4. Thursday
Chapter 4
Thursday
A t work the next morning, I am giddy and energized both from my walk with Matt and from seeing my team last night. Practice was a blast—the girls were in fantastic moods, blaring music the entire time and working their asses off. One of the senior captains, Addie, called me out on the goofy smile I had on my face all night.
"Hey, Coach, what's with the smile? You got a new man you're trying to hide from us?"
That's all it took for the other eighteen girls to join in heckling me.
"OOOOOOhhhkayyyy, Coach!"
"Who is he?"
"Or she? We're cool with either!"
"You know we can find anyone on the Internet."
"Just give us his initials."
I managed to evade their questions … for now.
At my desk, a new email pops up with today's discharges. Sid is on the list. I smile, knowing how happy he will be to get out of jail, but my heart sinks at the thought of not seeing him or Matt anymore.
Later that day I head down to the hospital cafeteria for a coffee to get me through the mid-afternoon slump. I'm standing in line to check out when I feel the air in the room shift, almost like the atoms are rearranging themselves.
I turn to see Matt strolling in, his hands in his pockets, dressed in dark jeans and a white T-shirt, with a lighter-wash denim shirt unbuttoned and billowing in his wake. He scans the room, and when he sees me, his eyes light up. He beelines toward me.
“I was sent to fetch some food,” he tells me with that sexy half smirk. "'Something that doesn’t look like it's been scraped off the side of the road and fried,’ and that’s a direct quote.”
I laugh. “And I am here to prevent myself from face-planting on my keyboard.” I lift my large coffee cup toward him. “At least it’ll be your last time doing this. Big day. Sid is getting out of here.”
He nods. “Yeah, he’s ecstatic. Already listing off all the meals he wants to cook. In his own kitchen. Complaining about how long it’s taking. I guess everyone has to come do one last check before signing off on it. So, we’re just waiting.”
We’re still in line to pay, once again enjoying a comfortable silence.
Matt interrupts it. “I know I keep saying this, but I’m going to say it again anyway—I very much enjoy spending time with you.”
“Me too,” I admit. “We should do it again.” I'm suddenly emboldened by the fact that his dad is being discharged and I may never see him again after today.
“How about now?” he asks with a boyish smile.
My heart kicks up a notch. I find us a table in the corner, and Matt sits with his back to the cafeteria in an attempt to hide from ogling eyes. By this point in Sid's hospital stay, word has traveled that the famous Matt Johnson is a regular visitor of New York Grace. We both take a sip of our coffees and Matt starts coughing.
“Did they siphon this from a tanker? God, this is bad.”
I take another pull from mine without so much as a flinch.
“This coffee is the lifeblood of the hospital. It runs through our veins. It will put hair on your chest and toughen you up a bit.”
He looks at me pointedly. “Does it put hair on your chest?”
I laugh out loud. “Is that a line?”
He grimaces. “Okay, yeah, that was bad. Please pretend I didn’t say that.” He covers his eyes with his hand.
“Okay, but rest assured, my chest is hair-free.”
We choke down our coffee and chat about what we love about the city, the people, the energy, and what we don’t—the rising crime, the small businesses that didn’t survive the pandemic. Matt talks about how he is trying to pave over some of his bad memories of New York during the lockdown. He describes how he felt trapped in California and was desperate to get to his dad and mom but didn’t want to put them at risk. When he was finally able to safely make it to the city, he describes how empty, haunted, and terrifying it seemed. The once bustling metropolis, a ghost town. Now that the city is fully reopened, he wants to visit his old favorite places—and new places—now alive and bustling with people, to forget the scary scenes that still play in his mind.
“Anything you haven’t crossed off your list yet?” I ask.
“I’d love to go see a movie. Like a real classic film, playing at an old-school New York City theater. I want to get in there, give my ticket to a real guy, not some machine, get popcorn, a soda, maybe some Junior Mints, and sit down next to other people, no masks, nothing scary, and just shut my brain off and watch it. Just sit there and listen to someone else’s story for two hours and enjoy the entire experience. Does that make sense?”
“It does.” I smile at him, liking the way he often asks me if something makes sense. A little verbal tic that is perhaps rooted in a lifetime of feeling misunderstood. It's endearing.
Matt tells me that Sid wants to go back to Allentown as soon as he is discharged—that despite having a beautiful apartment in the city, Sid goes back to his house in Pennsylvania as often as possible. He tells me about the mixed feelings he has visiting his childhood home, the place where all his dreams were born but also a place that holds so many memories, including reminders of his losses.
