I shake my head, inhaling slowly. “Was your girl…adopted?”
I don’t know how I get back upstairs. I ask for Evie. Everywhere, I ask for Evie. She’s in surgery. I pace around. I hear myself paged: once, twice, three times.
She emerges through the door of the scrub room, her brown-blonde hair in a bun, her face looking relaxed as she steps out into the hall. I mean to catch her by the arm, but I can’t move. Can only rasp her name as she walks toward the nurse call station.
She whirls. “Landon.” She laughs, clearly glad to see me standing in the hall. I watch her smile wither as her gaze moves over my face. “What’s the matter?”
She’s right by me, her hand on my shoulder. I step back, shaking my head. I don’t even have the words to say what’s wrong.
“Hey…” She lifts her hands up, in a mock surrender pose. “What’s wrong,” she asks me softly. Her eyes dart behind her, toward the ORs. “Did you come from surgery? Did something happen?” Her blue eyes are full of empathy.
“You could say that something happened,” I say slowly.
“What?”
I try to speak and can’t at first. The hall around me spins. “You had a baby.”
Nine
Evie
“I saw her down in ER. She had your face—” he points— “and my eyes.” I watch as fury twists his features. “I was her doctor, Evie! She looked just like you,” he moans. “September 2007 birthday, born in Asheville…” He shakes his head, his chest pumping with his frantic breaths.
Adrenaline has lit me up, but I can’t tell him! If I do, this will be over, and it can’t be over. “Why did you think this girl you saw was—”
“No! Don’t do that shit with me, Evie! They told me she’s adopted.” Landon’s voice cracks. “They told me she was…yours.”
I shake my head as I move toward him. “We should step into a room—”
He holds his arms out as a barrier. “Why’d you name her Ashtyn, Evie? It reminds me of my mother.”
His face crumples, his head bows, and his hand comes over his eyes as Landon’s shoulders start to shake.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I was gone. You said you tried to find me. You tried, but you couldn’t…so…”
“Come here.” I reach for him, and Landon stumbles back.
“Landon, please come with me. Let me talk!” I start to sob as he takes one step back, and then another, moving his hand off his tear-streaked face.
“She...uh…hurt her arm,” he says in a thick voice. “I think she’s okay now. Bay three.”
He reaches out to touch the wall, blinking as he steadies himself. Then he turns and jogs off down the hallway.
My mind is spinning, my pulse racing, my heart wrenched with pain so awful, it’s like the day I birthed her—Ashtyn Nora Deckert—someone else’s baby. But she wasn’t someone else’s when she got here. She was mine.
I came home at thirty-seven weeks so I could birth her in my state of residence. So I could finalize the deal to give her to the Deckerts. I remember it was strangely cold that week, the weather dark and misty. Sometimes fall in Asheville is vibrant and beautiful, but that one wasn’t.
I cried every night. I would lie awake, exhausted and uncomfortable, and I would beg the universe for Landon. If he came back to me, I was going to change my mind and keep the baby.
One night, I slept downstairs in his old bed, where our baby was created. That’s the night contractions started.
I went to the hospital—Carolina General—when my parents thought it seemed like time. Emmaline cried because she couldn’t come with us. My grandma kept her.
During labor, I was treated with the utmost care and kindness by my parents’ colleagues. My mother held my hand while I screamed and moaned, and I remember how she tried to tell me moms and daughters had been doing this together for thousands of years.
“No boys,” she told Dad when he called from in the hall.
Makayla was my only friend who knew the truth. She sat in the waiting room with Dad, Aunt Raina, and my other grandma.
In the moments that I pushed, I remember thinking I was no different than Landon’s mother, a horrible abandoner who broke his heart before his poor young mind could even form its first memories. I was giving up my own child at the very same place.
I pushed hard, and felt an awful fire of pain all through my legs and belly. I started to sob, and then I saw her tiny, crying face. She had my mouth and cheeks, and Landon’s brows. When someone laid her on my chest, I fell in love. Our baby. Perfect.
