The fact that I spent the entire train ride scouring the internet for kidney diseases, scaring myself with increasingly horrific medical scenarios, surely has not helped.
In reality, it’s been three and a half hours since she called. The hospital staff signs me in as a visitor, and I find the room where she’s staying.
She looks up as I come in. “Oh, thank god. My cell phone died thirty minutes ago.”
I give her a dirty look and a hug designed not to disturb her IV. “Here.” I plug the charger into the wall for her and hand her the business end. “Let me read your chart.”
“Did you suddenly become a doctor?”
“WebMD,” I say curtly. “I want to know what’s wrong.”
I look for the chart. I’m expecting some kind of unintelligible chicken scratch handwriting on a clipboard. Instead, there’s a computer in the corner of the room. I try to wake it up, but it’s password protected.
“TV medical dramas have been telling me lies,” I announce to the room at large.
“Or you could ask me.”
“Fine.” I pull up a chair and sit next to her. “What’s going on, Nana?”
“Some kind of kidney infection that I can’t pronounce.”
“Pyelonephritis,” I guess.
She snaps her fingers. “Yes. That sounds right. I’ll be fine once the antibiotics run their course. I’m only here because the infection also makes me vomit, and I can’t keep their stupid pills down. I just need a couple days on a drip IV and I’ll be fine.”
I look over at her. “Promise me there won’t be any complications.”
“Maria. You know I can’t promise that. But the internist did say it was unlikely.”
“Fine.” I swallow panic. “Okay. Sure.”
“Maria,” she says more gently, “you know you’re not really mad at me, right?”
I look into her eyes for the first time since I’ve arrived. She’s watching me carefully, probably as aware as I am that I’m panicking for very little reason.
People are allowed to have minor health scares. People get sick. It’s okay. She’s not going anywhere.
I reach out and take her hand. Her skin is a little looser than mine over the knuckles, but she’s still strong. I let out a breath, and try to release all the stupid medical knowledge I acquired on the way in as I exhale.
“I know,” I say. “I’m such a basket case about these things.”
“No,” Nana says. “You’re my strong girl.”
We sit without saying anything. I try to shove my feelings into an appropriate channel.
“Hey.” She interrupts me. “Stop blaming yourself.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were. You were telling yourself that you were a bad grandchild because you were making this about you, when I’m the one in the hospital.”
I look back at her. Fine. I was.
“Tell me what you were doing while I was on trial.”
I exhale again. “I seem to have acquired a boyfriend.”
“Does he have a name?”
“Jay. Jay na Thalang.” I swallow. “He knows Gabe from Harvard. He’s a professor at Berkeley.”
“Hmmm,” she says.
“He’s not in the country right now,” I tell her. “He has a conference in Melbourne. And I’m kind of ridiculously glad he’s not here for this.”
“Why? Because you’re afraid of how he’ll react if he knows you occasionally freak out?”
I already know how Jay would react to that. He’s witnessed it. I shake my head. I’m not entirely sure why I don’t want him around.
“It would be weird,” I say instead.
She doesn’t say anything.
“It would be weird,” I say, “to…you know. Lean on him. We haven’t been together that long. It would be weird if I could trust him with something like this so soon.”
“Weird,” she repeats.
I know how ridiculous I sound. “Weird,” I affirm. “It’s better that he’s not here.”
And because she knows me, she doesn’t push.
I walk out of her room forty-five minutes later, when a nurse gently suggests that visiting hours will be over soon and maybe my grandmother needs to rest.
Nana rolls her eyes at the suggestion that she may be human, but I leave.
It’s been good to talk to her. I’m feeling better. Less anxious, and the damned medical diagnoses I had rattling around in my brain have finally quieted down.
I make my way out past the check-in desk.
As I do, I hear my name. “Maria.”
My heart stands still for one moment, then it thumps, hard and fast. I turn around.
Jay is sitting in a plastic bucket seat. He has his laptop out. There’s a blue plastic bag on the seat next to him.
My mind isn’t working properly. I can’t explain his presence. He’s on a plane to Australia. It is not possible that he would be here.
“Jay?”
He shuts his laptop and slides it into his bag. “Hi.”
It is apparently possible that he is here. I wrinkle my nose suspiciously. “How are you here?”
“Gabe texted me when I was still in LAX.” He says this like it’s some kind of explanation for his presence. It still doesn’t make sense.
I try again. “Why are you here?”
He shrugs. “Your grandmother was in the hospital. Gabe was in Switzerland. Someone had to bring you soup.” He gestures to the blue plastic bag. “I hope you like Korean.”
I love Korean.
I try again. “But you were on your way to a conference.”
“It’s at the end of the week. I moved my flight back a couple of days.”
“But you were going to spend time with your co-author.”
“I called Vithika and explained. She said it could wait.”
“But why would you?”
“Seriously, Em?” He looks at me and I know the answer. I know the reason that I didn’t want him here. I wasn’t afraid that he would blame me or make fun of my anxieties. I wasn’t even afraid of leaning on him.
I was afraid he would understand without my telling him.
