Finding Jack, page 23
I had, though.
Now I would pay for it.
***
I’d set my alarm for 6:00 AM so I could be on the road at first light, but it wasn’t the alarm that woke me. It was the warm, heavy weight of an arm across my waist. An arm with Jack’s watch around its wrist.
Jack had obviously come in at some point and kicked off his shoes before crawling onto the bed next to me. I glanced down to where he’d thrown his leg over mine too. I couldn’t believe I’d slept through that, but I’d been up late, staring into the dark and trying to solve an unsolvable problem before I’d fallen into an exhausted sleep. Maybe it wasn’t such a surprise that I’d slept through his arrival.
I moved to slide off the bed, but his arm tightened, and he nuzzled his face into my hair, murmuring my name on a soft sigh.
“Jack,” I whispered. “I need to go.”
He lifted his head to peer down at me. “Where are you going? Stay. I’ll make you breakfast.” He leaned down and kissed me.
I shouldn’t have let him do it. It would only make leaving more difficult, and not just because we were completely tangled up again. “I need…” I tried before immediately losing my train of thought when he murmured an agreement and claimed my mouth.
I ran my hands down his shoulders, still in the shirt he’d been wearing yesterday, lost in the heat and hunger.
“I missed you,” he said softly when he pulled away before shifting his attention to my earlobe which he caught with a light nip of his teeth. “I shouldn’t have left,” he said as I slid my hands through his hair.
It was the feeling of the long strands in my fingers and that last sentence that finally broke through the fog, and I let go of his hair to press my hand against his lips.
“No.” I pushed against him and squirmed away, remembering why his hair was so long in the first place. I slid off the bed and found my feet. “No, you don’t get to sneak back in here like nothing is wrong.”
He dragged himself up until he was sitting with his back against the wall. “I know I shouldn’t have left. That’s what I’m saying.”
“I mean, bonus points for coming back, I guess, but it’s not nearly enough to make up the difference,” I muttered as I scanned the floor for my shoes. It was light enough to see now. I’d make it back into town without any problem. I’d shower at my hotel, change into fresh clothes, and drive back to Portland. The need to get back home, to where I understood everything happening around me and controlled every bit of it, overwhelmed me, and I hunted for my shoes with greater urgency. I needed to get out of here.
“Can we talk about it at least?” He ran his fingers through his hair which looked like he hadn’t brushed it.
“I don’t know. Can we? Because it actually seems like we can’t. One step forward and two steps back isn’t going to get us anywhere, and that’s what keeps happening.” I finally located the black leather booties I’d paired with my skinny jeans and slid one on.
“You mean two steps forward, one step back.”
I straightened and stared at him. “No, I don’t. I meant it exactly how I said it. Every time we get a little closer, you push me away again, but it hurts worse every time. I know I’m not a relationship expert, but that’s not good. In fact, that’s a fatal program bug.”
I walked out to the living room and snatched up my purse to rummage for the keys. Jack was right behind me. “So that’s it?”
I spun to face him. “If by ‘it’ you mean how I’ve spent months trying to coax you to open up, and then I flew up here to surprise you against every ounce of common sense I have, and then it turns out that I never should have come but at least I know that now, so hey, that’s a thing that I learned, then yes. I guess that’s it.”
“You’re just giving up?”
“I’m not a quitter! YOU are.”
He stepped back like I’d slapped him. I reached out, maybe to snatch back the words, but he flinched, and I let my hand drop. I didn’t want to hurt him, but the words were true. “You’re hiding, Jack. You’re hiding up here when Sean says you can easily find someone in semi-retirement to take over the clinic. You’re letting other people fight your battles for you at your old job because it got too hard.”
“That’s easy to say for someone whose job stakes are whether a program will get a bug or not.”
I bent to put on my other boot, and to compose myself. “I will never understand what it’s like to lose a patient. But I know quitting when I see it. And so should you, because you’re right. I quit this. I can’t be a part of this half-life you’ve made for yourself, and I can already tell you’re not going to try to become a part of mine.”