I tell him about my mom, the admiration I feel for her knowing her plight as a single mother raising two mischievous kids. We're laughing at something when I hear the overhead PA system beep on.
I see all hospital staff in the cafeteria pause midbite or mid-conversation and perk up their ears—something we all do any time there is a code called hospital-wide. Not my patient rooms, we silently chant. Before I fully realize what is happening, and a split second after I hear “Code Blue, CCU room 416,” I grab Matt by the hand and bolt for the doors, leaving our coffees and Sid's food on the table.
“What?” He is wide-eyed and confused. Clearly, he didn't hear the code or recognize the room number.
“Sid,” I say, pulling him toward the stairwell.
We bound up the stairs together, taking them two at a time. When I swipe us onto the unit, we're both breathing hard, and Sid's room is a swarm of activity. We freeze at the threshold, and I rapidly try to assess the situation.
“Code blue means your dad is in distress. It means the nurses need help immediately and anyone available shows up. That is why all these people are here. It doesn’t mean he’s dying—that’s just in movies,” I say quickly, softly, trying to exude calm despite my hammering heart. We walk toward the jam-packed hospital room, fingers still interlocked. I navigate us to the back corner by the window and begin to talk Matt through exactly what's happening.
Sid does not look good. His skin is gray and clammy. His eyes are closed. He looks so old and so frail in the hospital bed.
“It looks like he is having some respiratory distress—that might’ve caused him to lose consciousness,” I say softly. “No one is doing chest compressions. That’s a good sign because it means his heart never stopped. If his heart never stopped, it means his brain and all his other organs were not deprived of oxygen. Those tubes Dr. Patel is putting on him now are connected to high flow oxygen—that will help keep everything functioning as it should while they figure out what happened.” I gesture toward Christine, who is working quickly and efficiently. “It looks like Christine is giving him an IV to push fluids and probably a medicine to help him breathe.”
I turn my head away from the bed and hover it two inches from Matt’s chest to avoid seeing a needle go into Sid’s vein. Even though I'm not looking, I still feel woozy. I lean my forehead against his shoulder and take three calming breaths. Even amid the chaos I can’t miss his smell. He holds my hand even tighter.
After what feels like hours, the team has stabilized Sid, who is now resting peacefully as the room clears out. Dr. Patel comes over to us. She looks exhausted, but her eyes are warm.
"Hi, Matt. Your dad’s sats dropped suddenly and without any obvious reason. I am confident this is something we can figure out and treat. This happens in older people—sometimes for no reason and sometimes there is one, and that is what I'm looking for. There is no need to panic despite how intense that seemed. I want to reassure you he is in the best care, and we will do everything we can to get him through this. At a minimum, I am adding another twenty-four hours of observation to his stay and want to run a few additional tests." She goes on about the specific tests and procedures while Matt stands silently, nodding in agreement.
When he finishes signing the consent forms and Dr. Patel leaves the room, I finally turn to look at him. He is standing in the dark corner; the sun started setting sometime during the chaos. His face is deathly pale.
“Are you okay?”
A dumb question, especially coming from me. He doesn’t respond. I tug his hand, gently guiding him to sit in the recliner next to his dad's bed. His eyes are wide, staring at a spot on the floor, unseeing.
“Matt?” I kneel in front of him. “Your dad is okay. I know how bad that seemed, it’s overwhelming and scary every time, even for me, and I see it almost every day. Can you try to take some deep breaths for me?”
I worry he is in shock. I take both his hands in mine and squeeze gently.
“Matt. Can you hear me?”
His eyes focus on our intertwined hands and then slowly move up to my face, like he is just realizing where he is. He finally looks at me, and his eyes fill with tears. He drops his chin to his chest and takes a shaky breath.
“That was … terrifying,” he mumbles into his shirt.
I look at him—at the top of his head and his thick, wavy hair. This man I've just come to know, so shaken. I impulsively move forward and run my fingers through his hair, to touch him, to comfort him. He leans into my hand, and I skim the backs of my fingers across his cheek.
“He’s okay,” I repeat. Matt nods slowly, trying to digest what I'm saying. "He is okay," I say again, my fingers now openly caressing the side of his cheek. Matt catches my wrist and slowly brings it to his lips. He gives me a single, soft kiss on the back of my hand.
