Come Away With Me. Karma Brown

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      “Yes,” I say without elaboration. He waits, but I don’t add anything more.

      “It was quite serious,” Anna interjects. “She had to have surgery and was in the hospital for almost three weeks.”

      “What kind of surgery?” handsome Dr. Wallace asks, casually, like he’s asking how I take my coffee. He looks up from the chart and waits again for a response.

      It’s as if someone has sewn my lips together. I can’t get the words out.

      Anna looks at me, waiting, too, then at the doctor. “She, uh...” Anna glances my way again and I try to tell her it’s okay, she can tell him. The message must have come across despite my lack of voice, because she keeps going without taking her eyes off me. “She had a hysterectomy,” Anna says, adding more quietly, “and she was just over six months pregnant at the time.”

      Dr. Wallace stops writing and gives me the most excellent sympathetic look. One I’ve seen before. From my surgeon, who cut out my uterus right after the accident, along with any chance I had of becoming a mother.

      “I’m very sorry for your loss,” Dr. Wallace says, and I can tell he means it. His voice is smooth, confident, yet it carries an appropriate amount of compassion. They must practice that, doctors—how to convince a complete stranger you really care in one minute or less. “You mentioned you haven’t been sleeping. Any other changes to your health?”

      “She’s not been eating much, either,” Anna offers, before I can answer “No, nothing,” like I’d planned to.

      “Well, that could explain why you fainted,” he says. He licks his finger, which I find odd for an emergency room doctor to do, and flips over a page on the chart. I think about all the germs his hands must come in contact with during a single shift. I’d be wearing gloves, or carrying a bottle of hand sanitizer in my back pocket, but I guess he’s not all that concerned about getting sick. “Also, that patch on your upper arm? Nicotine patch?”

      I shake my head. “It’s an estrogen patch. They also removed my ovaries when I had the hysterectomy.” I say it as matter-of-factly as I can, but we all know what it means. I will never have a child. And every week, when I take off the old patch and put on a fresh one, the reminder of that makes me want to throw something, or punch someone, or collapse into a heap on my bathroom floor and never get up.

      The good doctor nods, and gives me another sympathetic smile. “I’m going to do a few more tests, just to be sure there isn’t something else going on, okay?”

      “Thank you,” Anna, my spokeswoman, says.

      “You bet...sorry, I missed your name. Miss?” he asks, his smile for Anna this time.

      “Anna,” she says, extending her hand. “Anna Cheng.”

      “Okay, so if everything checks out we’ll have you out of here soon. Sound good, Tegan?” I nod, and he pats my shoulder. “Just try and relax.”

      Three hours later Anna pushes me out of the hospital in a wheelchair—hospital policy, apparently—with a good handful of sleeping pills to get me through the next few nights until I can see my family doctor. A short cab ride later, I’m home and manage a pitiful thank-you when Anna strips me of my clothes and tucks me back into bed in new pajamas. The hollow welcomes me back like an old lover, and I settle in as Anna heads to the kitchen to make me soup and toast. A few minutes later I hear the front door open and close, and I brace myself for company, presuming Anna made that call after all.

      I roll over, settling deeper in the mattress, and feel the cool comfort of the pendant as the weight of my body presses it into my skin. For a moment, I indulge my grief-weary brain a reprieve and imagine what life would have looked like if the car had spun out thirty seconds later, after the row of steel lampposts.

       If only Gabe kept both his hands on the wheel.

       If only I stopped him from what he was doing under my skirt.

       If only the de-icing trucks had already been out.

      I close my eyes, only then remembering I left my hat and gloves at Starbucks.

      “Tegan.” Gabe’s voice startles me. Guess he got the voice mails.

      “Are you okay? What the hell happened?”

      He lies down beside me, barely disturbing the covers, but doesn’t touch me. He knows me so well.

      I keep my eyes tightly closed. “Let’s just say I may not be welcome back at the Starbucks at Michigan and Lake.”

      Gabe sighs. “But you’re okay. Right?”

      I nod against the pillow. His voice softens. “What happened?”

      “I had a fucking meltdown, Gabe. An embarrassing, who-let-the-crazy-lady-out kinda meltdown. Then I passed out on the sidewalk and ended up in the ER.”

      “I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you. I was with a client.” Gabe shifts closer to me. “I should have been there.”

      “You can’t be here every second of every day,” I say. “Anna took care of me.”

      “I know. I’m glad she was there,” he says. His hand caresses my cheek; his fingers brush the hair back from my face. Still, I keep my eyes shut. “You need to eat something.”

      “I’m sure Anna will force-feed me the soup she’s making. Or my mom will when she gets here in, oh, twenty minutes,” I say, finally looking over at him. He’s wearing my favorite suit—gray herringbone, cut perfectly for his lean, muscular body—with a white shirt and mint-green tie. “I assume she called my parents?”

      Gabe shrugs and smiles. “You know Anna, she’s not known for her secret-keeping abilities.”

      I sigh. Gabe and I often joked that the best time to share something with Anna was immediately after telling everyone else.

      “I completely freaked her out,” I say. “She didn’t even comment on how cute the doctor was.”

      “Man, that is serious,” Gabe says, his tone light. I smile. But a moment later, the smile drops from my face and Gabe’s laughter fades.

      “It’s okay, Tegan. You’re just not ready yet,” Gabe finally says, when the silence becomes uncomfortable. “You need more time.”

      “That’s what I told Anna.” I’m weary now. I really want to be alone. “I wish you could explain it to her. I think you could make her understand.”

      “She’s doing exactly what you would do for her, Tegan.”

      I nod, rolling onto my side. I can hear Anna in the kitchen, as drawers open and close, and the microwave timer beeps. A salty, fragrant smell hits my nose and I know the boxed chicken noodle soup—the extent of Anna’s cooking repertoire—is bubbling away on the stove. I hope I can get some of it down, if for no other reason than to appease everyone.

      “I want to talk to you about that night,” Gabe says, pulling me back from thoughts of my churning stomach. “We need to talk about it.”

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