Chapter 18
Eventually, Marian and Emily went home, too.
The doctor had called around nine, reporting that Jonah was out of the surgery on his leg, doing fine in recovery, no complications. Nora had sagged against Will, already reaching for her phone to call Benny. Marian and Emily had both pressed their hands together and closed their eyes, twin prayers of thanks before they’d turned to hug each other tight. It’d be a while longer before Jonah would be transferred to his room for the night, and Nora had insisted that Marian and Emily go, had promised that she’d stay the whole night through.
“I’ve got all my things, anyway,” she’d said, gesturing toward her suitcase, and Emily and Marian had both turned their eyes on Will expectantly.
“I’m staying,” he’d said, and it felt like their official seal of approval when they’d nodded and finally agreed to make their way home.
Alone with Nora, the immediate crisis mitigated, he wondered if it would turn awkward between them—things they hadn’t said, but things they’d agreed not to talk about here. But for Will, at least, it was the opposite of awkward. It came so easy to him this way—to get her tea, to help her wrangle things out of her messily packed suitcase so she could go wash her face, to answer every medical question she had about Jonah, who hadn’t been brought to a room until after midnight, to arrange his body so she could rest comfortably against him. It all felt so practical, so responsible. So safe.
He recognized her energy from many days and nights he’d spent checking in on families—tired but teed-up, relieved but worried. With her head on his thigh and her legs draped over the arm of the tiny love seat, she told him all kinds of things he didn’t know, origin stories for how everyone had ended up in the building. Jonah had grown up nearby, the only child of parents who’d run a small grocery store less than five blocks away; he’d moved in after he married a woman who’d eventually left him (and the apartment) after only three months to move to Maine with a man Jonah worked with. Mr. and Mrs. Salas had moved in after they’d sold their place in Bucktown, only ever intending to stay for a few years but eventually making peace with the fact that their son would be staying for good in Singapore, the place where he’d gotten a job in finance after college. Benny’s aunt Alma had lived in the building, and because he’d been her favorite, because he’d stayed with her for long periods when his own mother was ill, he’d taken over the lease way back when Alma had moved into a rest home. Marian and Emily—both from small, somewhat challenging families—had come to the building only two years after they’d graduated from college, the place where they’d met and fallen in love.
Nora’s grandmother, for her part, had moved in as a widow, surprising Nora’s mother—her only child—by selling her paid-off house in the suburbs and moving into an apartment that she’d always said had something special about it.
“Those little angels in the hallway,” Nora said, her feet swinging gently back and forth, “I think that’s what sold her. She loved things like that.”
Nora thought Nonna had needed a new start, had needed to make a home only for herself after so many years of focusing on making her husband comfortable. “And with my mom so far away, she needed a new family, too, I think,” Nora had said.
Will didn’t miss that she’d skipped over whatever she might’ve known about Donny and his history with the building, a kindness that made him love her all the more. Instead, she went right on ahead to the year her grandmother had led the effort to take the building condo, to all the moments where various building traditions were born. Will listened and stroked his fingers idly through her hair, recognizing this for what it was: not only Nora winding herself down but also Nora giving him her full trust, giving him the history of the building that had been the source of their feud. As she spoke, her voice got lower and slower, her eyes closing longer and longer on each blink.
Orphans, kind of, he thought, thinking through the stories she’d told him—grown-ups upended for one reason or another, making their own family unit even amid weird wallpaper and awful wall sconces. For the first time since he got the call from Donny’s lawyer, he let himself imagine that his uncle had left him the apartment not as some kind of cross-generational slap in the face but instead as some kind of offering. Some kind of apology, or gesture of understanding. From one orphan to another, maybe. A belated gift Donny—for whatever angry, grudging reason—hadn’t been able to give Will sixteen years ago.
He felt strangely, surprisingly grateful to his uncle.
Against his leg, Nora’s head felt heavier, her body earnestly sinking into sleep now. “Not gonna drool this time,” she murmured. “Because I’m not sick.”
“You can if you want,” he told her, which he wasn’t sure made sense, but it’d been a long day for him, too. He leaned his head back against the wall behind him, grateful that the lights above had dimmed automatically, grateful that he’d slept in far more uncomfortable places, grateful that Nora was home and that he was with her, that he’d gotten to help her. He thought sleepily of that scroll of poetry at home, the one he’d left on his nightstand. Little fragments of it caught at the edges of his brain: lily’s white, deep vermilion in the rose. Figures of delight.
You, pattern of all those.
He’d have to remember to tell Nora about it, this sentimental start he’d made while she was away. But for now—Jonah’s accident aside—this all seemed just as well: the best of who he was, all in service to her.
This is how I’ll be with her, he told himself as he drifted off, as sure as if he’d settled on a treatment. This isn’t selfish at all.
He might’ve known it wouldn’t be so easy.
Will woke at the shift change, noises familiar: the more frequent elevator dings, the rattle of dining carts, the greetings of the morning crew and the goodbyes of those finishing up. His head was thudding from leftover tension and from the awkward position he’d dozed in, but on his lap Nora slept soundly, at some point in the night having compacted herself, knees pulled up almost to her chest so she could fit her whole body on the love seat, her cheek—she had drooled a little—on his thigh. The room was still empty of other visitors, so Will guessed it’d been a slow overnight around here. As carefully as possible, he slid his phone from his pocket and sent a text to Gerald, an activity he absolutely could not have imagined ever doing only a few months ago.
