Chapter 25
Chapter twenty-five
Emma
When Things Started Breaking
I’ve never liked hospitals. Definitely didn’t like them when the boys were born. I never understood Steven’s fascination with the place. Blank walls and harsh lighting are not my idea of a healing presence.
But today, Steven’s feelings about the setting seem to have dwindled as we sit in the surgery waiting area. His mom fell. Down two flights of stairs. The sheer thought of that woman stubbing her toe breaks my heart, and now we’re waiting to hear if they were able to repair her pelvis.
“I feel sick,” Jay groans into her hands.
“Don’t,” Tom barks at his daughter as he stands in the corner of the room like a statue. He’s taken the space closest to the waiting room phone, in case the surgeon calls, and has not moved in two hours.
“Dad,” Steven whispers calmly. But Tom’s eyes bore into him, enraged and unreceptive to any kind of comfort.
He’s angry. He stepped outside to water their garden when this happened. He left her alone for five minutes, and she fell.
The phone rings, and we all sit upright as Tom answers. His eyes are pinned on the wall behind us as he listens.
“Thank you.” He hangs the phone back on the receiver and rubs a hand across his jaw. “She needed a rod in her femur,” he says, pursing his lips. “But her pelvis will recover over time.”
I slump back in my chair, the waiting room adrenaline dissipating, replaced with sheer exhaustion. “Thank God.”
Steven releases my hand, the one he’s clung to since they wheeled Donna to the OR. He wraps his dad in his arms, and both of them deflate, the composure they both feel the need to uphold crumbling right before our eyes.
Tom whimpers into his son’s arms, and my heart splinters at the sight.
The strongest man I know, terrified and guilt ridden, needing support.
It’s strange how we convince ourselves we have to hold it together, to swallow weakness and be steady for everyone else.
But in the end, even the strongest of us need someone to hold us up.
After another hour in recovery, we’re finally led to Donna’s room, and the fact that she has dementia is left at the door.
Everyone swarms her room. Tom settles at the head of her bed, Jay and Shayna on either side, Steven at the foot, while India and Tamara share the recliner that sits too close to her face.
Donna’s eyes are withdrawn, lost, as they bounce around at the people surrounding her. I stay back, making myself small, trying not to disrupt.
She doesn’t say anything as her children tend to her every need, fluffing her pillows, straightening her blankets, massaging her hands.
Though she’s confused about what’s going on, a small part of recognition flickers across her gaze, as if she knows these people are important to her.
They must be for how much they’re fussing over her.
My eyes burn, and my lips tremble as I watch them.
Each of them loving their mother so deeply it creates an achy pit of longing in my chest.
I use Steven’s phone to text Ellie, asking for photos of the boys.
She replies immediately. In the selfies she sends, she looks delightfully disheveled.
Her hair is twisted into a tangled knot on one side of her head with a Spidey mask squashing half her face.
Easton and Sawyer are piled on top of her, one in an Iron Man mask, the other in Darth Vader.
What little of their faces I can see is smeared with pasta sauce, while dark circles and fine lines cover Ellie’s.
Me: You’re doing great haha!
Ellie: Never again. How’s Donna?
After filling her in on Donna’s prognosis and recovery plan, I click out of the messages. But before I pocket the phone, my gaze snags on an obscure text thread at the bottom of the screen.
L.P.
A part of me knows who it is before I even open it. But I have to be sure.
And there, on Steven’s phone, is a recent conversation between him and Liam, the man that abandoned my sister at the altar—when I had begged him to not speak to him out of respect for Ellie.
He knew I didn’t mean forever, but it’s only been a few weeks since he abandoned her at the altar.
Speaking to Liam feels like a betrayal to Ellie. To me.
He didn’t tell me. Again.
And he tried to hide it by changing his name to just initials?
Rage boils in the back of my throat, sending a flash of heat up my neck. The air around me feels hot and sticky. It’s getting hard to breathe. I rub my sternum, my heart pounding against my palm. My breaths come and go rapidly, some on top of the other.
Before I can think better of it, I am racing down the hall and down the stairwell to the parking lot. The summer air hits me like a heated blanket, enveloping around me and making everything worse. Suddenly, I’m heaving breaths, nearly gagging, in the tripod position.
“Ma’am, you alright?” a voice beckons me. I nod, powering through my breaths but not looking in their direction. This must be enough for them because they don’t say anything else as the sound of a sliding door opens and shuts.
“Breathe, breathe,” I command myself. My lungs burn, and my chest throbs. “Breathe, Emma.”
“I am outside,” I finally muster. “It feels hot and muggy.” I finally open my eyes and focus on the crack in the asphalt. “I see concrete.” The crack makes a Y shape, and I trace it with my gaze, as if it’s some weird metronome designed specifically for a time like this.
