by Hayden Hunt
“Okay, we’ll call your parents,” I told him. “We’ll call right now. Angela!” I yelled out to a nurse I saw walking by in the hall.
She popped her head in. “Yes?”
“I need you to call this patient’s parents. Grab a pen to write down the number.”
She nodded and grabbed out a pen and a small pad of paper. “Alright, ready, give it to me.”
“555-4632,” I told her. “Let them know their son was in a minor car accident, and we need to run a few tests. They might want to come down here.”
“Alright, I’ll call right now.”
“Awesome, thank you,” I answered, before directing my attention back to Jesse, who now had the oddest expression on his face.
“Are you okay?” I asked, suddenly worried. “Is something hurting, are you feeling weird?”
He tried to move his head to look at me. “Who… who are you?” she asked.
Now I felt worried in a whole new way. “Uh… what do you–”
“How did you know my parents’ home phone number?”
Shit, fucking shit. How could I have let that let slip out?
“I just…”
He jerked his head, shifting enough to see me even with me applying pressure. And when he saw me, his jaw dropped.
“Aaron?”
He recognized me immediately. And that should’ve felt like a relief to me… if it wasn’t for the obvious disappointment in his voice.
5
Jesse
I couldn’t believe what I was waking up to. So, not only had I been in a car accident that, if I remembered correctly, was my fault for not paying enough attention to the road, but I was waking up in the hospital to the one person I hadn’t expected I’d ever had to see again.
And, god, did he look amazing.
I wouldn’t say I was exactly happy to see him, but I couldn’t ignore the simple fact that he looked so good right now. He had always been attractive, for as long as I could remember, but God, had he gotten even better as he’d aged. Even working a long nursing shift, his good looks appeared to be effortless.
And here I was, all banged up, hair matted with blood. I may not have planned to ever see him again, but I had hoped than when I had, I’d have been looking a lot better than this.
I wasn’t even sure what to say to him. My mind was going completely and totally blank. Did he even know who I was yet? The way he looked at me told me he did. Though I couldn’t discern what emotion it was on his face exactly. It was foreign to me.
For some reason, that stung me slightly. I used to know his facial expressions so well. Now… I didn’t know him at all.
“It’s nice to see you,” I spat out.
He didn’t smile, not even slightly, and it sent me spinning with anxiety.
“You, too,” he finally decided to say in return, though it was incredibly obvious that he’d forced himself to say it.
This was so weird. To be with him now, to feel like he was a stranger to me, to be unable to read him. And we were lying to each other… lying to exchange pleasantries. We’d never lied before. We’d used to be so close, so brutally honest, and now…
“I’m sorry,” I said suddenly.
He raised an eyebrow. “What?”
Oh, god, why had I said that?! When thinking about how wrong it was that we were lying, I’d felt inspired to tell the truth. To address the elephant in the room the same way we would have in the past.
But it wasn’t the past. We weren’t friends anymore. And he didn’t want to hear the truth from me, I was positive of that.
He wouldn’t have lied about it being nice to see me if he’d wanted to have a truthful, heart to heart. He was lying so he could continue to avoid me, the way I’d been avoiding him for years. And if I was a decent, unselfish person, I have would allowed him that much. I owed him that much.
But, let’s be honest, I’m not a selfless person. I’m a hot damn mess who usually thinks about himself first, and that’s what I was doing here. I was trying to assuage my own guilt. And it was unfair.
But I couldn’t back down now.
“I’m sorry for… for everything. For what I did, I–”
“Stop,” he said. “Please, stop right now. This is not the time or place. I’m working, you’re a patient of mine. I can’t have this kind of conversation with you while I’m working.”
I cringed at myself. You fucking idiot.
“Right, of course, I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m a little fuzzy right now, with the accident and everything.”
“Right,” he said, in a serious, monotone voice. He wasn’t going to let me assuage myself of anything. He was being colder than I’d ever seen him.
That was not entirely true. I’d seen him be cold to people. I’d seen him be cold often. He had always been a serious, unemotional person and was ruthless to anyone who’d tried to hurt him feelings or make fun of him. In high school, that had been a lot of people. So, I’d seen him be an asshole quite often.
But never to me. This was the first time I’d ever seen him be an ass to me. Even after what I’d done he… well, he hadn’t acted like this.
I was not sure if that meant he still cared about what had happened and was still angry about it, or it had just been so many years that he didn’t care about me whatsoever and felt no need to be kind to me. It could really go either way.
He had been pressing down hard on my forehead and he finally let go, allowing me to look at him more easily. I’d been really forcing my eyes to turn in his direction, as I was only able to move my head a little bit.
I didn’t want to be looking in his direction, though. And now that I was, I couldn’t stop.
I wished he’d start pushing down on my head again.
“I’m going to clean your laceration now. This is going to sting some.”
“Not a problem,” I said casually, even though I was a bit nervous. I’d never been one for pain. I was kind of a sissy. I wondered if he remembered that…
If he did, he gave no indication. He was hardly gentle with me. He didn’t warn me before he started wiping away at my cut. I couldn’t see with what, but it certainly stung like alcohol on a cut did.
