Chapter 15
Fifteen
Tabitha
Angie.
Of course it is.
She should be somewhere in Switzerland right now, Jason’s hand at her back, a glass of something with alcohol in her other hand. Not calling me from her honeymoon.
Her name glows bright, almost accusing.
I swipe. “Angie?”
“Tabs.” Her voice snaps, but there’s a wobble under it. “Why didn’t you call me?”
My stomach tightens. “About what?”
“Don’t,” she says too fast. A breath shudders through the line. “Mom told me. About Henry. The beam. The surgery. The whole thing. I mean, she told me he’d had a slight accident and everything was fine, but she didn’t go into detail until now. And you knew. You didn’t call.”
I lean into the counter. “I didn’t know at first,” I say. “I wasn’t there. I’d already left for Boulder.”
“The seminar,” she says flatly. “Right. Why didn’t you tell me you got in?”
“Well…because you were on your honeymoon.” Duh. Do I have to draw a picture for her?
“I’m happy you got in.” But her voice doesn’t sound happy.
“Eli got a spot too.”
“Great.” Again, her voice falls flat.
“You know what this is for me, Ang. I couldn’t just—”
“Henry asked for you.” Her voice goes sharp. “At the hospital. Like I said, Mom finally told me everything. He asked Mom to call you. She said you didn’t come.”
The words lance through me. The room tilts. “I couldn’t,” I whisper. “Not then. This seminar—”
“—is your future,” she finishes. “But this is my brother.”
I stare at the spot on my contact list where his name used to be.
“Angie…” I start.
“No,” she says, softer but no less firm. “Don’t Angie me. Tell me the truth, Tabs. What happened between you and Henry at the wedding? I know something went on. Why would he want you if it was nothing?”
Heat climbs my throat.
I could lie. I could say it was a misunderstanding, a look that meant less than it seemed. But she’s my best friend, and she’s his sister. She already knows there’s something to know.
“I don’t want to make this harder for you,” I say.
“You’re making it harder by not saying it.” A beat. “Please.”
I sigh, but I offer nothing.
“He told Dad he was driving to Boulder,” she says. “Before the accident. He was going to your apartment. He was already on his way. He just stopped at his place to check it out before making the rest of the drive down.”
Everything tilts again. Emotion coils through me, and my heart nearly stops.
He was coming after me?
No.
No, he wasn’t.
“No one told me that,” I finally say.
“I would have told you if I’d known. Now what happened?”
I can’t. I can’t bring myself to spill everything when she’s paying God knows how much for this international call. Then again, she’s loaded.
I can’t spill it because I’m not sure I can get through it without bawling.
When she speaks again, her voice is steadier. “You think staying away makes it easier?” she snaps.
Something in me wants to snap back he told me there was no future, but the words won’t come out without sounding angry and petty.
I picture her across an ocean, eyes soft and stubborn all at once. I picture Jason at her side, that patient way he looks at her like she’s the only person who ever existed.
“Tell me something honest,” she says. “Why did he call for you, Tabs? Not why you? I know why you. Why there? Why, in a bed with monitors screaming and his head stapled, did he say your name?”
I stare at my laptop, my texts, the flashcards of surgical instruments that Eli and I have already worn the corners on.
“I don’t know,” I say finally. “We had some fun together. But he told me he was broken.”
Somewhere on her end, a train announcement blares. She must be getting ready to board. The world keeps moving.
“Dr. Landers is a genius,” I say, trying to get back to real life. “Blake, the TA, says my hands are good. He says I think like a surgeon.”
“You do,” she says. “You always did.”
“I’m afraid if I leave, I’ll never get back on this track,” I admit.
“One swerve and it’s ten more. One exception and suddenly I’m a person who makes exceptions.
I’ve worked too hard to become a surgeon.
I can’t be the girl who runs across the state because a man says her name when he’s on God knows how many meds. ”
“He didn’t say it like a summons,” she replies. “He said it like a prayer. Mom told me.”
He said it like a prayer.
The words slide through my head, moving around as if they’re alive.
