Perfect Distraction

by Allison Ashley

  “I…told you. Was busy…trying not to…stare at your mouth…and chest. A man…can only take…so much.”

  “Well, now look where we are.” She closed her eyes. “This is my fault. I never should have gotten involved. If I hadn’t done your education that da—”

  “Kiss me,” he demanded. “Stop…talking crazy…and kiss me.”

  Wiping a tear from her cheek, Lauren tilted her face up and brushed his lips with hers, and it felt so right. It was as if the world had been spinning off its axis and had been put back in position. His body tightened, and he silently willed it to stay calm.

  “You can’t…tell me this…is wrong,” he breathed. “If being…together…is wrong…I don’t want…to be right.”

  She didn’t respond and instead lay her forehead against his chest. His heart sped up, fear and anxiety churning in his gut.

  Something was off. He could feel it.

  “Tell me…you love me,” he said, unable to find even an ounce of pride. He needed to hear her say it, tell him that she was his.

  She lifted her head, tears continuing to slowly stream down her face. His shirt was damp where she’d rested her head. “I love you.” One of her hands touched his face, her fingers brushing what would have been his hairline. “But…”

  “No.” He shook his head, his own eyes burning. “No buts…not right now. Please.”

  She stayed right where she was, stretched out alongside him on the bed, looking at him with sad eyes. She did as he asked and didn’t say anything more. It was almost worse that she didn’t argue and tell him the “but” was something silly like, but you look ridiculous in this hospital gown. The fact that she stopped told him it wasn’t something he wanted to hear.

  “Just…stay with me.”

  She probably thought he meant stay with him now, in this room, on this bed. And he’d take that.

  But what he really meant was that he wanted her to stay with him for all time. Forever.

  No matter how long his forever was.

  Suddenly, it hit him.

  Was that fair to her? To ask her to stay with him when his life was so precarious? If the cancer didn’t kill him, it became painfully obvious today the chemo could. Or some other complication from his treatment. Was he hurting her, by asking her to walk this road with him?

  Most days he’d envisioned them continuing a life together outside of this…outside of his illness and all that came with it. He pictured them beyond this, when it was over and they could live a normal life together.

  But that wasn’t a guarantee, was it? Plan A hadn’t worked to cure him. What if Plan B didn’t work, either? What if the rest of his life—with the length of that life in question—was consumed by doctor visits, medication, and weakness? He couldn’t give her everything she wanted, everything she deserved, from a sickbed. Hell, he couldn’t even make love to her properly.

  Her arms tightened around his torso, and the lump in his throat nearly choked him. He willed his eyes to stay dry, his emotions to stay composed. He just felt so much…everything…for her. He felt for her. In every sense of the word. And he couldn’t imagine doing this without her.

  But for her sake, maybe he needed to try.

  Turned out, it was the bleomycin. His chest X-ray had shown what they called “infiltrates,” but his white count was normal and, without a fever, they were pretty confident it wasn’t pneumonia.

  They administered several doses of steroids, and his breathing eventually improved. He wouldn’t receive the bleomycin again, and his remaining chemo treatments would have three drugs instead of four.

  Lauren and Jeni stayed with him overnight and try as he might to get Lauren to sleep in the bed with him, she refused.

  “I shouldn’t stay at all,” she’d said. “If any of the nurses I know see me, they’ll wonder why I’m here.”

  “If you think you should go, I understand,” he’d said.

  Her expression had been torn but her voice was sure. “I’m not leaving.”

  Both women attempted to find comfortable positions using the couch and armchair in the room, and as he watched from the bed, Andrew had never felt more like a douche in his life.

  He also felt incredibly lucky.

  Lauren left shortly before he was discharged Saturday afternoon. Andrew didn’t speak to her again that day, and by Sunday he’d come to a few realizations.

  One, he loved her more than he knew it was possible to love someone.

  Two, he wanted to be with her forever. Marry her. Have children with her.

  Three, he didn’t know if number two would ever happen for him.

  Four, until he knew he could offer her a full life, he didn’t deserve to have her now.

  Three times now, she’d cried because of him. Because of his illness and the difficulties of her job circumstances. He’d been selfish to push her into this relationship, when she’d made it clear it wasn’t something she was comfortable doing in her position. He’d cared only about how much he wanted her. He knew there were times he made her happy, and that she wanted to be with him, too. But being with him wasn’t the only thing that brought her happiness.

  There was her job, and her friends. Her favorite ice cream sundae from Betty Rae’s. The barista at The Grind House who knew her name and her regular drink. The bookstore on Second Street that she liked to browse for hours, sometimes accidentally buying the same book twice because it looked so good but she never had time to read. So many things about her life in Kansas City made her happy, and she’d told him her job at Coleman was what could keep her here. Let her continue this life and put down roots here.

  She’d told him that starting a relationship with him could risk that and, like an asshole, he’d done it anyway.

  All those things together brought him to her doorstep that Sunday afternoon. It was sunny but still cold, typical for March. Teasing everyone with impending spring but still sending down a freezing wind from the north. During the drive to her house he thought about the fact that he’d been diagnosed in October. He’d spent the last six months of his life facing something horrible and gaining the most beautiful thing he’d ever known.

