Chapter 18 #2
He pauses in the middle of the path, like he’s letting himself enjoy the memory.
Then his expression clouds over. “The first two years were good, but it was all classwork. The third year is when you start the clinical rotations. Those are notoriously demanding, but I knew that. I was ready.” He shifts his weight, and a muscle in his jaw ticks.
“My first rotation was in emergency medicine. In the first twenty-four hours, I saw five people die. One was a six-year-old who had gotten hit by a car right in front of his house.” His throat bobs.
“All that training, years of work, and there was nothing any of us could do. Then we had to move on, build up a callus so it didn’t affect us.
I just couldn’t. And I didn’t want to learn to.
So I talked to my attending at the end of the week and quit. ”
A gust of wind sends yellow and red leaves falling around us, but I barely notice. My attention is locked on Ben, the tension in his jaw, the hard line of his brow. How he’s working hard to keep his emotions at bay.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
“My mom always thought I would go back. She used to tell people I was just taking a break, that it was temporary.”
“But you love what you do now,” I say. “That has to make her happy.”
He lets out a heavy sigh. “I’m not so sure.”
“Why?”
His head cocks to the side, like he’s deliberating how much he should say.
“My dad was a carpenter. He’s the one who bought me my first set of tools.
Who taught me how to use a marking gauge and a hand plane.
He also had a lot of issues. And his way of dealing with those issues was drinking and arguing with my mom.
Disappearing for days without a word. Then, one day, I noticed he had packed a suitcase, and I knew he wasn’t planning on coming back.
” He pauses, letting his gaze travel across the lawn.
“I chased him outside, begged him to stay, but he just kept walking straight to his car. He never came back.”
I think back to the painting of the little boy in the museum, of that same boy begging his father to stay, to choose him, and my heart breaks in two.
“How old were you?” I ask.
“About ten. Lauren was just a toddler.”
“Ben…” I whisper.
“Everyone always said I looked just like him. A carbon copy. They meant it as a compliment. They didn’t know the details, why that messed with my head so much.
I tried so hard to run away from it, to make sure I was nothing like him.
But after medical school, I found my way back into his workshop in our garage.
And it just… fit. I had spent so long running away from him, and in the end it didn’t matter because I still ended up in the same place. ”
“You’re not him, though. You know that, right?”
He lets out a dry laugh.
“I’m serious, Ben. You decide who you get to be. Nobody else.”
He looks over to meet my gaze. His brow sets a dark shadow over his eyes, but there’s a new softness there I haven’t seen before.
“We’re all out here winging it every day with no idea what the hell we’re doing,” he murmurs. “Sometimes we forget that goes for the people who raised us, too.”
I nod, letting a moment pass before I say, “I think that’s why my grandmother worked so hard to make me believe in magic and destiny. It made life easier to explain.”
Ben turns to face me fully. “What do you mean?”
I shrug one shoulder. “I was six when I went to live with her. I didn’t understand why my parents never came home, or what a drunk driver was.
But the way my grandmother swooped me up in her arms and the things she said, the way she explained things, made sense at the time.
Things were awful, but they wouldn’t be awful forever, because magic was real.
The universe had a plan just for me. And I was so swept up in it all, I didn’t think to question whether she actually believed it or whether it was just something she said to make us both feel better. ”
“What do you think?” he asks, his voice soft.
A memory flashes in my mind. My grandmother waking me up at midnight on my twelfth birthday, wrapping a blanket around my shoulders before guiding me down the long path from her bungalow to the beach.
Jupiter has returned to the exact same spot in the sky as when you were born, she’d told me.
That deserves a celebration. Then she lit a bonfire and told me to set my intentions for the year.
So I did, yelling them up to the stars like the universe was there, listening.
The moment I was done, a shooting star flew across the sky, and all I could think was, Yes, there really is magic here.
When I turned to tell my grandmother the same thing, I found her watching me, her long gray hair floating in the breeze, her pale skin almost glowing in the moonlight.
But she didn’t look magical. She looked old and frail.
And sad. Even though she was smiling, there was so much sadness on her face that I didn’t end up telling her about the shooting star at all.
“Honestly? I don’t know. I wish I had had time to ask her, but she was diagnosed with dementia when I was in college. Within a couple of years, she barely recognized me anymore.”
I try to offer him an apologetic smile, like I don’t mean to burden him with the unabridged history of Marnie Stephens, but it fades when I see the look of concern on his face.
“Marnie,” he says. There’s a new gravity in his tone.
“It’s okay,” I say, trying to keep my voice level. “She died a couple of years ago, but I had been losing her for a long time before that. It’s just hard sometimes because, yes, I miss her, but I feel so frustrated by her, too.”
“Why?”
I sigh. It sends thin white tendrils of breath between us.
“I guess it feels like I was sold a false bill of goods. If everything my grandmother told me about magic and destiny is true, then why did my parents die? Why did she always promise to leave me her bungalow, only for me to end up having to sell it to pay her medical bills? Why did a stupid fall wipe away a year’s worth of my memories?
Why do horrible things happen to good people every day? How is any of that magic?”
A moment passes as he studies my expression, as if he can see how my anger is just a thin mask for my grief. Then he smiles—the small, sad smile of someone who’s been there, too.
“Maybe the magic is that we keep going,” he murmurs, his voice so deep I can almost feel it in the air.
The tightness in my chest loosens, like his words have dislodged something I didn’t even realize was stuck there. Then I offer him a small smile, too. “Maybe.”
We stare at each other for a moment, caught in each other’s orbit. I don’t even know how much time passes, until a student across the lawn yells to another. Ben clears his throat and starts walking again.
When we reach the street a few minutes later, he asks, “So who is Elle Woods?”
“Only one of the most iconic blondes in film history. Besides Goldie. And Grace Kelly. Actually, Grace is probably at the top. She really nailed the perfect blond tone. And her cut was perfection.”
He steals a glance down at me, tilting his head to the side.
“Your hair right now looks pretty close.”
I scoff. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious.”
“No way,” I say. “Grace Kelly would never get a bob this short.”
“Or drop her R’s.”
“Tonight you’re going to see one of Hahvahd Yahd’s most fascinating sights,” I say with the same elegant hand motion as before, but now with an affected Boston accent.
His mouth ticks up with that perfect almost-smile. “See, now that’s not too bad.”
I laugh, leaning into his side as we turn around and head back to the T station.