“I just got out of the shower. I didn’t have time,” she said, still clutching my shoulders.
“And thank God for that.”
We ate and talked and had sex in two of the five rooms of my house, including the kitchen. I didn’t even know how we ended up in there but I knew that home was becoming the most fantastic place I had ever been. Lying in bed that night, as we stared up at the ceiling, I said, “Did you know that people who have sex more often live longer?”
Sleepily, she came back with, “More often than what?”
“More often than other people, I guess.”
“How would they know how much is ‘more’ if the people who don’t have sex are dead?”
“You’re a silly girl but you make a good point. It must have been one hell of a study.”
“Do you think it’s a matter of healthier people having more sex or sex making you healthier?”
“Both, maybe. I just read it somewhere,” I said.
“Is this your way of giving me a lecture on heart health?”
“Are you making a heart joke, Avelina? It’s heart to tell.”
She started laughing hysterically. “That was bad. Even you have to admit that was awful.”
“I have a great sense of humor. I’ve just spent way too many years around science geeks.”
“If I saw you on the street, I would never peg you for a doctor or a science geek.”
“Well, I’m both. What would you guess about me?”
“I don’t know—that you’re an actor or a model.”
“Stop.”
“I’m serious. You have model good looks. What would you think about me if you saw me on the street?”
“Goddess. That’s pretty much what I think when I look at you now.” I turned to face her. There was just enough light coming from the hallway so I could see her expression and her gorgeous full lips turned up into a smile.
“You are charming. Not very funny, but definitely charming.” She leaned in and kissed me, and then moments later we were asleep.
CHAPTER 21
Immaterial Purpose
Avelina
We went for dinner one Wednesday night at the same Italian restaurant we had gone to before. I liked the idea that we were forming favorite places in our relationship.
Just as we took our first sips of wine but before we’d had a chance to order, we heard commotion coming from the back of the dining room. A robust man had collapsed on the floor, holding his left arm. Nate jumped out of his seat quickly and ran toward the man, who was still conscious.
“Call an ambulance!” Nate yelled to one of the servers before dropping to his knees. I watched as he checked the man’s vital signs as best he could. He ordered him to lie down and then a moment later the man lost consciousness. Nate never looked back at me; he just remained focused and steadfast, immediately starting CPR. Once the ambulance arrived he barked orders at the EMTs. They loaded the man onto a stretcher and into the ambulance.
Nate ran to me and took my hands in his. “I’m so sorry, but I have to go. That man is very sick.”
“I understand.”
“Can you meet us at the hospital in my truck?”
“Yes, of course.”
He leaned in and gave me a swift, chaste kiss on the lips and then hopped into the back of the ambulance. I stood there and watched the red taillights fade off in the distance. A chill ran through me. When the crowd around the restaurant dispersed, I went back inside to pay our bill. I looked at the check and did a double take. The bottle of wine, which was the only thing we had ordered, was eighty-eight dollars. I had exactly ninety-seven dollars in my wallet and to my name.
I set all the money I had in the tray and left. On my way to the hospital, I began to feel the strangeness of the situation. I felt painfully anxious as I drove his truck to the hospital, knowing I might have to meet his colleagues.
Once there, I quickly learned that they had life-flighted the man to Nate’s hospital in Missoula, which was almost three hours away, and Nate had gone with them. I got back into the truck and headed to Missoula. Halfway there, he finally called.
“Ava, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m driving there now.”
“Oh.”
He was silent for several moments, which made me feel like a complete idiot. “I thought maybe you would need your truck.”
“That’s sweet of you.”
“I can turn around.”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll see you when you get here.” He sounded distracted.
The gas gauge was almost on empty when I pulled into the hospital parking lot in Missoula. I called Nate from my phone but he didn’t answer. I left a voicemail and hung up, thinking I would see him rush out to the parking lot within minutes. I went to the front entrance but the doors were locked. I pressed my forehead to the locked glass doors, hoping someone would see me. I knocked loudly and waited and then knocked again and waited some more, but no one came. I got back into his truck and wrapped my sweater around my bare knees to stay warm. I scrolled through my contacts for Trish’s number just before my phone went dead. It got so cold in his truck that my teeth started chattering. I remembered being that cold once before. It was on a rock in a valley with my dog curled up next to me to keep me warm while I wondered if my husband was dying alone in a tent in the middle of nowhere.
I cursed myself for being so stupid to drive hours from home with no money, but I’d had no other options. Staring at the front entrance, I kept hoping to see one lone soul that I could persuade to open the doors for me so I could get to Nate. After at least an hour, I got out and decided to run to keep myself warm. I ran up one dark street while shivering, my arms braced around me. The hospital glowed from where I stood on the darkened street.
I searched for a pay phone to call Trish or Bea collect, but I found nothing until I was standing in front of St. Francis Xavier Church. It was eerie and dark, and the building’s stone steeple cast a long, intimidating shadow that swallowed the moonlight and left me enshrouded in even more darkness. I tried to open the door to the church, hoping to find some refuge, or maybe a priest who could help me make a phone call, but the door was locked. When I pounded on it, the echoes through the nave of the church frightened me.
