Chapter 10
Ten
Henry
One more day down, and morning comes again.
My head aches in a pulsing but manageable way. Every once in a while, my scalp tightens where the stitches are. In those moments, I imagine I can feel the exact outline of where the surgeon opened me.
Mom slips in with a paper cup and a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Good morning, sweetheart,” she says. “Ice?”
I nod.
She tips a chip into my mouth, and for a second, I’m five years old again, burning up with a fever while she whispers stories about outlaw cowboys who rode into storms and back out again. I swallow carefully. It hurts less than yesterday.
She settles in the chair by my bed. Last I heard, she’d left a voicemail for Tabitha. I don’t know if Tabitha ever called her back.
I watch her for a moment and then force out, “Any word from Tabitha?”
She doesn’t look surprised by the question. “I spoke to her,” she says gently. “Yesterday. Twice.”
The ache behind my eyes tightens. I picture Tabitha’s honey hair and piercing amber eyes. I called her amber the last time we were together.
Does she think about that time?
Does she care?
“And?” I ask.
“She’s in a surgical seminar,” Mom says. “She got in at the last minute, and it’s a huge opportunity for her. It’s a big deal, Henry.”
I stare at nothing in particular. “Oh.”
“She said she’s so happy you’re okay. She asked me to tell you she’s thinking of you. Then I texted her that you were smiling and that Zach sends his love.”
I scrunch my forehead. “What? Why’d you say that?”
Mom sighs. “I don’t know. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I don’t know why you wanted to call her. Why you’d want her to know.”
“She knows why,” I say.
“Care to tell me?” she asks. “Please, sweetheart. I want to help.”
That’s my mom. She’d move the earth for any one of her kids if she could. Even the one she didn’t actually give birth to.
But she can’t help with this.
I let out a breath. It isn’t disappointment exactly that fills the space. It’s something slower and more honest, the kind of grief that doesn’t need to make noise to exist.
“She’s not coming,” I say.
“She can’t,” Mom replies. “Not today. Maybe later.”
I nod once and stare past her at the narrow window.
“Your father’s getting coffee.” Mom reaches for my hand and rubs her thumb over my knuckles the way she did when I broke my wrist sliding into home plate in a sixth-grade baseball game. “You want me to tell him anything?”
“Nothing to tell.”
Dad appears in the doorway and fills it across the shoulders the way he always has. He holds two coffee cups. “You look better.”
“Feel better,” I rasp.
It’s not a lie. Physically I feel a lot better.
“We’re taking you home tomorrow if you don’t do anything stupid between now and then,” he says.
“Working on not being stupid,” I say.
“Good. Zach has been whining and scampering since the accident. When he’s not doing that, he’s on your bed. He’s not eating.”
“He needs to eat,” I say.
“He will,” Dad says. “When you get home. He’ll be okay. That dog’s a damned hero, Henry.”
Mom’s phone buzzes. She glances at it and then up at me. “It’s Angie. We finally got through to her and Jason. She wants an update. You feel up to talking to her?”
Ugh. Not really. The only person I want to talk to is Tabitha, but that’s clearly not going to happen.
“Just text her,” I tell Mom. “Tell her my throat is hurting but that I love her and to not worry about me. To have a good time on her honeymoon.”
Mom nods and types.
The nurse comes in with a tablet and a smile. She checks vitals and asks me to rate my pain and tells me to put in my order for lunch.
I drift into sleep and back out again. In one dream, I’m walking through the half-finished frame of my house, and beams keep turning into people I love.
In another, I’m on a horse that won’t listen.
In all of them, Tabitha is at the edge of the field, her hair catching the sun, her face turned to me, and I can’t tell if she’s walking toward me or away from me.
I wake to the scrape of the door opening.
Mom’s alone this time. “Dad went home,” she says. “Just me for the rest of the day.”
I wave her away. “You can go too. I’m fine. They’re springing me tomorrow.”
“I’ll never leave you, sweetheart.” She kisses my forehead. “You’re going to have a bald spot for a while. Lucky that your hair grows as fast as your father’s.”
I nod. At this point, I’d gladly give up my whole head of hair if only I could see Tabitha.
“So…” Mom says.
“What?”
“You…and Tabitha.”
Ugh. Just what I don’t want to talk about.
“We had a fling.” I sigh. “This isn’t the kind of thing a guy talks to his mother about.”
“A fling?” she says. “Or something more?”
“I told her we had no future.” Saying it out loud tastes like chewing on a nail. “After the wedding. I thought I was being honest. Ever since Ralph… I’m kind of broken.”
“And now?”
“I still think I was honest,” I say. “But…honesty isn’t always the same as right.”
Mom sits with that. Then she leans forward and covers my hand with both of hers.
“I’m not in the business of telling you what to do about your heart,” she says.
“But I am in the business of telling you you’re allowed to have one, no matter what you’ve been through.
And sometimes, Henry, an accident puts things in perspective. ”
My mom’s words warm me. But the truth? I’d already decided to go after Tabitha while I was standing in the wooden skeleton of my house. Right before the beam cracked my head open.
I open my mouth to tell my mom so but then decide not to.
Seems like it’s too late now.
She’s right about my heart. I do have one. Because it’s breaking.
A nurse practitioner enters then and runs me through a cognitive check, asking me the date, the time, the current president, what city I think I’m in. Then she makes me count backward by sevens. My tongue feels thick halfway through, but he smiles and says I passed with flying colors.
What the hell does that mean, anyway? Flying colors?
“Get some more rest,” Mom says when we’re alone again. “And tomorrow we’ll take you home.”
I nod. “And then?”
“And then you’ll sit on the porch and let me take care of you. Zach will sure be glad to have you home.”
“I miss the mutt.”
“And he sure misses you. We can’t seem to pry him off your bed.”
I roll my head to the side and stare at my phone on the night table.
I imagine a text from a number I don’t recognize that starts with Hey. It’s me. I’ll be there the next time you wake up.
I imagine her footsteps in the hall.
I imagine that smile that starts in her gorgeous eyes and ends in her gorgeous lips.
I imagine her staying.
Staying.
Staying.
None of it happens.
I close my eyes. Somewhere down the hall, nurses laugh. Outside a cart rattles past, and the woman pushing it hums three notes of a song I can’t place.
I breathe in, careful and slow. I breathe out.
I do not die of missing her.
I do not die of wanting to see her walk through the door.
I do not die of being the one who said we had no future and then wanting one anyway.
I do the thing the surgeon gave me back the chance to do.
I live.
And tomorrow, I go home.