Were you able to find coverage for my shift today? he typed, checking for typos before he pressed send. He wasn’t going to be caught sending Gerald Abraham an accidental, autocorrected We’re for Were.
He set down the phone and closed his eyes again, knowing Gerald was not a particularly fast texter. But within a minute the reply came: Yes.
Will might have been unsettled by seeing Gerald’s curtness in text message form, but he could see by the gray bubble beneath that he was still typing, so at least he wouldn’t be leaving it at that.
Sally asks how your neighbor is doing.
Will started to type his response, a jargony summary of Jonah’s injuries, before he realized that he hadn’t told Sally about any of this.
Gerald’s third reply came in while Will’s fingers still hovered over his screen.
I am currently with Sally, as I slept over at her home last night.
Then there was a winking emoji.
“Jesus Christ!” Will said, nearly dropping the phone.
Nora jerked awake. “What happened?” she said, her voice somehow both groggy and deeply alert. “Is Jonah okay?”
Will reached out, settled a hand on her back. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I’m sorry. I was—uh. Texting with my boss.”
Who had clearly been desperate to inform him about this latest development in his (re)marriage efforts.
Nora sagged in relief, her breath coming quickly, and Will rubbed her back, apologizing again.
“Rounds are probably starting soon, so we might want to try to get into Jonah’s room, see if we can be there to catch the doctor.”
> She nodded, shifting her body, pre-stretches that told him she was feeling the cramped discomfort, too. She turned toward him and set a hand on his thigh, pressing a closed-mouth kiss to his lips that—even in spite of their location—he wanted to take deeper. It’d been so long, after all, and—
“Oh no,” Nora said, jerking back and looking down at Will’s lap, lifting her hand slowly from his thigh before clapping it down again, groaning dramatically. “I did it again.”
He smiled and caught her hand, giving a smacking, teasing kiss to her palm. “It’s no big deal,” he said, thinking that he could be perfectly happy waking up with Nora Clarke drooling on him for the rest of his life. “Go ahead and get cleaned up,” he told her. “I’ll meet you back in the hallway.”
She leaned forward and kissed him again, standing to grab her bag. When she started to wheel it away, he felt the squeeze of her fingers around his, and he cleared his throat when he realized he’d been holding on to her. He let go, a wispy, nearly forgotten thread of discomfort winding through him that he shook off.
Focus, Will, he told himself, running through the questions he wanted to ask the surgeon when she came by this morning. He made his own way down the hall to a bathroom, splashing water on his face and brushing his teeth with one of the small, plastic-wrapped complimentary toothbrushes the hospital provided for overnight visitors. He stopped at a vending machine in the hall, got coffees for himself and Nora and a granola bar for her. He went to the nurses’ station, glad to see that at least one of the nurses he’d spoken to last night was still there; she greeted him with a big smile and gleefully introduced him to the nurses who’d just come on.
“Your friend’s up,” she told him, and he straightened, immediately looking down the hall for Nora.
“Can we go in?” he asked.
“I’d say so. He’s pretty sharp for the morning after a surgery like that! Kind of a tough guy, huh? Doc Terano should be by soon.”
“Great.” He took a swig of his coffee, his headache fading as the caffeine kicked in. He saw Nora down the hall and waved her over, not liking how fatigued she still looked. They’d talk to the doctor, visit with Jonah until he needed sleep again. Will could call one of the other neighbors to come sit for a while, get Nora back to her place to rest.
Easy.
But nothing was easy when they got into the room, not once Nora saw Jonah for the first time: the angry purple bruises on one side of his face; the hard, overly large line of his recently repaired leg beneath a thin blanket; the elaborate, mechanical-looking splint and sling keeping his hand perfectly set until his next surgery. She went stiff and she stayed that way, even though she was working to seem calm—greeting Jonah with a big smile and an apology, promising to bring him anything he needed from his apartment, gently arranging the pillows behind his head and looking over the equipment that surrounded him as though she needed to memorize it.
“Nora,” Will said, because Jonah had just sent him a look that he could’ve sworn meant, Help me out, Beanpole. “You want to take this seat here?”
She shook her head, taking out her phone. “Let me make this list,” she said. “I assume you’ll want your tablet and charger, and . . .”
Will knew what this was, had seen it a hundred times. When you weren’t used to being around it all the time, seeing someone like this—banged-up, groggy, the particular sort of pale and weak the hospital made a person look—it was more than simply stressful. It was panic holding you in a loose grip, its fingers forever poised to tighten right around your middle and take the breath right out of you. Some people cried, some people pressed a call button until they found somebody to yell at, and some people, like Nora, tried to take total control.
But it didn’t matter so much that Will had seen it before; he hated seeing it on Nora, and he felt panic start to get a hold on him, too, tentative and cruelly teasing. While they waited, he felt useless, impractical, unsure, and unlike with Marian and Emily last night, Nora kept her distance from him in front of Jonah, standing beside his bed and barely looking Will’s way.