“Come on,” he says. “There’s a cafeteria down the hall. Let me buy you a Coke and feed you dinner.”
“But…you…” I trail off helplessly. “You’re here.”
“It’s just work,” he says. “Don’t worry. It’s not going anywhere.”
“But…” I trail off uselessly.
He gives me a half smile. “Come on, Maria. Have some soup.”
* * *
I let him feed me soup.
He was right about the Coke, too; I’d skipped dinner. Stress and low blood sugar, it turns out, really do not mix. It feels weird to let someone take care of me.
It feels weird that my grandmother’s in the hospital, but it’s only a minor thing. It feels weird that Jay would move his flight, lose time with someone he’s doing research with. I don’t have a better word for how it feels than weird. Unnatural.
He calls an Uber as we head out. We nestle together in the backseat, holding hands. I almost don’t feel present in my own body.
The lights on the Bay Bridge strobe through the car windows, on and off. We’re sitting thigh to thigh, my hand in his.
“What are you thinking?”
“Just how lucky I am. That this wasn’t worse. That I have you.”
All this luck is scaring me. Flip a coin, and have it come up heads, and it’s no big deal. Flip it again, and heads still isn’t a surprise. If you see Washington’s profile nineteen times in a row, though…something’s wrong with you. Or something’s wrong with the quarter. Luck is lovely, until it keeps going and going and going. Until all you can do is hold your breath, waiting for it to run out.
Jay shrugs. “You’re not lucky. This is just what life is like. Most of the time, it’s not that bad.”
I shake my head. He catches the movement, even though we are in a dark patch. He doesn’t say any
thing, but he rearranges our fingers and squeezes my hand more tightly.
He doesn’t speak again until we’re in Oakland on the other side of the Bay. “I saw your job spreadsheet the other day. When you handed me your computer.”
I look at him. My chest goes cold first, then my arms. I feel like ice all over. So. He saw that I have a job offer in New York. He knows I didn’t tell him about it. I glance at our driver, who has been thankfully silent.
“This probably isn’t the place to have this conversation,” I say.
“Why?” I can’t see his face.
I wish we were texting. Here in the dark, with my feelings wrapped around my throat, I can’t tell if he’s sarcastic. His voice gives me no clues.
His hand squeezes mine, hard. “Look. Maybe this isn’t the right time for us. Maybe you need to go across the country. I looked up the company. They seem interesting.”
Oh. My whole body feels light. That’s why this is happening. He’s breaking up with me. Finally something that makes sense.
“Maybe this isn’t the right time for us,” he says with a little more conviction, “but I’m pretty sure I just tipped my hand. You’re the right person for me.”
I blink. I turn to him. It takes me a moment to understand that he is not, in fact, breaking up with me. It takes me so long, in fact, that he keeps going.
“I don’t know what this means, except that I’m all in. If you move across the country and I only get to see you four times a year, I’m still all in. If you go to New York and want to call it quits, I’m—”
He pauses. I can see his lip curl in a thin shaft of passing light.
“No. I’m not really into that. I’m too selfish for that. But I’ll understand.”
This is the point where a response of some kind is socially expected. The only word that comes to mind right now, though, is, “Oh.”
Which has to be the worst response I could possibly give at the moment. It’s a shitty response. Such a shitty response. I know it, and he knows it.
He exhales. “Fine. You don’t want to talk about that. How about this? Your grandmother went to the hospital and you didn’t even text me.”
I shake my head. “You were on a plane.”
“You didn’t text me.”
“It wasn’t serious.”
“Maria, don’t tell me it wasn’t serious to you. I know what she means to you and how much it would scare you to have her in the hospital. You didn’t text me.”
“I didn’t want to bother you. I don’t want to ask you for things.”
He gives his head a short, sharp shake. “I’m serious about you, Maria. And I know you’re not there yet, and I know this is shitty timing. But I want you to have expectations of me. I want you to ask me for things. I need you to believe that I can be enough.”
I exhale. I can almost hear the echo of the words I sent him months ago. Your boundaries are hurting me. I can see that now. I’m hurting him, and I don’t know what to do about it.
I use my one word again. “Oh.”
Maybe he hears the shake in my voice, because he reaches out and touches my face.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Shitty timing.”
It’s not okay. The car exits the freeway, and I’m still stunned.
I remember this time our childhood cat caught a crow. It landed in our front yard, and the cat didn’t hesitate. He jumped on it. Crows are massive, but the surprise attack knocked it out, and the cat trotted it into the house. Where it proceeded to come to life and wreak havoc.
Jay can say that it’s okay, but saying it doesn’t make it so. If someone says “I love you,” there’s pressure. And I don’t know what says I love you more loudly than rescheduling a transpacific flight just to bring me soup, and telling me I should be able to expect that from him.
I don’t know how to expect that kind of care. I just understand that he needs me to expect it—just the way I need to go hide right now. Jay just attached a clock to our relationship. I can almost feel it ticking in time with my heart as the driver pulls alongside the curb of my house.