  Taking as deep a breath as he could while recovering from the injury to his lungs, he knocked on the door. He waited a full minute before knocking again, but still she didn’t answer. He glanced around her porch and sat on the single step down to the sidewalk. He bent his knees and propped his elbow on one, laying his forehead in his palm.

  There was only one thing to do.

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and called her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lauren dropped her eyes from the road to see who was calling.

  Andrew. His name on the screen simultaneously caused her heart to soar and her stomach to drop.

  “Hello?” Her voice sounded tentative even to her own ears.

  “Hey,” came his deep voice. “Where are you?”

  “Driving.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere. I like to take a drive when I need to think. I’m somewhere north of town. I don’t even know.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Us.”

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. “I’m at your house.”

  “You are?” She looked at the passing street sign. “I’m sorry. I think I’m like thirty minutes away.”

  “It’s okay. It might be easier to talk about this over the phone anyway.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Us.” His voice cracked.

  She didn’t say anything for several seconds, and neither did he. Neither of them wanted to be the one to say it. To be the one to break both their hearts.

  “You don’t want to be together anymore?” she finally asked.

  She imagined him alone at her house. Was h
e pacing on the porch? Sitting in his car? She considered telling him to wait there until she could meet him, thinking it might be easier to talk in person. She quickly erased the thought.

  Nothing would make this easy.

  “That couldn’t be further from the truth, but all I’ve thought about up to this point is what I want. That’s the problem. When I think about what’s best for you, and what you want out of life, I can’t possibly allow this to continue. It’s not fair to you. I’ve asked you to risk your career and your happiness to be with me, and I can’t do that anymore. I won’t.”

  “Andrew.” Tears burned behind her eyelids. “I may have risked my job to be with you, but never my happiness. I’ve never felt so much joy, or”—she paused, searching for the right word—“fulfillment as I have since I met you. Never in my life have I felt cherished and valued. Until you. So don’t say I risked that to be with you. Do you hear me?”

  “Yeah.” His voice sounded far away.

  “You got under my skin in the most wonderful way, and I fell in love with you. I know I got upset about the Gavin thing the other day, but then you got sick…and I realized I want you more than my job. But I feel at least partly responsible for what happened. You were having symptoms, and I didn’t see them because I was blurring the lines of your cancer care and our relationship. If I’d put it all together and said something to you, maybe you would have realized something was off. If I’d been paying attention to what was going on with your health instead of being so wrapped up in my feelings for you, I could have prevented it. I’ll never forgive myself for it, and I can’t let it happen again. I care more about you being alive than I do about being with you.”

  “What happened on Friday is not your fault. How can you even think that?”

  “Don’t try to convince me otherwise, it will only piss me off. You didn’t know, so you get a free pass. But I knew. I know, Andrew. I know what bleomycin can do, and what the symptoms are. When I think back on it, I noticed several things that should have set off alarm bells in my head, and I missed them all. Every single fucking one.”

  There was a beat of silence. “Did you just say fuck?”

  A small part of her wanted to smile, but she couldn’t. “Focus, Andrew.”

  “Fine. I’ll never blame you for that, as long as I live.”

  “That will make one of us.”

  “So that’s it? We’re breaking up because you’re blaming yourself because I experienced a well-known side effect from chemo that probably would have happened anyway? That’s bullshit.”

  “I thought we were breaking up because you think you make me unhappy. That’s even shittier bullshit.”

  Another pause. “Who are you and what have you done with Lauren Taylor?”

  “Don’t make a joke.”

  “I’m not joking. You’re freaking me out.”

  “You’re pissing me off.”

  “I can tell.” A rustling noise came through the speaker, like he was shifting position. “What makes you think things would be any different if we weren’t together? You not pointing out my symptoms is the same as if I had no girlfriend at all. If you hadn’t been with me, the end is the same.”

  “Did Emma ask you if you’d had any shortness of breath or difficulty breathing when she examined you on Friday?”

  “Yeah, she did.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said no.”

  Exactly as she suspected. “Did you even think about it?”

  “Of course I did. I thought about the night before when we were all over each other and how she didn’t need to know about that kind of heavy breathing.”

  “My point exactly,” she nearly yelled. “If you’d been sitting at home on your couch with the same difficulty taking in a breath, you’d have said something, right?”

  “Maybe, but that’s ridiculous. Are you saying that anyone who gets this chemo regimen can’t hook up with their significant other because they might mistake a chemo side effect for being turned on?”

  “I’m not talking about other people. I’m talking about us, and what happened, and I missed it. And that could be directly responsible for you getting the drug again, when you were already showing signs of toxicity.” She turned into a small parking lot and put the car in park. She couldn’t pay attention to the road any longer. She was nauseous and cold, and her heart felt like a stone inside her chest. “I just think it’s best if we back off for now. Stay away from each other for the time being, while you finish your treatment.”

  “I still love you,” he said.

  She closed her eyes. “I love you, too.”

