Left Hanging

by Cindy Dorminy

  “Yep.”

  She scans the wellness center from my office doorway. Barely above a whisper, she asks, “Does Stella know?”

  “It all happened so fast. She was leaving with Diane, so I couldn’t simply spring something like this on her and then say, ‘See ya in a few weeks.’ Besides, I need to talk to him first.”

  “Does he know?”

  I throw my hands up in frustration. “I thought he did, but he acts completely clueless.”

  “Oh. My. God.”

  “It’s a lot to process.”

  Shelby has a refreshed appearance after finishing her morning run on the treadmill. “Ya think?”

  Isaac leans against the doorframe. “I take it you told her.” He gives me a thumbs-up.

  Shelby swats at him, but he jumps out of hitting range. “If you knew, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Hey now. A promise is a promise. Sorry, Boss.”

  She closes her eyes and exhales. “Okay, I can’t take all this in right now. We’ve got to get ready for new staff orientation.”

  Isaac groans.

  I stand and stretch my arms over my head. “Think of it this way. This week can’t get any worse, right?”

  They both stare at me as if I’ve jinxed all of us.

  We trek across campus with our oversized storage-bags-on-wheels stuffed with all our equipment.

  As we enter the hospital lobby, Isaac whispers, “Dr. Stud Muffin, dead ahead.”

  Before I even realize I’m looking, my eyes find him coming my way. His cheerful expression makes it hard not to watch. As he passes without seeing me, I continue to follow him with my eyes, not watching where I’m going. Someone rushes past me and whacks me with a very large purse, sending me to the floor.

  Isaac helps me up. “You okay?”

  “Rude,” I say to the blur that keeps going.

  I watch the blur for a moment. No! Unbelievable.

  My mouth drops, and I am frozen in place. I need a sinkhole to open up and swallow me whole. It’s the best thing that can happen at this point. I thought he wasn’t with her anymore.

  Mallory runs up to Theo and links her arm through his. He rotates his head and jerks his arm away. At that very moment, he catches my eye. I can’t stop gaping. He grins at me. She keeps chatting into his ear, but he continues to hold my gaze.

  “Help me,” he mouths.

  Holy cow.

  We settle in to our little section of the orientation room. Isaac slides two tables together and arranges chairs for us to sit in one long line on one side of the tables. In front of the tables, he arranges another set of chairs for the new employees to sit in while we do their wellness assessments. I’m always at the end so I can draw blood and be near the Sharps disposal containers. Like three little robots, we organize our supplies and set up for the day. I think all of us could do this in our sleep, except today it’s a nightmare. Thank goodness I hid behind Isaac so Mallory didn’t see me. With any luck, she’s long gone by now.

  “Whoever schedules all these orientations back-to-back should be shot,” Shelby snaps as she throws brochures and forms on the table.

  I nibble on my fingernail as I pace back and forth across the room. I cannot believe Mallory is here and with him. This is not good. This is nothing near good. I think I’m going to hurl. Maybe I thought the gods of mercy would cut me some slack, but it seems as if they’re taking a smoke break.

  “Amen, sister,” Isaac replies.

  “I’m serious. It’s too much for one week. I mean, hello? We have other things to do. And we have a nighttime screening session coming up for the evening staff.”

  “I say let the newbies figure it out for themselves,” Isaac says.

  I nod, not really following the conversation. I keep replaying the hallway scene over and over in my head. He’s here. She’s here. They’re still together. The idea makes the bile bubble up from my stomach. The last time I saw Mallory, we did the obligatory graduation photo together and made “let’s stay in touch” promises, which we did for a while. But when I realized she and Theo were a couple, I couldn’t keep up the pleasantries. So I replied less and less to her emails, and she eventually stopped writing.

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself. Drinks are on me tonight.” Shelby holds up a stack of brochures as if it’s a shot glass. A shot would be helpful right now.

  “Yes!” Isaac cheers.

  “Darla,” Shelby says. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  Mallory is here. She still has those legs that go on for days and that perfect shade of blond hair. And she’s… well, she’s still… perfect in every possible way. And she is still with him. Of course she is. Mallory always gets what she wants. She stalks her prey and pounces. When that happens, it’s best to either surrender or play dead.

  “Maybe she’s worried another lover from her past will show up,” Isaac says.

  “No chance of that,” I reply, plastering on a fake smirk.

  I stack up the tubes near the Sharps container and get set for a long morning. I’m hoping that by keeping my hands busy, my mind won’t stay stuck on the perpetual Theo-Mallory wheel.

  I pull Isaac aside and lower my voice to a whisper. “You said he wasn’t in a relationship anymore. Does your dyslexia get facts backwards too?”

  He chuckles. “No. That’s what he said.”

  I inspect my supplies to make sure everything is in place. I can whip right through two hundred new employees in three hours if I’m all organized. That’s what I need to stay focused on—work. If I don’t think of something else soon, I’m going to need a paper bag to breathe into. Please tell me she didn’t get a job here too.

