But Hayes...he didn’t fit. The idea that I had met, fallen in love, and become engaged to him in under a year didn’t make sense to me. Was I that...? The word eluded me. Impulsive, maybe? I didn’t feel impulsive. And I wasn’t going to school — er…hadn’t gone to school — for an M.R.S. degree.
I had no feeling for this man standing at the foot of my bed, except maybe a certain wariness that I accorded to all jocks who liked to bully nerds. I certainly didn’t love him. He was no different than the doctor, who had not stopped droning on while my thoughts wandered.
“...she’ll need to live with someone for a time. Several months, at least. It’s —”
“Where was I living?” I interrupted, tired of being spoken about instead of to.
Hayes cleared his throat. “We were living together. We’d bought a house and were fixing it up —”
“No.”
A faint crease in his brow was TD and H’s only reaction. The man was the definition of stoicism.
“Sorry,” I added. “But I don’t know you, and I don’t think I’m the ‘shack up with a strange man’ kind of girl. We’re going to have to work our way back up to that sort of thing.” Maybe, I added internally.
After a pause in which my mother and Hayes exchanged uncomfortable looks, he nodded slowly. “I understand.”
“You can stay with me,” Mom added. “Your room is the same as it’s always been.”
“Good,” Dr. Chen said briskly. “We’ll be keeping you for at least one more day for observation, but if everything looks good, you can plan on getting out of here the day after tomorrow.”
I yawned. I was exhausted, even if I had spent the last four days in a coma. My brain hurt.
“We’ll let you get some rest, then.”
The doctor placed a hand on Mom’s shoulder to guide her out. She gave me a little wave and a smile filled with worry. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Birdie. Get some rest.”
“Bye, Mom.”
Alone, Hayes and I looked at each other, me with wariness, him with...I wasn’t sure. Frustration, maybe. Longing? I couldn’t read him.
With a sigh he pulled the room’s sole chair closer to my bedside and sat down in it heavily, passing a hand over his jaw. Using the button on my bed, he dimmed the light.
“Get some sleep.”
“But —”
“I’m not leaving, Birdie.”
“Hayes —” I tried again.
“Don’t ask me to leave you. I’ll do anything you want, give you everything you need. But don’t ask me to leave.”
Somehow, I knew he was talking about more than tonight. I rolled over, careful of the i.v. in my arm, and presented him with my back. “You can stay,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “For now.”
“To the love.
My goodness to the love that never stops and comes from somewhere
only mothers have seen and know the secret location of.”
Tyler Knott Gregson
November 15│Birdie
I STOOD AT THE STOVE, SLOWLY STIRRING MY SOUP TO KEEP THE MILK FROM STICKING. On the next burner, a grilled cheese sizzled, and I reached to flip it. It was browned to perfection, the cheddar oozing from the seams of the bread.
I turned off the burners, plated the sandwich and ladled the soup into a bowl. It was the first meal I’d made for myself since I’d come home from the hospital yesterday, and so far, so good. I knew, without thinking about it, exactly how to prepare the tomato soup, with a can of milk instead of water and a pat of butter. I didn’t know why I added butter, of all things. It just seemed like the thing to do while I was buttering the bread for the cheese sandwich.
Sitting down at the small table in the kitchen, I picked up my spoon and paused before I dipped it in the soup. I knew exactly how the soup would taste, knew that I liked to dip my sandwich in the soup.
I knew these things like most people knew the day of the week.
And yet, I didn’t know that. The day of the week, that is. Or the year, apparently.
I started eating, and a sense of well-being assailed me immediately. I guessed, from my impulse to make it and the feeling I had now as I ate it, that this was one of my comfort foods.
“Birdie? Gracious, child, what are you doing?” Light flooded the kitchen and I blinked up at Mom.
I remembered her — or at least, I remembered a version of her, slightly younger, slightly lighter. She hadn’t changed much. Still wore perfectly awful stretch pants and humongous tee shirts. Still had her hair slicked back in a bun at the nape of her neck. She wasn’t an unattractive woman, but she’d stopped trying to be pretty around the time Dad had killed himself. Her method of punishing herself, I supposed.
I tried to swallow the reflexive irritation that rose within me. All of that had happened years ago. I had probably long since moved on, so it wouldn’t be fair to either one of us to bring it up now. I had struggled, though, with the fact that neither Mom nor Dad had chosen me over their own personal issues and tragedies. Mom had chosen her wants, uncaring or unthinking about what such a choice might do to her family. To her daughter. Dad had chosen to end his life, rather than making the decision to stay with me. Love me.
Regardless of whether or not I’d moved on, it hurt now to think about it. I took another bite and chewed, unspeaking.
“Why are you sitting here in the dark?”
I swallowed the bite of sandwich I’d just taken and wipe my fingers on a paper towel. “I had a light on.” It was true. I’d turned the light over the sink on, but for some reason I hadn’t wanted a brighter light.
“It’s ten at night,” she said, eyeing the meal in front of me. “You’re going to have heartburn when you go to bed.”
I jerked my shoulder in a shrug. “I’ll be fine.”
Heartburn.
Just one more cow pie in a whole meadow of crap I’d be dealing with for the foreseeable future. My stomach lurched as I remembered Dr. Chen’s visit the morning following his diagnosis.
It had been early, but I was already awake. The hospital was an impossible place to sleep, with nurses in and out all night to prick or prod at me. The latest had just bustled in and out for shift change protocols, rousing Hayes from an uncomfortable-looking slump in the chair as she greeted me cheerfully.
“I’m so glad to see you doing so well, Birdie,” she murmured. “Ghost has been on me endlessly to give him a good report.”
“Ghost?” I thought I had misheard.
“Ghost stopped at the accident,” Hayes said, rising to stand and stretch. “He helped us, called EMS.” He’d looked at the nurse. “You’re with him?”
“I am. And so glad that he happened to be on that road that evening.”
“Please tell him how grateful I am. I think I was a mess that night; I can’t remember if I told him.” He’d leaned over to place a chaste kiss on my forehead. “Morning, Mini.”
I’d stared after him as he walked into the bathroom and closed the door. Did he only ever call me by names deprecating my height? I knew that at five feet one inch and five-eighths I was vertically challenged. I didn’t need the continual reminder.