And Cooper.
I feel the day melt off me every time I turn down our street, though most nights I don’t get home before it’s shrouded in darkness. I don’t think I’ll find much refuge there tonight either with the stack of grant application paperwork on the passenger seat next to me.
When I pull into our circular driveway, I discover a familiar red truck parked diagonally across the gravel. One of the tires is elevated by a rock that lines the empty planter in the center of the drive. I shake my head, but I’m glad Stephen’s here. The three of us have shared every milestone—career and otherwise—since I met him and Cooper that first week of med school almost ten years ago.
I find the guys in the backyard, sitting in the middle of the grass in chipped, lipstick-red Adirondack chairs, the legs of which are swallowed to the hilt by the overgrown lawn. All I can see of them is the back of two heads, two hands with two open beer bottles and four bare feet kicked up on a cooler between them. The trees shade them from the fading sunset but capture their laughter like fireflies in a mason jar.
“Hey,” I say.
“Dylan,” Stephen calls, not turning but holding up his beer in greeting.
Cooper makes the effort, flashing one blue eye, half a smile and his fallen-down hair at me. My heart flutters. He still gets to me. After all this time, he gets to me.
“Hey, babe,” he says. “Come here.”
I wade through the rain-damp grass in my bare feet. It’s been too long since I’ve taken this path, through the yard and down the broken stepping-stones to the wooden bench next to the creek. The crisp air nips at my skin as night descends.
When I reach Cooper, he uses one strong hand to pull me onto his lap, and I fall into his familiar angles, the faded breath of his cologne. His warm hand resting on my hip has become less familiar, though, over these last six months as I’ve focused more and more on my research grant. I feel it acutely.
“Beer?” he asks. I shake my head but take a swig of his. He rests his chin on my shoulder and watches me. It catches me off guard—this act of intimacy. Like I’ve only just realized we’d come to an unspoken agreement that intimacy would come again later—after—but Cooper’s exhibiting the weak spot in his willpower.
“Guess what,” I say, my voice airy, a try at excitement. Or maybe it’s the lump in my throat.
“You got it,” Cooper says. Stephen raises his eyebrows.
I nod. “I got on the research clinic schedule. My spot is guaranteed as long as the grant is approved.”
“Which it will be.” Stephen is quick to assure me, his face lighting up. “Damn, Dylan. Congrats. I’ll drink to that.”
I laugh. “Thank you. But I don’t know how meaningful that is. You’ll drink to anything.”
“And I’ll drink to that.” He winks, raises his bottle in a salute and follows through.
I turn to Cooper, my stomach tight as I wait for his response.
“I’m happy for you, Dylan,” he says. His smooth fingers twist their way through my ponytail, not looking at me. “I knew you’d get it.” There’s tightness in his voice. Still, he presses a kiss to my forehead, pulls me closer to him.
“Thanks,” I say, though I’m not reassured. Now that the possibility of getting the grant is so real, the pressure to do the right thing for my family—for Abby—is almost suffocating. I had hoped Cooper would remind me that this is the next big milestone in our shared dream for the future. This is a good thing. A great thing. I should have known I was hoping in vain.
I clear my throat. “So, what? Are you guys out here reliving the glory days?”
The hint of spring in the air reminds me of studying for finals and opening the windows in the little apartment Cooper and I used to share in the city; of when the three of us spent so much time at our favorite spot in the forest next to the Willamette River, drinking into the night by the light of a feeble campfire. We talked about what life would be like when Stephen was a sought-after neurologist, Cooper was a partner at a patient-focused pediatric practice and I had discovered the secret to diagnosing early pregnancy complications before the mother’s body knows something is wrong itself. Back when the path was simple and our whole lives were ahead of us.
Now Stephen is an attending neurologist at the hospital where we completed our residencies—the same hospital where I work. Cooper is at a practice he loves and is, any day, bound to be recognized for the amazing doctor he is. And I...I have grant paperwork to fill out.
Stephen laughs and runs his hand through his shaggy hair. “I guess so. All we’re missing is the fire.”
“You are not starting my backyard on fire,” Cooper says.
“Might do it some good,” Stephen mutters behind his bottle.
Cooper kicks Stephen’s feet off the cooler, making them both laugh like kids. They always have fought like brothers, even before it became official. Cooper couldn’t have been happier when his best friend married his younger sister four years ago. Stephen was a force of nature—women, alcohol, adrenaline—before he fell in love with Megan. He reminded me of the way I was before I met Cooper—shallow encounters with men I hardly knew, detached, angry. Megan was exactly what he needed. The same way Cooper was what I needed.
“Behave, children. Where’s Megan tonight?” I ask. Being that she’s an elementary school teacher, she’s better than I am at keeping the guys from getting too raucous.
Stephen shrugs. “Busy.” He finishes off his beer.
“Which is what I should be.”
“Can’t you stay a little longer?” Cooper asks softly. “Celebrate?”
“I wish I could. I have to get my application done. Vanessa’s waiting for it.”