He felt, suddenly, like he entirely didn’t belong.
When the doctor finally came in, Will was suffused with relief: finally, some way he could be useful. Dr. Terano was clearly a great surgeon, delivering information clearly and succinctly, confident in Jonah’s odds for a full recovery but straightforward about the challenges ahead. On a sheet of scrap paper he’d snagged from the patient whiteboard behind him, he scribbled notes in his usual way, phrases he hoped would make sense to him later.
When the doctor said the name of a facility he was familiar with, he lifted his head, his brow furrowing. “Is that the only option for rehab?”
Dr. Terano turned toward him, letting out a knowing sigh. “It’s got open beds, especially for the length of time he’ll need to be in. Obviously we can check again after he gets the hand done, but . . .” She shrugged in that frustrated, overburdened healthcare system way that Will had done a thousand times himself.
“I could make a call.” He had a facility in mind where a former coresident worked. It was farther away but better equipped, a place he thought would be more comfortable.
“Wait,” Nora said. “Open beds?”
“At his age,” Dr. Terano began, and Jonah made a snort of offense. “And with the injuries he has, a few weeks of residential rehab is the right move. He can do therapy during the day, and have twenty-four-hour care at other times.”
“I live across the hall from him.” Her voice was high, nervous. “If the therapists could come there, me and my neighbors—”
“It’s a third-floor unit,” Will said, which was absolutely his first mistake. Nora’s eyes snapped to his, her expression hard. He cleared his throat.
Dr. Terano looked to Jonah. “Third floor, huh?”
“How else do you think I keep this physique?” Jonah said, which would’ve been funny had Nora not been vibrating with tension beside him. Even Jonah seemed a bit nervous when he looked over at her.
“The rehab facility is the best option, really,” said Dr. Terano. “After you’re out, that’s the bigger challenge. How accessible is this building you’re in? Is there an elevator?”
Jonah laughed, as though the very thought was ridiculous. Will looked over at Nora, something about her expression tugging at his memory, but he couldn’t get a grasp on it, not when Dr. Terano was still talking to Jonah about the building.
“Stairs might be fine for you, eventually, but the thing is, your grip strength will need a lot of work, so railings aren’t always going to be reliable assists for you. If the stairs are narrow, or steep—”
Will cringed, thinking of all the times he’d gone up and down those steps over the last few months.
“What about one of those chairs?” Nora said. “The mechanical ones, to go up and down?”
“Won’t work,” Will answered, without thinking beyond the immediate thing, the practical thing, the thing that he felt like he’d been handling safely for hours. “Three flights and landings in between.”
His second mistake. Nora looked at him with such naked betrayal that his stomach cramped.
“He’s got a poi—” Jonah began.
“He doesn’t live there,” Nora said to Dr. Terano, and Will knew, he knew he’d messed up. Even Dr. Terano knew. She caught his eye and a silent professional communication passed between them: Not the best time to look too far ahead with the family.
“We can figure this out later,” Will said, taking a step toward Nora. “No need to rush a thing like this.”
“Dr. Sterling is right,” she said cheerfully, and while he was grateful, the use of his title made everything feel about ten thousand times worse. “First order of business is getting ready for the hand surgery, then we can think about where Mr. Hajduk heads next.”
“First order of business is calling my woman!” Jonah practically shouted, obviously similarly relieved to get a break from this conversation. “Nora, I’m going to n
eed that tablet so I can do a video call.” He looked to Will, his grin skewed by his still-swollen face. “Chicks dig scars, and all that.”
Dr. Terano laughed, and promised to come by again later, dipping her hands beneath the sanitizer dispenser and rubbing them together on her way out, washing her hands of this whole messy scene.
And then it was only the three of them, and the silence was deafening.
“Let’s review the facts.”
Will sighed and stared down at the pavement of the hospital parking lot, avoiding eye contact with Gerald Abraham, who loomed above him in his white coat and projected a profound energy of disapproval at the state of Will’s clothing and also possibly his emotions.
“Sure,” said Will, because if he’d been desperate enough to contact Gerald forty-five minutes ago when Nora had basically kicked him out of Jonah’s room, he was also desperate enough to do this Gerald’s way.
“You spent the night at the hospital with your girlfriend—”
“We ought to get the terminology right,” Will said, because there was something wrong with him, clearly. His Abraham mimicry was off the charts, though he had not used any emojis in his text message requesting a meeting. “I don’t know if she’s technically my girlfriend.”
“Fine.”
Will wondered if the man would take out his notebook and start recording this humiliation in shorthand.
“You spent the night at the hospital with the woman you’re involved with.”
Also doesn’t sound right, thought Will, but whatever. He nodded.
“She was there for her neighbor, who is also something like a . . . what would you say? Uncle?”
“Not uncle,” said Will, knee-jerk. “More like grandfather, maybe.”
“Fine,” Gerald repeated. “And the news is not positive for his return to his current home?”
Will swallowed, shifting on the bench that usually served as a pickup spot for a parking shuttle service. “Hard to say,” he lied.
Love at First Page 27
