Parallel

by O'Roark, Elizabeth

  My whole life, I wanted two things—to become an architect and to become a mother, and now neither of them will happen. I brush at the tears streaming down my face. It takes me a minute or two before I get it under control.

  “You don’t have to stay,” I tell him once I’ve pulled myself together. “I’m sure you have things to do.”

  He squeezes my hand. “I’m not leaving unless you force me to.”

  We are silent for a moment. The truth is, no matter how badly I don’t want to be dreaming about him, don’t want to persuade myself I feel something for him…there is no one else in the world I want here in his place.

  I glance out the window, at the dwindling light, and brace myself as I ask a question I’ve avoided all this time. “You don’t have to be home to someone?”

  “I made arrangements.”

  Ouch. “You’re married?”

  His eyes shift away. “No, but I have a girlfriend, Meg. She’s a pulmonologist here, actually. I told her I was working late.”

  My heart sinks. He’s got a girlfriend and she’s a doctor too. It leaves an extremely bitter taste in my mouth, jealousy and also panic. In a few years I’ll be gone and she’ll still be here with him. “You should go home to her then,” I tell him, the words grating in my throat on the way out. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Quinn,” he says quietly, staring between clasped hands at the floor, “I want to stay.”

  I hear need in his voice, and torment, and the sound of it opens this Pandora’s box inside me. My eyes close. I want to soothe his torment and my own. I want to forget the entire world exists aside from him. But the world does exist, and in it I’ve made certain promises.

  “I’ll have to invite both of you to the wedding,” I reply. “Two doctors would come in handy, given the odds the bride is going to pass out.”

  My forced cheerfulness fools no one. “Maybe—” he starts. “Never mind.”

  “No, come on. You started, so finish it.”

  His lashes lower, shuttering his expression. “Maybe you should postpone it,” he says. “The stress of a wedding…I’m not sure it’s what you need right now.”

  “People have already bought plane tickets. We’d lose all our deposits.”

  “You’re not even sure you want to marry the guy,” Nick says. His hands are clenched so tightly on the top railing of my bed that they are nearly bloodless. “A few lost deposits should be the least of your concerns.”

  I stiffen. “I never said I didn’t want to marry him.”

  “You didn’t have to say it,” he replies, glaring at me. “I told you he couldn’t get here until tomorrow and you didn’t even blink. And every time you’ve mentioned him, it’s like you’re talking about a work friend, or a cousin. You don’t feel the way you should about him.”

  “Oh, but you do with Meg?” I lash out and regret the words immediately. I don’t sound like a patient, or even a friend—I sound like a very, very jealous girlfriend.

  “No,” he says, his eyes nearly translucent in the dim room. “Because if I felt the right way about her, I probably wouldn’t be in here with you.”

  Relief washes over me, sweeps beneath me and raises me high. I allow myself to float there, on its surface. It will all come to nothing, but just for this one night, I’m going to pretend he is mine.

  17

  NICK

  I told the nursing staff I was staying late because Quinn was an old friend from college. This would probably have aroused less suspicion if she was a slightly less attractive old friend from college.

  I order in dinner from an Italian place down on MacArthur. As I pull the containers from the bag, I realize this feels a bit like a first date, and a bit like a night with someone I’ve known all my life. Her eyes are smokier than normal, her face flushed. If this was even a first date I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off her.

  I place the first container on her bedside table and she raises her surprised face to mine. “Penne alla vodka is my favorite.”

  I’m swept by an unsettling feeling I might have already known this. So many things with her seem to be automatic, so ingrained they’ve become a part of me—the same way I can drive home without paying attention to where I am or type without looking at the keys. “Sorry I couldn’t get us any wine to go with it, but I’m already getting enough of a side-eye from the front desk staff without providing alcohol to a patient.”

