Briana called out of work on Monday and the day after. Those were the last two shifts we had until the time off for the surgery.
She had called me the night she left. She’d apologized in tears for snapping at me and told me she just needed some space. She’d asked if I could come over on Wednesday to talk. And so I waited for Wednesday. That was all I could do.
This change in her felt deeper than just the shock of seeing her ex with his new wife. There was something else going on, and I couldn’t figure out what it was.
I missed her so much. I didn’t know what to do. I was living somewhere between anxiety and a dull panic attack, constantly. My heart felt like it was grasping around in the dark, searching for hers because it used to be there and now it wasn’t.
I couldn’t sleep without her. I lay in bed at night, my mind racing. I’d poured myself into my journal because my feelings had nowhere else to go.
Nothing was okay. Nothing.
When Wednesday mercifully rolled around, I had to get bloodwork done before going to see her. The transplant was the day after tomorrow. I’d be driving down to the Mayo Clinic at five a.m. on Friday to be checked in for pre-op at seven.
I picked up some pita bread and soup she liked and headed over to her house. Rosa let in Lieutenant Dan and me. She hugged me and looked about
as worried as I felt.
“I’m glad she’s seeing you,” she said, her voice low.
“Rosa, what’s wrong?” I asked quietly. “She’s not talking to me. I don’t know what I did.”
She looked sorry for me. “You didn’t do anything. Just tell her you love her. Okay? Make sure she knows.”
I studied her face like I might be able to glean more information from it. But the older woman just patted me on the shoulder and sent me down the hallway.
When I came up to the room and saw Briana, I wanted to run to her the way my dog did. The urge was so strong I had to put a hand on the door frame to keep from sprinting the distance between us.
She was sitting up in bed, wearing a baggy T-shirt. Her long hair was in a braid. She was pale, and even though she was smiling and petting Lieutenant Dan, she looked sad. I set the food I brought on the dresser and came around the bed, sat down, and gathered her into me. She surrendered like she was just as relieved as I was to have her in my arms.
“I missed you,” I breathed into her hair.
It was a long moment, but she said it back. I had to squeeze my eyes shut to keep myself from crying from the relief.
I climbed into the bed and pulled her down onto my chest and just hugged her. She started weeping softly and I kissed the top of her head and smoothed her hair. “What is it?” I whispered. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
When she finally did, she did it with her cheek pressed to my heart. “I’m pregnant, Jacob.”
I froze. “You’re pregnant?”
I pulled away to look at her. “Briana, that’s…that’s wonderful,” I said, beaming. “That’s…”
But she wasn’t smiling. Her chin quivered. “I don’t know if I can carry it. I couldn’t carry the last one.”
I nodded and took her hands into mine. “Okay. That’s okay. That’s not your fault if that happens. We’ll deal with that if it does. Come home. Come home and I’ll take care of you.”
She let out a shaky breath. “Jacob, I can’t live with you. I meant that. I meant everything I said that day. I shouldn’t have said it the way that I did, but I did mean it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t…I don’t understand.”
She pressed her lips together like she was trying not to cry. “I’m not sure I’m in any place to be in a relationship.”
My stomach bottomed out. “What are you talking about?” She didn’t answer me.
I licked my lips. “Look, I know you had a hard time in your last marriage. It won’t be like that with us. I love you. Please. Come home. Or let me be here—”
“No. I can’t. I’ve thought about this a lot over the last two days.” She looked away from me. “Jacob, I don’t know how to be all-in anymore.” Her eyes came back to mine. “I don’t think I’m capable of it. Or any of the things that entails. Especially now. I can’t be the carefree, throw-caution-to- the-wind person I was before Nick. I can’t pretend like I don’t know how these things end—”
“It’s not going to end. Why would it end?” Her eyes looked so sad.
“You are perfect, Jacob. But I am not. You won’t always want me and I’ll always be braced for it. I’ll never relax. I’ll be waiting for the shoe to drop. I’ll never feel secure. I’ll never really trust you. I’ll just push you away and I’ll be miserable and I’ll make you miserable.”