“Jason’s flagging me,” she says. “We’ve got a train. I have to go. Tabs?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s okay to choose yourself,” she says. “Just don’t pretend you chose anything else.”
The line clicks. I set the phone down and stare again at the stuff on my desk.
It’s okay to choose yourself.
Not what I would have expected to hear from Angie. From Eli, sure. In fact, he’s said as much several times. But Angie? Thoughtful and compassionate Angie, when it concerns her big brother?
Nope. Those words must have cost her.
I go to the kitchen, fill a mug with coffee that’s gone stale, and pour it down the sink instead. I rinse the mug and then walk back to the desk and grab a pad of sticky notes. Time for a list.
Shower
Instrument tray #2 review
20 clean surgeon’s knots
20 square knots
Eat at least a half sandwich, not just coffee
I add one more line and hate myself for how much relief it gives me to see the rule in ink.
Do not contact Henry
I already deleted his name from my contacts and deleted the text from Marjorie that had his number, but I could easily get the information again.
But I won’t.
I can’t.
I shower too hot, scrub until my skin says enough. I fix a tuna sandwich and force myself to eat the whole thing. Twice as much as my to-do list dictated.
Then back to studying. Tomorrow is a big day in the lab.
My phone alarm goes off, and I wrangle my hair into a bun. Scrubs, badge, penlight. I check my pocket for a pair of gloves and leave the apartment.
Outside, the sky is a gorgeous August blue. Halfway to the medical building, I stop under a cottonwood because the world goes a little soft around the edges with a memory.
His room. Morning. The day after we slowed down.
I woke up.
He was gone.
I walk again because if I stand here any longer I might go running the other way to get in my car and drive like a maniac to the Slope.
The building looms ahead like an oasis to save me from my thoughts. I walk in.
Inside the lab, steel shines under bright light. Blake claps once.
“I hope you all took some time for yourselves on your day off yesterday,” he says. “Let’s start with the same drill. Passes, names, uses. Then knots. If you fumble, you do it again.”
Eli slides into the spot at my side like he always does now. “Hey, Tabitha,” he says softly. “You look like you didn’t sleep.”
“I did.” I’m not lying. At least I don’t think I am.
He doesn’t press. He picks up a scalpel handle, holds it correctly, offers it to me palm-up like a scrub tech would. “Scalpel.”
“Thank you.” I take it by the stem, index on the top, like it’s already mine to wield. The weight is right. I set it down.
“Kelly,” he says.
I pass him one without looking.
“Crile.”
“Metz.”
“Mayo.”
The words make a rhythm that’s almost music. That’s the point, to make it a song your hands know when your head is somewhere else.
When we tie knots, I find a groove I didn’t have the day before yesterday. The repetition steadies me more than any pep talk ever could. It’s not that the thoughts of Henry disappear. It’s that something in me stands up under them.
“Good,” Blake says when he passes. “I’ll say it again. You have good hands, Tabitha.”
I nod like his praise doesn’t matter, but of course it does.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I don’t take it out. I line up another set of knots.
At break, I step into the hall. I take my phone out because I can’t not.
Not Henry.
Angie. A photo through a train window. It shows blurred fields, a brown roof, a bit of blue sky.
We’re moving.
I text her back a heart emoji.
The break ends. I slide the phone away. I pick up the number-three handle again. I answer Eli when he asks, “Ready?”
“Ready,” I say, and for the first time in a week, the word doesn’t feel like a lie I’m telling myself to get through the day. It feels like a thread I can hold on to with one hand while the other hand keeps tying what needs tying.
I do not contact Henry.
I let my hands remember how to be steady even when my heart is not. I let the day carry me through the next thing and the next.
Somewhere on the Western Slope, a man sits on a porch with a dog who saved him, the sun on his bandaged head, the breath in his chest a little easier than yesterday. Somewhere his sister watches the countryside whip by her window and decides not to judge me for choosing myself.
If only I could grant myself the same grace.
And if only Henry hadn’t told me we had no future together.
I set my feet. I take the instrument. I begin again.