“Thank you. For being here,” he whispers, eyes still full of tears. We stay like that for what feels like a very long time.
Eventually I stand up, not sure what to do next, and head for the door. He seems startled by my movement.
“Where are you going?”
“I just have to go check on a few other patients. I can come back.…”
“Please don’t leave,” he pleads, eyes panicked. My heart flip-flops in my chest.
“I’ll come back in just a few minutes. I promise,” I respond.
“Okay. Okay, good.” He turns toward Sid as I slowly exit the room.
I walk back onto the unit, Matt's words echoing in my head, my heart rate finally slowing after the adrenaline. I stop by the nurse's station to say job well done to everyone who responded to the code. I do a quick round on my other patients, rushing through my usual questions, before I head for my office. Christine hops up from her chair and heads toward me.
“I’ll join you. I need a minute away from the desk,” she says. We walk in silence, and I know my longtime friend and colleague is chewing on something.
“You seemed pretty cozy with Mr. Johnson’s son during that code.”
“He was rattled. I was doing what I would’ve done for any other loved one of a patient.”
“Hmmmm.” She eyes me suspiciously. “Jules, I’ve been working with you for how many years? We’ve seen the good, bad, and ugly parts of humanity together, and yes, you’re right, I’ve seen you hold people’s hands in their time of need, but this … seemed different, and not just because you had dinner with him."
"What are you trying to say, Chris?"
"I know it's been a while since things ended with you and Nick and that eventually you have to get yourself back out there. I’m just a little cautious of it potentially being with 416’s son. I have heard about that man nonstop from Dave for the past few days. I don’t know what is true and what is not. But as a friend, I might suggest dipping your toe back in the dating pool with someone a little less … scandalous.”
I laugh at that. It feels ridiculous in the context of what I know about Matt, which admittedly is not a lot. Also ridiculous in the sense that there is absolutely nothing happening here that would extend past Sid’s stay.
“Noted. Thanks for your input.”
* * *
I push the rest of my tasks for the day onto tomorrow’s to-do list, unplug my laptop, and throw it into my purse. I grab two Cokes out of my fridge and head back to the unit to check on Matt and Sid.
Matt is in the same place where I left him over an hour ago, but this time he is turned toward his dad’s bed, chin resting in his hands, watching Sid sleep. He looks deep in thought.
I hand him a Coke. “Sugar helps with the shock.” He takes it but doesn't open it.
I sit down on the window seat by his chair. “How are you doing?”
“I’m having déjà vu,” he says eventually. “I used to have this reoccurring dream when I was a kid that something terrible happened to my parents and they were gone. Remember how you said you always thought something bad was going to happen when you were a kid? I had a similar fear, but it was only ever about my parents. It was always something different: they went to work and never came home; they moved to the next town over and forgot me; they got scooped out of the driveway by a giant bird. It didn’t matter what happened, exactly, but that feeling of them being gone and me being alone was a constant. I would wake up in a panic and sneak down the hall to peek into their room and make sure they were all right. I’ve always had this fear of losing them. I know that is normal for everyone, but sometimes I worry I’m thinking about it so much it's all I can see. Like I’m on this train and I can’t get off, but I know exactly where it’s headed.” He takes a deep breath.
“I thought losing my mom was going to be the worst of it. Don’t get me wrong, Eric dying was a tragedy of epic proportions, and though it didn’t make it easier, the fact that we knew he was sick, and fighting, and then fighting but losing, gave us some semblance of preparation. But losing my mom ... I mean, watching someone who is still very much alive fade into dust right in front of you is just a sadness I can’t even scratch the surface of.
“And it's human nature to think it’s about you. To think, If I was important enough to her, or if she really loved me, she'd snap out of it and be my mom. It’s something I couldn’t wrap my head around for a long, long time. It created this hole somewhere inside me that I was desperate to fill, usually with the wrong things or the wrong people. But the older I get, the more I realize that my mom is my mom, and she is also a human just like me. A complicated, messy, flawed human who suffered a devastating loss—one that I can't quite comprehend because I'm not a parent. Once I could sort of understand all of that and lean into it, I felt less angry about her abandonment.”
He stops, still looking at Sid, then continues. “But what happened just now, with my dad, feeling like I could’ve just lost him.” He pauses, voice thick, eyes full. “That hit me like a sucker punch to the gut. I know he is going to die someday, but thinking something in my head and watching it happen in front of my eyes is very different. It has been just the two of us for so long. He has been the only constant for me. He’s been with me every moment of this wild ride, in this life I’ve made. I have been sitting here since you left trying to figure out where he ends and I begin. And I couldn’t tell you." He swallows hard.