“I’m miserable without you,” I said. “That’s what makes me miserable.” I swallowed. “Look, I understand what you’ve been through. I do. And we didn’t plan all this to happen this fast. It’s unexpected and it’s scary for you. I get that. We can slow down. We can take a little break if you need it. I can give you space, but I will never leave you, Briana. Do you hear me? Never. Every single thing that matters to me in this world is in this bed. I love you.”
I squeezed her hands as she sat there, looking at them between us. Her chin started to shake.
Please…believe me.
“Jacob…it’s just best—”
“Don’t do anything. Please. Just wait. Don’t make any big decisions right now.”
“Wait for what, Jacob?” she said quietly. She raised her eyes to mine. “What will change?” The way she said it made my heart crack right down the middle.
“Maybe you will,” I said. “Maybe your mind will catch up with your heart.”
“I don’t trust my heart. That’s the problem.”
Lieutenant Dan nudged his nose under her arm and she started crying softly again. I wanted to carry her off and put her where I could keep her safe, pack love around her and insulate her from whatever was eroding her.
But I couldn’t do that, so I just held her instead. I folded my arms around her, and she clutched my shirt like she was afraid I would vanish. But she was the one who was going to vanish, not me.
I felt panicked. I didn’t know how to love her better than I already did. How to show her I wasn’t like her ex or her father. She had all of me—there
was nothing else I could give her—and if that wasn’t enough to convince her, what else could I do?
We stayed holding each other for a few minutes. When she finally stopped crying, she spoke against my chest.
“I’m sorry, Jacob.” She sniffed. “Sorry for what?” I said gently.
She went silent for a long moment. “I’m broken.” The hopeless way she said it made tears pinch from my eyes.
“We’re all a little broken, Briana. We are a mosaic. We’re made up of all those we’ve met and all the things we’ve been through. There are parts of us that are colorful and dark and jagged and beautiful. And I love every piece of you. Even the ones you wish didn’t exist.”
I pulled away to look her in the eye. “What do you need? Tell me what to do. What can I do to fix this?”
She was quiet. “You can’t give me what I need.” “Try me.”
She searched my face. “I need to be able to see into your soul.” I shook my head. “I love you. You know that.”
But I could see in her eyes that she didn’t believe me.
She didn’t look at me again after that. But she let me hold her and she let me stay. That was at least something.
A half an hour later I brought the soup to her in bed. She didn’t eat much of it. She was distant and withdrawn, and my anxiety pulsed and clawed around.
The surgery was the day after tomorrow, and knowing I was about to be helpless when she might need me made me feel panicked. I didn’t want to be laid up in a hospital for a week and not able to get to her. If she lost the baby, I wouldn’t be able to be there. I didn’t want not to be able to carry her
to bed, or drive to her house if she decided she wanted to see me, or not to be able to take care of her for the next two weeks because I’d be post-op.
But there was nothing I could do about any of it.
When she fell asleep curled into me, I fell asleep too. For the first time in days I could close my eyes without my brain racing because it was wondering why she wasn’t with me. I didn’t even know how exhausted I was until the moment that my body finally let go.
There’s a special peace in sleeping next to someone you love. When you slip into the dark holding them and wake up and they’re still there and you know that everything that matters is just opening your eyes away.
When I felt her hands wandering my body, the light was no longer coming in through the curtains. I didn’t know what time it was. I don’t think she was really awake and neither was I, but I slipped a hand under her shirt and she slid one down the front of my pants and it was dreamlike and somewhere between awake and asleep and it felt good to touch her and for her to touch me. To have some proof that she still wanted me, even if it was just this.
We didn’t talk. Talking would have ended it. We just kissed and took off each other’s clothes and made love in the dark. But she felt like a ghost, going through the motions of the things she used to do while she was alive.
When I woke up again, it was morning. And then she asked me to leave.
I didn’t want to go. But forcing my company on a woman who wasn’t sure she even wanted me around would only make things worse. So I left.
Rosa said good-bye to me on the way out like it was an apology. Then she handed me a casamiento and egg sandwich wrapped in a paper towel and told me I needed to eat. I left holding that and feeling more despondent than when I got here.
