No one was in Caleb's room when I went at six in the morning. He looked terrible, covered in even more colors. Some of the wounds on his arms were unwrapped and looked oozy, like burns. The swelling had gone down a little in his face. It was eerie to see him so still. I stood by the bed, which had small railings. "Well," I said in the empty-feeling room. "Here we are."
He lay unmoving.
"So I met Halley," I continued. "She seems nice." The sarcasm was thick. The betrayal tasted so bitter. I hated that he couldn't answer for this. "Seriously, I don't even know what to say about this." I realized I was still wearing my ring and half-laughed. "Guess I don't need this old thing anymore." I slid it off and into the nightstand drawer. Hopefully someone would steal it.
His phone was in there. "Oh really," I said out loud.
I would normally never read through his phone, but he lost his privacy when he forgot to tell his new girlfriend about me. I swiped the lock screen, which used to be a picture of us from the day we got engaged, but was now an ugly landscape with shovels. The dig site. His background was also not us anymore, but a picture of him and Halley, the sun setting behind them. They sat with their arms around each other's shoulders, dirty and grinning, her hair in a bun on her head and he wearing a Sharks baseball hat.
It killed me a little bit. "You fucking asshole," I said matter-of-factly, and quietly, but it took restraint not to throw the phone. I knew the texts probably wouldn't make me feel any better, but I'm a sucker for punishment so I went into his messages.
The last several were, of course, from her, when he didn't meet her or respond. I scrolled though to the afternoon of the accident and read through them with a suffocating grief that grew with the addition of each word.
I'm waiting . . . ???
Where the hell are you, Cale?
I'm seriously getting mad. It's been almost an hour. You can take a second to text me back. I didn't fly all the way here with you for you to do this to me
?????????????
You okay or what? Making me nervous and it's not cool.
Cale. Timeout from everything, please let me know you're okay, idc about anything else just say you're okay
You're not okay, are you
Please baby call me, just call me I'm really worried
Jesus. I scrolled up several pages and stopped randomly. The date was seven weeks earlier.
Him: Omg if he says "like a feather duster" one more fucking time I'll kill us all
Her: I know right!!! Like we don't know how to do our jobs by now
Him: Let's get burritos tonight, I'm dying for carne asada and guac
Her: If we survive this meeting. It'll be our reward
Him: You're my reward
I was sitting in the chair at this point and leaned back, looking up at the ceiling. I still couldn't believe it. "How could you do this to us?" I hoped he could hear me and felt like shit. I got falling in love with someone else, and yes it would have been less than fun to tell me. But he should have anyway. He owed me that, if nothing else. After all the years, he fucking owed me that.
I put the phone away. If I read any more I was going to start crying. My heart was a shredded bleeding mess, or maybe that was my soul.
Of course she took this opportunity to show up, the same bun in place on top of her head, the same jeans. She looked in and saw me. Her ears turned pink and she opened her mouth and closed it again.
I stood up. "It's cool," I said. "I was just leaving." I smirked at her. "He's all yours. Which I guess you already know."
She burst into tears. "I'm sorry," she said miserably. "You don't deserve this."
I stood three feet from her, the unexpected sympathy making me both mad and tearful. "You don't even know me," I said, not making much sense. "So don't tell me what I deserve, okay?" All along he had been texting and calling me like everything was normal. All along.
"I'm sorry," she said again, wrapping the hem of her red jacket around her finger anxiously, and I felt like a total bitch. Just because it was a fucked up situation didn't give me the right to treat her like that.
"Look," I began, trying to get on top of the wave of emotion threatening to flood me out. "I can't be a nice person right now, okay? Just stop saying sorry."
"I'm sor--" she started to say, and actually put her hand over her mouth. "I'll come back later," she said.
"No," I said. "I'll go." I was torn, I knew I didn't owe her an explanation but apparently I couldn't not talk. "I'm still going to come here. I mean, I'm pissed, and perplexed, and he has a lot of explaining to do when he wakes up, and he's not mine anymore like that or whatever, I get it, I know." My eyes and nose burned and I pinched the inside of my arm to stop it. "Just so you know, I know. But he's still my family, and I can't just let him rot away here without me. Regardless of everything else." Standing there awkwardly wasn't helping. "Even if he doesn't deserve it."
"Of course," she said, surprised, her hands up like I was going to punch her or something. "I know he's your . . . I wouldn't try to . . . I didn't know it was like this," she finished lamely. She took a step into the room, glancing at him.
"He's not any better," I said meanly. "And you didn't know it was like what?" It was too weird standing so I moved to sit on the other side of the bed, close to the window, my purse in my lap. The new position made me feel trapped, which didn't help a whole lot.
She took some tissues from her purse and wiped her eyes. "That you guys were still . . . that things were okay. Even when he finally told me about you the other night, he made it seem like you weren't getting along, like you were about to break up anyway."
Hot indignation washed over me. "It wasn't that way at all," I protested. The dishonest bastard.