“That’s not fair,” he said.
“Am I wrong? Have you been thinking lately about how you’re finally ready to join the wider world again?”
He wouldn’t meet my gaze. Instead, he crossed his arms and kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “No. That’s not going to happen because I didn’t run away from it. I found a different way to help, and it’s here. Look.” He walked over to the large, sleek monitor I’d seen in the background of so many of our conversations. “This is the only thing I can do,” he said flipping it on. A minute later, a series of photos filled the screen. “This is why I learned to Photoshop.”
I stepped closer to study them. They showed kids in superhero costumes or dressed as powerful knights and warriors. Some looked like ordinary kids. Others bore the clear signs of a fight with cancer; bald heads, steroid-puffed cheeks. I glanced at him, my eyebrows lifted in question.
“I make them heroes in their battles. It lets them visualize a victory. I get dozens of requests a week, and I do them for free.”
They were beautiful. Hopeful. And a tremendous gift—from anyone else. If Jack couldn’t do the other things he did, this alone would have made me fall a tiny bit in love with him. But he could.
“You have the ability to do so much more for them. These are incredible photos, but you could be changing the outcome in a real way. Treating them. Healing them.”
He shut the monitor off. It went black. It was abrupt. Final. “I found a different way to fight. I hate that you can’t see it for what it is.”
“And I hate that I do.” A deep sadness swept over me, smoothing out the angry places and drowning them in regret. “I’ve never told you much about my parents. They split when I was nine because my mom, she’s broken inside. She’s always chasing the next romantic high, the shiny new love. It never lasts, because when the new relationship sparkle fades, she can’t deal with looking at the real stuff underneath. And for her, it’s the feeling that she’s never enough.” My hands closed around my keys, and I fought the urge to run to the door. “I’ve watched a string of men try to fix her, put her back together, but it’s useless until she patches up some of her own wounds. And still, there’s some poor sucker always lining up to try. I swore I’d never do the same thing for someone. But here I am.”
A fresh wave of tears threatened, and I closed my eyes against them for a moment.
“Emily—”
I held up my hand. “No, let me say this.” I drew a calming breath and refused to let the tears fall. “I should have seen this. But I convinced myself somehow that if I could say the perfect words, behave exactly the right way, find the right sequence of conversations and grand gestures, that this would work out. I swore it wasn’t my job to save you, because no one can rescue another person. They have to do it themselves. I know this.” I squeezed my eyes shut again. “I used to know this. But I can’t control your brokenness. Why did I forget that?” The last part was only a whisper.
“Emily, stay. We’ve got everything else right between us. There has to be a way to fix this.” He shoved his fingers through his hair the way he did when he was stressed. “Please.”
“I don’t know how.” I walked to the door, pausing before I slipped through it. “I have never been so close to something this real. I’ve done everything I can. And I may have failed, but at least I tried. Goodbye, Jack.”
His silence said everything as the door clicked shut behind me, and I started the long drive back to town.
Chapter 38
I pulled into the spot in front of my motel bungalow and parked, resting my head against the back of my seat and closing my eyes, letting the scene I’d just left play on a loop in my mind. I didn’t want to go. But there was no point to staying.
When I’d reached that conclusion for the tenth time, I climbed out of my car to change my flight, shower and pack.
A man got out of the car next to me at the same time. I instinctively tightened my hands around my purse strap before a voice I knew called my name softly, and I looked up to find Sean coming around his car.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Jack texted me and asked me to check on you, make sure you’re okay.”
I squeezed my eyes for a second before opening them and staring down at my disheveled self. “Just so you know, this isn’t a walk of shame.”
“I know. Jack was very clear that he’s been an idiot. He said you were pretty upset when you left. He wanted to make sure you got back safely, but he didn’t think you’d answer if he called.”
“True enough. I’m fine. I’m going to shower and head to the airport.”
