“Well, I made eggs too,” he said with a tilt of his head to the bowl on the other counter. “Help yourself.”
“Where are the plates?” I asked as I opened one cupboard after another.
“Beside me.”
I reached up to the cabinet beside the stove and caught him watching me. “Good morning,” he said with meaning.
I was stretched up on my toes to reach the top shelf where the plates were. “Good morning,” I echoed.
“How’d you sleep?”
I held the plate tightly as I came back to the heels of my feet. “Better.”
“Better than what?”
“Than I’ve slept in a long time.”
I watched as he took in a breath, and was grateful to see this kind of reaction from him. “How long.”
“Since June thirtieth, two thousand and eleven.”
He let out the breath and looked at the bacon, but his attention seemed elsewhere as he just moved it around the pan with his tongs. “I wish. . .”
I stayed absolutely still. “What do you wish?”
He looked from the pan to me, opened his mouth before closing it again and shaking his head. “Never mind,” he said, effectively ending the conversation.
I backed away as I clutched the plate and turned to the bowl of eggs. “Thanks for breakfast,” I said over my shoulder. It would be my second complete meal in a row, because I didn’t feel right vomiting in Jude’s toilet. It sounded strange, even to me, but purging the food he’d made for me in his own house made me feel even dirtier than I already did. So I knew I’d need to keep it down, which was why I took one spoonful and then flattened it and spread it on my plate, to make it look like I’d taken more than I had.
When he joined me at the table, I was just a few tiny bites in and he raised one eyebrow. “Want some toast?”
I swallowed the bite I’d just taken. “Eggs are fine for me,” I insisted, making a big show of swallowing an invisible bite. Jude wasn’t an idiot; I knew he saw right through my bullshit. But he didn’t call me out on it, so I was thankful we wouldn’t have to revisit the conversation we’d had a year earlier.
We were both living in the same lie, but he wasn’t as comfortable as I was with it.
“Have you checked on him?” I asked when I’d finished my eggs and pushed the plate away from me.
“Yes.” I’d known Jude as a pretty introspective person, but in conversations he had always had thoughtful things to say. But now he was saying very little, just few-word sentences and meaningful looks.
“How is he?”
He stared at a speck of egg on his fork. “He’s been better.”
My empty plate became my focus when he said that. It’d been two years, and though the wounds hadn’t healed, I didn’t wish Colin ill. I didn’t wish anything for Colin—he’d been so far removed from my thoughts for the last two years when I’d been thinking about Jude as much as I had.
“Is Mila still there with him?”
Jude sighed, a sound that he didn’t often make. It made me lift my eyes and I saw the war of conflicting emotions across his face as he gathered his words. “Mila hasn’t been there for a while.”
I dropped the fork I was holding as I’d scooted around tiny specks of egg on my plate. The clatter was jarring, and Jude stared at me like he was shocked I’d made so much noise. “What do you mean? Is she on a job?”
“She left him a while ago.”
“But she called me—she told me he was sick.” But I thought she’d been talking about Jude.
“Yeah, she did. She was . . . distraught. She didn’t think. She reached out to you, I’m assuming because you both loved him.” Jude swallowed, as if talking about it made him uncomfortable. “But she was blinded with grief.”
“But she’s not at the hospital?”
Jude pinned me with his stare. “She may have left him, but I still stay in contact with her.”
“And she gave you my number?”
He nodded slowly, still holding me with his gaze. “I asked for it when she said she’d called you.”
It wasn’t the first time Mila had gone against me for Jude, but I understood it. She owed me nothing—but Jude was her brother. “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Is she coming?”
He dropped his head into his hands, his elbows braced on the table. I saw the tension knotting his muscles and wanted, for the briefest second, to reach over and touch his arm if nothing more than to say I could be there for him. “She’s not coming.”
That stunned me more than Mila leaving him had. Though I hardly knew her, I never suspected that she would abandon Colin when he was as ill as he was. “I’m sorry,” I finally said, because I was. I was sorry that Jude had been here alone, the only one caring for Colin despite the tension they’d undoubtedly had between themselves. “You shouldn’t have been alone through all of this.” I reached my hand across the table, but stopped just short of halfway. He looked at my hand for a long moment.
“He shouldn’t be alone.” He lifted his eyes to mine and I saw, for the first time, a bottomless sense of pure agony.
Colin may have been many things, but he was still Jude’s friend, someone who had been there through the same diagnoses.
I wondered if Jude witnessing Colin’s mortality was affecting him—coming face to face with what could be his destiny.
“Are you okay?”
He laughed, but it was without humor. He dropped his head and stared at his plate as I had minutes earlier. “Am I okay?” Shaking his head, he said, “No, I’m not fucking okay.” He pushed away from the table hard enough that the screech of the chair across the wooden floor startled me. Jude was always so steady, and while he wasn’t necessarily predictable, he wasn’t prone to outbursts of anger like this. He picked up his plate and walked to the sink and I stared at his back, willing him to talk to me. But I couldn’t ask that of him.
