All We Can Do Is Wait

by Richard Lawson

  Scott’s mom was always saying things like “What happened to my little baby?” So much so that Scott began to feel guilty for growing up. Of course, he knew now that his mother hadn’t meant it, that she knew he couldn’t actually go back to being a baby, and didn’t really want him to. But back then it had wracked him. He felt sad and guilty all the time. A teacher at school noticed that his behavior had changed and spoke to his parents about it, and they stopped fighting in the house so much, and eventually things got better and everyone seemed to move on. Scott never forgot that feeling, though, that desperate wish that things could just be easier.

  He felt it now, a yearning to go back to when life was less complicated, when it wasn’t so difficult and frightening. But what could he do? He could only hope that Aimee was alive, that she’d be all right, and that things would eventually get better, like they were supposed to.

  Alexa sniffled and pulled back from his hug a little. “Sorry, ugh, I’m sorry. I just feel so bad for her. I mean, I feel bad for all of us. But . . . I don’t think that was good news. It didn’t look like good news.”

  Scott nodded, then looked up and saw Jason and Morgan walking in from outside. They were laughing about something, but they quickly stopped as they caught sight of Scott and Alexa hugging, and Alexa’s red and tear-streaked face. Jason quickened his pace, his eyes looking a little sharper now, more focused.

  “What, what was it? What happened?” he asked, notes of panic rising in his voice. “Alexa? Are they here?”

  Alexa shook her head, pulled away from Scott, smoothed her shirt. “No, no. It’s Skyler. Skyler’s sister . . . They took her back there.” She pointed to the ominous doors. “I don’t think it’s good news.”

  Jason ran both hands through his hair, letting out a long exhale. “Oh. O.K. O.K. That’s . . . O.K.”

  Scott thought he saw a quick brightening in Jason’s eyes, some spasm of relief. It was oddly comforting to see Jason reacting externally the same way Scott was inside. Maybe Scott wasn’t such a bad person after all. Maybe it was natural—unavoidable—to feel this way. Of course, tragic news could still be waiting for him, for all of them, but they weren’t out of the game just yet. There was still hope, still a chance.

  Morgan had been hanging back, but then she approached the group, gave them a timid wave. “They took Skyler back?” she asked, and Scott said yeah, that it probably meant nothing good. Morgan shook her head. “Not necessarily. I mean, they might just not want to, y’know, give her good news in front of other people. You know, out of, like, respect.” Scott knew she was right, of course.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s true,” Alexa said, nodding a bit too vigorously. “Yeah. I mean, maybe it is good news. They took you back there to tell you about your dad, right?” she asked Morgan, who looked down at her feet.

  “Yeah, they did. But, like, I know them here, so . . . I don’t know. I’m just guessing, really. I don’t know how all this works.”

  Jason made a sound. “I mean, it doesn’t seem like anyone does,” he said, gesturing toward everyone else milling about the waiting room. Scott realized that the crowd had thinned. Other people must have gotten their news and Scott hadn’t even noticed.

  “This is a mess. It’s all a mess,” Jason muttered. Something caught in his voice as he said it, and Scott felt a sudden pang of sympathy for him. Maybe Jason was only just now realizing the gravity of the situation. “It all just fucking sucks,” Jason murmured, and despite himself, Scott burst out laughing. Then Morgan did too, Jason even giving a little half-grin.

  “It really does, man,” Scott said with a sigh. “It really does.” Alexa stayed quiet, only sniffling a little more and crossing her arms over her chest. Morgan cleared her throat.

  “You know,” she began timidly, “my mom used to work here, like right in the ER, right where we are. And when I was little, she wouldn’t tell me about all the really bad stuff she’d seen. ’Cause she must have seen, like, the worst things—people who’d been shot or burned or whatever. She never talked about work, unless it was, like, about some annoying co-worker or something. I guess maybe she talked to my dad about it? But I never heard it, if she did. And one day I realized that maybe she didn’t have to talk about it because, for all the bad things she saw, there was good stuff too, you know? They save people here. Like, all the time. Maybe . . . maybe most of the stories here actually have happy endings?”