I did what I could to stay centered for the rest of the day. I journaled. Watered my plants and packed my hospital bag. Forced myself to eat. Got the house ready for me to be gone for two weeks since I’d be recovering at my parents’. I could see that Briana wasn’t in any place to take care of me while I recovered, and I didn’t want to burden her with it. I went to drop off Lieutenant Dan with Mom. When I came into the house, I found her in the living room, reading, a moment after Lieutenant Dan found her.
She smiled up at me over my excited dog. “Jacob. Are you ready? It’s the big day tomorrow.” She closed her book. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come?”
I dropped on the couch next to her. “Don’t come. I’ll be home in a week and you’ll be spending plenty of time with me then. I need to stay here after the surgery.”
She looked confused. “You’re recovering here? Is Briana taking care of Benny? I thought Rosa was doing it.”
“She is.”
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
I rubbed my forehead. “No,” I said.
She set her book down on the coffee table and waited. And I told her about everything except the fake dating—how Briana changed after she saw Kelly and Nick, what Nick did to her, that she’d lost a baby last year. That she said she’d never marry me or live with me, that she was distant and despondent.
And pregnant.
Mom sat and she listened. When I was done, she let out a long exhale. “How do you feel about the pregnancy?”
I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees, staring into the cold fireplace. “Happy. Excited. Wishing she was excited too. But she’s not.” I
looked at her. “What do I do, Mom? I think she’s going to leave me.” “Jacob, she’s traumatized.”
I stared at her.
“She’s in the first serious relationship since her divorce, she has an unplanned pregnancy, and her last pregnancy ended in a traumatic miscarriage that she went through alone. She comes from a broken family where she was abandoned by her own father while her mother was expecting. She’s terrified and she’s trying to protect herself—and she might be so scared that she’s willing to sabotage the relationship so that it ends.”
I shook my head at her. “Why?”
“She’d rather things end on her terms than have the rug pulled out from under her again. It’s the only way she can feel in control of the outcome. It is a very common trauma response, Jacob.”
“But…but I would never do that to her,” I said. “Never.”
She looked at me gently. “I know, sweetheart. But sometimes the hardest thing isn’t trusting the next person. It’s trusting yourself. She doesn’t trust herself to choose well. Given her history with important men in her life, she may even feel that severing her relationship with her child’s father is in the best interest of the child. None of the fathers in her life have ever stayed, Jacob. Seeing Nick moved on with his new pregnant wife must have been incredibly difficult, given the circumstances. Had Briana not lost that pregnancy, that man would have been the father of her baby. And it was clear he didn’t want Briana or the baby he almost made with her. Why would you be different? Why would you be the one who sticks around?”
She dipped her head to look at me. “Has she had any therapy? Talked with anyone?”
I sat back against the sofa and dragged a hand down my mouth. “I don’t know. She doesn’t have a therapist now, I know that. I don’t know what she
did back then.”
Mom nodded. “Well, if I had to guess, knowing what I know of Briana, she probably didn’t. She’s tough. Self-reliant. She’d try to muscle through it. But if you don’t deal with trauma, it just circles back around. She’s probably depressed. And depression lies, Jacob. Nothing it’s telling her is true, but she can’t know that in her state without help.”
I looked her in the eye. “So what do I do?”
“You know what to do. It’s what you did with him.” She nodded at the dog sleeping at my feet. “You move slowly. Be consistent. Give her reassurance. Make her feel loved and safe. Show up. Don’t give up on her and make sure she knows you never will. And try to get her into therapy.”
I blew a breath through my nose and nodded. “Okay.” “She must love you very much,” she said.
“Not as much as I love her. I don’t even think it’s possible that she could,” I said quietly. “She’s it, Mom.” I looked at her. “I think I knew it the moment I laid eyes on her.” I laughed a little. “Even though she was telling me off.”
She smiled gently at me and put a hand on mine. “I want you to know that watching two complete strangers fall in love has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.”
I stilled. “What do you mean?”
She grinned ruefully. “Come on, Jacob. It’s my job to know when it isn’t real. And also when it is.”