Heading back toward the hospital, I found the emergency room entrance on the other side. I wished I had thought of it sooner; of course, it was open. Once inside, I saw children coughing, women moaning, and a man sleeping across two dingy chairs with stains on the vinyl cushions. I remembered not liking hospitals when Jake was recovering from his accident, but now I just felt compassion for everyone around me. I went to the reception window, where I was greeted less than enthusiastically by a young woman, probably around my age, wearing blue scrubs and round Harry Potter–like spectacles. Her hair was pulled back into a pristine ponytail. I looked at my hazy reflection for a moment in the glass. I was shivering and wearing a dress that fell above my knees, and I could just make out mascara smears from the cold wind, which had made my eyes water fiercely.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Dr. Meyers.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m Dr. Meyers’s girlfriend.”
She looked me up and down suspiciously then picked up a phone and said something in a hushed tone. When she hung up the receiver, she leaned in toward the glass between us and said, “Dr. Meyers is in surgery at the moment.” She reached for a piece of paper and wrote the hospital phone number on it and handed it to me through the little hole. “You can call back during regular business hours and leave a message with his secretary if you’d like.” She spoke to me as if I were either a child or a crazy person.
“Okay.” I took the piece of paper and walked out of the sliding glass doors, staring at the paper in my hands in disbelief. Had she called him? I wondered. Did he tell her to say that to me? There was no way, I thought. I shuffled back to Nate’s truck, still freezing. I turned it on and cranked up the heater and then I cried, that
pathetic type of crying like when you pee your pants in kindergarten and you’re filled with a mixture of shame and regret for holding it so long. Then, when everyone starts laughing at your wet jeans, you get angry and want to scream Screw all of you! After the kids stop laughing, you never want to see them again because you’re the only kindergartener who ever peed her pants on the story rug while Ms. Alexander read The Giving Tree for the twelfth time. Everyone else was sitting crisscross applesauce while you were fidgeting about, trying to hold it until the end of the story when the teacher asked what the moral was so you could say, “It’s about being generous to your friends,” even though, later in life, you learn the story is really about a selfish little bastard who sucked the life out of the only thing that gave a shit about him. But you never got the chance for your shining moment because you peed on the story rug, got laughed at, then cried pathetic tears.
Not that that happened to me . . .
I regretted following him out here and believing he cared for me the same way I cared for him. I honked the horn and revved the gas in anger, but no one was listening. I watched a helicopter land on the helipad above the hospital and wished briefly that it would land on top of me. That’s when the really pathetic tears started, the “I feel sorry for myself” tears—and there were plenty in Nate’s truck that night. I cranked up the heater even more, got the cab toasty warm, shut the engine down, and dozed off with snot on my face and sweater.
I woke to the early morning light blasting me through the front window. Squinting, I desperately tried to clean the crusted snot off my face with spit on the back of my wool sleeve, which might’ve been about as low as I’d felt in a long time. Dignity was quickly running away from me and I wasn’t chasing after her. The entrance to the hospital was now open. I walked through the glass doors, thinking hell hath no fury like a . . . well, you know the expression.
On the fourth floor, I found a group of doctors standing in a circle. Nate was in the bunch. I walked at a determined pace right up to him, handed his keys over, and said, “Gas is on empty and I didn’t have any money after paying for that eighty-eight-dollar bottle of wine you ordered. And by the way, I spent the night in the parking lot in your truck freezing my ass off so I’m gonna head home now.”
“Excuse me,” he mumbled to the other doctors before stepping out of the circle. “Ava,” he called to me as I walked away. “That man was on the transplant list. He’s getting a heart today. There’s a whole team here. My colleague, Olivia, flew in late last night to assist on this. It’s a huge deal . . . Ava!” he shouted.
I stopped and turned slowly to face him. My dignity was back and she was standing in the corner, demanding that I straighten my shoulders. So I did. “Okay,” I said. I was feeling defeated but I didn’t want him to see.
“Okay what?”
“You don’t have to explain anything. I just spent the night in a parking lot in your truck and I’m tired and I have no money. Can I borrow a few dollars to catch a bus back to the ranch?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”
“Where did you think I was?”
He pulled his wallet from his back pocket but paused before opening it then shook his head. “Why don’t you stay here for a bit and get some sleep? I’m sure I can find you a bed.”
“Where did you think I was?” I repeated.
Nate looked more exhausted than I felt. “Ava, I’m so sorry. I feel terrible about . . . about everything. I didn’t realize.”
“You said that but I want you to answer my question.”
“I was up all night in surgery. I wasn’t thinking.”
“About me?” It pained me to smile, but I did. Bitterly. “You weren’t thinking about me?”
“Are we fighting?”
“No.” I shook my head determinedly. “We’re not fighting. Don’t sweat it. You’re busy, I get it.” I looked down at the wallet he was still clutching in his hands. He saw where my eyes landed and opened it, pulling out three hundred dollar bills, and handed them over. I pinched one bill and pulled it from the stack. “This is humiliating,” I said. I swallowed and tried desperately to fight back the tears welling in my eyes. He reached up to smooth the hair from my face, but I stopped him and did it myself. “Somehow taking money from you like this, after following you here, after freezing and sleeping in your truck, feels more humiliating than being beaten by my husband.”