  She smiled wanly, and the others returned the gesture. Scott nodded. “That’s a good way of looking at it, I guess.”

  “But it’s probably bullshit . . .” Jason muttered. Scott was about to snap back at Jason, to stand up for Morgan’s little pep talk, but Morgan laughed.

  “Oh, it almost definitely is,” she said. Jason laughed too, and then even Alexa was laughing, snapped out of her funk for a second.

  “I mean, it’s probably a fucking nightmare here all the time!” Jason said.

  “All the time!” Morgan yelped, looking like she might cry—from laughter, from fear, from tiredness. It was a desperate moment, but it also felt good to feel a little giddy, a little punchy, Scott realized.

  They stood like that, the four of them laughing to stave off the fear. Scott thought that it felt a little like a team huddle, like they were ending a time-out, catching their breath one last time before heading back into the game. He closed his eyes for a second and wished himself back to one of those thrilling afternoons playing soccer, lungs screaming, hair sweaty, muscles burning. Then he heard Alexa say “Oh my God,” and opened his eyes in time to see Skyler walking through the double doors, Mary Oakes behind her, a hand on her shoulder. She said something to Skyler, who nodded and gave her a tentative, awkward hug. Mary Oakes pulled back, nodded quickly, and then disappeared once more behind the doors.

  Skyler looked over to them. It was clear she’d been crying. “Oh my God . . .” Alexa whispered again, breaking the huddle to walk over to Skyler. Scott followed, as did Morgan and Jason. If nothing else, if Kate was dead, they were here for Skyler. Maybe that counted for some tiny something.

  Alexa was the first to reach Skyler. She gave her a big hug, Skyler bursting into tears, Alexa saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  Skyler shook her head—seemingly unable to comprehend the loss she’d just suffered—and said, “No, no, no.” Alexa kept hugging her, until Skyler gave her a light push back, said, “No, she’s O.K. Kate’s O.K. I was just with her. She’s going to be fine.”

  Alexa blinked at her, then turned to Jason. “She’s O.K.?” he stammered out.

  Skyler, bleary and smiling now, blubbered, “Yeah. Yup. They said she’s going to be fine. I mean, she broke her legs really bad and is gonna need a lot of physical therapy, but it’s not life-or-death. She’s O.K. She’s O.K.”

  A sick feeling coursed through Scott, dread and envy swirling together. He was happy for Skyler, for Kate, of course. He wasn’t a monster. But if Kate was O.K., then hadn’t the odds shifted? Wasn’t Aimee now firmly back in the bad column? Had he just somehow condemned Aimee to die, by thinking such terrible things about Kate? Alexa must have been feeling something similar, because she staggered back and grabbed for Scott’s arm again.

  They stood, smiling weakly as Skyler wept. Morgan kept her distance, watching quietly, a resigned look flickering across her face before she said, “That’s great. That’s so great, Skyler.”

  Skyler nodded. “I know. I know. I have to try to call my grandparents. It’s . . . I don’t know what time it is there, but I have to—I have to do that.” She went to her chair and started gathering her things, bag and coat and phone, pulling her hair into a messy bun as she shouldered her bag and took a deep breath. She looked at all of them and then seemed to realize. That her good news, her good fortune, wasn’t theirs too.

  She let a little “Oh” escape before steeling herself and putting a hand on Alexa’s shoulder. “I’m not leaving, O.
K.? I’m not leaving until you guys all know. I’m just gonna . . . I’m just gonna go call my grandparents and my family and . . . just not be in here for a second. But I’ll be back, I’m not leaving.” She smiled at them and then said, “O.K.,” before striding out of the room, already dialing her phone.

  And then there were four, Scott dipping his head and letting out a long breath, Alexa retreating to her chair, Jason standing, looking stunned and confused, as the sounds of the room returned. Morgan seemed to sense all of their worry. “If she’s O.K., that could mean everyone else is too. I mean, people are surviving this, right? People are alive.”