  Isaac stands in front of us and starts his traditional deep-breathing exercises. This is his way of getting psyched up to be nice to everyone that stops by. Shelby and I follow suit. It actually does help. Isaac says if he doesn’t do this, he cannot stand answering the same questions two hundred times.

  The crowd filters into the room and quiets down as the orientation film plays on the screen. A new wave of nausea threatens to take control. Mallory sits on the back row, phone in hand, fingers flying across the keyboard. Shit. She is a new employee. Ugh.

  I could fake a stomach virus. Or maybe I can lie and say I left my favorite stethoscope in the office. That should take at least two hours to fetch.

  Suddenly, I don’t think I’m going to have to fake that stomach virus. I am going to need a gallon of Maalox to get through this morning. Maalox combined with Xanax and a shot of whiskey might do the trick.

  When the crowd breaks up into small groups, Mallory heads directly to our station, of course. Open wound. Pour salt. Kill me now. At least I’ll get this face-to-face over with, and I can check it off my “people I want to see the least” list.

  Mallory sees me and freezes. She grins and cocks her head to one side. “Darla?” she asks with a syrupy sweetness to her voice.

  I paint on the fakest, prettiest smile I can manage. “Hi, Mallory.”

  She runs around the table. With her long legs and four-inch heels, she towers over me. She grabs my shoulders and does a bouncy happy dance. “Oh my God! Oh my God! I cannot believe it’s you!”

  “It’s me.”

  “It’s her,” Isaac and Shelby say with as little enthusiasm as I did.

  She takes in my appearance. “You look fantastic. Absolutely adorbs.”

  She starts with my hair, which hasn’t been trimmed in months, and scans all the way to my sneakers, which have seen better days. Yep. That’s Mallory. She always analyzed my choice of clothing. I look as though I’m ready to take a yoga class, and she’s dressed as if she owns a yoga studio. It’s easy to feel inferior in her presence without her even trying. It’s not that she purposefully tries to make people feel a few level
s lower on the food chain. She just has this way about her. She can criticize me while she has a beauty-queen smile plastered on her face. And I don’t even realize the jab until ten minutes later after she has moved on to someone else.

  Had it not been a random roommate pairing freshman year, we probably would have never even known each other’s names. We had zero friends in common. But I did enjoy her perpetual perkiness. Otherwise, I would have requested a new roommate the first chance I got. Besides, she was gone partying so much, it felt as though I had the dorm room to myself most of the time. Mallory was always, and I’m sure still is, the life of the party. There’s never a dull moment when she’s around. Except sometimes, dull is good. I’m really good at being dull.

  I’ve often wondered over the years if she really did try to help me find my Romeo before we graduated. Now that I have had time to think about it, I realize it’s possible that she intentionally kept information from me so she could snatch him for herself. She seemed sincere at the time, but only a few months after graduation, she had him, and all I had were memories of what I could only assume he thought was a one-night stand.

  But the only thing I can think of right now is the last communication from her. It was that email Christmas card showing off the love of her life. I was still pregnant, and my hormones were off the charts, so I didn’t take it well, to say the least. I guess I should thank her for sending that email to everyone, including Theo. It gave me the opportunity to reach out to him, even if he flat-out refused to accept responsibility. I didn’t copy Mallory on the email because I never was good at standing up for myself when it came to her. My plan was to tell Theo, and together, we could talk to Mallory. But my plan took a nosedive when he rejected me and his baby.

  “You haven’t changed,” I said, trying to keep my smile in place. “What are you doing here?” Oh God. I can’t believe I asked her that. Just get this little meet and greet over with. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Don’t pursue.

  “Well, my fiancé is doing a fellowship here, and…”

  And that’s all I remember from the conversation. She said fiancé. She didn’t say boyfriend or friend or roommate or even cousin. I think I could handle any—well, most—of those words. But she said fiancé.

  Shelby assesses the situation with a thin-lipped grin. “You two know each other, I assume.”

  Behind Mallory’s back, Shelby mimics gagging herself with her finger. I stifle a grin. Thanks, Shelby. I owe you one.

  “Yes, of course,” Mallory replies. “We were roommates all through college.”

  She gives me another squeeze around the neck, and I fake a grin. It’s such a good grin that I could get an award, although I think I will have to massage my cheeks to release the cramps I’m getting.

  “Yeah, we kind of lost contact somewhere along the way,” I say.

  “I know, and I don’t think you ever got to meet the love of my life.”

  I bite my lip. She has a lot of nerve. “Guess not.” Boy, talk about an Oscar-worthy performance. Of course, I’ve met him. She must have seen Theo staring at me the night of the party, and we did some incredible things that I’m glad she didn’t see. He’s the only man I’ve ever wanted, and somehow, she managed to squirm her way into his life. On top of that, it appears as though she has a strong choke hold on him now. She knew who he was and kept it from me on purpose. I’m certain of it now.

  She hugs me again. “Now that we’re back in town, the three of us have to get together, unless you have someone special too.”

  I glance at Isaac and Shelby, who aren’t missing any part of this conversation. “Actually, I do, but she’s out of town right now.”

  Mallory’s face goes blank. “Oh, that’s okay. I’ve got lots of gay friends. Well, not lots, but you know what I mean.”