Picking up my plate, I debated what to do. It was surreal almost, being in Jude’s apartment but not touching him the way I wanted to. Finally, I joined him at the sink as he worked a sponge into a lather and swiped it across his plate. “Let me do it,” I said softly, reaching a hand in to take the sponge from him.
He let go of the plate and clasped my forearm as I reached into the sink. His touch was gentle as he turned my wrist over and rubbed a thumb slowly across the length of my vein, visible through my translucent skin. I could only hold my breath as he touched me like this, like he was memorizing the blue lines that ran the length of my forearm. His hands were warm, searching, and I realized that I’d been yearning for this, for the simple act of him touching my skin like it was delicate. His fingers moved down, and my closed fist opened to give him access to my palm, where he traced the lines in my hands. It was so intimate, even in its simplicity, that all I could do was watch him as he examined my hands. “I’ve missed you,” he said in a voice that was just short of a whisper. My heart turned over as he bent my fingers gently back into my fist and rubbed his soapy fingers over the knuckles.
When he let go of my hand and turned away from me, I felt goose bumps ignite across my skin. All I wanted was for him to keep touching me, but I’d hurt him. And he’d hurt me.
We had miles of pain between the two of us, and even though we were no longer miles apart, that pain existed between us like another person, holding both of us back.
“I missed you too,” I said too late, when I’d caught my breath again.
“Please,” he pleaded as he rinsed the plate in his hands. “I can’t hear you say that right now.”
Nodding, I backed away. I understood. This wasn’t the time or place, and we were little more than strangers right now. I was a new Trista, someone he had never known.
Likely, someone he didn’t want to know.
The hospital was bright, but it was incongruent with the feeling that settled over my skin the moment we stepped through the revolving doors. I followed Jude down many blue tiled hallways, up an el
evator and down another blue tiled hallway until we reached a room marked one-nineteen.
“Do you want to go in alone?” Jude asked. It was the first thing he’d said since we’d gotten into the car and I nodded, wanting some alone time so that however I felt would be experienced for the first time without an audience.
“I’ll go get some coffee,” he said before disappearing.
I knocked first on the door and heard a muffled, “Come in,” before I turned the handle and stepped into the room.
He was the first thing I saw, lying inclined on the hospital bed, a hundred wires strapped to his body. His head was turned so that he was staring out the window.
“Hey,” I said, but it came out weird, like a croak.
Colin turned and took me in as I did the same. His black hair was matted to his head, the curls less curly and his skin much duller than I had ever seen. “Hey.”
I approached the bed and took him in as I clasped the ends of his blankets, curling the fabric into my fist.
Though he definitely looked in less-than-perfect health, his eyes were still sharp as he studied me. “You look like shit,” he said.
For some reason, it made me smile. Possibly because I knew he wasn’t lying. I knew I looked like shit. I’d stared at my reflection that morning with a mixture of disgust and confusion. I looked like a shadow of the woman Jude had a framed photo of in the hallway, among the many other frames of the many people who had been there for him when I had not. Including Colin.
“You do too,” I said, knowing it was the absolute least kind thing to say in the situation. But, like me, Colin took it with a hint of a smile and a shrug of one shoulder, the shoulder that didn’t have wires disappearing under his gown.
He lifted a hand and waved it down his body. “This is what dying looks like.”
That—that indifference—made my knees buckle, falling right into the bed’s footboard. The noise of my knees knocking on the plastic was loud enough that he heard it too, probably even felt it. “Don’t say that,” I said, not ready to talk about it even though I was faced with it.
“The sooner you accept it, the better it’ll be.”
“For who? You?”
“For you.” His lip curled. “I’m long past accepting it, Trista. This is my life; this is my end. It is what it is.”
He sounded cold, like he had the last time I’d seen him in a similar position. But he’d looked better then, with life actually brightening his cheeks. Now his skin looked like a pale sack that hung apathetically off of his bone structure. He’d lost quite a bit of weight, which was saying something for someone as fit as he had been.
“You’ve lost weight,” he said, as if he was reading my thoughts about him.
I curled my arms around my front and shrugged. “So have you.”
“Mine is a symptom of dying. What about yours?”
He sounded like he held a little bit of judgment for me in his tone, but I wasn’t sure what Jude had said to him about the last time we’d seen one another. “Mine is a symptom of living.”
Colin snorted and rolled his eyes. I didn’t recognize him from the man I’d once loved—a man who was always happy, never cynical. “Don’t be so dramatic, Trista.”
“I could say the same to you, Colin.”
“But you can’t, because one of us gets to walk out of this hospital and the other will be leaving in a body bag.” He said it flatly, reminding me of my place.
I wanted to leave, I wanted to walk right out the door the way I had two years before and never look back. But Colin was alone, and I couldn’t ignore our years together even though he had been a complete asshole in the end. So I sunk down into a chair beside the bed. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” he asked as if he was mocking me. “Do you wish to trade places with me?”