  “Then why are we doing this?” It sounded like he was asking himself as much as her.

  “I don’t know why you’re doing it, but I’m doing it because I want you to live.”

  “It feels like this is what will kill me. Not the cancer, not the chemo. Being away from you is what will do it.” He sniffed once. “But I don’t want to do this to you anymore. Drag you along in my misery and pain. It’s selfish and unfair and I won’t.”

  “I hate you when you say things like that.”

  “I hate myself when I think about what I’ve put you through.”

  She sighed, long and heavy, the sound of her breath echoing inside the car. “Any tears I’ve cried over you have been because I care so much. Surely you understand that.”

  He made a noncommittal noise.

  They sat there, he at her house and she in her car, with phones to their ears and saying nothing. Was he wishing she’d change her mind, like she wished he would? Hoping she’d say this was stupid and ridiculous, and could they forget the last ten minutes ever happened?

  Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. She’d never know.

  Tears fell freely from her eyes, and she didn’t want him to hear her fall apart. “I need to go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  “When?” he asked, but she’d already lowered the phone from her ear.

  She hung up, dropped the phone on the passenger seat, and let herself cry.

  The two weeks that followed were the worst of Lauren’s life. Worse than the days after discovering Will’s infidelity and deception. She’d thought she’d loved Will and that she knew what it was to have her heart broken.

  Losing Andrew was a hundred times worse.

  She called her friend Kate a few times, needing someone to talk to, but she wished she had someone to hug and talk to face-to-face. The fact that she didn’t feel she could be that open with Emma or Kiara about it just made her feel more isolated.

  She spoke to her dad once, and he excitedly described a new electronic dispensing machine he’d purchased for the pharmacy that would speed up the process for both the pharmacists and technicians. Between the uncertainty of where her job stood at Coleman and the loneliness she felt, Lauren had an unusual sensation of homesickness for her uncomplicated prior life in Oklahoma. She’d been an outsider in her family, true. But she had good friends and had never suffered acute pain like this. Before, she’d focused on the negative aspects of working with her dad. But now, she was considering the positives, and there were more than she thought.

  Then, on Friday morning, two weeks after the run-in between Andrew and Gavin and when Andrew was admitted to the hospital, Lauren had an email waiting in her inbox. Dr. Hawthorne wanted to meet with her, but he didn’t specify why.

  So here she was, about to step off the elevator and head to Dr. Hawthorne’s office, terrified of what she was about to hear.

  His door was open, and she stopped short of entering, knocking lightly on the frame.

  Dr. Hawthorne’s gray head tilted up from where it had been bent over paperwork on his desk. He stood and motioned her inside.

  “Lauren, come in. Is it two o’clock already?” He pulled out a chair on the opposite side of his desk for her and closed the do
or before he returned to his seat. “How’s your day going?”

  “Well, and yours?”

  “Busy, but I like it that way.” He smiled at her. “Well, let’s get straight to it. You’ve been a wonderful asset to this institution, and instrumental in improving patient care and safety. We’d like to offer you a full-time position here at Coleman, as the Clinical Pharmacy Specialist in the leukemia and lymphoma clinic.”

  His words were so unexpected, and the release of tension in her muscles so sudden, she nearly slid to the floor. A wide smile spread across her face. “Really?” Part of her had thought Gavin had reported her, and this meeting would be a serious discussion about her involvement with patients for the rest of her residency contract. Minus a permanent job offer. “That’s such great news. I’d be thrilled to be a part of this group. I’ve learned so much, and I respect the mission of the center and the strides being taken to improve the quality of care for patients with cancer. I’ve never been happier since starting my residency here.”

  Dr. Hawthorne leaned back in his chair. “I take it you accept the position, then?”

  She thought of her dad, prepared for the familiar rush of guilt. But now that the opportunity to continue the job she loved was in front of her, she felt nothing but excitement and certainty.

  “Yes, I happily accept.” She and the Director of Pharmacy had previously discussed the salary and benefits that would be offered if the position was approved, and knowing she would stay in the lymphoma clinic had answered her final question.

  “Wonderful. I’ll have Sandra in HR reach out with the required paperwork to get the process started.”

  “Um, Dr. Hawthorne? There’s one more thing I’d like to talk to you about, if I could.” She swallowed, terrified to bring it up but knowing she wouldn’t feel right if she didn’t. Even though she and Andrew had broken up, it was still possible for Dr. Hawthorne to learn of the short-lived relationship.

  The older man steepled his fingers. “Of course.”

  She willed herself to stay calm and her lunch to stay down. She didn’t remember ever feeling this nervous. “I want to be completely honest and tell you I became romantically involved with a patient. I was only part of his care team for one day, before I moved to another service, and we didn’t start seeing each other until after that. It was near the end of his treatment, when we thought he wouldn’t be receiving chemotherapy anymore. Unfortunately he had some residual disease on his scan, and he’s still receiving chemotherapy. The relationship has…ended.” She took in a shaky breath. “Before we move forward with the job offer, I wanted to make sure you were aware, and that I recognize it was unprofessional of me.”