Chapter 9
Nine
Tabitha
Class ends at eleven. That’s it for the day, but after today, we’ll have lectures in the morning and labs in the afternoons. Five days a week for all of August. Then the fall semester will begin.
A lot of work, but I have enough in loans to cover my rent without finding a temp job.
God, the loans…
I’m going to be knee-deep in debt by the time I actually get to cut into a real patient.
“Lunch?”
I turn to see Eli.
“Yeah. Sure.” I grab my phone. “Hmm. I have a missed call. I don’t recognize the number, but they left a voicemail.”
I tap the icon to listen to the message, holding the phone up to my ear. It’s a woman’s voice.
“Tabitha, it’s Marjorie Simpson. Could you give me a call, please?”
A shiver of unease runs through me. Why is Henry’s mother calling me? She sounded…concerned. Not all bubbly and happy like she usually is.
“Hey, are you okay?” Eli’s concerned gaze brings me back to reality.
I try to clear the sudden fog of worry. “It’s Angie’s mom. That’s who called me.”
“What’s she calling you for?” His eyes widen. “You don’t think something happened to Angie or Jason, do you?”
“I don’t know.” I bite my lip. “She didn’t say. But she didn’t sound normal.”
“I think you should call her back,” Eli says.
“Yeah,” I reply, trying to keep my voice steady. “Yeah, I should.”
I quickly dial the number Marjorie left, my heart pounding in my chest as the line begins to ring. After a couple of rings, she answers.
“Tabitha, dear. Thank you for calling back so quickly.”
Her voice is different from the one I remember. It’s strained, as if she’s forcing herself to keep calm. Anxiety knots in my stomach.
“Of course, Mrs. Simpson. Is everything okay?” She told me over the weekend to call her Marj, but it doesn’t seem right at this moment.
She takes a deep breath, and for a minute, there’s only silence on the other end of the line. Then, “It’s Henry. He… He had an accident.”
My heart stops.
The world spins around me. Henry? An accident? Everything blurs.
Finally, I find my voice. “What? What happened?”
“He was checking the construction on his place yesterday morning, and a beam fell on him. It was pure providence that he survived. His dog, Zach, was with him, and he ran over to our house. We knew something was wrong. Henry had to have emergency surgery, but he’s awake now.” Her voice breaks.
I hear pain in her words. I can almost see the worry on her pretty face.
I press a hand to my forehead and pace to the far edge of the student lounge, away from Eli and the handful of others hovering by the vending machines.
The room smells like lemon floor cleaner.
Posters for anatomy review sessions curl at the corners on the bulletin board.
Everything looks so normal that the word surgery feels like it belongs on another planet, except that I’m here to study surgery.
But this is real surgery.
Surgery on Henry.
“How… How bad was it?” I ask, even though she’s already told me the answer by saying emergency and awake now in the same breath.
“They relieved the pressure,” she says. “A small epidural hematoma and a fracture along the temporal bone. He’s lucky. Thank God for Zach. Henry’s prognosis is excellent. The doctor said minutes mattered.”
Minutes.
The last time I saw Henry, minutes didn’t matter. I made them not matter. I left him. Left him to pursue this opportunity. This seminar. And he didn’t want me. He wasn’t ready. Maybe I wasn’t ready either. But he’s the one who made the decision. The one who said we had no future.
And now his mother calls me about his accident.
Why would she call me?
Angie asked me some questions about Henry over the weekend, but no one else had a clue what was going on. At least I don’t think anyone did.
Which means…
“He’s been asking for you,” Marjorie says softly. “He fell asleep and woke up and asked again. I thought… I thought you should hear it from me.”
Something wedges in my throat. Heat rushes up my neck. My mind, traitor that it is, leaps to all the ways this could feel in reverse. What if I were the one in the bed and Henry the one standing at a threshold, deciding if I was worth giving something up for?
“Tabitha?” Marjorie asks. “Are you there?”
I look over at Eli. He’s pretending not to watch me, hands stuffed in his pockets, eyes on the floor.
“I’m here,” I say.
“Will you come?” she asks.
Everything in my body, my heart, my soul wants to say yes.
But my mind, the part of me that got me into this seminar—the part that kept reading last night after the police report, after the fear, after the mess—analyzes.
Dr. Landers.
A seat that wasn’t supposed to be open.
A month of mornings with tools and afternoons with cadavers.
A real taste of the future I’ve been clawing my way toward.
If I miss even a day at the beginning, I could spend the rest of the seminar trying to catch up and never quite do it.
I tighten my grip on the phone until my fingers ache.
“Mrs. Simpson,” I say, and my voice comes out too formal.
“I’m glad you called me. I am. And I’m so, so glad he’s awake, and that he’s going to be okay.
But I got a place in a seminar that began today.
I was on a waitlist, and they don’t usually let second-years in.
It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I—”
“I understand,” she says, interrupting me. “You should focus on your studies.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, and I mean it with everything in me.
Silence hums on the line, muted like the air right before that storm Thursday evening when Henry and I were trapped in the barn and…
“Would you like me to tell him anything?” she finally asks.
I don’t hear any condemnation or anger in her voice. Rather, I hear only understanding.
Tell him I’m a coward. Tell him I’m choosing the future over a few quickies, though the last one was hardly a quickie. Tell him he told me there was no future with him and I listened too well.
“Please tell him I’m thinking of him,” I say instead. “Tell him I’m grateful he’s okay. That I’m cheering for him to get home soon.”
“I will,” she says. “He’ll be happy to hear it.”
We end the call. I stare at my reflection in the black phone screen until the shape of my face blurs and all I can see is regret.
“Everything okay?” Eli asks, coming closer.