I cried the whole night while I held her. Her parents wanted her to get my colostrum, and my mom wanted closure for me, so the deal was, that first night, I’d be with her alone.
Mom asked me only once if I was sure. I’d just emerged from my first shower, and Mom was looking down at her from where they sat together in the rocking chair.
“Dad and I can’t help the way some other parents could, but Evie…this needs to be your choice.”
My mother looked at me, and I at her, and I knew she was telling me to do what my heart said I had to.
I took her from my mom, and I tried to envision her at day care while I finished school and went to college. I closed my eyes and prayed, and thought of Landon. If I kept her, she would likely never know her father. Landon had been off the grid for months. I had to face that. If I gave her to the Deckerts, she’d have both. She would also get two older brothers. I had seen their pictures of the bedroom they had for her. The diaper bag and car seat. Her parents had even let me help name her.
They arrived a few hours later, and when I saw Clara Deckert sob and collapse against her burly husband, when they cried with me and talked to me and listened, when they promised they would send me pictures, and invite me for birthday parties, when they told me she was what would fill the holes inside their hearts from Clara’s stillbirth the year before…what could I do?
They held her with such care, and in their eyes, I could see pride. Clara giggled like a teenager herself and rubbed the baby’s little toes, and I could see that she would be okay. She’d be better than okay. She would be wholly cared for, wholly loved.
Before they left, I fed her one last time, then Clara handed her to Mike. She walked with me into the bathroom. We held hands, and she said, “You’re my angel, Evie. You are Ashtyn’s angel, and because of you, she made it here, where all of us can love her.”
I let them take her. In that moment, it felt right. It almost always did—until I saw Landon again.
Mark and Clara tell me everything when I get to the ER. Ash has a mild brachial plexus injury from falling out of the tree house Mark built her and her brothers last year. Her arm is in a sling, but all is well; her CT and her MRI look good. When I see her, she smiles and hugs me. “Evie!”
After that, out in the hall, I grill Mark on his exchange with Landon.
He recounts their conversation, shaking his head sadly. “Why didn’t you tell us he was here? We tried to call before we came.”
I do my best to reassure them.
“He would never take her or anything like that. He’s a neurosurgeon, just like me. We’re married to our jobs.” I wrap my arms around myself. “All of this is my fault. I could have told him, but I waited. I was selfish.”
“No you’re not. I know you. You’re not selfish,” Mark says quietly.
I start to cry, and shake my head. “I was this time.”
I don’t know if Landon can forgive me, and without him, I don’t know how I’ll survive. I accept Mark’s hug and try to pull myself together.
Within the hour, they’ve got discharge papers. We hug goodbye with promises to get together soon. I see Ashtyn once or twice a month, and she knows I’m her birth mother.
“What about Landon? Dr. Jones,” Mike says, hanging behind Ashtyn and Clara. “Do you think he’ll want to get to know her too?”
He wants that—I see it in his eyes. The Deckerts want what’s best for Ash, and Mike w
orks as a counselor. He knows that knowing us, given some strong contextualization and a lot of honest talking, will probably anchor Ashtyn rather than unmoor her.
My eyes fill with tears as I shake my head. “I don’t know. I…maybe. But I don’t know. I need to find him. After he found out, he left.”
Eilert finds me shortly after the Deckerts go. She asks if I’ve seen Landon. I almost tell her, but I realize it’s not mine to tell. I tell her I’m not sure.
“Apparently he just left while he was seeing the girl who just got discharged. No one’s seen him since. We’ve tried to call him. Nothing.”
“I’ll keep a look out for him.”
I call Landon, too, and text him.
‘I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. Please call me. You don’t have to forgive me, but please let me try to explain. I’ll leave and we can talk about it. Anything you want.’
My shift rolls on, through agonizing hours when I’m so distraught that I consider leaving, too. Finally, it’s almost nine o’clock. I have a plan in place to drive right to his house.
I pass Eilert at the nurse desk on floor three as she heads out for the night.