He shook his head frantically. “Don’t say that.”
“You never once thought about me after we talked on the phone?”
“We were trying to stabilize that man, Ava. Then a heart became available.”
“In all of that time, all of those hours, you didn’t wonder where I was after I told you I was coming here?”
His eyes were vacant and then he shook his head slowly back and forth. “I didn’t think about you. All I could think about was getting that man his heart.”
“Maybe after you give him that new heart, you can get one for yourself.” I looked past Nate to the group of doctors still waiting for him. The woman with fiery red hair looked annoyed as she stood with her hand on her hip. She glared at me. “They probably think I’m your charity case.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Why am I still here, talking to you?”
“Let me make this up to you. What about Sunday? I’m off Sunday, all day.”
“Don’t worry about making it up to me.” My voice got higher. “You don’t owe me anything.”
It was amazing how one minute I could go from imagining some kind of fantasy life with Nate to feeling totally rejected by him the next. He had given up one job for me already; I couldn’t expect him to give up another.
I left the building quickly and could hear him running behind me. “Please, listen to me. Where will you go now? How will you get to the bus station?”
“I can walk. I know where it is.”
I walked down a treelined street toward a major intersection. When I hit the button to cross the street, I looked back and saw Nate still following me. “I think it’s amazing what you’re doing,” I said to him. “You should be proud of yourself for saving a life.” He was at least fifteen yards away, but now he slowed up, walking toward me very cautiously. I had to practically yell over the traffic noise. “We’re not the same, you and me. Everyone kept saying so, but I guess we weren’t listening.”
“We’re not that different.” He walked with his arms outstretched toward me. “Come here please, Ava.” He was wearing scrubs and a lab coat and I was in a short, wrinkled red dress. My greasy hair was half tied back and blowing around messily. It must’ve looked like a doctor was trying to coax an insane person back to the asylum.
When the little green man appeared, instructing me to cross, I darted into the street quickly. “See you around, Dr. Meyers,” I yelled over my shoulder. I never looked back.
I got on a bus back to Great Falls and called Trish from the bus station to pick me up. When she pulled up, her eyes were downcast. I got in but didn’t look over to her for the rest of the drive. I couldn’t face anyone eye to eye.
Finally, I said, “Thanks for coming to get me.”
“What happened, sweetie?”
“Nothing major.” It was sort of the truth.
“Talk to me.”
I shrugged. “He’s a doctor. It’s a demanding job. It’s not like how it was with—”
“Don’t you dare say his name,” she interrupted.
“It’s not going to work with me and Nate. Let’s not talk about it anymore. I can’t be mad at him for wanting to save a life. I wanted that, too. I’m just not right for him. Not smart enough or savvy. I do stupid things. I deserve to be alone.”
“Stop that right now. You’re not giving it a chance. I think you might be lookin’ for a way out.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Do you think Red will loan me some money to fly to Spain?”
I could see her eyeing me but I woul
dn’t look over. “You missin’ your mama?”
“Yeah.”
“Dale and I will pay for you to go.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I mumbled soberly.
“We would be happy to. But tell me something, Ava . . . do you think you’ll come back, or do you think you’ll run off to Spain to hide since you can’t hide here anymore?”
“I don’t have to hide because no one’s looking. I told you, I miss my mom and I want to see her.”
“Okay, darlin’.”
As we drove back, I stared out the window. This time my simplified observations of my own life weren’t so pleasant. You’re Avelina McCrea. You had your whole life ahead of you—a handsome husband, a job you loved, and plans for the future. Now your husband is dead. He left you behind, and no one else is looking at you. Get over it.
By that time the next day, I was in an airport in New York City. My brother met me there during my layover. He offered me money but I refused. I looked at pictures of his kids, whom I hadn’t seen since they were babies. I hugged Daniel for a long time and promised to stay in better contact with him. While we hugged, he reminded me that I was not responsible for our mother’s happiness, only my own, and then he apologized for not being there for me more after Jake died. We cried in each other’s arms. At first it was uncomfortable to hug him; some level of childhood embarrassment still lingered between us. But after a few moments, I felt a sad familiarity in his embrace. His voice sounded like my father’s, minus the heavy accent. He was tall for a Spaniard, and as he got older, I could see that his mannerisms were almost identical to my father’s.
“You’re starting to look just like Mom when she was young,” he said, echoing my own train of thought.
“Does it scare you how much we’re like them?”
“No. There is a likeness, Ava.” He laughed. “You’re so young still. I know you kind of got the worst of it. When Dad got sick, I was already on my own and you had to deal with Mom. I’m sorry, I really am, and I’m so sorry about Jake, too. I want you to know, you’re way stronger than Mom was after Dad died. You’ve done everything on your own. Still, I can tell you don’t have much faith in yourself. I think that’s what’s holding you back from having faith in others and opening up to them. But you can change that. Even Mom has changed. You’ll see. You have a long life ahead of you to figure out who you want to be.”