He nods, leans forward and kisses me slowly until my thighs quiver. It’s been so long since he’s kissed me that way.
“What’s gotten into you?” I whisper. Before he can answer, my pager buzzes on my waistband and Cooper’s body deflates.
“I have a—”
“Delivery,” Cooper completes for me. I nod. He purses his lips, then sighs. “I’ll see you when you get home.”
“See ya, Doctor,” Stephen says when I stand to leave. He winks as if to say it will all be okay.
* * *
I get home after midnight with every intention of sneaking into the office to work on my application for a few hours before bed. When I see the glow from Cooper’s bedside lamp coming from our room, though, I know Cooper is waiting up for me.
I go to him and find him in his reading glasses, holding a copy of Game of Thrones open on his chest. I stop in the doorway and lean my head on the door frame. The lamplight on Cooper’s face makes him look even more boyishly handsome, if possible. He hasn’t aged a day since I met him. It’s possible working in pediatrics keeps him young at heart, but there was so much about him that was childlike already. If opposites attract, maybe that’s what drew us together. I was forced to grow up too soon.
“Is everything okay?” he asks.
The telltale line of worry is drawn across his forehead.
“Of course,” I say.
He nods. He knows it’s just me trying to convince myself. I cross to my side of the bed while Cooper sets his book and glasses aside. I climb in next to him.
“Listen.” He shifts downward and brings his hands together in front of his lips, the way he does when we’re about to have a serious conversation. I sigh inwardly. “I know you’re really focused on your grant right now. And I know you go through these phases, so I try to give you your space. You don’t like to feel boxed in, and I get that.” He reaches down to brush his fingertips down my thigh. “You always come back to me eventually. But, I don’t know... I guess I keep hoping at some point we’ll get past the push and pull. I keep hoping that instead of blocking me out when things get tough, you’ll open up to me and let me be
there for you. It’s been nine years, babe. When are you going to finally start trusting me?”
“Cooper, it’s not about trust. And you are here for me. So much more than you realize. Once I get this grant—”
“Once you ace this test. Once you graduate. Once you finish your internship.” He cuts me off with the list of promises I’ve made him, always putting my guilt over Abby first. Because my guilt over hurting Cooper can still be forgiven. Cooper is still here. Abby isn’t.
I close my eyes in an attempt to hide from his words, to go somewhere else in my mind.
For a few minutes, it’s just our soft breathing, but then Cooper props his head up on his hand. I reluctantly turn onto my side to face him. The moonlight coming in from the window casts long shadows over his solemn expression.
“I know you have a hard time letting people in, Dylan. I understand that there are things I don’t understand about you. Hell, the fact that you can still surprise me after nine years is one of the things I love most about you. But I worry about you. It’s not healthy to keep everything locked up inside yourself. You don’t have to try so hard to keep everything under control. The world isn’t an operating room.”
It’s easy for him to say. He’s lived such a charmed life. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have everything you know and love torn to shreds before your eyes, like my life and my family was after my sister died.
I used to tell Abby my secrets, but since her death, I’ve been too afraid to trust anyone else with that raw, imperfect version of myself. I’ve been too afraid to trust the world. But Cooper doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know all the details of what happened that night.
“Are you going to pull out your blood pressure cuff?” I joke.
“I’m serious, Dylan.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s not you. You know it’s not you, right?” I ask him. I place my hand on his cheek. “You know how much I love you?”
My words seem to reassure him more than I would like, like he didn’t know.
I tell him.
Don’t I?
I feel it.
He takes my hand from his cheek and holds it to his chest, right over his heart.
“Maybe it’s time we focus a little more on us,” he says. I open my mouth to argue, but he goes on before I can. “I know you have the grant. But you love me. And I love you. God, Dylan, don’t you get how much? I’d do anything to make you happy.”
I watch my fingers run up and down the folds in the sheet instead of looking at him, instead of answering him.
“What can I do?” he urges. When I can’t come up with an answer, he sighs and softens his voice. “You know once you get this grant, work is going to be busier, not slower.”
“Maybe I can get fewer shifts at the hospital,” I offer hopelessly.
“Can you?” he asks. “I don’t mean, will they let you. I mean, will you let yourself?”
I scoot closer to him and bury my face against his chest, feel his chin against the top of my head. His body melts beneath mine, no doubt with the belief that his words have gotten through to me. But the responsibility I carry lives deep in my bones. I can’t lose focus at the moment of truth.
“I just love you, Dylan. I want to see you happy, and I’m not sure you are anymore.”
“I’m happy with you,” I whisper.
To that, he has nothing else to say.
I close my eyes and count his heartbeats, hiding in the immediacy of him.
3
The following Tuesday morning, the rain comes down like candy from a piñata. The drops are intermittent but heavy and invasive—the kind that assault the top of your head and bleed down your scalp. I stride across the hospital parking lot, using my hand to shield my eyes from the sunrise as it rekindles its romance with seven o’clock.