"So, what does that mean for me when he’s not here anymore?” he chokes out.
I walk over to him as his tears overflow, spilling down his cheeks, his chin working hard to contain the emotion flooding out of him. I sit on the armrest of the recliner and wipe the tears away instinctively as I feel my own eyes well. We sit in silence, his words hanging heavily in the air. I know there is nothing to say right now, no platitudes or assurances will make him feel better. I bend down to hug him, to comfort him as he reaches for me, leaning in, lips parted. I panic and move away, which results in an incredibly awkward half hug, his beautiful lips grazing my cheek.
I pull back to face him and wonder how someone can look so gorgeous and devastated at once. His glassy eyes roam my face, moving back and forth between my eyes and my mouth, like he can't decide where to look or what to do. I bite my lip, not sure what is happening. He leans in again, and I do not back away. I am at once hyperaware of what is happening and feeling disembodied, like I'm watching from the ceiling. His lips press against mine so softly I may have missed it if I weren't frozen in place. My face must register shock, because he pulls away quickly.
"Shit. I’m sorry.” He blows out a big breath and runs his hands through his hair and down his face. He stands up and starts pacing the tiny hospital room. “I’m all over the place right now. I’m not usually this … unguarded. Or impulsive. And that, the kiss. I, uh, don’t get me wrong, I wanted to do that, but it seems like it was probably terrible timing,” he rambles on. I stay still, speechless, trying to let my brain catch up.
“What are you two yapping about over there?" grumbles Sid hoarsely from the bed. "Can’t you let a man rest in peace?” His eyes are still closed, and Matt bolts next to him, wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands.
“Jesus, Dad, are you okay? You scared the shit out of me.”
Sid opens his eyes to find Matt and me hovering next to his bed.
A slow smile creeps onto his tired, lined face. “Now, there is a sight for sore eyes. Look at you two. You look good together, if I do say so myself.” His voice is weak.
"How are you feeling?" Matt asks, desperate.
Sid, exasperated, says, “Don’t be so dramatic, son. I'm fine.”
I see Matt’s shoulders relax slightly. At least his dad’s cantankerous disposition remains intact.
I take that as my cue and glance quickly at Sid’s monitors before excusing myself for the night.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, Sid. I’ll check on you in the morning.” I feel Matt’s eyes on me, laserlike, as I leave the room.
* * *
By the time I get home, I am exhausted. I barely have the energy to take Murphy for his nightly walk. The emotional rollercoaster of the day is more than I'm used to. Images keep flashing in my head: Matt sitting across from me in the cafeteria, eyes bright and smiling, hand in mine; his pale face in the corner of his dad’s room, the fear rippling off him, the vulnerability in his eyes, the feeling of his lips on mine. It’s overwhelming. I don’t know what to make of any of it.
I draw myself a piping hot bath and soak my body, trying and failing to clear my mind of everything, but especially of Matt.
I cannot deny the instant connection I feel with him. I rack my brain for similar experiences, the most obvious being Nick, but there is no comparison. Nick and I were always in agreement that our story wasn’t a love at first sight situation. I was in my second year of grad school and Nick was working his first finance job out of college. We kept running into each other at the same bars in Fells Point, so much so that I eventually turned to him and asked if he was following me.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he shot back with a warm smile.
Nick was very attractive, a solid six feet of athletic grace with sandy blond hair and warm hazel eyes. He had a confident if not cocky way about him, like he’d never had to try too hard at anything. After that first interaction, it was several weeks before we saw each other again and he asked me out. When I go back to that moment, I remember feeling excited by the idea of Nick, amused by the situation. It was markedly different from what I am feeling now with Matt, like a physical force that cut to my core the moment I saw him. It only intensifies with every new interaction as I learn more about him.
After today, I feel untethered, like I'm swimming through unchartered waters—a place I do not like to be. I can't be sure what parts of this are real and what parts are symptoms of different issues, like me being single and lonely, or Matt’s innate magnetic pull that isn’t special just to me. It is too much to sort through, especially after a day like today.
I manage to fall asleep eventually, but my dreams are full of Matt—the same images from earlier, but a few more: his lips on my neck, his hands on my hips, his fingers dancing down my body, his head in between my legs.