  Scott wasn’t sure what to say, what to do. He felt as helpless as ever, maybe even more helpless than before, somehow. He realized that, until then, he’d been quietly convinced that everything really was going to be fine, that things couldn’t actually be as bad as they seemed. But somehow Skyler’s news—her great, happy, miraculous news—made him doubt all that, made him convinced that everything was only going to get worse for him now.

  He heard Alexa crying again, a despairing sound. Jason stayed rooted in place as Morgan walked quietly over to Alexa and sat down next to her, not touching her, not saying anything, just sitting. Of course, Morgan had had good news too, hadn’t she? She didn’t seem to know a lot, but at least she knew her dad was alive. Scott felt a flash of anger toward her, and then guilt again, and then panic. Things were back to that strange, dreamlike pace, Alexa’s crying the only sound Scott heard. And then, he realized, he was crying too, a sudden rush of tears, a choking in his throat. He turned from the others and closed his eyes and tried to make it stop.

  He thought about Aimee, in her sunny third-floor bedroom, practicing some monologue from some play, crying on her bed with a funny smile on her face, turning it on and off with ease.

  “How the hell do you do that?” Scott asked, amazed.

  Aimee smiled, casting him a serene gaze. “My natural ability!”

  Scott laughed. “No, seriously. How? Do you just, like, think of sad things?”

  “Sorta. I think about Google ads.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Yeah. You know the Google ad with the guy who moves to Paris?”

  Scott had no idea what she was talking about. “I do not.”

  “Oh my God!” Aimee yelped, jumping up from her bed to grab her computer from her desk. Scott grabbed at her, wanting to pull her in for a kiss, but she swatted him away. “Not now, this is serious.”

  She got her laptop and brought it over, sitting next to Scott on the bed, Scott taking in the smell of her, soap and fruit and a little of the incense she liked to burn in her room when she was trying to set a sexy mood. (She didn’t really need to try, Scott always thought.) “O.K. So there are a few really good Google ads, like the ‘It Gets Better’ one. But the Paris one is the absolute best. Oscar-winning. It should win Oscars.”

  Scott was skeptical as Aimee searched YouTube for the video. He wasn’t a terribly sentimental or emotional guy—very few of the guys he knew were—and he doubted a commercial for a search engine would do much to move him. Aimee found the ad and let out a little “Aha!” and pressed “Play.”

  Visually, the ad was very simple. Just a search text bar. But it nonetheless told a story, about a kid studying abroad in Paris, searching for ways to woo a French girl, then going on a date, then getting a job in Paris and moving there, then getting married, and then, at the end, searching for how to build a crib. A whole romance, a whole life, told in a little ad set to wistful music. It was really something, and Scott’s eyes were welling up with tears by the time the guy was searching for a job in Paris.

  Aimee, tears streaming down her cheeks, looked at him and burst out laughing. “See? See? It’s unreal! Every time I watch it!” She looked at him again, ran her thumbs under his eyes to wipe away the tears that were, yes, now falling. “I knew you would get it,” she said, cupping his face and kissing him. “I knew you would. That’s why I love you.”

  It was the first time she’d ever said that, and Scott instinctively, but meaning it, said it back. “I love you too. I love you, Aimee.” And then they were kissing again, the day tumbling along as they fell into each other.

  Scott closed his eyes and wondered if he would ever see Aimee again. He wondered if Skyler would actually come back. He wondered if he prayed then, harder than he ever had—even as a little kid when his parents were fighting and the whole world seemed to be crashing down around him, if he somehow prayed harder than that—if he could open his eyes and be somewhere else entirely.

  Chapter Ten

  Jason

  IT KEPT REPEATING. The cycle of thinking that maybe some news was coming, and then nothing—then the worry and the daze rushing back in. They were spinning in place, all of them. Except, of course, for Skyler, whose life could, after a few hard weeks or months of her sister’s therapy, return to normal, almost like all of this had never happened. Jason was bitter and angry, so tired of this feeling that nothing in his life could get better.

  Then came the numbness. A strange sensation of calm muffling the sound of Alexa crying, dulling the sting of Skyler’s happy news. Still, he wanted a pill, or a drink, or something that would hasten his retreat from the world.