“I checked the flights while I was waiting for you. If you let me take you to breakfast, you can still make the noon flight.”
I hesitated. I just wanted to get home.
He smiled. “I’ll even call Ranée and tell her to pick you up and make her promise not to ask any questions.”
“Deal.”
“Meet me at Annie’s in an hour?”
“Stupid Annie’s.”
He looked startled. “What?”
“Nothing. Yes, I’ll be there in an hour.”
And I was, feeling cleaner and unwrinkled but somehow no better. I slid into the booth he’d claimed. “Omelet,” I said to the waitress, who appeared as soon as I sat. “Whatever the cook likes best. I’ll eat anything. And a large cup of coffee. Very strong coffee.”
“So it didn’t go well?” Sean prompted me.
“No. It really didn’t, but honestly, I’m exhausted. I was up late worrying about him, and I don’t have the energy to rehash it.”
“He told me the whole story, I think.”
“Doubt it,” I said.
“He told you about Clara, that he failed to save her, the tragic loss forced him to confront his own limits, he looked into a bleak future of losing more kids than he saved, and he couldn’t do it anymore, so he ran?”
“Uh, I don’t think he put it quite that dramatically. But basically.”
“I guess I just added my own personal twist to the story, because that’s what it was like for me. I’d been on the floor for two years already when Jack started there. I was in the early stages of burnout, but I didn’t know it yet. We worked together for two years, and we lost patients before Clara. But her loss hit us extra hard. Did he tell you why?”
“Because he tried a highly risky treatment so she could still do gymnastics and he lost the gamble when he could have saved her?”
He nodded, slowly. “And because we knew Clara. Before she ever got sick, I mean. Her mom is a surgeon at the hospital. She and Jack had worked on several cases together. Clara had been coming to see her mom at the hospital since she was five, dropping in with her dad so they could eat together in the hospital cafeteria, coming to play with the patients who weren’t in isolation. We were all crazy about the kid, which is why Jack wouldn’t take the case at first. But Dr. Mendel—Sheila, Clara’s mom—begged him to. Wouldn’t let him refer her out, said she trusted him.”
The waitress returned with my coffee, but I was wide awake now. I took a sip, but I was too riveted by Sean’s story to need the caffeine. “And he finally agreed.”
“Yeah.” Sean scrubbed his hands over his face. “It was a bad idea. She’s a formidable woman, and she pushed Jack hard to try the riskier protocol. I think it’s because as a surgeon, she knew exactly what Clara was in for if they did the more aggressive excision on the affected bone. And I think she truly believed Jack could pull it off.”
“But he didn’t.”
“It wasn’t his fault. No one blamed him when Clara relapsed. She came in for her quarterly screening because she had severe bruising. We all knew that meant the cancer was back, but she’d been clean two months before. None of us expected it to be stage four.” He took a sip of his own coffee and stared through the window for a long minute before turning back to me. “That was my worst day as a nurse. The day you find out that there’s nothing you can do is even worse than the day you lose them, because you know what’s coming.”
It was horrible. I couldn’t imagine it. I stared into my mug and blinked back tired tears. “That’s so hard. No wonder Jack couldn’t keep doing that job.”
“It wasn’t just him. I left first, and when I’d been working for a couple of months here, I started to feel like I could breathe again. I invited him out to spend a week, get re-centered. But instead he got a job. I was the last person who was going to tell him he had to go back to war. So if you’re going to judge him for running, I guess you have to judge me too.”
His voice had acquired a defensive edge, and I met his eyes, then reached over to lightly touch his sleeve. “I don’t judge either of you for leaving. But I’m never going to be enough for him to overcome something like that. I’m not enough to coax him back to life, to leave the safety net he’s found here.”
“I don’t know,” Sean said as the server returned to set a plate in front of each of us. “I’m not so sure that’s true. You want to know why I was in San Francisco last week?”