  She takes her first bite of pasta and groans, a sound that has me reacting in completely inappropriate ways. Before I can stop myself, I’m imagining hearing that noise with her beneath me, on top of me, with my head between her thighs. Thank Christ the bed rail blocks her view of my crotch. I shut my eyes for a moment, scrambling to think of a topic that doesn’t involve her mouth or my dick. Ideally, a topic that references no body parts whatsoever. Nothing comes to mind.

  “I guess this is the point where I’m going to have to tell Jeff and my mother about the tumor.”

  I set my fork down. At least the erection is gone. “You didn’t tell them about the tumor yet at all?”

  Quinn exhales heavily, staring at her plate. “My mom would have worried, and…with Jeff, I was just being bratty, I guess.”

  “Bratty how?”

  She shrugs. “After that last test I did, he kind of forgot to ask how it had gone. It wasn’t a big deal but it made me feel…like an afterthought.”

  My hand flexes. She’s got to be fucking kidding me. “How,” I say, “could he not have asked?”

  “I’m sure he just assumed things were fine.”

  Bullshit. If she were mine, I’d have been at the hospital when she was being discharged. I’d have tried to make her go home and rest. I’d have had a thousand fucking questions for her doctor about next steps. I’d have persuaded her to leave the job she hates. There are a million things I’d have done, and he hasn’t done a goddamn one of them. “Do you want me to call them?”

  She laughs. “Oh my God. If you called my mother, she’d go off the deep end.”

  “Why’s that? My bedside manner isn’t that terrible, is it?”

  Her smoky-green eyes grow a little hazier. “Your bedside manner is just fine.”

  I find myself watching Quinn’s mouth as she speaks, which was a really bad idea. My dick has a mind of its own and now strains hard against what was a roomy pair of pants. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is if she learns I’ve got a doctor named Nick after I spent my early childhood dreaming about a doctor named Nick, she’s going to lose her mind. I think it was pretty unnerving to have your toddler talking about her husband from a past life.” Her jaw tenses. “And my mother is easily spooked.”

  There’s tension there, whenever she refers to her mother. I wish I knew why. “Those dreams…what made them stop?”

  Her teeth pull at her lip. “I went to therapy but I don’t think that had much to do with it. We had this…incident on the farm. And they became a lot less frequent after that.”

  I go on alert the moment she says incident. She’s trying to minimize something I doubt was minimal. I’m guessing she does that a lot. “What incident?”

  She stares at her lap, avoiding my eye. “A murder-suicide. My parents had these tenants on the property, this little two-bedroom house… They think the wife wanted to leave, so the husband killed her and their daughter while they were asleep.”

  “Their daughter? She was a child?”

  She swallows. “Yeah. Jilly. She was nine, just two years older than me. She would tell me all about Melrose Place after school since I wasn’t allowed to watch it. I still don’t know if Michael and Jane ever got back together,” Quinn says, with a raspy noise that is meant to be a laugh but comes out as something like a sob. She brushes at her face. “God, I haven’t talked about this in ages. Anyway, it kind of messed me up a little.”

  I reach between the railings to squeeze her hand. “That would mess up anyone. But I can’t imagine how something like that would have
made your nightmares stop.”

  Her eyes flicker to me and dart away again. “I guess I finally realized caring too much for any one thing…it just creates problems. I was better off letting it go.”

  Something about her answer doesn’t add up. It’s obvious she cares about things. She dropped out of school for her parents’ sake, and she’s getting married. Not the behaviors of someone who fears intimacy. “You don’t mean that,” I say. “If you really didn’t want to be attached, you wouldn’t be engaged right now.”

  “I didn’t say I want no attachment. I said I don’t want to get too attached. If Jeff cheats on me or leaves, he does. I’ll be hurt, sure, but I won’t be destroyed.”

  It seems like a fucked-up way to go through life. I’ve spent years waiting to feel more for another person, while she intentionally chose someone with whom that would never be possible.

  She rolls toward me. “Which reminds me. I did a little research yesterday morning before I called you. There’s a doctor in New Jersey who might be able to help me stop the dreams.”

