The Things We Cannot Change

by Kate L. Mary

  I hadn’t even made it to the kitchen before I was calling Dr. Curtis.

  “Jade?” she answered on the first ring.

  In the background, I could hear the usual bustle and noise that accompanied the ER, and I closed my eyes, picturing myself in the familiar halls as the well-known smells flooded my system. It was almost as comforting as a glass of wine would be right now.

  “When do you need me?” I said as adrenaline flooded my veins and my heart thumped harder.

  “As long as you aren’t drunk, I’ll take you any time. Now. In an hour. Tomorrow. Whenever you can get here and however long you can stay.” She paused and I heard her swallow. “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be on my feet at this rate, and the more hands we have on duty the better.”

  I kicked my shoes off on my way to my bedroom. “I’ll be there in forty minutes.”

  Chapter 2

  I stood in front of my building, staring at the front door like I was in a trance. I could barely move. My feet had never hurt as bad as they did right now and my calves ached like I’d run a marathon with no training. My eyes burned from lack of sleep and were so swollen that the skin underneath was red and puffy. I felt like I was sleepwalking. Over the last week there had been no time for me to even eat something that didn’t come from a vending machine, let alone lie down and take a nap. Every exam room had been full, and the halls had been lined with beds that held sick and dying people. Their moans had echoed through the halls and made my temples pound, and I’d known that no matter what I did, there would be no rest. No break. The waiting room had been so crowded that people had resorted to sitting on the floor, and the little staff still standing was exhausted.

  But it was over now. They’d closed the doors. Sent everyone who could walk home. People had protested and I was positive that if any of them had possessed the energy to fight, a riot would have broken out, but it had been the right call. Having all those sick people in such close quarters was a health risk. The virus was spreading through the hospital faster than anywhere else, and the medical staff had started coming down with it one by one until very few of us were left. The sick were better off at home. There was almost no one left to help them at the hospital.

  Behind me a lone car drove down the street and I turned as it passed, watching it drive away as if I’d never seen anything like it before. It disappeared around a corner two blocks down and then the street was once again empty, just like the sidewalk was. The city was terrifyingly silent.

  It had been a week since I’d been to my apartment and I found the idea of going up there horrifying. It would be empty and dark and lonely, and once I was there I would be unable to stop the memories of the past week from coming back. Suddenly, the idea of being alone was the most terrifying thing I’d ever faced.

  What day of the week was it?

  I looked down at my phone when I couldn’t conjure up the date. Thursday. Meeting day.

  I was wearing scrubs that I’d been too tired to change out of before leaving the hospital, and I knew I smelled, both from the sickness that had filled the ER and because I hadn’t showered for three days, but I didn’t hesitate to head down the sidewalk. It was twenty blocks to the church that housed the meetings and I didn’t see a single person on the way there. My feet throbbed with each step, but I found myself walking faster, suddenly desperate to be with someone, anyone, even the strangers that I had worked so hard to avoid every week before.

  When I reached the church though, it was locked. I stepped back and studied the building like I would find a sign telling me where everyone was, but there was nothing and it didn’t matter anyway. I knew where they were.

  A sob shook my body and I hugged myself. For a week I’d nursed the sick—because that was all that could be done at this point—while waiting to catch this thing. Around me, one by one, the staff came down with it until those of us left standing could be counted on two hands. Even then, the people who were still standing when we’d finally sent everyone home had been showing signs of infection. Everyone except me.

  I looked up and down the street as I fought back the tears. Was I alone? It felt like it. I’d seen that one car but I hadn’t seen the driver and for all I knew he or she had been on death’s door. Soon everyone would be dead and I’d be left to fend for myself in a city full of rotting corpses.

  I felt like I was cursed.

  I turned away from the church and headed down the street in the opposite direction of my apartment.

  Three blocks down, I stopped in front of a store and peered in through the front window. When I’d turned this way I hadn’t really acknowledged to myself that this was were I’d been heading, but now that I was standing here, staring at the shelves of bottles, I couldn’t deny the truth. My mouth filled with saliva, but I didn’t move right away. There was still a part of me that thought I should resist. I’d given my word, had been good for six weeks now, and giving in made me feel like I was failing even though I knew there was no reason to hold back. Not anymore. The city was disappearing, my career was over, and my boss was dead, right along with the rest of the world. It was just me now, and if I wanted to drown my sorrows with booze, I should just go ahead and do it.

  “Fuck it,” I muttered.

  I grabbed the handle, half expecting the store to be locked, but the door opened with no problem when I pushed. The bell that was mounted above the frame dinged, sounding almost as loud as a crack of thunder in the silence that surrounded me. My heart beat harder, faster, in a rhythm that reminded me of the blades of a helicopter. I took one step into the liquor store and stopped, allowing the door to shut behind me. The bell dinged a second time, but otherwise, the store was silent.

  “Hello?” I called.

  No one answered.

  The overhead lights were on, but everything else about the store felt empty. When I held my breath and closed my eyes, I could feel the silence that coated the room deep in my soul, and a heaviness fell over me that threatened to take my breath away. The fear that I was alone slammed into me once again, only this time it was so sharp and violent that it literally knocked me off my feet.

