Page 27

I know, I’m being incredibly rude, but damn it, I’m in pain. Or maybe shock. I’m not entirely sure. When I glance over at Kel again, she’s still chewing on the pen. What do I do?
I rip the pen from her mouth and throw it across the waiting room.
Her narrowed eyes cut to mine. “Was that necessary?”
I roll my head against the wall to look over at her and scrunch my nose up like something smells. Something does smell. The dude next to me. “Yep.”
By the time I do get back to see a doctor, it’s four in the morning and I have to be to work by seven. I’m not in a good mood, my dick is still hard, and I’m beyond being civil.
“This is going to sting a little,” the nurse tells me when she sticks a needle in the wound to clean it.
“I don’t doubt it,” I snap back at her. “Can you hurry it up though and stop treating my hand like you’re looking for fucking gold? You know I can feel all that, right?”
“Noah!” Kelly gasps at me. “Stop being mean to her.”
I roll my eyes and slump back against the gurney they have me lying on, flopping my one good arm over my face. I had been holding a pillow over my dick to avoid that conversation, but when she notices, the nurse laughs. “Have you taken any drugs tonight?”
Fully prepared to defend myself, I sit up, rather quickly. In the process, I knock my head on that spotlight thing they’re using and the tray with needles and gauze pads. I’m about to say something mean, again, when Kelly slaps my shoulder and speaks for me. “He took a Viagra. Like a dumbass.”
I snort and roll my eyes. “You weren’t complaining when I fucked you up against the counter, now, were you?” Yeah, I said that. Out loud. To my wife.
Kelly grimaces, and then her lips turn upward into a vicious smile. It’s not one of amusement. It’s one of, dude, I’ll cut that rock-hard dick off if you say one more word.
The nurse’s cheeks turn pink. It’s then I take a look at her and realize she’s just a kid and probably a virgin and here I am with a raging fucking cock inches from her face. “Just stitch my hand up so I can leave,” I mumble, the need to yell at everyone deflating. If only something else would deflate. They certainly weren’t lying when they said four-hour erection, were they?
The nurse cleaning my hand refuses to make eye contact with me or Kelly, but adds, “I could give you something to help, you know, with your problem.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I grit, flopping back on the gurney as any upset man would. I’m not even trying to hide my erection any longer.
I’m stitched up, put in a splint and about four different nurses and doctors come in to check out the progress of the wound. Bullshit. They’re all checking out my erection. I should feel proud. I’m not. When I get embarrassed, I get angry.
The on-call orthopedic surgeon tells me I broke two bones in my hand. I might need surgery, but I ignore everything they’re saying. I do this because that’s when I notice a doctor in the hallway standing near the nurse’s station.
My heart drops to my knees, quite literally. I swear if I wasn’t leaning against the wall, I would have fallen over at the sight of him. How? Why? Those are all questions I have because it’s him. Another reminder of a day, hell, a fucking year I want to forget. Nearly fourteen hundred miles away from Austin, and Mara’s pediatrician is here. In the same hospital as us.
I do my best to avoid anything about our daughter. I don’t want to be reminded of it. It hurts too much and to have him here, on a night when we’re already struggling, it’s the fucking cake topper. Just the sight of him makes me want to send my fist through his face. I know in my heart he didn’t do anything wrong, but the fact he couldn’t save her, and I couldn’t, just adds to my already bad mood.
Kelly notices him next. My eyes slowly slide to hers, and we exchange a look. My body jolts when her hand finds my good one. In this moment, she touches me, and I’m not sure I want her to. It’s one of those moments where you don’t want anything, especially not the touch of someone you love, because that’ll only break the dam you built around yourself and the flood gates will open.
I squeeze her hand, and we walk out of the room together and toward him. It’s the only way out. It’s then he notices, does a double take, then the compassion comes. He gives us the look. The one that screams I don’t know what to say to them. The one of sympathy and regret and all that messy shit that happens when a child dies. The kind of bullshit no one talks about because it’s hard. You don’t know what to say, let alone how to feel about it because it’s so unnatural. Kids aren’t supposed to die and when they do, it destroys everything.
Doctor Levi looks at my hand, thankfully disregards the problem in my pants I’d rather not discuss, and smiles at my wife. He draws her in for a hug. She lets go of my hand, and my world shakes. Everything is blurry, a reminder of that night, his words, his “There’s nothing more we can do.”
My jaw clenches at the onset of emotions and my entire frame begins to shake. I don’t offer him words, or even acknowledge anything he says to Kelly. All I can do is focus on not exploding with anger and sadness.
Kelly looks over at me when something is said to me, but I don’t comprehend any of it. My eyes burn, my head throbs, and I think at any moment, I’m going to throw up.
In the movies, this is where the sad music begins. This is also the moment in the movies when the two heroines realize their problems all stem from one incident. One moment in time when their lives were irrevocably changed forever.
Kelly and me, our problems lie deeper than either one of us wants to believe. It’s the shit you can’t even comprehend let alone tell anyone about, and it all leads back to one day. The death of our daughter.
That night it happened, I don’t want to think about it let alone take you back to it, but in order for you to understand this pain, how we got here and this void between us, you’re gonna have to go back there with me. It ain’t pretty, and it’s certainly not the outcome we saw coming.
I don’t want to tell you about the part where they took her off the machines breathing for her and finally disconnected everything. I don’t want to tell you about them letting us hold her. I don’t want to tell you that she took her last breath in my arms. I don’t want to tell you that for another hour, Kelly and I held our daughter’s lifeless body in the same hospital she was born in, on the same day we brought her into the world. I don’t want to tell you anything about our sweet little girl who smiled up until the day she died on her seventh birthday. I don’t want to tell you any of that because those are the moments that make me angry to even think about because it’s unfair, so I don’t. It’s moments like this, when reality crashes in on us that I’m forced to.
It rises and rises until I’m sure I’ll choke and suffocate if I don’t leave. I swallow. I blink. I clear my throat. I do anything to snap myself from the wicked memories of that night.
Kelly grabs my hand again and leads me out of the hospital. It’s there the two of us sit in complete silence, until Kelly bursts into tears and brings her palms to her face. I stare at her, my mouth tight, throat bobbing over emotions.