What feels like hours, but is really only minutes, pass before I muster up the strength to go back inside. When I round the corner of the nurses’ station, Steven is pacing the hall.
“Em? What’re you doing?” He rushes toward me, eyeing me frantically. “Are you alright?”
He reaches for me, but I step away, minding the space between us. Distance feels like the only thing keeping me together right now.
“Please don’t.” My voice comes out thin, vicious.
Confusion flickers in his eyes for a moment before they sharpen on his phone still clasped in my hands. “Emma, what’s going on?”
“You’re talking to Liam still.”
The muscle in his jaw tightens, and his nostrils flare as he releases a slow, steadying breath. “Em, can we talk about this later?”
“Why? I’m sure you won’t have time later.” Pain pulses through my temples as I shake my head. “There’s always something. The kids, your mom, work, a laundry list of things that are more important to you than being honest with your wife.”
“Emma.” His voice is low, almost pleading, as he steps closer to me. I try to step back but my foot hits the wall. There’s nowhere I can go.
“I didn’t lie to you,” he whispers, looking around to make sure no one hears us. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you, and I didn’t want to stress you out.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t use compassion as your excuse to lie.”
“That’s not…ugh, Em. Did you even read the messages?” He’s annoyed now.
“That doesn’t matter, Steven,” I snip. “I asked you. No, I begged you to wait. It’s only been three weeks. You couldn’t survive just a few weeks without the guy? He’s gone on backpacking trips longer than that, and you didn’t speak to him then.”
My jaw and fists are clenched. I don’t even recognize myself. Maybe I’m not fighting fair. Liam is his best friend. But he’s the one who agreed not to speak to him.
“Why? Why did you agree not speaking to him was best if you were just planning to go behind my back and talk to him anyway?” My chest squeezes at the truth, stars now dotting the corners of my vision.
The nurses’ station near us starts to buzz with noise—monitors beeping, phones ringing, the scanning of badges and closing of doors. It’s all too loud. The white walls around us start to close in, and the air thickens. It’s all quicksand, pulling me under.
“Emma,” Steven reaches for me. “You need to breathe. Let’s go back—”
“Stop telling me to breathe!” It feels impossible now. My words are expending every ounce of energy I have, leaving no room for the task. “Just stop.”
“Hey.”
Tom’s calm voice cuts through the static building in my ears. He’s standing in the hall a few feet away, his expression soft but tired. His gaze moves between us—his son’s exasperated scowl and my bloodshot eyes—and he lets out a slow sigh.
“Is everything alright?” he asks.
“Yes,” I grit out.
Steven doesn’t look at his dad. His gaze stays locked on me, jaw clenched. “Yeah,” he says flatly.
A nurse passes by, her shoes squeaking faintly against the floor. Tom waits until she’s gone before he speaks again. His attention settles on Steven, who still won’t face him.
“I don’t know what’s happening here,” Tom says calmly, “and I’m sorry you’re both going through a hard time.”
His eyes are on me now, and I can tell that part is for me more than anyone.
Tom knows about Liam. He knows about my anxiety, about the exhaustion that comes with raising four-year-old twins.
And he, of all people, knows how distant Steven has been lately.
Working extra shifts, forgetting to call, nearly missing Thanksgiving altogether.
He’s been distracted, and we’re all suffering for it.
And maybe Tom’s just as disappointed as I am.
“Whatever this is,” he says, waving a hand between us, “I need you both to let it go. You love each other. Don’t forget that.”
His throat bobs as he sniffs. “And be damn grateful you still remember it. I’d give anything to have that back.”
Silence settles over us, heavy and shameful, as he turns and walks toward the nurses’ station. I stare at the floor, heat rising in my cheeks, unsure if I want to collapse or run.
For a long moment, neither of us says anything. The sounds of monitors and distant voices drift from the end of the hall. Tom’s words hang in the air long after he’s gone, as persistent as the hum of the fluorescent lights above us.
“Em—”
“I can’t keep doing this, Steven,” I whisper, the words a knife to my throat, painful and shocking.
“Wh—what do you mean?” His voice shakes, weaker than I’ve ever heard.
“I can’t keep pretending things are fine when clearly they’re not.”
“We’re just going through a rough patch. It will get better.”
“Really? When?”
He opens his mouth, but I stop him. Nothing he can say will help right now. “Go be with your mom.”
I turn toward the window at the end of the hall overlooking the city, night lights bleeding through the glass in blues and golds. Our reflections stare back at me. Two tired, depleted people, with no traces of happiness anywhere.
Without saying anything else, I hand Steven his phone and head for the elevator. The sight of him being left behind breaks my heart, knowing I’m the one breaking it. The doors slide shut, leaving me alone with the echo of Tom’s words.
Be damn grateful you still remember it.
I think it’s safe to say we’ve already started forgetting.