These Three Words

by Holly Jacobs

  “Honey,” said a woman’s voice.

  For a moment, I thought the doctors had indeed come to get me, but it wasn’t a doctor. It was an elderly woman standing in front of me. She was older than the executively dressed Missy. This woman’s steely gray hair was wrapped and corded onto itself in a bun. She had glasses perched on the bridge of her nose that reminded me of a librarian I had in grade school. And she wore a frumpy dress and orthopedic shoes.

  She also wore a serious expression as she thrust a cup at me.

  “Here.” The bitter smell told me without looking down that it was coffee. “Drink it. It’ll do you good,” she said in such a motherly tone I felt tears well up in my eyes.

  She took the seat next to me. “Who are you here for?” she asked.

  “My husband.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Me, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” I parroted back. We both knew that the words were hollow and without any real impact.

  I’m sorry was probably one of the most meaningless phrases anyone ever came up with.

  Being sorry never changed anything. It was a passive response to a situation.

  Action. Action brought about change.

  The problem was, there was no action open to me right now. Gray’s situation was in the hands of the medical staff. There was nothing I could do for him but wait.

  “I’m Maude,” she said, as if I’d asked. As if we were sitting beside each other at an event. As if we were simply two strangers just passing time together.

  She didn’t wait for me to introduce myself. She said, “It’s hard to wait to hear about someone you love. I keep thinking, what if Bertie doesn’t make it? I’ve only had him for fifteen years and that’s not long enough. I met him at the Piggly Wiggly in Waunakee, Wisconsin,” she said.

  It took me a moment to register that she’d said her husband was the reason she was here. Maude’s eyes glazed over a bit as she lost herself in the memory—as if she were no longer here and now, but had magically slid back in time to Waunakee, Wisconsin, and was standing in a Piggly Wiggly grocery store.

  Even the tenor of her voice changed. It was just a breath above a whisper and she spoke slowly as she continued, “We’d both been married and widowed, but I didn’t know that at first. No, the first time I saw him, he was simply a man standing in the produce section looking lost. I hadn’t planned on going shopping that day, but I’d had a hankering for apple crisp. I hadn’t made it forever because it’s no fun to cook for just one. But I stopped at the store on a whim.

  “It was as if meeting Bertie was meant to be. As if we were meant to fall in love and start a new chapter of our lives together. You see, there he was, standing by the apples as if he were just waiting for me.”

  I watched as she came back to the present with regret. If she could, she’d have stayed at the Piggly Wiggly on that day so long ago. I could almost smell the apples and hear the shopping carts rattling in the background as she smiled shyly at the stranger . . . her Bertie.

  But there was no staying in the past. The present weighed so heavily that it only allowed her that brief respite of visiting with that cherished memory.

  Maude looked around the waiting room, as if hoping to see that long-ago moment. “Bertie and I, we both had lost someone, and we realized that we couldn’t go back, but we could make a new start. We could start again together. We both felt the pain of losing someone we loved, but we found joy in a new beginning with each other.” She leaned closer and whispered, “Fifteen years we’ve been together, day in and day out. I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose him. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to start over for a third time.”

  She gave a small hiccup as she made the confession. I leaned closer and hugged her even though hugging strangers wasn’t something I usually did. But I realized that Maude wasn’t really a stranger. I might have just met her, but I knew her because I understood her pain. I wasn’t sure how I’d start over if I lost Gray.

  It didn’t make sense, of course, but there it was.

  “You’ll do what needs to be done,” I told her. “That’s all any of us can do . . . what needs to be done. We can’t look too far ahead. Sometimes it’s easier to simply put one foot in front of the other, take one step at a time, and don’t think too much about what’s around the next corner.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s all I can do. I just need to take one step at a time and not borrow trouble.”

  In that moment, she made her decision. Her Bertie was here, and she was trusting he’d be okay.

  “I hope you have many more years together,” I said.

  She asked, “When did you meet your husband?”

  This was an easy question to answer. I’d told the story of our meeting so many times in the past that I was pretty sure I’d lost the actual memory somewhere in the story of the memory.

  “I met Gray first day of kindergarten. I remember walking to the door of the classroom. The room smelled of crayons and glue. And it was loud. I was holding my mother’s hand as I looked inside. The room seemed so big and it was filled with strangers. I remember feeling so small. My mom kissed me, told me to be good, and then left. I cried as she disappeared down the hall. But Gray walked over, put his arm around me, and told me, It’s okay. I’m here. And it was okay. He was there all through school. First as my best friend and later . . .”

  Now I dipped my toes in the past—back in a time when he was my everything, just as I was his.

  How simple things had been back in school. I knew who I was and I knew what I wanted.

  Back then, I’d been Gray’s Addie and he was all I wanted.

  “They’ll both be just fine,” my new friend said. Maude patted my leg. “After we met at the grocery store, Bertie took me to dinner at the diner. Why don’t you tell me about your first date.”