“Evie, you’re about to be paged down to ER.” My pager buzzes at that second, and Eilert looks at me apologetically. “I know you’ve got floor notes, but they’re saying they need another hand down there for a possible spinal cord injury. I’ve got to get moving. Darius is headed out to summer camp tomorrow morning.”
I linger in the stairwell, wiping my eyes.
Downstairs, it’s a madhouse. All the bays are full and EMTs are pouring in with stretchers.
“Wicked wreck at 8th and Monroe,” I hear someone say. “One van full, no seatbelts, plowed into a smaller car that’s fucking crushed.”
Ten
Evie
Very rarely, I have moments where I just don’t want to help. My enthusiasm for doctoring is nearly unflappable, but once or twice a year, the right—or wrong—mood hits me, and I want to leave a shift. As I wait for the line of ambulances to bring my suspected spinal cord injury, that’s exactly where I am.
Landon’s out there somewhere. I need desperately to find him. I can’t imagine what he must be feeling, and I hate myself so much for not telling him sooner. He deserved to know. He deserved to know before now, regardless of how little his knowing would have changed things, or how much it terrified me.
I deserve this, I think with a knot in my throat. I’ll deserve whatever happens to us.
I keep texting him, and I know he’s really upset—obviously he is—because he hasn’t even looked at my texts.
I’m gritting my molars as yet another stretcher comes in. I hope my guy—or gal—with the suspected SCI isn’t last in line. I need to get them stable, pass them to the night floater, and split.
I hear shouting as the automatic doors swish open, and three EMTs bustle in with another person on a backboard—this one held down low, as if he’s heavy. With my eyes still on the doors, I listen idly to what they’re telling the ER attending, noting something about a mean right hook.
“—wild and talking crazy,” one of the EMTs is saying.
A second later, I hear a low shout echo down the corridor: “I SAID I WORK HERE!”
Cold sweat washes over me, but I stay rooted to my spot for the next few minutes, still watching the doors as my brain fails to connect the dots. And then I do connect the dots, and I am flying toward the private rooms because I know that voice, and that was Landon.
That was Landon on the backboard. Oh my fuck, he’s bleeding! As I near the private rooms, I hear him snarling, “I can move my fucking feet. Unstrap me, man, I’m not gonna fucking punch you.”
EMTs are gathered ’round the entrance to his room. I can hear the nurses talking heatedly over his low voice.
“You’re going to have to calm down, sir, so we can validate your—”
“I’m checking your lung sounds,” another interrupts.
“BP’s through the sky.”
“There’s no way he works here,” says the EMT in the doorway.
I squeeze into the room and—oh God. Landon’s lying on his back atop a railed bed, still strapped to the ambulance backboard. His head is bleeding, his mouth and nose are covered by an oxygen mask, and his chest is bare and mottled with bad bruising. Even so, his shoulders lift up off the board, his biceps straining as he fights the thick, leather restraints around his wrists.
“I fucking told you I’m a surgeon—”
“We have no ID,” an EMT cries, at the same time someone else says, “You’d better watch those wrists, then.”
“Quiet—so we can triage, doctor! Catie, do you have that Nitropress? We’re almost to minute five with numbers like this—”
I step closer to the bed, and Landon sees me. “Evie…oh God. Please.” He just lies there, panting and groaning as he tries to free his arms by force. I remember what he said—about the group home.
“Get rid of his restraints. Take them off, right now,” I tell the nurses.
“He hit one of my guys,” an EMT calls from behind me.
“He’s a surgeon. If he used his fists, your guy probably earned it.” I turn toward them, my heart pounding wildly. “I want everybody out. Dr. Jones is my colleague. I’ll triage him.” No one moves. I throw my hands up. “I said everybody out!”
Landon’s eyes shut as he struggles to breathe, gasping on the inhale, moaning on the exhale. Shit. The right side of his chest is so bruised, there’s no way his ribs are all intact.
“Blood pressure is still high,” one of the nurses says as she goes. She hands me a syringe: the Nitropress.