“It was Angie’s mom,” I say. “Her brother had an accident at his house yesterday. He’s having renovations done, and a beam fell on his head. It gave him an epidural hematoma. He’s in the hospital.”
“Jesus.” Eli’s eyes widen. “Henry?”
I nod.
“Is he…?”
“He’s going to be okay.” I keep my tone even. “Surgery went well. He’s awake.”
“Thank God.” He cocks his head. “Why would she call you, though?”
I don’t have an answer. Except I do. I don’t say anything, but something in Eli’s eyes seems to figure out the truth.
“Are you and he…?”
I look away. “No. Not really.”
“Tabitha…” A hand on my shoulder.
I shake my head. “It wasn’t anything. We just…” I sigh.
Eli doesn’t look the least bit upset. Angie was wrong. He doesn’t feel anything for me. There’s no vibe.
“You should go,” he says.
I flinch. “I can’t.”
“Tabitha—” He stops, lets out a heavy sigh. “Look, I get it. This seminar is a big deal. But this is clearly a person you care about.”
“You just want me out of the seminar. Less competition.”
He shakes his head. “How can you even think that?”
“Relax.” I force out a chuckle. “I was kidding. I guess I’m trying to… I don’t know. Make myself feel better about everything. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it at your expense.”
“Apology accepted.” He smiles. “Go. You can miss a few days of class.”
I shake my head. “He told me we have no future. He told me after Angie’s wedding. And I believed him.”
Eli’s expression softens. “People say things when they’re scared.”
I swallow, my throat raw. “If I leave, I’ll be the one who’s behind from day one in Dr. Landers’s class. The one nobody takes seriously. The one who had a chance and blew it. And for what? A man who told me in no uncertain terms that we have no future? No thank you.”
“He’s been through a lot. You know. With Ralph.”
I scoff. “I know that. I was there.”
He touches my elbow and guides me toward the door. “Come on,” he says. “Food. You’ll do better thinking on a blood sugar level above zero.”
We cross the quad toward the cafeteria. The sky is a beautiful blue, the exact hue of Henry’s eyes. Sprinklers start up on the lawn, hissing and throwing rainbows across sun-soaked grass.
The line in the cafeteria is short. I order a turkey sandwich, and Eli grabs two coffees and hands me one.
We sit by the window. He talks about suture materials and the difference between a surgeon’s knot and an instrument tie and how he’s going to shadow a cardiothoracic fellow next week if he can swing it.
I listen. I don’t ask how he’s going to shadow a surgeon when we’ll be in class and labs all day.
Not because I don’t care, but because I can’t find the energy to say the words.
Halfway through the sandwich, my phone buzzes on the tray.
A number I don’t know.
For a beat, my heart hammers. Please be him and please don’t crash into each other in my chest.
I let it go to voicemail and take another bite.
“Want me to quiz you later?” Eli asks. “On instruments?”
“Please.” I force a smile. “I need to redeem myself after the polypropylene debacle today.”
“You nailed it,” he says. “And you were late by like sixty seconds. Blake’s a tool.”
“He’s the TA,” I say. “Besides, tools can be useful.”
Eli barks out a laugh and almost spills his coffee. “I’ve missed you.”
I’m about to say same when my phone buzzes again.
New voicemail.
I can’t not know. I wipe my hands on a napkin and stand. “I’ll be right back.”
“Take your time,” Eli says.
In the hallway off the dining room, I press play.
“Tabitha, it’s Marjorie again.” A breath.
I picture her in a hospital hallway, her hands clasped together, worry etched over her gorgeous features.
“I told Henry you sent your love. He smiled. He’s resting.
If you change your mind later tonight or tomorrow, we’ll be here.
No pressure. Just… Thank you for calling back. ”
He smiled.
I lean my head against the cinderblock wall and close my eyes. The image is too vivid.
He smiled.
I don’t believe it. Henry doesn’t smile a lot.
For a hot second, I imagine racing to my car, ignoring every red light between Boulder and the hospital in Grand Junction, bursting into his room, and… What? We weren’t anything. We were almost. We were maybe. We were a kiss that tasted like a future he said he couldn’t hold.
My pulse steadies as the decision settles into me like a stone.
I open a new text thread to Marjorie. I don’t have Henry’s number. It’s ridiculous that we never exchanged them, but we didn’t. That feels like its own kind of omen.
I type to Marjorie instead.
Thank you for letting me know. I’m thinking of Henry. Please tell him I’m so happy he’s okay. I’m cheering for him.
A moment later, the little Delivered status pops up.
When I return to the table, Eli has already spread out a set of instrument cards and laid his phone between us as a timer. He pushes a card toward me. “Name it.”
“Scalpel,” I say. “No. Blade handle.”
“Be specific.”
“Number-three handle,” I say.
He flips to the next. “This one?”
“Kelly clamp.”
He shakes his head. “Crile. Kelly’s bigger.”
Right. I knew that. Focus, Tabitha.
We move through twenty in five minutes. Sweat prickles under my shirt. On the last card, my phone buzzes again. I pick it up and glance down.
It’s a reply from Marjorie.
He says to tell you Zach sends his love.
A moment later…
And thank you.
I laugh, an ugly sound that’s half a sob. Zach. His dog. The hero who ran to the ranch when the beam fell and saved Henry’s life. That gorgeous dog who lay on the barn floor while Henry and I—
“Everything okay?” Eli asks.
“Mrs. Simpson says he’s smiling.”
Eli watches me for a beat. “And you’re staying.”
I hesitate. Then, “I’m staying.”
He nods like he understands all the math I’m not explaining. “Okay. Then we make sure we both know all this shit inside out and make those third- and fourth-years look like morons. Got it?”
I smile weakly and nod.