But, I put on my brave face and allowed him to do it without complaint. I’d already made a fool of myself enough. I really didn’t care to do it any further today.
The nurse who had jotted my parents’ phone number down stopped in again.
“I just wanted to let you know, your parents are on the way,” she said, with a cheerful smile.
“Oh… thanks,” I muttered, though I was anything but thankful.
I mean, it wasn’t her fault. I’d asked her to call them, but I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known it was Aaron who was going to be my nurse. It was hard enough to deal with him in the room, but him and my parents? Yeah… that was going to be difficult considering they’d never really gotten along.
It wasn’t ever Aaron’s fault, it was just my parents. They were so damn strict. They’d always had an opinion about all my friends, but Aaron had gotten it especially bad.
It was because he’d always been unconventional. He hadn’t been the type of friend my parents had approved of because he hadn’t grown up in the church, and he’d lived with his aunt because his mother had been too irresponsible to be a mom to him. And I didn’t consider any of these bad things. So, what, he wasn’t religious. If I was being honest, I was not particularly religious, either.
And so, what, he came from shitty parents. We didn’t get to choose our family. I knew that better than anybody.
But, with my parents, this put him in the ‘bad egg’ category. Like he was going to be a terrible influence on me because he hadn’t come from the perfect, Christian household.
Funny because I had, and I wasn’t so perfect myself.
They always dealt with Aaron, though, because he was my best friend. I’d had him over all the time, and they’d kept their mouths shut because the alternative t
o him coming over was us going out somewhere. Which they most definitely had not wanted. They’d feared me getting into trouble outside of the house way more than inside.
I could see on Aaron’s face that he wasn’t pleased with the news that my parents would be here soon, either, though he didn't say anything. Of course he didn’t. As he had just reminded me, he was at work.
“Alright, so I’ve got this cleaned up, I’m going to go grab someone to stitch it, and someone should be in to take you for your scans soon.”
Right, of course, that was how he was going to handle it. By handing me off to someone else, allowing himself off the hook from dealing with my parents and me.
And I couldn't blame him, but, right now in this moment, I didn’t want him to leave. It was ironic, considering how badly I didn’t want to see him before, but, now that he was here… I just couldn’t imagine him gone.
Maybe this had been part of the reason I hadn’t wanted to see him. Not just because I was ashamed of my past actions, though I was, but because I hadn’t been sure that, if I saw him again, I could walk away…
It’d taken everything I had to walk away the first time.
I didn’t answer him right away. I couldn’t. My mind was spinning, and I didn’t have any idea of what to say. And I couldn’t blame it on a possible head injury… this was all definitely based on my intense emotions for him.
And if that bothered him, me not answering, he gave no indication of it. He just wordlessly began to head to the door, not so much as glancing back at me.
Was this really all so casual for him? My mind was racing, as was my heart. I felt overwhelmed with everything I felt for him, and, yet, he seemed mostly unaffected by seeing me. Was this just me? Was I the only one feeling all of this?
I wasn’t sure, but I had to find out.
“Aaron, wait!” I called out without thinking. I had no plan for what else I’d say. I just knew I absolutely couldn’t let him leave right now.
Not when I didn’t even know if he’d ever be back.
He turned around and, again, in a very professional voice asked, “Is there anything else you need?”
“It’s not related to any patient care, but—”
“I told you. I can’t have any personal conversations with you,” he reminded me.
I knew that, of course; he had just said that. I was pretty disappointed in myself for already failing on my promise not to make more of a fool out of myself, but I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t going to be able to stop obsessing over him after he walked out the door.
“Well, when can you?” I asked.
“When can I what?” he responded bluntly.
“When can you have a personal conversation with me? Because I just… I really want to have one with you.”
He tried to hide it but I could see his stoic facial expression turning annoyed.
“Really? Now? After all these years, you suddenly want to talk?”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m sorry, but… I really do.”
God, I truly was so selfish.
“Jesse, I didn’t even know you were coming into town. I haven’t heard a thing from you in years. And now, all of a sudden, you show up in my ER, and you want to have a discussion with me?”
“I know… I know all that, and I don’t have a lot of excuses for myself but—”
He cut me off. ‘Would you even want to talk to me if you hadn’t showed up in the ER today? If you weren’t forced to see me face to face, would you ever have got back in contact with me?”
I didn’t know how to answer that.
“I… I wanted to talk to you, yes, I was just… ashamed of myself. I’ve been ashamed of myself, Aaron.”
“That doesn’t answer all of my questions,” he said coldly. “If you weren’t here looking at me now, would you or would you not have reached out to me?”
I wouldn’t have. I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud, but I knew I wouldn’t have. That was my plan all along. To not have to talk to him, to not have to face any of this. It was just that things hadn’t ended up going like I’d planned.
And he knew it. I may not have been able to read his face anymore, but he still saw right through me.
