𝘛𝘏𝘐𝘚 𝘍𝘌𝘌𝘓𝘐𝘕𝘎 𝘉𝘜𝘙𝘕𝘚
CONCERNING BETH
──────
9 MONTHS EARLIER
I FOUND OUT my brother was dying halfway through a marriage proposal.
Admittedly, I did not see this coming-- either of them. The man on one knee in front of me or the text message from my estranged sister telling me that my older brother, Archer, was in Seattle and on the brink of death.
It had killed the mood considerably.
In fact, the ring tone of my text messages and my emails had played out consistently for two minutes, cutting over the sound of the heartfelt words of my boyfriend of two years. I'd already been filled with so much discomfort and awkwardness (the words 'No, I can't', were so close to the tip of my tongue and his eyes were so shiny and hopefully...) but this seemed to make my lungs burst. My eyes trailed between his outstretched hand, ring box and all, and the cell phone that screamed loudly on the table.
Eventually, the man who loved me too much sighed as wobbling slightly from the strain of holding on for too long, "Are you going to get that?"
***
Historically, I wasn't really renowned for my ability to anticipate things.
I didn't have any sort of third eye, sixth sense or psychic ability. I didn't really have any idea of fate or destiny or any of that stuff. I sure as hell didn't have instincts either. No gut feelings, no second wind-- as far as I was aware, it was impossible to truly anticipate things. My whole belief was constructed on science: the logic that something plus another thing would result in a reaction and it's consequences.
I hadn't been able to anticipate or foresee my life going to shit, not even science could help that.
I would've given anything for future me to have come back into time to give myself a little heads up. That would've been deeply appreciated, the leading figure in this mess of a movie plotline that I felt as though I was making up on the spot:
Future Beth would've waltzed into my childhood house, sat down on my childhood bed and told Past Beth not to move to New York. They would've given Past Beth a full rundown of the next twenty years of my life.
They would've told me not to go anywhere near Manhattan, or if I did, to stay the hell away from my sister and her boyfriend (eventual husband and then ex) and, to definitely not get involved with the Best Man at the wedding.
They would've told me to forget about my dream of becoming a surgeon (Hey, having a different career from your siblings is fun and unique, right?) and to move West, or maybe to a whole country completely.
They would've told me to never even dream of drinking— and not to even look at anything that would give me at least the tiniest buzz (Drugs aren't even worth the consequences you're going to be left with... no really, don't fucking think about it.)
If that all fell through and I disregarded all of Future Beth's wisdom (which, in all honesty, was very likely as I was the last person to list to my own sensible advice), they would've made me promise one thing. They would've made sure that I was paying attention completely, they would've pressed their hands on their side of my head and made sure that these words burrowed deep into my subconscious— so deep that it would echo around my subconscious as I dreamed.
Under no circumstances, (and I repeat: NO CIRCUMSTANCES) fall in love with Mark Sloan.
Unfortunately, I didn't have a visit from Future Elizabeth Montgomery, so I did all that shit anyway.
I did it all with a slowly dimming smile and a slowly withering pep in my step. Mental health? They left the building long ago. Love life? It went down with a long and torturous fight. My career? Still a sore conversation topic.
Without Future Beth, I wasn't able to foresee any of it. In retrospect I was mad about it— why couldn't the universe give me one tiny sign? Cut me one tiny bit of slack?
Maybe I should have stopped being so surprised and inconvenienced by everything, and just continued with the mindset of: "Oh okay, so this is how my life is going, great." Or maybe I should've just started to explore my spirituality in the hope of developing some mystical psychic skills. If it isn't clear by this endless stream of hypotheticals— I did neither of those things. Instead, I was blindsided.
I didn't anticipate the part where my sister was exposed for having an affair with my boyfriend.
I didn't anticipate the part where I had to rebuild myself by disappearing off the map, spending years rebuilding myself back to the kid who had left small-town Connecticut to come to New York.
Then eventually, once everything in the universe seemed to settle to a very nice silence— I didn't anticipate the part where my brother decided to try and kick the bucket. Now that was a very nice surprise and a very nice reason to appear back into everyone's lives after five years of radio silence.
It didn't sound nice and it didn't feel nice either— but I supposed that everything was inevitable.
I shouldn't have been surprised. I shouldn't have been shocked. I shouldn't have not seen it coming.
I should have been at the point where everything left me surprised and unbothered. However, I had to give it to whatever in the universe, outside of the science and the medicine and all of the other crap I had in my brain, decided what was going to happen next:
Going to Seattle was one hell of a move.