Over the last week, I’ve hardly left these few square miles, spending all my spare time in my office preparing my application. Between patient exams and three deliveries, spare time has been hard to come by. The first couple of nights I tried to work at home, but although Cooper never said a word about me skipping dinner, I felt his disappointment permeating all the air under our roof, seeping into every word I wrote. I could no longer decipher which disappointment was his and which was mine. It was easier to stay away.
Last night, though, when I sneaked into our bedroom after working until midnight in the clinic and curled up with my back to him in the dark, he reached out for me in his sleep. That simple gesture has gotten me through many tough times—to know that even in his unconsciousness, and even when he’s unsure about my choices, he’s never unsure about us. Still, I didn’t turn to him. I could have. He would have woken up for me. I could have let him take me in his arms, and we would have been Dylan and Cooper for a night, or just an hour. We could have been the can’t keep our hands off each other young couple we once were, instead of Dr. Michels and Dr. Caldwell, making appointments to see each other. I know that’s what he really wants from me. Putting work first was always the story of our relationship. There’s never been a time when we haven’t been studying, applying for grants, making it through one class at a time, one day at the hospital at a time. Except for the past two years, since Cooper finished his residency and found a nine-to-five. He’s ready for me to find a comfortable routine, too—to find a comfortable ease together.
I just don’t have the energy to reassure him yet again. All I can think about right now is my purpose—that which is greater than me.
As I step off the curb toward the emergency entrance, an ambulance comes barreling into the drop-off lane, the back doors flying open and EMTs pulling the patient out on a stretcher. It’s a common sight, but I step back onto the curb, startled—both by its abrupt appearance, and that after all these years working in a hospital, I still associate the red-and-white lights with only one person. I close my eyes and force a deep breath into my lungs.
When I open them again, I notice a packet of flower seeds where it’s been discarded in the ditch. I’ve seen hundreds of them in my life—scattered on the kitchen counter, hidden in drawers around the house, bound together by a rubber band in the garage, and torn open and empty on the porch. Gardening is my mom’s passion. But with Abby still in the forefront of my mind, it’s her face I see, not Mom’s—fragile and broken, like the seeds, with their package marred by dirt and water. It feels like a sign. I crouch down to pick up the paper envelope, wipe it with my palm and slip it into my pocket. Then I run into the hospital, out of the rain.
“Good afternoon, Erika,” I say as I enter the exam room later that day.
It’s Mrs. Martinez’s monthly checkup. She sits straight-backed on the exam table in a flowing white blouse that’s tucked into a taut pencil skirt. Her long black hair is pulled into a side ponytail, and her bright red lipstick is freshly applied. I try to imagine how much of this will change by the time she hits forty weeks, and a grin pulls at the corner of my mouth. Doctors aren’t supposed to have favorite patients—I, of all people, understand why—but I’ve always enjoyed my visits with Erika, a strong, successful businesswoman with a sense of humor.
“Afternoon, Dylan,” she drawls. She’s always made it a point to call me by my first name, and I never felt the need to correct her, so it’s become an inside joke between us. In truth, I savor the intimacy.
Her husband, Andrew, is here for the first time, and I introduce myself. He’s an unassuming man behind his glasses, the reflection of a computer screen almost still visible on his lenses. This surprises me. I imagined her husband would be someone bigger with a presence large enough to rival hers, but his quiet air balances her—the yin to her yang. A good fit. That’s one part of being an obstetrician I didn’t expect—how much my patients would teach me about relationships.
“Erika has said a lot of good things about you,” he tells me over his eager
handshake.
“Likewise,” I say with a smile. “You’re quite the lucky guy.”
“I know it,” he says earnestly, casting a glance at Erika. She blushes, something I never imagined I’d see her do. There’s an innocence to their love, even after six years together. In our first years together, Cooper and I were passionate, but never innocent.
“Oh, don’t let him fool you,” Erika says. “He calls me a pain in the ass five times a day.”
“The best ones are,” he says, and we all laugh.
“All right, let’s take a listen to baby’s heartbeat,” I say, and grab the jelly. “We’ll give Dad some of the good stuff. Go ahead and lie back,” I tell Erika.
Andrew helps her down. “She keeps pretending she’s going to take maternity leave,” Andrew chatters as I help Erika pull her shirt out of the way. “But we both know that’s not gonna happen. She’ll probably have her assistant on the phone, barking out orders while she’s pushing.”
Erika narrows her eyes at him.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “When the baby comes, she’ll have to slow down, right, Erika?” I tease. Erika turns to Andrew, the paper underneath her head crinkling.
“Actually, I’m going to stay home with the baby,” Andrew says.
“Oh?”
“I can work from home,” he says. “And Erika likes to be at the office. She’s happy there. Stressed, but...a happy stressed, I think.”
I laugh because I know exactly what he means.
“I think that’s a great option,” I say. “Parenting is all about working as a team.”
“Teamwork makes the dream work,” Erika says, and they laugh.
I picture Erika power-walking through the halls of her office in her power pumps, singing it to her colleagues as she walks by. I envy Erika, so sure of herself and how her life is going to turn out.
“You okay, cuchura?” she asks me.
Perfectly Undone Page 2
