13. Jules
— ? —
Jules
A week ago, Harry put Avery’s lilies in the hallway trash without a word.
I watched him through the window in my door. He picked up the bouquet, walked out of my room, dropped the whole arrangement into the bin by the nurses’ station, and came back to sit in his chair. His face stayed blank the entire time, and he didn’t explain and he didn’t look for praise.
I noticed, and I refused to give him credit.
Today is discharge day, and Harry has arrived with a wheelchair and my overnight bag.
“Ready to go?” he asks.
“Take me to a hotel.”
He pauses in the doorway. “A hotel.”
“Somewhere with room service and no memories. I’ll figure out the rest from there.”
“No.”
I stare at him. “That wasn’t a request.”
“And that wasn’t a negotiation. You’re not going to a hotel.”
“You don’t get to decide where I go.”
“I’m not deciding anything. I’m pointing out that you can’t walk, you can’t open a jar, and you’ll need help getting to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Your parents are a flight away, and you can’t get on a plane with that leg for a month. A hotel isn’t going to work.”
“I’ll hire someone.”
“With what agency? At what notice? You’d be sitting in a lobby for six hours while I make phone calls, and then you’d end up with a stranger helping you shower.”
“Maybe I prefer a stranger.”
“Maybe you do. But you’re not getting one today.”
We glare at each other across the hospital room. He’s right, and I hate him for it. I hate that I can’t storm out of here on my own two feet, and that I’m dependent on him for everything from transportation to basic hygiene.
I hate that he knows it and isn’t gloating about it.
“Fine,” I say. “But this conversation isn’t over.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
He wheels the chair to my bedside and helps me into it with careful, impersonal hands. Then he grabs my bag and starts pushing me toward the door.
“You’re going too fast,” I say.
“I’m going walking speed.”
“It feels fast.”
“You’re being difficult.”
“I’m being a patient with a broken leg and a legitimate concern about velocity.”
“Velocity.” He snorts. “You sound like a physics textbook.”
“You sound like a man who’s about to get his shins kicked.”
“With what leg?”
I reach back and smack his arm. He doesn’t flinch, but I see the corner of his mouth twitch.
I’m annoyed that it’s almost fun. I’m annoyed that we can still do this, the rapid back and forth that made me fall in love with him in the first place. I don’t want to enjoy his company, and I don’t want to remember why I married him.
I want to stay angry.
We take the elevator down to the lobby, and when the doors open, I see her.
Avery is standing by the front entrance with a bouquet of flowers and wet eyes. She’s wearing a soft pink dress, her red hair is perfectly styled, and her face is arranged in an expression of trembling concern.
She sees us and hurries over.
“Jules! Oh my goodness, I’m so relieved you’re okay.” She reaches for my hand, and I pull it away before she can touch me. “I’ve been so worried about you. I tried to visit, but they said you weren’t accepting visitors, so I’ve come by every morning this week hoping to catch you on your way out.”
Harry steps around the wheelchair and puts himself between us.
“Avery.” His voice is flat and final. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see Jules. I know we’ve had our differences, but I thought maybe…”
“You need to leave.”
“Harry, please. You blocked my number. I’ve left a dozen messages with your office and nobody calls me back. I don’t understand what I did wrong.”
“You know exactly what you did, Avery, and so do I. My wife told me, and I believe her. You’ve been transferred across town. You know this. It’s been two weeks.”
“But I thought that was just temporary. I thought once things calmed down…”
“It’s not temporary. You don’t work in my building anymore. You don’t have access to my calendar or my schedule. And you need to stop contacting me and my wife.”
“Harry.” The tears start falling. “After everything we’ve been through, after all these years, I don’t understand why you’re treating me like this.”
“You need to leave, Avery.”
“I’ve always been there for you. Always. And now you’re just…” She presses a hand to her mouth, and her shoulders shake. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I did to make you hate me.”
She stands there crying with her bouquet clutched to her chest, looking small and wounded and pathetic.
I watch Harry’s face. I watch him take in the tears, the trembling lip, the familiar performance of Avery in distress.
His expression doesn’t change.
“Goodbye, Avery.”
She looks at him for a long moment with wet, pleading eyes. Then she nods once and walks out of the hospital without another word.
I wait until she’s gone before I speak.
“You transferred her.”
“Yes.”
She wasn’t fired. She was transferred. This is the first I’ve heard of it.
“Let’s go,” Harry says, and starts pushing my wheelchair toward the exit.
***
Harry helps me into the passenger seat and folds the wheelchair into the trunk. He slides behind the wheel and pulls out of the parking lot with his eyes fixed on the road.
I wait until we’re on the highway before I say it.
“That woman locked me in a burning building.”
He doesn’t respond.
“She left me to die, Harry. She stood outside that door and listened to me scream for help, and then she walked away. And you gave her a new desk.”