I don’t ask Jay in. I don’t ask him to spend the night. He changed a transcontinental flight for me, brought me soup, and told me he loved me. I should be delighted. Instead, I can’t feel my own emotions. Just the vise grip of something fierce and relentless crushing my chest.
The best I can manage to say to him, as I exit the vehicle, is this: “Thanks.”
He looks at me. He nods. This is the point where I should say something. Anything.
Instead, I don’t let myself look back. I escape into the house.
26
MARIA
“Hey.” Tina is still awake and up, waiting for me in the kitchen when I arrive. “How are you? How’s your grandmother?”
“Fine.” I can hardly manage eye contact at this stage. “It’s just a minor kidney infection. She’s going to be fine.”
“Oh, good.”
I stand at the edge of the kitchen, not wanting to engage in conversation. My room is downstairs. I want to go hide.
Tina frowns at me. “Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t look okay.”
“Fine.”
“You’ve used that word three times.”
I look over at her. She’s watching me closely.
“Honestly,” Tina says, “you don’t look like anything like okay.” She comes over to me and picks up my hand. My pulse is a rapid, staccato beat against her forefinger. “You look like you’re in shock.”
Huh. I consider this. My thoughts move at sloth speed.
“Come on. You’re freezing.” She pulls me into the living room and finds a blanket throw. I curl into a little ball underneath. She disappears for a moment, long enough for me to Google “symptoms of shock” and decide that Tina is wrong.
She comes back with a pile of blankets and a cup of tea.
“Look,” I say, holding up my phone. “I’m not in shock. WebMD says so. Without any kind of trauma—”
She waves my phone away. “It’s a figure of speech, not a medical diagnosis, genius. Come on. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Nothing’s wrong. That’s the problem. Nothing is wrong, and the thing about climbing to the top of the mountain is that it leaves you feeling exposed. Open. There’s no protective tree cover, nothing between you and the sky.
Nothing is wrong. And so instead of telling her about Jay, I tell her about another thing that is actually wrong.
“Anj wants me to go to her costume party dressed as a shark.”
Tina frowns. She looks at me. The best word I have to describe her is nonplussed.
“I don’t want to go dressed as a shark.” I’m aware that I am whining. “I hate her shark. Hate it. And if I don’t show up with fins, she’ll ask me why and I’ll have to tell her.”
“So. What if you tell her?”
I wring my hands.
Tina hands me the tea. “It’s okay to tell people when you’re upset.”
“Fine,” I snap out. “I don’t want to be roommates next year.”
She pauses. She looks at me again.
“You and Blake are together. Really together, and it looks like that’s not changing. Adam Reynolds shows up at random intervals. I just feel…weird, like I don’t even belong in here, and I hate feeling like I don’t belong in my own living space.”
Tina blows out a slow breath and hugs her knees on the couch. I didn’t want to upset her.
I shake my head. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Why?” she asks. “You’d prefer not to say anything and just be miserable instead?”
“I wasn’t miserable. It’s more like a low-level discontent. A two-point-five on the misery scale. I can live with that.”
Tina looks at me. “But you don’t deserve a two-point-five on the misery scale. Why would you think I’d want you to live with that?”
I blink. I don’t answer. But deep down, I know the why. I just experience
d it with Jay. I’m afraid to expect care. I certainly don’t want to ask for it. I’m always afraid that one wrong move will disturb all the good things I’ve managed to find. Luck never lasts, and my friends are the luckiest part of my life. If I let them know what I need…
Maybe it won’t all end.
I exhale and choose my next words carefully. “Jay met me at the hospital.” It sounds like a non sequitur.
She blinks. Once. Then twice. “Isn’t he supposed to be in Australia?”
“Gabe texted him during his layover. He took a flight back.” My voice is trembling again. “His luggage is lost in limbo.”
“Okay.”
“He told me…” I almost can’t say the words. They aren’t bad; they’re great. “He told me he was all in on the relationship. On me. The only reason I think he didn’t say the l-word was because he could tell how much it was messing with my mind.”
Tina doesn’t say anything. How could she? You’re being a dramatic idiot is not the kind of thing a supportive friend ever says.
“It’s too soon,” I say. “We’ve been together for like, a month.”
“Kind of,” Tina says. “I mean, you two have been talking for…how long now?”
At this point, it’s been a little over two years. I wrinkle my nose.
“And you know,” Tina says, “even if it were true that you’d only been together for a month, it’s actually really believable to me that someone could fall for you in a month. You’re really great.”
I burrow into my blankets, hiding my face. “You’re just saying that because you’re my best friend.”
“You get your grandmother groceries when she’s on trial.” Tina holds up one finger. “You fix your brother’s PowerPoint slides. When I ruined my lucky sweater last year, you got it secretly dry-cleaned. You’re funny and you’re sweet and you care about the people you love so much. Anyone who doesn’t know you and love you is an asshole.”
I can feel my eyes stinging. A hint of hoarse congestion clogs my voice. “Shut up.”
“You’re all in for everyone else,” Tina says. “Always, all the time. I think you’re freaking out right now because the only person in your life you aren’t all in for is yourself.”