The thought of it, of being strapped in that bed as he awaited death, made me feel such sympathy for him. It was the reason I stayed, because I could see just how trapped he was. And I knew he was miserable, I could see it in his eyes and hear it in his words. So that was why I chose to stay beside his bed, even when he was doing his very best to push me away. I thought of Mila then, wondering what he had done that made her not come back even for this.
“I’m sorry you’re dying this way.”
He closed his eyes and it was then that I saw the flicker of pain he masked behind the cynicism and sarcasm. “What a way to go, right?” he said before opening his eyes. “I thought I’d fall off a mountain, or get eaten by a cougar, before I’d ever die in a hospital bed.”
I knew in sitting beside him that I didn’t love him anymore—there was no doubt in my mind. But I couldn’t pretend those years hadn’t existed. I couldn’t wipe away all the feelings I’d had for him. And if I could have chosen for him, I’d have wished he’d have died quickly, doing what he loved the most.
A slow death while virtually chained to a bed must have been hell for him.
I looked around the room, taking in the various balloons and flowers. On the nightstand was a teddy bear, and I must have stared long enough at it for Colin to make a comment. “It’s like they think I’m three years old still.”
“They?”
He motioned a hand at the bear before dropping the hand back to the bed. “My mom. She’s the one bringing me teddies and various other stuffed animals. It’s like this. . .” he motioned to the wires and all around him “. . . has made her regress so far back that she thinks I’m still a small child, needing stuffed animals for security.”
I folded my hands in my lap. “She probably doesn’t know what else to do. I can’t imagine it’s easy for her right now.”
He didn’t say anything to that and I made sure not to make eye contact. I didn’t want to talk about death—what was the point of that? It was waiting for all of us, but was claiming Colin before the rest of us.
“Why are you here?”
I turned my gaze to him, watching him watching me. “Because I felt like it was right.”
He nodded, seemed to be taking in what I said. “Did you think I wanted you to be here?”
I hadn’t thought about that, but now that he’d said it, my stomach churned and I suddenly felt like I was going to throw up. I looked around for a trash can before I stood and walked into the private bathroom and closed the door.
The vomit came up easily, like my stomach couldn’t stand the heaviness of the eggs nor the bitterness of my reunion with Colin. I let it all pour from my mouth, hoping to purge everything I could so that I was empty of food and feelings.
After I’d rinsed out my mouth, I left the bathroom fully intending to leave the hospital room and find Jude.
“Wait, Trista.”
I closed my eyes, not wanting him to see my face. I didn’t know how to feel about this, about my ex-boyfriend’s life coming to an end. And, more importantly, I didn’t know what to do for him.
But I turned back to the bed.
“I’m happy you’re here.”
I waited, on that precipice of running away, but stayed still for the time being. “Are you sure about that? You’re not the Colin I remember.” I took a tentative step toward the bed. “The Colin I remembered would smile—he didn’t have to say he was happy. He just was.”
After looking out the window for a moment, he said, “I have very little to be happy about these days. I hope you come back.”
“Why?” I didn’t feel right asking him why he wanted me back, like I was treading on ground that wasn’t solid between us.
“Because I want to tell you, the next time you visit, that I’m sorry.”
“You are?”
His voice was bitter as his eagle eyes set themselves upon me. “You’re sorry I’m dying this way. I’m sorry you’re living the way you are. Ellie would be disappointed.”
I didn’t believe that only flesh could bleed, not when he looked at me like that, bringing up our mutual ghost.
As I left the room, I realized we had said
very little in our first time seeing one another after two years. But I would come back, I knew. I couldn’t let this be the last time we spoke.
That’s what was so complicated about the situation. There should be no question that I’d be here for someone I had known for years, someone who I practically grew up with. Even though he had spoken to me with acid on his tongue, I couldn’t forget the boy I’d loved years ago. Regardless of how I felt about the way we’d left each other, he was still a person, a someone, dying too soon.
When I found Jude in the waiting room, I watched him sleeping upright, arms crossed over his chest and his head tilted back so it lay against the wall behind him. He looked tired, and for the first time since I had woken up that morning, I got a good look at the circles under his eyes, and the way his facial hair was several days overgrown. It didn’t look intentional; it looked like a symptom of grief.
I pulled out my notebook and wrote a poem.
We’re a hundred miles apart
but in the same room.
We’re two different people
but thoughts of you
have consumed
me
since I exhumed
you.
I’m not ready,
I’m not who
I’m meant to be,
but I want to find her
for you.
It was the first time in weeks I’d been able to write anything, and I curled my fingers down the words on my paper, my fingertips coming away with gray smudges. When I looked up, he was watching me. He was always watching me with a quiet sort of steadiness, like he knew what I was thinking but was letting me keep it to myself—telling me he’d be there for me, no matter what I chose. I didn’t deserve him. He didn’t deserve my indecisiveness or my unsteadiness.
All I could think was how much he deserved someone solid, but I was still selfish enough to want him to wait for me. Wait for what, I didn’t know.
I walked toward him and he stood from the chair. “I’ll go talk to him for a minute,” he said, brushing past me without touching me. I sank into his seat and laid my head against the wall as he had done, and I watched him walk down the hall.
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