The Rom-Commers(92)
Charlie nodded, like Got it.
But he was still lingering there. Like despite it all, he couldn’t bear to leave.
To be honest, I lingered, too.
Would I have liked Charlie to stay? Could I have used that hug? Was I tempted beyond description to just bring him inside and swaddle myself in his arms? Did I wish like hell that I could still feel about him the way I did before I knew how he felt about me?
All yes.
But there was no misunderstanding. I had fully, unabashedly offered myself to him, and he had clearly, plainly said no.
“The only thing you can do for me,” I said then, “is to get out of my sight and stay there.”
* * *
AND SO CHARLIE left.
He left, and I got back to my life.
Almost—almost—as if those surreal weeks in LA had never happened.
Back at home, in our apartment, with my dad to look after, and Sylvie to ignore, and Salvador still living with us (now banished to the couch), and a whole new relationship to begin with Mrs. Otsuka, I was able to keep busy.
LA started to feel more like something I’d dreamed.
My dad spent a full ten days in the hospital, and—yes, I can hear how odd this sounds—it was a surprisingly pleasant time. That hospital was really a remarkable place. We got a surprise upgrade to a VIP room, for example, because my dad’s surgery was the ten-thousandth one they’d performed. And that room was part of some ongoing study about the impact of foliage on surgery outcomes, and so his windowsill was filled edge to edge with jade plants, and aloe vera, and bromeliads and prayer plants. Not to mention a gorgeous leafy shrublike beauty that exactly matched the fabric of Sylvie’s tropical maxi dress called Monstera deliciosa.
They asked us to keep them watered, so I got a little misting bottle and made one of my signature sticker charts.
And I guess this is VIP life, but the nurse’s station brought in astonishing, delicious food for lunch every day and insisted that we share with them. “It’s too much,” they insisted. “It’ll go to waste.” And so we were forced out of politeness to down steaming bowls of gourmet ramen, crunchy catfish po’boys, juicy gourmet burgers, gyros dripping with aioli.
I’m telling you, this hospital ward ate like takeout food royalty.
“Isn’t this expensive?” I kept asking.
“It’s the administrators.” The nurses would shrug. “They pamper us so bad.”
And who was I to argue?
My dad and I had spent a hell of a lot of time in various hospitals over the years. I could describe some of them down to the ceiling tiles. But we’d never seen anything like this before. Plants? In a hospital room? Free-roaming massage therapists in the hallways? Ice cream delivery on a three-wheeled scooter?
Insane.
But we sure as heck weren’t complaining.
Mrs. Otsuka stayed for hours every day, fussing over my dad, and reading to him from his new book on Norse mythology, while Kenji and I made origami animals to put on the shelves among the plants—frogs, foxes, whales, pigs. He had a whole zoo’s worth memorized, and he patiently walked me through the folds—his turning out like something you’d see in an instructional tutorial, and mine a bit more like wadded-up gum wrappers.
Even still, he kept saying, “You’re definitely getting it,” and I let myself feel encouraged—though I didn’t care too much about being terrible at origami. What I cared about was the companionable feeling that sitting together making things gave me. Comforting in the way that having a project with someone is comforting. Safe in the way that gathering with others always makes you feel safe. The way that being together was just, on some fundamental level, always better than being alone.
It was the most family-like vibe I’d felt in years.
Not to mention, there are conversations that happen sometimes when you’re waiting around that would never happen if you were just scurrying from errand to errand like we all do most of the time. There are conversations that can happen only after waiting has slowed things down.
One night, late, after a nurse had checked my dad’s surgical dressing and his vitals and then left the two of us alone, I had the bright idea to show my dad the video of us that Logan had sent to Charlie, way back when all this started. I thought at first that we’d find it funny, and we did—me and my dad doing our handstands, Sylvie’s little chipmunk voice, my mom scolding Logan—but by the time we’d finished laughing, all we were left with was tears.
“I’m sorry,” I said, as we both pawed at our cheeks. “Maybe that was better left unexcavated.”
“No, no,” my dad said, his chin still trembling a bit. “I’m glad I got to see it.”
I put my phone away.
Next, my dad reached up to touch the bandage on his head. “This wasn’t Sylvie’s fault, you know.”
He was looking for emphatic agreement. But … I mean, it kind of was.
When I didn’t answer, he turned to meet my eyes.
“It wasn’t her fault,” he said, leaning forward a bit for my full attention, “any more than the rockfall was yours.”
My eyes stung at that, and I looked down at my lap.
“Things happen, Emma,” my dad said, reaching for my hand. “Nobody can see the future.”
I kept my eyes down. “But—” I said. I felt a tightness rising in my throat, and then, without, of course, needing to specify who she was, I spoke out loud the one little sentence that had been haunting me in whispers for ten years: “But she wanted to go to the beach.”