"No, I know, because last night I found these in his bag." She pulled out a thin stack of letters that were rubber-banded together, and held them out to me across his body. "Not that I would normally snoop through his things."
I didn't want them. I saw his handwriting and my first instinct was to reject them. But my hand reached out of its own accord and took the small bundle. They were all open. I pulled out the one on top.
It was short: Dear Mary, please don't hate me. I shouldn't start like that but it's all I can think, that I still love you but I love her too and I couldn't stand it if you hated me. I've fucked up everything. I just wanted to see what it was like to be just me, without being US, and
The next part was crossed out. Then None of this is what I want to say.
There was nothing else on the page.
I folded it and put it back into the envelope, my face stiff from the mask hiding the anguish. "Are they all like this?"
She took out her hair tie and began unwrapping her bun, her eyes downcast. Her hair was like gold, falling heavily through her hands. Maybe Caleb had always secretly harbored a thing for blonds. "Pretty much," she said reluctantly. She kept unraveling it until she had a ponytail almost to her waist, then used both hands to smooth it all back together and wound it around and around again, securing it once more. She shook some loose strands from her fingers.
I looked away from her perfect hands. The letters I folded and stuffed into my purse. "Fuck," I said, without rancor. "So you're not happy with him either, I guess."
She raised an eyebrow. She wasn't wearing any makeup, and was gorgeous anyway. Who does that. "Before I knew about you, I already had a ticket here. He got weirder and weirder until the night before we left, when he finally told me about you. But I thought we would come here and he would break up with you and we would . . . " She shrugged, her sorrow and confusion making me way more empathetic than I wanted to be.
"Live happily ever after?"
It was her turn to smirk, and she turned it on him. Not that he cared. "Something like that," she agreed. "He played me pretty easily. I fell for it all." She shrugged again but dabbed under her eyes really fast. "Whatever."
That summed it up, at the moment.
"He should have told me," I said, not that it was her fault. "It would have sucked, but I would have dealt with it. And none of this would have happened."
She made a face acknowledging me and sighed. "I never think of him as being scared of anything."
"Yeah, well, that's 'cause he isn't." I snorted. "Except when it comes to telling the truth, suddenly."
She pulled at a thread in her jacket. "Yeah, and now I'm stuck here where I don't know anyone. And for what it's worth, whatever he and I had is over, too. I can't deal with someone who based our whole relationship on lies." Her cheeks were more red than pink. "But I can't, I don't feel right just walking away when he's like this. But his waking up isn't going to change anything," she added hotly, as if I'd argued.
"Hey, you're preaching to the choir," I said dryly.
The same nurse from the day before came in with a new IV bag. She had shoulder-length black hair, brown skin, and kind eyes that made me want to hug her, though I am not a hugging person. Her scrubs were covered in planets. I could easily see her in the kids' ward.
She stopped on her way to the bed and gave us both a look. "Nice to see y'all ladies behaving cordially, today. This young man needs positive energy and loved ones around him to help with his recovery." Her accent reminded me of a friend we'd had in school from Georgia. I loved Southern accents.
"Then he shouldn't have been dating her while engaged to me," I retorted, but not rudely. "You can probably guess neither of us knew about the other."
Her expression became disapproving. "Well," she said. "That does change things." Shaking her head, she went to check him and switch out the bag. "Mmm, y'all think he's maybe faking it?" Somehow she said it so it wasn't inappropriate.
"It's possible," we both said, and I bit down the grin that threatened. It was kind of funny. If you didn't have humor, what did you have? Not a fiance, that much was clear.
"Well, in that case, I'm impressed with how y'all are handling it," she amended, writing down a few things in his chart. "Try to keep the fighting outside. He really does need to be kept from the drama right now. Save it for when he wakes up, then you can really unload."
"Is . . . that going to happen?" Halley asked, voicing my thoughts as well.
I moved my purse to the floor again.
The nurse looked at her kindly. "We're still in the first forty-eight hours, honey. Chances are good."
"Good, good? Or pretty good? Maybe great, at all?" As if I could make it so by asking.
She smiled at me, but those kind eyes were not promising. "It's always hard to say. I wish I could give you a better idea. But each person is different. So different." She patted his hand and adjusted the sheet a little bit. "We're letting these wounds air out and then we'll get them covered again. I know it's unpleasant."
"Whoa, full house," Leif said from the door. I could tell from the blank look on his face how uncomfortable he was because Halley was there. His eyes settled on me with relief.
"Let's go smoke," I said, getting up again. Then, because my conscience thoroughly hates me, I side-eyed her reluctantly. "Well? You smoke, don't you?" The words were grudging.
"Keep it up, ladies. You're good girls," the nurse assured us, satisfied. "Smoking's terrible for y'all's lungs, though. Try to stop soon."
Leif was already gone and we made some agreeable noises and made our own escape. "Least she didn't threaten to call our parents," I muttered, more out of the need to fill the silence than anything else.
"Right?" She paused at the elevator but no way was I riding down with her, and Leif was already holding open the door to the staircase, so stairs it was.