  Right. The dreams that show her how much better her life should be. I wish I could convince her to pay attention to them, but instead I listen as she describes a study this guy published on repressed memories and sudden tumor onset, some case in which a teenage girl had a seizure and woke up speaking fluent Italian.

  I’ve been combing medical journals since the day we met for something, anything, that could help, and have found absolutely nothing—which means any guy she’s found online is probably a crackpot no respectable journal would publish. I lean back in my chair and rub my neck. “Quinn, I’m not trying to dissuade you, but there are a lot of people who try to profit off the misfortunes of others. For every single incurable disease, you’ll find at least one charlatan offering some insane treatment that costs a fortune and makes no sense.”

  “He went to Harvard for medical school. That’s got to be worth something.”

  “It’s probably worth a lot less than you think. Guys like that…they either come up with a bizarre cure or a bizarre supernatural explanation for what they can’t cure.”

  She smiles. “Are you ruling supernatural explanations out?”

  “Look, even if I believed in ghosts, or reincarnation, you’re remembering events that took place within the past few years. Besides, you seemed even more certain than me that there was no explanation.”

  “I know, but I was thinking something.” She rolls on her back, her gaze on the ceiling. There are water spots there I’ve never seen before, but I don’t think she even notices them. “I realize it sounds crazy, but the tumor gets bigger every time I black out, right? It was tiny, now it’s not. So maybe if I can just figure out why it’s happening, even just part of the reason, I can stop it from growing.”

  “Or maybe,” I reply as gently as possible, “it’s the progression of the tumor that’s causing the incidents in the first place. And now you’ve got a tumor that needs treatment. We should be focused on getting you in with an oncologist, not some quack’s insane theories.”

  She blinks rapidly, trying not to cry. “I need this to stop, Nick. I need someone to make it stop. Even if the tumor kills me, the way I find myself thinking and feeling…it has to end.”

  “Why?” I ask, harsher than I intended to sound. “Why does it have to end?”

  Her eyes are so tortured as they turn toward me it’s hard to meet her gaze. “Because I wake up feeling like everything in London actually happened, and I want it more than I want my real life. Except, my real life is what I have, and I need to be happy with that.”

  No, you don’t. You could be with me.

  I picture it: leaving here together. Starting over in a new city where no one knows us. Coming home to her every night and finding her beside me every morning. The thought of it makes me burn with want. What I’d like to do right now is hold her face in the palms of my hands and make a thousand promises I’d never be able to keep. Instead I jump to my feet and begin to pace. I’m angry and upset and being unprofessional and I really don’t care. “I think these dreams are nature’s way of telling you that you are settling for less. Way less.”

  “What I have with Jeff is exactly what I want,” she replies, her voice breaking. “I don’t want to feel more than that about someone. It causes too much pain.”

  I should let this go, because it’s not like I have anything to offer in its place—even if every other obstacle was removed, it’s never going to be okay for me to be with her. But I find myself arguing anyway. “The only other option is to go through your whole life never deeply loving anything at all.”

  “I’m okay with that,” she replies. She looks at me for a long moment. “And you seem to be too.”

  18

  QUINN

  A nurse enters at six a.m., waking us both. We stayed up talking most of the night, and he fell asleep in the fold-out chair beside me. I have no idea how he explained his absence to his girlfriend.

  “Oh,” says the nurse, trying to master her surprise. “Dr. Reilly…I, uh, didn’t realize you were…in here.”

  Guilt makes me flinch. I’m engaged and I shouldn’t have had a man other than Jeff stay overnight in my room. “Nick’s an old friend,” I explain.

  “From college,” he adds, but he looks far too guilty to be believed. She raises a brow and, after giving him a look I can only interpret as scolding, leaves the room.

  “I hope you don’t get in trouble,” I breathe when the door shuts behind her.

  He gives me a small smile. “As far as I remember, nothing unprofessional occurred.”