  She tugs on one of the three necklaces she has around her neck. I think she’s going to choke herself. By all means, please continue.

  I glance over at Isaac. “She’s my daughter.”

  “Oh, thank God.” She lets out a huge breath. “You have a daughter? I cannot wait to meet her.”

  Yeah, that will go over nicely. Showing her a child with the same eyes and dimples as her fiancé is not on my bucket list. Uh, nope. Not gonna happen.

  “Are congratulations in order?” Isaac takes her left hand and flips it over to examine her finger. He makes a “tsk tsk” sound. “Where’s the ring?” he asks with a scolding tone.

  Ha! She got busted by the prince of observation. The Mallorys of the world would have a massive rock to show off to the world if they were engaged, and she doesn’t have one.

  She snatches her hand back. “It’s not official. He’s going to work additional shifts in the ER to make some extra money. So it won’t be long.” She claps her hands like a cheerleader and cocks her head to the side—a tick of hers I learned a long time ago that signals when she’s bullshitting her way through a conversation.

  “Well, it’s really… good to see you again.” I try hard not to throw up on her blouse.

  Mallory continues to bounce. How in the world can she do that while wearing four-inch heels? And those fake boobs are going to put somebody’s eye out.

  “We have got to do lunch.” Her phone rings. “I’ve got to take this. Toodles.”

  “Toodles,” Isaac and Shelby say together.

  Isaac watches Mallory until she is out of the room then turns to me. “Girl, you should have gone to college with me. I would have made a much better roomie.”

  Shelby points to Isaac. “What he said.”

  I’m more confused than ever. Theo told Isaac he wasn’t in a relationship anymore, and the lack of an engagement ring corroborates his story. But I don’t think Mallory got the memo.

  There’s only one way to find out—put Theo in the hot seat.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Darla

  Isaac and Shelby don’t know it yet, but they are about to enter a brainstorming session to help me figure out how to deal with my Theo problem. But first, I need some face time with my baby girl.

  When her sweet face fills my screen, I can barely keep the tears away. It has only been a few days, but I already miss her. I can’t breathe without this kid in my life. She’s having the time of her life with my sister, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

  “Hey, Mommy.”

  That voice. It can melt the hardest of hearts and make me forget all my troubles.

  “Hey, sweet girl. Are you having fun?”

  “Yep. We went to the pool today.”

  Shocker. “That sounds like fun. The sun is a lot stronger in LA, so please make sure Aunt Diane puts a ton of sunscreen on you.”

  “I will,” my sister says offscreen. “You are such a worrywart.”

  She would understand if she had a child of her own.

  “I miss you.” On purpose, I move my phone so she doesn’t see me wipe tears off my face.

  “Miss you too.” Her lip quivers. “I did something really bad.”

  “It can’t be that bad, honey. What is it?”

  Stella’s gaze roams around the room. “I was listening when you and Uncle Isaac were talking the other night.”

  Shit. No air can get into my lungs. I have to think of something fast. “We weren’t talking about anything.” Liar.

  She wipes a tear away. “Yes, you were. You told him you found my daddy, but I think I found him too.”

  My phone drops to the floor.

  “Mommy?”

  “Yeah, sorry.” I scramble to pick up my phone. “What did you say?”

  Her face leaves the screen, and Diane’s appears. “Yeah, she’s been saying this all day long. It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

  Oh yeah, I’m not going to worry about it, not at all. “Why do
es she think that?”

  Diane shrugs. “Something to do with this jerk that plowed her over in the airport. She thinks her daddy’s special secret job is in the airport.”

  “It is,” Stella says, grabbing for Diane’s phone again. “That’s where he’s been all this time. Go find him, Mommy.”

  “Why in the world would you think you found your daddy at the airport?”

  “’Cause… well, we both like ice cream.” That eliminates about zero potential fathers. “Oh, and he called me Stella Bella, just like you.”

  “You also thought the UPS driver was your father because he delivered a package for you on your birthday.”

  “Mommy, it’s him.”

  “Okay, baby. That’s real sweet, but it’s not likely. I’ll look into it.”

  Thank God Theo doesn’t work at the airport.

  Since it’s a pretty day with surprisingly low humidity, Shelby, Isaac, and I sit outside on the fitness center’s patio for lunch. Butterflies surround the Buddleia bush and will be drunk on its nectar before the day is over. I bet if Stella were here, all she would have to do is hold out her finger close to the bush, and one of those beautiful Monarchs would gladly rest on it. God, I miss that sweet girl. Only two weeks, and I’ll have her back. That is two weeks too long.

  Shelby picks through her salad, and Isaac inhales a pizza… as usual. I sit cross-legged on a yoga mat and munch on a turkey club sandwich and some pretzels.

  “We are so boring,” Isaac says. “We have the same lunch at the same time at the same place every day. Can’t we ever do anything different?”

  “Here’s something different. I need some ideas on how to deal with this”—I lower my voice—“baby-daddy problem.”

  Isaac lifts his hands in praise. “You have come to the right place. But first, let me make sure I have all the facts straight. Theo’s the cute baby daddy.”