  The taste Jason had had—of a life that felt real and present and good—had been so short. Just a few months. The joy of that first kiss, followed by many other wonderful things. Kyle didn’t mind the occasional joint, the occasional drunk and bleary night spent wild and laughing together. But the other stuff, and the constancy of Jason’s stonedness, had bothered Kyle. And before too long, to make Kyle happy—and, he slowly realized, to make himself happy too—Jason eased up. It wasn’t like he was some crackhead dying for a fix. There was no withdrawal or anything. He mostly just felt clearer and sharper and brighter, not waking up every morning flattened and headachey and grouchy. He actually felt, well, happy some mornings.

  He and Kyle could only have a very few mornings in bed together, theirs being a secret kind of a thing, but at least the memory of Kyle, the knowledge of him, was in Jason’s head every morning when he woke up, for nearly that whole summer. Some nice or funny or comforting thing Kyle had said echoing in his ear, some smell of him, some tingle somewhere on Jason’s body where Kyle had touched him. He woke up eager to explore the day. To see Kyle, yes, but also to see where else this new feeling could take him.

  He went sailing. Theo had a boat, a little Beetle Cat that was easy enough for one person to handle, and Jason spent most mornings out on the bay, everything blue around him, the wind whipping. He’d taken lessons as a kid and was surprised at how quickly the muscle memory returned to him. Pretty soon he was confidently sailing out far enough that he could barely see the beach anymore, alone on the water, the day laid out before him, shimmering with possibility. He hadn’t felt so calm in his own skin in a long time, and he quickly grew to cherish those mornings, loving the expanse of the ocean rolling out in front of him as he raced across it, and loving watching the land get closer and closer as he turned and headed for home, knowing that things back there were pretty good too, for the time being anyway.

  Jason couldn’t really remember how he’d spent most of his days after sailing. There was just a handful of persistent memories. The day he got caught in a little storm, trying to manage his mounting fear as he desperately made his way back to shore, texting Kyle when he got home, I almost died!

  Kyle wrote back omg and then, sending a shirtless pic of himself, will this revive u?

  Jason replied, no now im really dead.

  There was the day Jason rode his bike—another skill reclaimed from childhood—all the way to Orleans and back, forty miles or so, probably the most exercise he’d gotten in years. He’d just done it to do it, getting back home right before dinner, his mother asking him where he’d been all day. Jason told her he’d just been around, not doing much, and Linda
smiled and said, “That’s nice. It was such a nice day, wasn’t it,” chopping tomatoes for dinner, Garrison Keillor droning away softly on the radio.

  And of course there had been days with Kyle, when he wasn’t working. After they’d “broken the seal,” as Kyle (a little grossly) called it, and had sex for the first time, a lot of their hours together were devoted to finding discreet, available places to do it. Usually that meant Laurie’s when she was at work, or Jason’s house when his parents were in Boston or at the club. But they found other places: Kyle’s car a lot, a motel once, one time even doing it in the walk-in fridge at Grey’s, a cold, sorta scary, entirely thrilling experience.

  Of course they had to be careful not to be seen together, in any capacity really, so a lot of their precious, too-rare alone time was spent in Kyle’s car, driving further west, toward the rest of Massachusetts. Everyone figured that Kyle was visiting his mom in Bourne, and they assumed Jason was . . . well, off being Jason somewhere.

  But they were together instead. Eating lunch or early dinners at places by the water in Dennis and Yarmouth, hanging around on the beach, swimming. One afternoon they drove to Corporation Beach in Dennis, wide and crowded with swimmers and sunbathers, even on a late Tuesday morning. They’d fooled around in Jason’s bed earlier—Alexa off at an early shift, his parents playing golf at the club with another couple—and Jason still felt hot and flushed as they drove, giddy and sexy and, he was beginning to realize, in love.

  They found a place, a little ways away from the bulk of the crowd, and laid out their towels, Jason lying on his back while Kyle got out a book to read, a dog-eared paperback with a drawing of San Francisco on the cover.

  “What’s it about?” Jason asked.

  “Tales of the City? It’s, like, a bunch of people living in San Francisco. It’s pretty old and pretty gay. I found it on Amazon.”