  I shook my head and it jostled the coffee I’d forgotten I was holding. A drop splashed on the envelope, magnifying a small portion of Gray’s name. I took a sip of the now-cold coffee, ensuring that I wouldn’t spill it again, and wiped my finger across the drop on his name, smudging it.

  My first date with Gray wasn’t something I wanted to share. On the surface, it wasn’t even much of a first date, but it was the moment when a lifelong friendship changed and became something more. I’d hold on to that story. But I owed Maude a memory in return for her sharing the Piggly Wiggly, so I pulled out something else. Not a date, but one of those moments I’d almost forgotten until now.

  “I can tell you about our first dance. I went to our junior prom with Chip Smuthers, and Gray took Candy Hawthorne. We all went together. Chip drove—he had some new fancy car, I don’t remember the make. But I do remember it was red . . .”

  “You’re sure it looks okay?” Gray asked for the umpteenth time.

  I felt bad. I knew that he was going to be one of the only guys not wearing a tux at the prom. He tried to pretend he didn’t care, but I knew he did. Even if he weren’t my friend, I’d have known it.

  “I think your suit says you aren’t a lemming. You don’t jump off a cliff because everyone else does. You’re not afraid to stand out in a crowd.”

  He offered me a wry smile. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  Gray had worked all through high school, but unlike some of the kids with jobs, his money went toward helping his mom pay the living expenses. He couldn’t spare any of it for a tux rental.

  I slugged his arm in response. He didn’t grin, like other guys might have, but there was a gleam in his eye that I could read almost as if he’d said the words. That gleam said that I hit like a girl.

  It was a standard joke between us.

  But before he could actually say the words, Chip arrived all properly tuxed. We stayed and let my mom take the obligatory pictures. Me with Chip and then me with Gray. Everyone in school knew that Gray and I were friend
s. Best friends. They all knew that Gray was here at my house almost as often as I was at his house.

  After my mother had enough pictures to fill a coffee table book, the three of us went to Candy’s, where her mother repeated the process.

  Rather than go out to a restaurant for dinner, Candy’s mom had offered to make us a formal meal.

  She served it all grown up and proper. She used a white tablecloth with cloth napkins. She put candles in the center of the table and laid out multiple forks.

  It was easy to believe we were eating in a restaurant.

  Gray held a chair out for Candy and gently helped her slide it under the table. I waited for Chip to do the same for me. He simply sat down. I started to seat myself, but Gray noticed and pushed me in as well.

  Mrs. Hawthorne started with shrimp cocktails, then salads, finally steaks and baked potatoes. She made us a chocolate mousse for dessert.

  When we got to Chip’s fancy car, Gray held the back door for Candy, while Chip simply walked to the driver’s door.

  Gray got my door then walked around the car and let himself in.

  I turned around and said, “I could have done it.”

  “Normally, I’d agree. Everyday Addie is perfectly capable of getting her own door. But my mom always says that sometimes all girls like being treated like a princess. And Princess Addie deserved to have her door opened for her.”

  A princess is just how I felt as I walked into the school gym with Chip on one side of me and Gray on the other. Candy was on Gray’s opposite side.

  The prom committee had transformed the bleachers and center court of the gym into a room that Disney would be proud of. There were small white lights dripping from all over the gym ceiling. They’d hung a gauzy material between the lights and the ceiling, too. The bleachers were hidden behind some white, gauzy fabric panels. White tablecloths, white chairs. More candles and tiny lights.

  The overall effect was very princess-worthy. The four of us sat together at a table at the back of the room.

  The official prom theme was “A Moment Like This.” Kelly Clarkson blared the song over and over through the night. After that initial impression, the rest of the night was a blur. I wasn’t much of a dancer, but Chip was. Gray wasn’t a dancer either, but Candy was. That meant Candy and Chip spent most of the night dancing together or with other people while Gray and I held our table.

  At one point Gray looked at me and said, “You realize we’re both dating people with food names.”

  I hadn’t, but I laughed as he said the words. “Maybe our senior year, we should try for people with plant names? Fern for you, and . . .” I was running through guys in our class, trying to find a name that would fit.

  “Reed,” Gray supplied.

  “Ew.” Reed Maverick had a name that sounded made up and he was cover-model gorgeous. It wasn’t so much the fact he was really good-looking that put me off, but rather the fact he knew he was good-looking and was comfortable using that gift from nature to his advantage. Fern at least was president of student council and was part of the prom committee who’d spent so much time working on making tonight a success. Fern had some sense of purpose and competence about her that Reed was lacking.

  A Celine Dion song started. Chip and Candy stopped the gyrations and slow danced. Gray held out a hand. “Want to dance?”

  “I dance worse than I hit,” I warned him, though we’d been friends for enough years that he already knew it.

  “Me, too,” he said, “but I think we can both turn in a circle together.”

  Celine’s song talked about touching and kissing, which made me feel uncomfortable wrapping my arms around Gray’s neck.

  He didn’t seem to notice my discomfort as he pulled me into his arms.

  We danced then, and maybe to the rest of the world, we were just turning circles, but something else started to turn inside me.

  I didn’t analyze it or try to name it. I simply reveled in its warmth and I danced with my best friend.