The EMT mutters something as he leaves, but I don’t even stop him for a report. Landon’s chart will be in my tablet, sent wirelessly from the ambulance to our ER. My hands tremble wildly as I pull it up. I don’t look at him, but I can hear him panting—breathe, then moan; breathe, then strangled moan. I can tell he’s trying not to make noise, but he must be in awful pain. The thought of that is almost my undoing.
You don’t get to fall apart. You deserve this.
With my leaking eyes, I scan his chart and call for the portable CT scan. Then I move slowly over to the bed, holding my stethoscope to his bare chest while I look down at him. My throat knots up as I hear abnormal chest sounds: evidence of a problem. Tears spill down my cheeks, because I hate this so damn much. I hate myself.
With shaking fingers, I reach down and touch his hair. His gray eyes are wide, the pupils slightly dilated. He looks dazed—but when my thumb brushes his forehead, he groans softly.
“Hey there…let me—”
“Go,” he mumbles.
“What?” My heart is beating so hard that I feel faint, but Landon doesn’t need to know. I use my softest voice when I say, “I’ve gotta check you.”
“No…you don’t.” His teeth grit as his face twists. “Please go.”
“You want me to go?”
He groans again, and when his eyes squeeze shut, a tear slips down his temple.
My heart shatters.
“I can’t go yet. Just tell me what hurts. Don’t talk to me like Evie, okay? Just let me check you like a doctor. When I know for sure about you after CT, I’ll shoot you full of morphine. Okay?” I stroke his hair again, and Landon’s lips form a tight line.
“I’m going to touch your chest,” I whisper. Most of the bruising is in a certain area. I hold my breath as I run the pads of my fingers over it. Landon grunts.
I shake my head as tears obscure my vision. “I’m so sorry.”
Just as I get ready to step back and make a more urgent call for CT, he grabs me by the shoulders, pulling me down on him as he starts trembling. “Evie…”
“God.” I stroke the only clean spot I see, near his neck, and Landon’s hand squeezes my shoulders.
I wet a cloth and wipe his face around the oxygen mask. He’s pale under the blood. As I clean him off, his eyes hold mine, and he continues trembling. I’m so intent on his
face, I don’t even notice his BP until the monitor starts dinging. He’s at 80 over 40.
Shit!
I rush to push some Levophed into his IV and call for ICU. Fuck it—I’m not holding out for the CT. I want the urgent team.
In the seconds between my call and their arrival, I lean over Landon, pressing my lips to his forehead as a single sob slips out. “I’m so, so sorry.”
His hand grips my shoulder. As two nurses and the ICU chief burst into the room, his eyes roll and he says, “My legs.”
This is not real life.
Lee Peterson, one of the top attendings in the ICU, is not muttering about pneumothorax as he runs the portable CT over Landon’s supine body.
The images arrange themselves on the screen, and everyone talks at once until Peterson holds up a hand and tells the group, “We’ve got a minor pneumothorax from one of these cracked ribs. Hairline fracture of the clavicle, and most significant, a fracture of L1. Not looking too stable either. I’m going to page Billards,” he says as we lean in so we can see the images.
As I take in the pictures of Landon’s lower back, I feel like I might faint.
“Is Billards here?” I hear myself ask. He’s our most experienced neurosurgeon.
“He is,” Peterson says. He looks at me. “Did you hear what happened—to Jones? How bad was the wreck?”
Tears flood my eyes as I tell him I don’t know.
I’m such a liar. This is my fault. My fault. It’s because of me that Landon’s lying here straining to breathe, unable to move. His lower body has sensation, but it seems to be a little altered. If there’s pressure on his spinal cord…I wipe my eyes as I struggle to keep from sobbing.
Billards returns Peterson’s call, and Peterson steps into the corner with his phone pressed to his ear. “I’m no neuro guy,” I hear him say, “but L1 has an obvious fracture, and it doesn’t look stable to me at all.”
Blood roars in between my ears as I look over at Landon. At the mask on his face and the probes on his chest. I want to touch him…