  I slumped to the floor, my eyes still closed. Tears sprang up from deep inside, threatening to choke me, and when they forced their way up my throat and reached my mouth they came out as a wail that felt like it would shake the bottles around me with its intensity.

  I cried. Sitting on the floor in the middle of the liquor store, I found myself sobbing like a toddler who had just had her favorite toy ripped away from her. Inside me, the raw ache that had begun during my last AA meeting spread and grew. It throbbed painfully against my ribs, and even when I grabbed at my chest I couldn’t control it.

  It took me a while—how long I wasn’t sure—to pull myself together enough to stand. By then my tears had soaked the front of my shirt and snot was running down my face. I pulled my scrub top off, leaving me in just a tank top and scrub bottoms, and used the shirt to clean myself up, then tossed it aside before grabbing a bottle of wine off the shelf in front of me. I didn’t pay close enough attention to know what it was, just that it had a screw top and I’d be able to get into it easily. I twisted it and the satisfying sound of the seal breaking echoed through the quiet room. When I took that first, satisfying gulp and the taste filled my mouth, I knew I’d made the right decision. It had been more than a year since anything on this planet had been able to satisfy me the way wine did, and now that there was nothing left to even try to distract myself with, this seemed like the best option.

  I grabbed a second bottle and left the store. Later I’d come back, but for the moment I wanted to be outside while I downed the bottle. Not because I thought I might run into someone, at this point I was fairly certain I was the only person left in New York City, but because I wanted to be surrounded by nature. It was the only time I still felt like Nathaniel was with me.

  It took me fifteen minutes to get to Central Park, and just like I’d expected, I didn’t run into a
single person on the way there. Once or twice I heard what I thought was a car in the distance, but I never saw any evidence to back the sounds up, and so I chalked it up to wishful thinking. I drank as I walked, and by the time I reached my destination the first bottle was half gone. It had been six weeks since I’d had a drink, and even though my tolerance had been a sight to behold before I’d been forcefully pushed on the wagon, the weeks had taken a toll. My head felt like it was filled with helium and my vision was slightly blurry around the edges.

  I swayed when I lowered myself onto a bench, but the feel of the stiff wood beneath me was welcoming. Above me tree branches swayed and rustled. The sound was soothing after the silence, so I closed my eyes and focused on the click of the branches and the rustle of the leaves, pretending that I wasn’t alone but instead on a hike with my husband. I could almost hear his laughter as he urged me to keep going. Just a few more miles, Jade. You can do it. The teasing tone in his voice told me that he knew it wasn’t a matter of if I could, but if I wanted to.

  I held onto the image of Nathaniel as I finished the bottle off. The air was cool and it only got cooler as the sun sank lower in the sky. The tank top I wore did little to keep me warm, but the wine helped. I opened bottle number two and drank a bit more, but before long I found it difficult to stay sitting, let alone hold the bottle. It slipped from my lap as I slumped over, curling up on the hard surface beneath me. My head swam in circles while the world around me spun in the opposite direction. I wrapped my arms around myself and squeezed my eyes shut, and before long the darkness I’d been longing for came to claim me.

  Someone nudged me awake. “You alive?”

  I moaned and tried to roll over, but there was nowhere for me to go. Whatever I was lying on was hard and unforgiving, and I had an ache in my shoulder that throbbed harder when I shifted onto my back. I cracked an eye and was greeted by darkness. Above me branches swayed and beyond that stars twinkled against the black backdrop of the night sky. The air was so cool that goose bumps decorated every inch of my body.

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re alive,” a relieved male voice said. “Are you sick?”

  My stomach twisted so hard that I almost said yes, but I knew that wasn’t what he was asking.

  “No.” I closed my eyes. “Hung over. Maybe still drunk. I don’t know how long I’ve been out.”

  He laughed. “Thank God.”

  “You’re happy that I’m drunk?” I cracked one eye again and tried to locate this asshole, but he was nothing more than a shadow in the darkness.

  “No.” He moved closer so he was looming over me, but the shadows from the surrounding trees still made it impossible to see his face. I could feel his breath against my skin though, and every time he exhaled it felt like heaven. I wasn’t even sure why until he uttered the next words and I realized that I felt the same way. “I’m happy I’m not alone. I thought I was all that was left.”

  I opened my mouth to respond but the words were cut off when he kissed me. It was so sudden and shocking that I almost couldn’t react, and I was drunk enough that when his tongue urged my mouth open, I obeyed. He plunged in, exploring my mouth like he was Indiana Jones, and I found myself kissing him back as a mixture of excitement and joy surged through me.

  I took his face between my hands and the feel of his stubble against my palms was so shocking that I almost let go. It brought me out of my alcohol-induced stupor enough to ask myself what I was doing. I hadn’t kissed anyone other than Nathaniel in years, and even though he’d been gone for over thirteen months, this felt wrong. Like I was betraying him.

  “Wait,” I said against this stranger’s lips.

  “I can’t,” he replied, “I need to feel alive.”

  Then his hands were moving over me and every protest left my body. I didn’t care that it was crazy or stupid or possibly a betrayal to my dead husband, it felt so good to have another person touching me, and not just because it had been so long, but because just a few hours ago I’d been certain that I was the only living person in New York.