  No matter how sweet the siren’s call of the past, the present pulled me back as easily as it had Maude. I sank further into my seat in the ER waiting room, still clutching a coffee as my arm rested on my purse and the envelope that spelled the end of my marriage to Gray.

  The drone of daytime television was broken by an occasional PA announcement. The smell of stale coffee that couldn’t quite mask the stench of the ER waiting room.

  I wanted nothing more than to fall back to that time when I turned circles on the dance floor, held in Gray’s arms as Celine Dion sang. But I held myself firmly in this place. I looked at Maude. “It was our junior prom and that was our first dance. And at that moment, something started to change between Gray and me. At least for me that was the moment.”

  We’d been friends from the moment Gray had wrapped his arm around me in kindergarten, but that night on the dance floor, we started to become something more.

  I remembered that prom and the song we’d danced to so clearly. “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” I clutched the envelope on my lap and realized that there was a sense of irony in the memory of that long-ago song.

  “Honey—” my waiting-partner Maude started, but she was interrupted when a doctor came into the room.

  “Mrs. Grayson?” she called.

  I didn’t want to go because that doctor might give me news I didn’t want to hear, but my new friend reached over and squeezed my hand. That tiny bit of human connection was enough to give me the courage to set down my coffee cup, grip the envelope and my purse, and move toward the doctor.

  The grim-faced doctor.

  She was tiny, but had an aura of confidence about her.

  “It was a heart attack, then?” I asked. I knew they could do things to remove blockages. Maybe that’s what she was coming to tell me.

  But I realized it wasn’t that simple as the doctor shook her head. “No, ma’am. It wasn’t a heart attack. It was a type A aortic dissection. In layman’s terms, it’s a tear in a blood vessel. We’re taking Mr. Grayson up to surgery immediately. He . . .”

  Then she spoke doctor at me. She talked about his history of high blood pressure, something I knew nothing about.

  I couldn’t hold on to the entirety of her explanation, but I gleaned words and phrases.

  Stent.

  Surgery.

  Sedation.

  Coma.

  I began to hear full sentences again when she told me that the longer Gray survived, the better his chances were.

  “His risk of death will decrease with every passing hour after the surgery,” she assured me, as if that would give me comfort.

  Risk of death.

  Despite the fact I was still clutching the divorce papers, I couldn’t process the concept of my life without Gray in it.

  “Ma’am, is there someone we can call for you?” she asked me kindly.

  I shook my head. I’d have to call Gray’s mom, Ash, and JoAnn, but that was something I could do myself. I wouldn’t have some stranger call any of them with news like this.

  She nodded. “I’ll send a nurse in with the consent forms.”

  “Consent forms?” I asked.

  “As his wife, you’ll need to sign the consent forms that will allow us to do the surgery.”

  “Surgery?”

  “To put in the stents,” she said gently.

  “For his heart,” I managed.

  “Yes,” she said, then turned and hurried back toward the ER, as if she didn’t want to get stuck answering any more of my questions.

  I didn’t blame her.

  Normally I was pretty quick about things, but I felt like I was thinking through cotton.

  I felt dazed as I walked back across the room and sat down across from Maude.

  “It doesn’t sound good,” I said. I needed to say the words to someone.
I needed to hear what they sounded like.

  It doesn’t sound good.

  The words were daggers. They were more painful than anything I’d heard or felt this last year.

  Maude didn’t say anything. She didn’t try to paint a good face on it. She simply reached across the expanse that separated us and patted my hand.

  The nurse came with the papers, which I duly signed. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you up to the surgical waiting room.”

  I nodded and stood again. “I’ve got to go,” I told Bertie’s wife. “I hope Bertie’s okay.”

  “I’ll say a prayer for your husband,” she said in response.

  “Thank you, Maude.” I nodded.

  The young nurse urged me to come along by only saying my name. “Mrs. Grayson?”

  Mrs. Grayson.

  When I had my lawyer draw up my divorce papers, I’d thought about going back to my maiden name. Adeline Frasier.

  He’d said it wouldn’t be hard to have everything changed over. He’d help me.

  But in the end, I couldn’t do it. I’d been Addie Grayson since I was twenty-four. Rationally, I knew that was only six years out of my thirty, but those years had set their stamp on me. I’d been Adeline Frasier, but I was Addie Grayson.

  It was a difference that might not mean anything to someone else, but it meant everything to me.

  I might be ready to end my marriage, but I wasn’t ready to put an end to who I was.

  Chapter Three

  “Mrs. Grayson?” the nurse said again.

  I realized I was just standing in front of Maude. I nodded at her and then turned to the nurse and said, “Yes. I’m ready.”

  I left the ER waiting room behind as I followed the young nurse through sterile-looking halls that smelled of antiseptic. While I was sure they used it to clean germs, I suddenly thought that its acrid smell was also used to cover the smell that they couldn’t quite mask in the emergency room. Maybe they thought that patients and their families wouldn’t be able to smell the fear and despair that lurked underneath the antiseptic smell.