“That’s what I thought,” he said, taking in my silence as an affirmation. “So, you don’t really want to talk to me. If you weren’t forced to see me, it never would have happened. But, now that you have seen me, you’re overwhelmed with all your feelings of guilt. That’s all this is. You feel bad, and you want to assuage yourself. Well, I’m not going to help you with that, Jesse. So you can just go back to living with your guilt however you did before today.”
Ouch… I should have expected that, but, god, it stung.
“But that’s not true!” I said suddenly. “I mean, yes, I wouldn’t have sought you out before, but it’s not because of guilt that I want to talk to you now.”
“Then what is it?” he snapped. “Because it can’t just be that you care about me. You made it abundantly clear that you do not.”
I deserved all of this. All his anger was more than justified. And I realized, in that moment, that there was nothing I could say or do to change his mind right now.
I mean, I did care about him, of course I did. But I wasn’t going to be able to explain that now. He was right, my actions had shown that I didn’t.
And I couldn’t keep being selfish this way. He was at work. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want to talk about anything personal, and I was just forcing him to do it anyway. I couldn’t keep pushing him like this.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
“Right,” he said coolly. “I’ve got to go.”
And though it killed me, this time when he walked out of the room, I didn’t try to stop him.
But just as I expected, I obsessed over him every second that he was gone. Getting my forehead stitched up and getting taken to my scans helped, though. Never thought I’d be happy to be getting stitches, but I’d do anything to have my mind taken off Aaron.
When I came back from my MRI, my parents were waiting for me in my room. You’d think that they’d have been a welcome distraction, too, but no, somehow they only made me think about Aaron more.
God, I really resented them for the way they’d treated him.
My dad was reading a magazine when my bed got rolled in, and he barely looked up as I said hello. My mom, on the other hand, stood up and started gushing over me.
“Oh, sweetheart, are you okay?!” she asked.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “It was just a minor accident.”
She nodded, putting her hand on mine. “What a day to have an accident! We were so worried when you didn’t come home on time.”
Ha, right, like both she and my father were worried. I believed she might have been, but my father certainly hadn’t been.
It was kind of gross the way they fell so strictly into their gender roles. My mom was the typical doting housewife. She made it her priority to be the perfect stay-at-home mom. Which meant she was overinvolved, overprotective, and basically had no life of her own.
My father had his own plumbing business, which made decent money. He worked during the week, and every evening he came home to a home-cooked meal courtesy of my mother. Every weekend he watched sports, except on Sunday morning when we had church.
They were typical. But not in a good way. Not in a way that fostered any kind of growth for either of them. Both seemed to stagnate in their roles. And, honestly, to me, they didn’t seem all that happy. I rarely ever saw them hug or kiss. They just went about their scheduled lives, never seeming particularly thrilled to be around each other.
My mother wouldn’t stop acting overly concerned, though I was clearly talking and feeling just fine. I was relieved when the doctor finally came in to tell me that all my test results were normal and that I could go home.
My mom was still really over the top when he told us. “Oh, thank you so much, Doctor! I was so worried!” she said,
as she grabbed both my hands in hers, squeezing them tight.
But, at least after he left the room, she calmed down a little.
I couldn’t help feeling a little unsettled as I waited to be discharged, though. I was glad I was okay, glad I wouldn’t need to be in a crowded ER anymore, but I wasn’t glad to be walking away from Aaron.
I kept hoping he’d walk back into my room before I left, but I knew that wouldn’t happen. Not when he knew my parents were around. As much animosity as he clearly felt for me, he had much more for my parents.
What was going to happen then, though? When I left here, was I just never going to see him again? It wasn’t as if I had his phone number or knew his address. I was sure he didn’t live with his aunt anymore. I was not going to have any way to get a hold of him besides stalking him outside the hospital, which, based on his reaction to me today, I was positive he wouldn’t appreciate.
I know this was my original plan, that I had hoped to not have to interact with him ever again. But now that I’d seen him, my feelings had drastically changed. I couldn’t imagine never seeing him again.
Man, I’d really fucked up.
6
Aaron
I wasn’t proud of myself for the way I’d reacted to Jesse. He was a patient, he was hurt, and I shouldn’t have spoken to him that way. At least, not while I was at work.
Outside of work, I probably wouldn’t have cared too much if my reaction had been hurtful. It was no more hurtful than what he’d done to me. But, I took my job seriously, and I wanted to always be professional. I’d slipped up with that today.
I was only human, though. And he’d really hurt me. And not just in the past! His comments today had really hurt me, too.
When I’d asked him if he would have reached out to me if he hadn’t ended up in the ER, I’d been really hoping he’d say yes. I’d been hoping I still mattered to him, that he still thought of me, that he had plans to see me even if he hadn’t called yet…
But he had no plans. He had never planned to get in contact with me. He just felt bad about being a shitty person. I was a living reminder of his terrible actions, and he wanted to fix it. Well, it couldn’t be fixed. He couldn’t just take away how awful he was to me. And I wouldn’t forgive it just so he could feel better and then walk out of my life forever.