“Jules…”
“You told Hazel she was out of your life. I heard you say it. You stood right outside my hospital room, looked her in the eye and said Avery was gone.”
“I know what I said.”
“Then explain to me how ‘out of your life’ turned into ‘transferred across town.’”
He’s quiet for a moment. His hands are tight on the steering wheel and his jaw is clenched.
“It was the fastest way to get her out of your world,” he says finally. “That night in the hospital, I wanted her gone immediately, and the transfer was the quickest option. I hadn’t worked out the rest yet.”
“The rest.”
“Firing her. Cutting her off completely. I knew it needed to happen, but I hadn’t figured out how.”
“You couldn’t bring yourself to do it.”
He doesn’t answer, which is an answer in itself.
“So let me make sure I understand.” My voice is cold and steady. “Your wife almost died because of this woman. She trapped me in a room and left me to burn. And your response was to move her to a different building and keep paying her salary.”
“That’s not…”
“That’s exactly what it is. It’s one more half measure and one more compromise, and one more time you couldn’t quite bring yourself to choose me over her.”
“I did choose you.”
“You chose a middle ground. You chose the path that let you feel like you were doing the right thing without actually having to commit to it. That’s not choosing me, Harry. That’s trying to have it both ways.”
We drive in silence for a long moment. The city passes by outside my window, all buildings and traffic and people going about their lives.
“You’re right,” he says quietly.
I turn to look at him.
“You’re right,” he repeats. “The transfer was a half measure. I told myself it was about speed, about getting her away from you as fast as possible, but that’s not the whole truth. The truth is I still couldn’t bring myself to cut her off completely. And you’re right to be angry about that.”
I don’t know what to say. I was expecting him to argue, to defend himself, to explain why I should be grateful for what he’s offered. I wasn’t expecting him to agree with me.
I turn back to the window and watch the city roll past.
“I have a proposal,” he says eventually.
“I’m not interested in proposals.”
“Hear me out. The house has been set up for your recovery. There’s a full rehab room on the ground floor with all the equipment you’ll need, and the best PT in the city coming every day.
There’s a bedroom on the ground floor so you don’t have to deal with stairs.
I’ll sleep wherever you want me, the study, the guest room upstairs, the garage if that’s what it takes. I won’t touch you unless you ask.”
“And in exchange?”
“In exchange, you get your leg back as fast as possible. That’s all. No strings and no expectations. Just the best possible place for you to recover.”
I think about it. I think about trying to get around a hotel room with a cast and a walker, about hiring a stranger to help me bathe, about lying alone in an unfamiliar bed with no one to hear me if I wake up screaming.
“Fine,” I say. “But that bedroom is mine, with my own bathroom, and you don’t come in unless I say so. And I leave the day I can walk on my own.”
“Agreed.”
“I’m serious, Harry. The second I can get out of that house without help, I’m gone.”
“I understand.”
“Then we have a deal.”
He nods and turns onto our street.
***
The house looks the same and completely different.
There’s a ramp leading up to the front door that wasn’t there before. The garden beds have been weeded and the windows have been cleaned.
Harry parks in the driveway and comes around to my side of the car. Before I can protest, he opens my door and slides his arms under me.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m carrying you inside.”
“I can use the wheelchair.”
“The ramp is steep. This is easier.”
“You had a wheelchair ramp built that’s too steep for a wheelchair?”
“Apparently.”
“You said you wouldn’t touch me unless I asked.”
“This isn’t touching. This is transport.”
He lifts me out of the car easily and holds me against his chest. I keep my body stiff and my arms at my sides, refusing to hold onto him even though every instinct tells me to wrap my arms around his neck.
He carries me up the ramp, through the front door and across the threshold, and nothing about it feels like a celebration.
“I’m not giving you a divorce,” he says as he sets me down on the couch in the living room.
“Harry…”
“I have until you can walk out on your own two feet to change your mind. That’s the deal. You said yourself you’re leaving the day you can walk, so I have until then to convince you to stay.”
“You won’t convince me.”
“Maybe not. But I’m not going to make it easy for you, Jules. I’m going to fight for this marriage every single day until then.”
I look at this man I married, standing in our living room, telling me he’s going to spend the next several weeks trying to win me back.
“Then I’ll learn to walk fast,” I say.
He almost smiles.
“I’ll get the wheelchair from the car.”
He goes back outside. I sit on the couch and look around the room.
Everything is exactly as I remember it, from the photos on the mantel to the books on the shelves to the throw blanket draped over the armchair, the one I always use when I’m reading.
But the door to the guest room is open, and where there used to be a lock, there’s just a smooth metal plate.
I look at the bathroom door, and it’s the same.
The closet and the pantry are the same. Every interior door I can see from where I’m sitting has had its lock removed.
Harry comes back in with the wheelchair. He sees me looking at the doors and goes still.
“You took off all the locks,” I say.
He doesn’t explain. He just stands there, waiting to see what I’ll do with it.
I file it away and say nothing.