It was several hours before I got to see Brandon. The limit was strict on visitors in the ICU, and Sloan and Brandon’s immediate family took first run.
It was night already. I had somehow managed to live through the worst day of my life. I checked my watch: 11:18 p.m. I sat in the waiting room with Kristen and Sloan and a fluctuating, thinning crowd of Brandon’s relatives.
Kristen held my hand.
She hadn’t stopped touching me since I got here. I was grateful. I needed her. Just being there with her soothed me. I’d been spinning at work, the images of Brandon running on a continuous loop through my head. The smell of blood, the crack of his ribs under my palms, every injury, replaying itself again and again, and me, questioning whether I’d done the right thing with each one. If I’d done enough to save his life.
But Kristen’s fingers laced through mine quieted it all. I couldn’t picture going through this without her. I didn’t know how I’d be coping if it wasn’t for her.
Sloan was a fucking mess. Kristen seemed to orbit around her in a constant stream of awareness, even when Kristen put her head on my shoulder and drifted off. Sloan got up to use the bathroom, and Kristen opened her eyes like she could detect the sound of Sloan moving, even in her sleep.
Kristen watched her friend walk from the room. When Sloan was gone, Kristen looked up at me with those brown eyes, one hand tangled in mine and the other on my chest, and I was whole just looking at her.
This crisis laid everything bare. I’d found my person.
She was the foundation. She was the thing that all other things are built on. Everything was secondary to being with her. It didn’t matter where I worked or if I liked my job, where I lived or how many kids I had. My happiness, my sanity, my well-being—it all started with her. And now that I knew that, I didn’t want to just be her boyfriend—I wanted everything. I wanted her to be my wife. I wanted to wake up to her every day for the rest of my life.
We needed to talk. Not now. It wasn’t the right place or time. But we needed to talk.
“You can go in now.” A nurse broke into my thoughts.
Kristen sat up and gave my arm a squeeze. “Want me to go in with you?” “No. Sloan will want to see him again. I’ll be fine.” I stood.
Brandon’s parents had gone home to deal with their dogs and to take showers. Only Brandon’s sister, Claudia, remained in the waiting room. She’d already gone in twice over the last two hours and was sleeping on a bench.
The nurse buzzed me into the ICU.
I peered into dim open hospital rooms as we made our way down the hall, the smell of antiseptic swirling around me as I walked.
We stopped at room 214.
His room was small. I could see why they limited it to two visitors at a time.
Like the other rooms, his was dimmed for the late hour. Brandon lay on his back. Hands at his sides, a pulse oximeter on the index finger of his right hand. His head was bound with thick white gauze, his left leg elevated in a sling and bandaged. He wore a ventilator over his face. Wires snaked from his chest under his hospital gown.
The gentle, quiet beep of a heart monitor and the in and out of the ventilator were the only sounds in the room. His cheek was purple and swollen, the bruising I’d witnessed on the scene blooming.
I just stood there, like I was looking at a mess too big to clean up and I
didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know what to do. I felt frozen. This was a soldier in Iraq. A hunter. A strong and capable man.
And now he was broken.
Sloan slipped into the room behind me and slid into one of the bedside chairs, gathering up his hand. My legs unlocked and I took her lead, sitting in the chair next to her.
She looked at him, her chin quivering. Her hair was up in a loose bun, crooked and sloppy. Her face, blotchy and red. “They say he can hear us. We should talk to him, Josh.”
I cleared my throat and leaned forward. “Hey, buddy. You look like shit, man.”
Sloan did a laugh-cry. Then she put her other hand over his. “Your whole family was here today, babe. You won’t ever be here alone, okay? Someone will always be in the waiting room for you. I’m not going to leave you. I can’t be in here all the time, but I’ll be just outside.”
I wondered why someone wasn’t allowed to stay with him. When the fifteen minutes was up and the nurse came to get us, Sloan went back to the waiting room and I made my way to the nurses’ station. I summoned my most convincing smile, the one that seemed to work on Kristen, and I walked up to the counter.
The middle-aged nurse manning the station looked up, eyed my firefighter badge, and gave me a warm grin. “Well, hello. What can I do for you, young man?”
I was grateful for my profession at the moment. Nobody was ever unhappy to see a fireman.
I put a thumb over my shoulder. “Yeah, I was just visiting my buddy, Brandon, in room 214.” I looked over at the room and came back with a smile that I hoped reached my eyes. “I couldn’t help but notice a lot of the other rooms had visitors that looked like they’d kind of set up camp. Is there any way his fiancée can just stay with him? He’d really like that.”
My sister Amber was a nurse, and I knew that on the hospital floor, the nurses ruled absolutely. They could bend any policy they wanted to.
