Page 24 of What You left in Me

But I don’t scream. I sit. Maybe this is her way of coping with this.

Julian sits beside me, arm snug around my shoulders, his palm rubbing slow circles down my arm. He’s murmuring reassurances, “He’s in good hands. Hospitals are prepared for this. He’s going to be okay.” But his voice has the same cadence he uses on donors, like every word has been tested for focus groups. I lean into him anyway, because my chest feels like shattered glass and I need him to keep me from falling apart.

Across the room, Finn sits apart from us, unsurprisingly. Isolating himself is what he does. His large frame is bent forward, forearms braced against his thighs; a tree bent by a storm too mighty for it to bear. His head is drooped low, but I see his teeth grinding like he’s chewing through something bitter. His fists are clenched, knuckles blanched.

I close my eyes and try not to remember. But I do. I remember everything.

###

I was sixteen the first time my mother brought Richard home for dinner.

I had met men before. “Friends” of mom’s who drifted in with pressed shirts and too-wide smiles, boyfriends who lasted a month, some who didn’t even make it to dessert. I had learned early not to get attached, not to ask too many questions, not to imagine anyone sitting at the head of the table for long. Theyalways left, and Mom always straightened her shoulders and acted like it hadn’t mattered.

But Richard… I liked him immediately.

He walked into our kitchen with his tie already loosened, like he had just decided that our house was somewhere he could relax. In his hands, he held a bouquet, not roses or lilies, not anything rehearsed, but daisies, half-wrapped in the grocery store paper sleeve. He held them out to me and said, “I didn’t know what flowers you liked, so I picked the ones that looked like they were trying the hardest.”

I laughed so hard iced tea came out of my nose. It was humiliating. But instead of looking uncomfortable or awkward like the others would have, Richard laughed too belly-deep, wiping his hand over his mouth as if he was in on the joke with me instead of at the center of my embarrassment.

At dinner, he asked me questions no one ever bothered with: what books I was reading, whether I’d made the school play, if I preferred math or English. He listened, really listened, when I talked, nodding like my opinions actually mattered. When Mom tried to redirect the conversation back to her stories about her charity committees, Richard circled it back to me. Every time.

Later that evening, he asked if I wanted to show him around. I did. We walked out together into the sticky summer air, fireflies flashing across the yard. At the sea’s edge near our home, he picked up a flat stone and tried to skip it across the water. The first one sank with a patheticplop.So did the second. The third actually bounced off his shoe and rolled back toward us. He cursed under his breath, not loud but not hidden either, and then he grinned when the fourth finally skipped, just twice, but enough to make him cheer like a kid.

“Don’t tell your mom I swore,” he said, winking.

I didn’t. And I also didn’t tell him that I had already decided he could stay.

After that night, Richard kept showing up. Pancakes on Sunday mornings, even though he burned the first batch every single time. Saturday drives where he let me pick the music and never complained, even when I made him listen to the same song five times in a row. He came to my school play with flowers, daisies again, and cheered louder than anyone in the auditorium.

He wasn’t perfect. He worked too much. He forgot anniversaries and sometimes left his shoes in the hallway where I tripped over them.

Yet, for a girl who had spent years learning not to expect anyone to stay, that steadiness was everything. Quirks and all.

###

Back in the waiting room, my throat burns with the memory. The man who made pancakes on Sundays, who taught me how to change a flat tire, who never once made me feel like a burden, he’s the one behind those double doors now, fighting machines to breathe.

And Mom is rehearsing for reporters. And Julian is speaking like a press release.

And Finn…

He isn’t even here anymore. I didn’t even notice him go out.

The hospital air presses down on me until I can hardly breathe. I shoot up from the chair, Julian’s hand slipping off my shoulder.

“Ariane?” Eleanor’s voice snaps like an elastic band.

“I just need some air,” I manage, already moving toward the exit.

The night outside is cold and biting and it smells faintly of rain. The automatic doors hiss shut behind me, muting the buzz of the hospital. I cross my arms tight, hugging myself, trying to stop the shaking.

It isn’t hard to find him. He isn’t exactly easy to miss.

Finn leans against the wall just beyond the entrance, no cigarette but he holds himself like a man who should have one, hips angled, head tilted back, and arms crossed. James Dean, if he was photographed slouching outside a hospital building. Beneath these lights, the silver at his temples gleams like steel fragments.

“Do you always have to act like you don’t care?” I blurt before I’ve even decided what to say.

His head turns slowly, eyes catching mine. He doesn’t look remotely surprised by my intrusion. “Do you always have to pretend you do?” he asks dryly.