“To show Ranée your dog?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t tell her because you know how she fixates on stuff, but I had a job interview. I want to get back into nursing, but I want to work for the VA, helping rehabilitate soldiers, maybe apply to physical therapy school.”
My jaw dropped. “Sean. That’s amazing.”
He gave me a shy smile. “Thanks. Eat your omelet. I’ll quit bugging you.”
The cook had made me a Southwestern omelet, and it was excellent. I’d never met a tragedy that could suppress my appetite yet, and when we’d both cleaned our plates, Sean pulled out some cash and set it on the table. “My treat. I won’t keep you anymore. I know you have a flight to catch.”
He walked me out to the rental car and paused before opening the driver’s door for me. “Hey, Em, none of this has ever been my business, but for what it’s worth, I think you should give Jack a little time to come around.”
“He’s had three years. I don’t think I’m the magic bullet that’s going to change things.”
“I never thought I’d want to get back into nursing full-time, but it looks like I can’t shake it. And if I can’t, I don’t think Jack can either. I think it’s just a matter of time.”
I slumped against the car. “I don’t know. I tried to invite him back to real life, and he made it clear that he’d rather keep half-living than to see if we have a shot.”
“You could move here, maybe find a job that you can work remotely.”
I glanced the short distance down Main Street and its hodgepodge of hyphenate businesses then met his eyes again.
He sighed. “You’re right. You belong in San Francisco. Give me a hug and then get out of here.”
I held up my finger. “On one condition. Stop meddling. No more talking about Jack, even if you move to San Francisco and you’re living on our couch indefinitely.”
“Agreed.” He hauled me in for a hug, and then I got in and drove away, letting Featherton become a green smudge in my rearview mirror.
Chapter 39
Ranée drove me home, and true to his word, Sean had managed to put a muzzle on her. She didn’t ask me about anything besides the weather even though I could feel every atom in her straining to squeeze the details out of me. When we got back to the apartment, I headed straight for bed. “I need to sleep.”
“Hey!” I turned around in my doorway, waiting for her dam of questions to break. Instead she ran down the hall to grip my shoulders. “You going to be okay?”
“Eventually.”
“Then let a nap do its magic.”
It was three hours before I woke up and stumbled out again in search of food.
Ranée smiled at me from the sofa. “Hi, sleepyhead. I’ll order Mexican.”
And somehow, an hour later, we’d settled on the sofa, a shared blanket spread across our laps with a dozen tacos between us. She pulled the whole story out of me before we even got to the flan.
“So he’s living his stupid hermit life with his stupid hermit hair in his stupid hermit town,” I concluded.
“Team Jack,” she said.
“Ranée! You’re supposed to be on my side.”
She fell quiet, shadows chasing each other across her face. “You okay?” I asked. I’d never seen this expression on her before, like she’d lived a decade in those quiet moments.
She sighed. “I thought I understood how hard Sean’s job was because we talked a lot while he was working at that hospital. This was before I even met you. He’d call to decompress, and I’d come up with these motivating pep talks to help him get back in there. So I thought I got it, and that I was being supportive. Now that I work at the barn…”
“I thought you loved volunteering there.”
“I do. But it’s only been four months and we’ve already lost some kids. The idea is that they’re at-risk and we’re trying to connect them to a supportive community, or with these horses because they’ve been let down by so many people but the animals, they don’t judge. Then maybe they can connect to the human part of the community. It works sometimes. But a lot of times it doesn’t. These kids, it’s not enough for them. The damage runs too deep, and we can’t reach them. I mean, how stupid to think we can. We haven’t lived a fraction of what they deal with. So they don’t die like the kids Sean worked with, but it feels like that a little. One of the caseworkers came in last week and told us this girl I’ve been teaching every week got picked up by police when they found her half-dead of an overdose under the freeway. They gave her Narcan, so she survived the moment. But for how long? The caseworker says the client won’t be back. And it makes me sick inside. Could I have done something else? Become her mentor?”
