Page 93 of Close Match

In yearning.

Not only for the woman next to me but for the fact she really doesn’t mind if I have a drink and love her anyway.

Because I don’t know how I can live anymore without one or the other.

Fifty-Four

Evangeline

“What does this mean? In English, please?” I’m sitting with a patient advocate in Inova Fairfax discussing the process about donating my bone marrow. I thought it would be relatively straightforward—especially since Ev refuses to let me pay for a dime. Instead, I’ve been in hour after hour of meeting with doctors, physician assistants, and now the patient advocate. Yes, I understand I will be undergoing a surgical procedure. Yes, I know there are risks involved. I realize I will experience soreness, bruising, pain afterward. I have a ridiculous lack of care about the amount of time it will take for me to return to my “normal” life when what I care about is giving my father more time to live in this one.

I want to give Ev this hope of a longer life with the wife he adores and the man he has called his son who I have fallen in love with. I want to get to know my father even more than I already have, build memories that I’ll be able to pass along to my children one day the same way I’ll be able to tell them about the ones I have about my mother. I want to have my father sitting front and center at one of my performances.

With Monty right beside him.

Life, it turns out, is more complicated than wants. After all, if it were based on wants, my mother would still be alive, and I’d have learned about my father in a much more conventional way than spitting in a tube mailed in a rainbow-tinted box.

My hand shakes as I reach for the glass of water on the table in front of me. “Go ahead.”

“As I was saying, Ms. Brogan, this document is a commitment between you and the patient…”

“My father,” I interrupt, angrily. The time for hiding is long gone. After this is over, Ev and I need to make some decisions on how to announce this. It was my mother’s secret, not mine.

“Yes, Mr. Parrish. This document is a letter of understanding that once the protocol begins, you understand if you back out…well, there is no going back for your father.” A high-pitched sound of pain comes from somewhere. It takes a few moments to realize it’s from me.

The advocate fiddles with the pen on the table anxiously. “Ms. Brogan, you do understand what that means, correct?”

It means I’m literally signing Ev’s life away. If something happens between the time they start his transplant and when I give him my bone marrow, my father will die. I want to run away, but I have nowhere to go. Not physically. Mentally, I retreat to the only safe place I’ve found in the last few months. And that’s where my heart is.

Monty, I know, is with Ev somewhere in the hospital going through a similar briefing. I received a text from him earlier that said,They just had Ev sign something… Well, let’s just say, this day had better end up with you, me, and a glass of something. Fuck, Linnie.

Now I understand. “Did my father sign something like this?” I ask quietly, still not picking up the pen.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss—”

And I lose my mind. “Yes or no! Was my father asked to sign a paper like this?” I shout.

“No.” I sag in relief. Much too soon, she continues. “All transplant patients—speaking generally, of course—are advised they may not make it through the conditioning period. That”—my arms grip the sides of my chair—“if something happens to their donor, they understand their condition is considered to be terminal if they don’t have a backup donor.”

Picking up the phone instead of the pen, I send a quick message to Monty.I don’t drink, but it seems like a good night for it.

As I’m signing my legal name on the most critical form I’ve ever signed—more important than any binding contract—I get back a single word.

Amen.

* * *

I’m sittingon Monty’s balcony wrapped in the comforter from his bed. Tears are frozen against my cheeks as I crush my phone between my hands. It all starts next week, but the soul crushing continues as soon as I press Send on the call I need to make.

Will she understand?

I’m not choosing one family over another. I have to break a promise to save my father’s life. I guess there’s only one way to find out.

I press the green button and hold the phone up to my ear. One ring. Two. “Bristol Todd…Houde.”

I smirk. “After all these months, still not used to saying it?”

“Simon didn’t care if I changed my name for work, and honest to God, Linnie? I’m beginning to wonder if I should have started the process to change it. It’s a royal pain in the ass. Half of my log-ins are in one name, half in the other. I figure they might have my access figured out just in time for me to go out on maternity leave in a few weeks,” she grumbles.