She smiled at me. “Well, it’s against the visitor guidelines. But I think we can do that. I’ll buzz her back in.”
I made a case for Claudia too and got the nod.
When I came back out into the waiting room and gave Sloan and Claudia
the news, they both hugged me before slipping back into the ICU. I turned to Kristen. “We should go home. Get some sleep.”
We were the last two left in the waiting room, and weariness started to take me down. I was emotionally and physically exhausted.
I put my hands on her arms. “There’s nothing else you can do for Sloan at the moment, and sleeping in a chair isn’t going to help matters. He’s stable. Let’s go home.”
She folded herself into my chest, and I tucked her head under my chin and closed my eyes, wrapping her in my arms. I’d never seen her this vulnerable. Her guard was totally down, and it made me feel protective over her.
“Come on.” I kissed her forehead, and she closed her eyes and leaned into it. “I’ll drive.”
On the way home she pulled her legs up to her chest and leaned against the door of the car. I held her hand.
We stopped at Del Taco, grabbed food, and ate while we drove. Both of us just wanted to get in bed. I don’t think either of us had slept the night before because of our fight, and we were both spent.
When we got to her house, we brushed our teeth together and went right to sleep without talking. She curled up against me, and I held her to me all night.
In the morning, when the sun cracked through her window and I woke up next to her for the first time in weeks, my heart felt full, despite the events of yesterday. I nuzzled into her hair, breathing in the warm fruity scent that was her.
My hands wandered over her body and I pulled her close, kissing the back of her neck, waking her up slowly. I wanted to get lost in her, just for a little while, before the reality of what we had to go back to came into focus.
She stirred. “Josh, no.”
“No what?” I breathed, moving against her, my hand sliding between her legs.
She wiggled out of my arms and sat up, her hair falling seductively over her eye. “No. We’re not doing that anymore.”
I slumped. I’d hoped we had moved past this. “Kristen, I don’t care about the hysterectomy. I mean, I care. It’s fucked up and I’m sorry it’s happening to you, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you. We can talk
about—”
“No. And don’t say you don’t care, because that’s bullshit. I didn’t tell you about that so you could say it’s fine, or figure out some sort of work- around.” She flung the blanket off her and got up. “We’re not seeing each other anymore. I let you stay with me last night so you wouldn’t be alone. That’s it.”
She turned for the bathroom, and I got out of bed and followed her.
She stood in front of the sink putting toothpaste on her toothbrush, and I came up behind her and slid my hands over her shoulders. She shrugged me off.
I looked at her through the mirror. “Kristen, we’re in love with each other. I want to be with you. Let’s sit down and have a convers—”
She whirled on me. “No.” Her face was hard. “I listened to you talk about having kids for months. We’ve already had the conversation. Plenty of times. And there is absolutely nothing you can say to me now to convince me that’s suddenly not some major priority for you. I can’t give you a family. I’m no different from Celeste.”
“Celeste didn’t want kids. It’s not the same thing,” I said.
She scoffed, waving around her toothbrush. “Isn’t it? The outcome is the same. In vitro is only forty percent successful—did you know that? Do you even know what it costs? Or how hard it is to find a surrogate? We could try for years, go broke, and never even have one baby. Not even one.”
“Then we can adopt, foster—”
She rolled her eyes and gave me her back as she ran her toothbrush under the faucet and put it in her mouth.
“Kristen, you’re being ridiculous.”
I put my hands back on her shoulders and she shrank away from me.
She spit in the sink and turned back to me. “Josh, it’s not gonna happen, okay?”
My jaw flexed. “Why not? You have no right to make this decision for me. I want to be with you. If I say it doesn’t change anything for me, then it doesn’t.”
She laughed. “It changes everything.” She blinked at me. “Josh, I meant what I said. I do love you. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. And I love you too much to let you settle.” Her eyes softened slightly. “I know you think this is what you want right now. But in a few years, when
you have a pregnant wife and kids running around, you’ll see that I was right. I can’t give you your baseball team. And I won’t take it from you.”
I reached for her and she pushed my hand away. “No.”
“You are not Celeste. You’re not even in the same league. And I’m sorry if things I said before I knew about this made you feel badly. I didn’t know
—”
“I know you didn’t know. That’s how I know you were being honest.” “I love you,” I said, looking her in the eye.
She shook her head. “And what does love have to do with it? Love is completely impractical, Josh. It’s stupid. And you should never use it to make decisions.” Her eyes were determined and level. She pulled her hair from its ponytail and grabbed a towel. “We need to take showers and go back to the hospital. And I don’t want to talk about this. Ever again.”