  Just the suggestion that something could have happened is enough to have me squeezing my thighs together.

  “But,” he adds, “Jeff will be here soon, so I should go.”

  I dread him leaving. It’s greedy of me to want more time with him, but I want it anyway. And I absolutely need to stop wanting it. “Thank you for staying over.”

  His fingers brush mine and his eyes shut. “If you’re still planning to go see that doctor in New Jersey, I’ll go with you.”

  I shake my head. “You don’t need to do that.”

  “You cannot drive that far alone. Not when you’re blacking out every other day. Unless you plan to ask Jeff.” The disdain in his tone implies he already knows I won’t. Or thinks Jeff isn’t up to the job.

  My hands twist together. The last thing I need are more hours alone with Nick. But he’s taken anyway, so how dangerous could it be? And he’s right—I shouldn’t drive that far by myself, and asking Jeff means telling him about these dreams, which wouldn’t go over well.

  I tell myself I’m agreeing because it’s my only option, but the truth is, as much as the idea of being alone with Nick scares me, it appeals to me even more.

  So I guess we’re going on a trip.

  * * *

  “Quinn!” my mother says excitedly when she answers the phone. “You must be psychic. I was just about to call. Nordstrom emailed to say they no longer have the heels I wanted you to get for the rehearsal dinner. So what do you think about getting the suede instead? I know you wanted patent leather, but I think they’d work and you’d probably get more use out of them.”

  Her words are like small, repetitive drips of water into an empty metal sink. So meaningless. It’s shocking to me that a week ago I’d have been worried about patent leather versus suede. And now I’m so sad for her. I’m about to make her small worries seem as trivial as they are by dropping a big one in her lap.

  “Mom,” I say softly. “I’ve got some bad news.”

  * * *

  By the time Jeff arrives, my tears have dried, but sadness weighs heavily in my stomach. My mother leaned on me so hard when my father died. Who will she have to lean on once I’m gone too? I gave her a best-case scenario instead of the worst, yet it was still the most difficult phone call I’ve ever made.

  Jeff walks into the room with his carry-on in hand, looking weary and worse for wear. He presses a ki
ss to my forehead, drops into the chair that was Nick’s during the night. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. There wasn’t a single flight out and then we left late. So what happened?” he asks, gently pushing the hair back from my face. “I called again and again last night but you didn’t answer.”

  Guilt delivers yet another tweak to my stomach. I begin to sweat and fling off the blankets. “I was sleeping a lot,” I lie. “But they did another MRI and it’s more serious than they thought.”

  He stills. “I assumed it was just another migraine,” he says.

  “Not exactly,” I tell him, so quiet it’s barely audible. “Jeff, I have a brain tumor.”

  He turns as white as bleached paper. “What? But that scan the other day—”

  “It was tiny then and there was no blood flow around it, so they thought it wasn’t growing. But it is growing. Quickly.”

  His jaw swings open. “They found a tumor and you didn’t even mention it?”

  I know he’s just upset and looking for a scapegoat, but I’m in no mood to be one. “You didn’t ask,” I reply. “I had to even remind you I’d had a test done.”

  “I thought you’d tell me if there was a problem!” he shouts, jumping to his feet with his hands on the top of his head. “So, what? This guy missed it on the first MRI, so he had you take another and told you it was fine?”

  “No,” I begin. “He ran a test to check blood flow and—” He reaches over in the middle of my explanation and hits the call button. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m telling them you need another neurologist. This guy obviously has no idea what he’s doing.”

  Irritation claws at me. There are so many things I’m irate about in this moment that I don’t know where to begin—the fact that he’s making decisions on my behalf, that he’s jumping to conclusions, that this moment has become about his distress instead of mine. For the last few years I’ve shielded him and carried the weight and made him feel like the center of the universe, but just once, I’d like to be the one who gets coddled. I lean forward and grab his arm. “Stop,” I hiss. “I don’t want another doctor. None of this is his fault.”