  I found my way off the bench and together this stranger and I tumbled to the ground. The grass was cool against my skin, but that didn’t stop me from helping him pull my shirt over my head when his hands yanked at the hem. He pulled the straps of my bra down my shoulders, not bothering to unhook the thing, and a second later warmth covered my right nipple. I gasped and closed my eyes when my back arched. My hands tangled in his hair as I pulled him closer to me, and in the darkness of the night I could only picture Nathaniel.

  A throb I hadn’t felt in a long time moved through me, settling between my thighs. I threw one leg over the stranger’s hip and when he moved against me, my body gyrating with his. The ache grew stronger and I moved faster. His teeth closed on my nipple, gentle but firm, and my body reacted just how it should, by exploding in a quivering mess of tremors that had me crying out the name of my dead husband.

  Seconds later the man moved, but he didn’t pull away. Instead he yanked my scrub pants and underwear down, and then he pulled his own shirt over his head and tossed it aside. I was already working on the button of his jeans, but apparently I wasn’t moving fast enough, because he pushed my hands away and did it himself. When he lowered himself back onto my body, settling between my thighs, Nathaniel’s smiling face was still fresh in my mind.

  But the second this stranger’s mouth covered mine again the image disappeared. This couldn’t be Nathaniel because this man’s stubble scratched at my skin and his kisses were harder, more forceful than my husband’s had ever been. And then the stranger was there, sliding inside me, and all pretenses that this was the man I’d loved with all my heart were pushed away. He was so much bigger than Nathaniel had been.

  I should have pushed him away then. Should have told him that I didn’t want him near me or that I’d made a mistake, but I didn’t want to. His skin was too warm against mine and I would have been lying if I’d said it didn’t feel good to have him filling me the way he was.

  “God you feel good,” the stranger said against my lips.

  I closed my eyes. “So do you.”

  “I’m not going to be able to hold off for long.”

  He started to move, fast and deep, and everything else disappeared. The hospital and death, the loneliness and drinking, and the despair that had been following me for the past thirteen months. All I could focus on was the stranger and what his body was doing to mine.

  It ended faster than I wanted it to, with both of us crying out our release at the exact same moment. Our voices echoed through the air, lingering even after he’d rolled off me and lay panting at my side. I was breathing heavily too, and even though I wanted to grab my clothes and get dressed and take off running, I couldn’t make myself move. The disbelief swirling through me had me paralyzed. This wasn’t like me. This was insane. People didn’t do things like this.

  Only I had.

  “I’m sorry,” the stranger at my side said after a few minutes. “I didn’t plan that. I was—” I could hear him swallow in the darkness. “I’ve been out of my mind.”

  “It’s okay.” My voice sounded oddly devoid of emotion considering I suddenly found myself trying to hold back a barrage of tears.

  He rolled toward me, but I couldn’t look away from the twinkling stars.

  “I’m Trevor.”

  “Jade,” I whispered.

  Trevor didn’t say anything, but I could feel him watching me. When a tear slid down my cheek I turned away, and a second later he had me in his arms. I expected him to kiss me, but not on the forehead and definitely not with the tenderness he did it with. His embrace was gentle and comforting, as if I was a small child and he was trying to shield me from the horrors of the world. It was sweet enough that I found myself not caring that we were both still naked and lying in the middle of central park.

  “I’m sorry,” Trevor said again after a few minutes. “That was the comfort I needed, but I didn’t stop to think about
what you needed and that was wrong.”

  “I didn’t protest,” I said.

  “No, but you did call out someone else’s name.”

  Heat rose to my cheeks along with the tears that sprang to my eyes. “I know.”

  “Who’s Nathaniel?”

  “My husband.”

  “Is he dead?”

  I nodded, and even though it hurt to say the words, I forced them out. “He’s been dead for a while now. Over a year. I just haven’t been able to move on.”

  “I’m sorry,” Trevor said again.

  “You said that a few times already.” I found myself smiling. “You don’t have to apologize. Not for the sex and not for Nathaniel’s death. I guess it’s better that he went when he did. I can’t imagine having to get over the shock of his loss and the rest of the world at the same time.”

  “Yeah.” Trevor let out a deep sigh and it occurred to me that he might have lost someone too, and much more recently than I had.

  In the darkness, it was impossible to see his face clearly, but I had the sense that he was older than me. How old, I didn’t know. He very well could have been married, maybe even had some kids. He could be hurting worse than anything I’d ever experienced.

  “Did you lose anyone?”

  “Everyone.”

  “I mean, did you lose a wife?”

  “No. I have an ex-wife upstate and two kids I haven’t seen in over a year. I’m an asshole, Jade, I might as well tell you that right now. Anyway, I don’t know if my ex or my kids are alive. The last time I was able to get through to them they were okay, but with the way this thing has wiped out the city, I doubt that’s the case now.”

  I twisted in his arms and his beard rubbed against my forehead. “You should go check on them. Some people are obviously immune to this. What if your kids are alive but your ex is dead? How old are they? Can they fend for themselves?”