Chapter 40
NIA
“A s soon as a room is available for you, we will let you know, ma’am,” I tell the woman following me as I scurry across the floor, scrubbing sanitizer into my skin. Gesturing with my head, I tell her, “Please go back to your seat so we can help all of these very sick people.”
“I’m sick, too,” she barks at me.
“I know, and I’m so sorry about that,” I say. “We will come get you as soon as there’s a room for you.”
Ignoring her arguments and deciding to let her become someone else’s problem, I head for the next bay to gown up and get to work on our patient. I hate cases like this one. Elderly patient brought in post-fall with head trauma and what looks like a broken pelvis.
Like we always do, we run the code and we run it hard, working ourselves to exhaustion until it’s decided that we aren’t going to be able to bring him back.
The loss itself hurts, but it’s the silence that follows that really does me in.
From med orders being shouted through the room, two of us swapping positions as we offer chest compressions, to the deafening silence of the monitors being shut off and time of death being called.
It isn’t just silence, it’s the sound of death.
As our team separates and the attending physician leaves to contact the patient’s family, I clean myself up and take a breath before pulling my phone from my pocket.
I blow out a calming breath, staring at our text thread, and I know that he’s doing the same. He can’t physically be here. I can’t call him and hear that soothing, commanding voice of his, but it still feels like he’s sitting here with me.
Several minutes pass in our shared virtual silence before my phone finally pings again.
“Who loves you?”
Matthew sidles up next to me, sipping on a water bottle as he looks over my shoulder and at my phone screen, which I immediately click off and slide back into my pocket.
“You do,” I answer with a saccharine smile.
With a quirk of his brow, he reaches into his pocket for an energy shot and offers it to me. I crack open the lid and suck down the liquid inside, grimacing at its flavor.
“Tell me it’s not the ex, and I’ll leave you alone,” he offers.
“Not the ex,” I nod. I reach for my beeping pager, offering him another wide grin before taking off to answer my page.
Ten more hours and more patients than I would ever be able to count later, I’m finally climbing into my car – though crawling might be a more accurate description. I haven’t worked a full shift like this in so long, I’ve almost forgotten the soul-crushing exhaustion that comes with it.
I’m thankful for that exhaustion, though. I’m thankful for the long hours and the bodily fluids and the sounds of pagers and monitors ringing in my ears as I drive home.
All of those things mean that my life is back.
As I pull onto my driveway, over that obnoxious cement bump that jolts me out of my near-sleep, I catch sight of a box near my front door.
I rub the knuckle of my thumb into the corner of my eye with a tired groan as I slip the key from the ignition and climb out, heading for the door and the box sitting in front of it that I definitely didn’t order.
The box itself is wrapped in a sleek cream-colored paper, secured together with a deep orange bow. Next to it sits a vase filled with flowers, this arrangement much brighter in color than the ones that have been showing up to match my home décor.
As I lift the note from the top of the box, I let out a soft laugh.
I don’t bother to carry the box inside before tearing open the ribbon and the paper beneath it as if it’s Christmas-freaking-morning, giggling at the stack of chocolate bars inside, accompanied by a tub of my favorite ice cream kept frozen with what looks to be dry ice, and—
“Oh my god!” I shriek, slapping shut the flaps of the box as my eyes meet the packaging for a rabbit-style vibrator. “Packages from Brody are opened inside the house,” I quietly say to myself as I glance over my shoulders before picking up the box to take it inside.
All I need is for one of my nice, white-picket-fence neighbors to see that, and it’s game over for me here.
After a long, hot shower to scrub off the day and the layers of yuck that I always feel clung to me after a shift, I slip into a comfortable old t-shirt and head for the laundry room to finally get this week’s wash folded and make sure that Katie’s Halloween costume is ready to go.
As I clip the pink skirt of her Paw Patrol costume onto a hanger, an idea occurs to me and I pick up my phone, propping it onto a shelf as I dial Brody’s number.
“Yello,” he greets me as his face fills up the screen of my phone.
He’s in his car, and though his eyes are on the road, they flick over to me and he smiles when I greet him.
“That looks like house chores,” he comments with an arch of his brow as I pick up a pair of leggings to fold them.
“I ate a chocolate bar in the shower and I set my beautiful new flowers in the kitchen,” I tell him. “If I stopped doing chores every time someone died, nothing would ever get done.” He shoots an irritated look toward his phone that tells me he’s taking note of my argument, and I bite the inside of my lip to hold back a laugh. “ Anyway , I wanted to know what you’re doing for Halloween.”
“I’m Catholic,” he laughs. His open palm glides across the steering wheel in front of him as he maneuvers a turn. “I am on my way home from church. We’ve never celebrated Halloween.”
“Not even candy?” I gape.
“You mean, ‘temptation wrapped in demonic imagery created to lure children into evil?’ ” He asks, throwing on a voice that sounds an awful lot like he might be mocking his father. “No, we didn’t eat Halloween candy, either.”
“Come trick or treating with us,” I blurt out. “Just for an hour or two, then Katie will eat herself into a sugar coma. Grammy and Keith can come over when she crashes and we can go to Isla’s party. I bet she’ll have candy eyeballs – you know, because of the whole watching thing.”
A loud, deep laugh pours out of him as his hand glides once again against the steering wheel. I love to watch him drive; I think it makes him happy, even (or maybe especially) when his only company is talk radio.
