29. Josh
Chapter twenty-nine
Josh
It’s noon.
By now, Iris is home with my cousin.
She cried when she saw Iris for the first time in fourteen days. Liv reached for the box of tissues and passed them over to my cousin, then shifted back beside me.
I was holding Iris, who was wearing the pear onesie Liv put on her this morning and one white sock. The left foot was bare.
Naturally.
Liv’s hand brushed my elbow. Once. Light. Not a push. Just there.
I kissed Iris’s head and passed her over.
The next few minutes happened in pieces. Bags lifted. Papers tucked into a folder. A question about the stroller brake. Liv finding the giraffe before anyone noticed it was missing. Me carrying the car seat down because it gave my hands something to do.
Outside, the air was sharp and bright. The kind of clean morning that does not care what it is taking.
I strapped Iris into the car seat one last time.
Liv stood beside me, holding the giraffe.
I took it from her and tucked it into the seat where Iris could see it.
Then Liv and I stepped back.
The car pulled away.
I watched until the taillights turned at the corner.
Beside me, Liv wrapped both arms around herself.
Neither of us moved.
Liv’s phone buzzed in her coat pocket. She pulled it out, glanced down, and winced.
“Office?” I asked.
“Two weeks of buried email, one partner who thinks urgent and immediate are different words, and Carter doing whatever Carter does when unsupervised.”
We came back upstairs.
Now, my home is quiet when I open the door.
Not empty yet. Just quiet.
The nursery door is open. The pear onesie wrapper is still in the trash. Liv’s mug is beside the sink. Her flats are beside my shoes.
The blanket is still folded her way.
For a few seconds, neither of us says anything.
“Coffee before you call the office?” I ask.
She looks at her phone, already wincing. “I want to say yes.”
Which is not yes.
“Dangerous answer,” I say.
“I know.”
Another buzz. She glances down and closes her eyes for half a second. “Sophie says Carter is walking toward her desk with a folder and a face. It is never good when Carter has a face.”
“Does he usually not?”
“Not one I trust.”
“I need to call Sophie,” she says. “Then Carter. Then possibly file a motion to have my inbox declared a hostile work environment.”
She comes close and kisses me once. Her hand stays against my chest for one extra second.
“Go take a nap before your shift,” she says.
“I love your bedside manner.”
That gets me a real smile. Small, but real.
“I’ll text you,” she says, glancing toward the guest room, then towards me.
“Okay.”
She has calls. I have a shift. We have later.
I am halfway down the hall when I hear her voice from the kitchen.
“Sophie, breathe. Tell me what Carter touched.”
A pause.
“No. Do not let him send that.”
I almost smile.
There she is.
The place sounds wrong without Iris in it. But Liv’s voice is still here, sharp and alive in the kitchen.
I close my bedroom door and let myself sleep.
***
When I wake, I reach for the monitor before I remember.
Right.
No monitor. No bottle. No Iris.
For a few seconds, I lie there with my hand on the empty nightstand.
Eventually, I shower, dress in scrubs, and find a note on the kitchen counter beside my keys.
Grocery run. Adult food.
Liv's handwriting.
Liv is still here.
Her mug still sits beside mine at the sink. Her shoes are still by the door, tucked beside mine.
I am still looking at it when my phone buzzes with the hospital reminder.
Shift starts in forty minutes.
I grab my keys, lock the door, and go to work.
***
By the time I have a minute between cases, my coffee is cold and my phone has three missed alerts. Two from the hospital system. One from Liv.
Liv
Carter has used the phrase “quick question” seven times. Pray for me.
I read it standing outside trauma bay two, one shoulder against the wall and my chart half-finished in my hand.
Medical advice: stop making eye contact.
Too late. He’s pulling up a chair.
Play dead.
Not helpful
Evans catches me in the hall and tells me to go home before I start looking like part of the building.
***
I unlock my apartment and step inside.
The quiet hits first.
Not the good kind.
I set my keys in the bowl.
When I look down, the spot by the wall where Liv’s flats have lived beside my shoes is bare floor.
The guest room door is open.
I walk toward it.
The bed is made. Clean sheets tucked tight. The suitcase is gone. The sweater she left over the desk chair is gone.
The room looks like a guest room again.
Not hers.
The closet door is partly open. Inside, her lucky suit still hangs in the dry-cleaning sleeve.
I step back into the hall.
In the kitchen, the feeding log is still on the counter. Liv’s handwriting fills half the pages. I peel the schedule off the fridge, then stop with one corner lifted.
Not yet.
My phone buzzes. It’s the hospital pharmacy.
I clear the notification and open my texts.
No new message from Liv.
That is fine.
She went home.
She moved her things across the hall.
Six steps away. The place she lived before Iris turned my apartment into a two-week emergency with bottle parts by the sink and Liv’s shoes beside mine.
She did not leave me.
I know that.
I do.
But she moved her things while I was gone.
That is the part I keep looking at.
My thumb hovers over her name.
I can ask.
I can type Hey, I came home and saw you moved your things. Wish we’d talked first.
I set the phone on the counter.
Then I pick it up again.
Home. Hope the inbox surrendered.
I watch the message send.
Three dots appear almost right away.
Never. It has taken hostages.
I breathe out.
Do we negotiate?
NEVER
There she is.
Sharp. Warm. Mine, maybe.
Another message comes through.
I’m going to keep digging out for a while. Rain check on saying good night in person?
Rain check.
In person.
For a second I let myself draft the true answer: I want five more minutes.
I look at it until the screen starts to dim and delete it letter by letter and send the easy thing instead.
Of course. Rain check honored. tomorrow?
Tomorrow.
Night, Josh
The screen goes still. No dots after.
I set the phone face down on the counter, walk to my front door and open it.
Across the hall, the thin line of light under her door cuts across the floor.
She is awake.
Working.
Existing six steps away.
I can knock.
Somewhere in the last fourteen days, I promised myself I was done stepping aside.
This is different. She asked for a rain check.
Six steps.
Seven years.
I close my door.