Heart the Lover (36)

‘I know,’ I say.

He knows the risks. He has seen it all online. It doesn’t matter to him. He is certain he will be fine.



‘When they call, I want the first opening. The very first.’

Across the room my phone dings in my bag. We all look at each other.

Harry reaches in, reads the text.

‘Who’s Sam Gallagher?’



Friday

It’s Silas who insists I go. I hate leaving them, even for a night.

‘We’ll be fine,’ he says, pulling up to the departure doors. Jack has gone to school today, the first time in nine days.

‘I know.’ But I’m thinking about the surgery. The doctor said they might only give us a day to get to Houston for pre-op.

‘Even if we got the call right now, we could get there by Sunday.’

We don’t talk about the costs anymore, the unpaid time he’s taken off teaching, or the fact that I haven’t published anything in five years.

I nod and pull my small suitcase from the back.

‘It’s just one night,’ he says, hugging me outside the revolving doors. ‘I’m so sorry,’ He means about Yash, but I can only feel the sadness of leaving them.

‘I don’t want to go,’ I say, his arms still around me, my lips against the stubble of his neck. ‘I hate hospitals so much.’

On the plane I hold the rock Jack gave me. He has done this since he was very young, given me a little rock to travel with. He collects them. I’ve gotten this one before. It has a little dimple in it. Jack calls it heart-shaped but that seems like a stretch. It fits nicely in my hand. We lift off, level out. I watch the clouds out the window. I think of my mother when I’m on a plane. I think of her many places, even though she’s been gone sixteen years now. She never knew my boys, but she has helped me raise them. I know how much she loves them. I feel that. I talk to her. I pray to her. I shut my eyes now and beg her to keep them all healthy and safe while I’m away.

I can do this, I think, lifting my cranberry seltzer off the tray table.

It will be fine, I think, my suitcase gliding beside me from the gate to the exit. I bought this roller for my last book tour and I’ve barely used it since. It’s one of the nicest things I own, with its four pert wheels and heavy zippers that don’t break. It’s navy blue and so responsive and agile it can do pirouettes at the slightest touch. It could run off and join the ballet.

It will be fine, I think, on the highway heading toward the hospital. I can do this. I check my phone. Nothing from home.

In the lobby, I falter. I sink into an armchair facing the elevator bank. My suitcase comes to a reluctant stop by my knee. I can’t do this. The elevator cars roar up and wheeze down.



I let a few more minutes go by. When I get up and push the top button, a door slides open immediately. No one inside. My suitcase leaps over the threshold ahead of me. I have to follow it. I press 5.

Sometimes time has a resistance, like a wind. It takes a while for the floor to push against my feet and lift me up.

I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to do this. I need to be home. I check my phone again. No messages. No call from the surgeon.

The elevator shudders to a stop. The door opens. Ahead is a long hallway that wraps around a nurses’ station. The smell hits me. God, I hate that smell.

I look at the text from Sam again, check the room number. 508. I try to bypass the nurses’ station, but one of them looks up from her monitor.

‘Yash Thakkar?’

How does she know?

I nod.

She points to the corner room diagonally across from where we are. And there is Sam, his back to me, leaning against a wall beside the door and talking to several older women. It’s confusing. He has not aged, at least not from the back. A full head of that copper hair, no thinning at the crown, not even a speckle of gray. The same straight spine, narrow waist, bowed legs. One of the women lifts her face to me as I come closer. Sam turns around and becomes a boy. A teenager, Harry’s age. Out of room 508 comes another Sam, smaller, younger. He stands there a moment, then his head falls against his brother’s shoulder. They move past me, faces crumpled, down the hallway.

‘Oh,’ the woman gasps, ‘Jordan.’ She grips my arm. ‘You look just the same.’

I have not been called Jordan by anyone but Yash in twenty-eight years.

‘It’s Rosemary,’ she says, ‘Rosemary Gallagher.’ Sam’s mother.

‘Rosemary,’ I say, unexpectedly moved that she would be here.

She squeezes my hands hard with sharp bones and gold rings. ‘You came.’

‘Jordan,’ the woman to her left says. I recognize her kind smile. Paige, Yash’s stepmother. Her hair is short now, her clothes soft and loose as she hugs me. Yash’s father died a few years ago, and Yash and Paige are closer now. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘this will mean the world to him.’

I don’t know why they are making such a fuss.

‘Go in,’ Rosemary says. ‘Go see him.’

I move to the door but someone is coming out. It’s Yash’s mom. ‘Oh, honey. You’re here.’ She is so small. I have to bend down to hug her. Her face, her bones are tiny. She is so frail in my arms. ‘He’s been waiting for you.’

She pushes open the door. I’m not ready. I’m not ready for any of this.