Pulling my phone from it’s place on the shelf, I carry it with me to the kitchen to rest on the counter while I pour myself a glass of wine, waiting for Brody to make a decision.
“How does four o’clock sound?” He finally asks.
“Make it two so you can paint pumpkins with us?”
His pinched-together face moves toward the camera for just a half of a second. “So I can what? ”
A giggle slips out of me and into my wine glass. It’s like explaining a holiday to someone who’s lived in a cave for their entire life. I never expected that I would be helping to give a thirty-eight-year-old man his first Halloween.
It’s kind of sweet.
“When I get to my house, I’m going to send you a list,” he tells me. “If you stop doing chores and you answer the question that comes with that list in a timely manner, I will be at your house at two o’clock.”
“I have another twelve tomorrow,” I counter, dipping my head with a raise of my brow. “My house isn’t gonna clean itself.”
“Two.”
“What?” I laugh.
“I’m just keeping count of the times that you’ve questioned an order since we got on this call.” As his arm shifts toward the camera, the corner of his mouth ticks up. “I love you, sweet girl. Don’t disappoint me.”
My phone’s screen goes black as the call disconnects, and I’m left alone in my kitchen with a glass of wine in my hand.
I scan the house: the basket of dirty laundry sitting on the couch, waiting to go into the wash. The dishes left in the sink from breakfast this morning that should go into the dishwasher. I promised myself I was going to scrub down the hall bathtub tonight, too.
My teeth tug at my lower lip before I pull another drink from my glass, setting it onto the counter once it’s emptied.
I wave to the laundry basket with a wiggle of my fingers as I walk past it and toward my bedroom to wait for Brody’s cryptic text message, which comes in ten minutes later. Nothing more than a list of colors, from which I’m instructed to choose only one. Along with it is the instruction to leave a copy of my house key in my mailbox before I leave for my shift.
Sliding a fuzzy, cat-eared headband onto my head, I give myself an approving nod before hollering for Katie to finish getting herself ready for our evening.
I may have gotten a little excited, which may have led to me going slightly overboard in preparation for our painting. There’s a small twinge of guilt that we may very well destroy the beautiful, professional cleaning that Brody had done for me while I was at work on Sunday.
Only a small twinge.
My wild child, already hopped up on sugar, careens around the corner of the dining room decked out in her costume – complete with flight goggles.
“Let’s take to the sky!” She shouts, pointing up toward the ceiling as she quotes her favorite TV show.
“You look great, Katie-cat!” I shout with a giggle.
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I snap a few quick photos of her pulling a series of poses before I move to answer the door and let Brody in.
He’s dressed in a black t-shirt that hugs the broad, solid build of his body and lets the artwork covering his arm spill out from under it. The t-shirt is tucked into a pair of equally-black jeans which are secured around his body with a belt, and his glasses aren’t resting on his face.
I’ve never seen him so dressed-down, and I’ve definitely never seen his tattoos on display in public – aside from our time spent in the voyeur room. It almost feels like seeing him in his underwear.
“Are you wearing contacts? ”
“For one night only,” he answers. “After tonight, I will never be touching my eyes again.”
I cover my mouth as a loud laugh escapes me at the thought of this big, broody, man who loves to make bruises and doesn’t mind wearing bodily fluids on his face…being afraid of touching his eyeballs.
A finger hooks beneath my chin, tilting my head upward as Brody quickly glances behind me to make sure that Katie isn’t there before he presses his lips to mine.
As we part, the padding of little shoes fills the space behind us as Katie blasts into the entryway.
“Brody!” She shouts, slamming into his body as her arms wrap around his waist.
As she pulls away from him, she offers a twirl, sending both her skirt and her floppy fabric ears flying out in a wide orbit around her.
“Oh wow,” he chuckles. “You are a very cool…dog…princess…”
“I’m Skye from Paw Patrol ,” she corrects him. “She flies planes.”
“Of course. My most sincere apologies, Captain,” he tells her with a salute and a firm nod of his head.
In the dining room, I’ve covered the large table with a thick plastic cloth to protect the wood beneath it, and I’ve set out several small pumpkins along with an array of acrylic paints and brushes.
Small bags of novelty candies are sprinkled across the table for us to munch on, even though I’m half certain that Brody will abstain.
I watch proudly as Katie tears into a package of candy and shows Brody how to put together the multicolored skeleton inside, and again as she walks him through the process of painting our pumpkins – making sure to note that the paint isn’t washable, so we have to be careful to not get it on the furniture.
The soft, gentle smile on his face while he listens to her is enough to turn my heart into mush.
Sitting at the table together to do something as simple as painting ghosts and silly faces onto pumpkins, sharing laughs and easy conversation is one of the most refreshing feelings I’ve had over the past year.
It’s so incredibly normal, and that makes it beautiful.
Watching the man that I love and the little girl who makes up my entire universe fall just a little bit in love with each other is something that I never thought I’d have the privilege to see.
Knowing that Brody didn’t – or doesn’t – like children scared me. I couldn’t fall for someone who would never appreciate my daughter the way that I do. I couldn’t bring someone into her life who would make her feel that she was optional.
As the three of us step out of the front door together and he welcomes Katie’s hand as she takes his, as I watch him make sure that his is always the body that sits on the side of the sidewalk closest to the street, any doubt that was left in my mind is squashed.