soap bubble that might burst.
For a while we look at each other and I begin to hope. But then he takes a step back, his hand slides from my cheek. Melancholy dominates his features, and I know that I am going to lose him.
‘And what about this?’ I ask, pulling the bag with Lilly’s torn-up bucket list out of my pocket.
‘Where did you get that?’ His voice sounds rough.
‘You promised her.’ Ignoring his question, I turn the bag in my hand. ‘You promised her you’d experience all of this for her.’
That’s what he has to remember, even if it’s only for a single moment. I want to hand him the bag, but he makes no move to take it.
‘You don’t have to decide right away, just keep it with you,’ I try again. ‘For Lilly.’
‘I…’ He draws in a sharp breath. ‘I don’t think she…’
‘No, don’t say anything now,’ I beg him. ‘Think about it in peace, and then we’ll talk.’
He needs time, that much is clear to me. But what if it’s not enough? What if neither my words nor his promise to his sister nor time itself is enough? What if accepting his decision is the only way to be with him?
A happiness with an unknown expiration date.
A life with an uncertain future.
The fear of this scenario tightens around my throat, but I know there’s nothing left I could say. So I lower my lids and tuck the bag into his jacket pocket.
‘Think about it.’ Tears push into the corners of my eyes. ‘I love you, Jaden,’ I say, my voice hoarse, and walk away.