Even my mother’s death during my senior year of high school didn’t stop my forward momentum. I’d finally run out of ideas and she’d finally stopped giving a shit about herself. I was never under any kind of illusion that she cared about me. I was just another body who shared her living space and pissed her off when I dragged her out of her sweat and puke stained sheets. I wasn’t even surprised when I came home that day in January to find her sprawled in the middle of the living room, her lips blue, her skin cold to the touch and the empty syringe still stuck in her arm. What surprised me was the fact that it hadn’t happened sooner. Every single day of my life, I walked through that front door prepared for the inevitable. Once again, I didn’t break down and cry for the mother I’d never had; I called an ambulance, got to work cleaning up the urine and feces left behind on the living room carpet and said a prayer of gratitude that my mother waited until I was eighteen to take that final, deadly hit of heroin. There would be no foster care or shitty group home for me, thank God. I was an adult who’d been taking care of myself my entire life, so her absence didn’t even make a dent in my daily routine.
With no one to take care of, the loss of my mother did leave me with way too much time on my hands, though. My life’s purpose was gone and those final months of high school loomed in front of me like a death sentence. When my guidance counselor pulled me into her office the Monday after her death to offer her sympathy and comfort over my loss, I cut her off and asked her if I could graduate early. I had enough credits, I had the grades and there was a full nursing scholarship waiting for me, all I lacked was her permission to take my finals six months early. I was ready to leave that shitty apartment and all of its memories behind. I wanted to go to college and get started on my nursing degree sooner rather than later.
My counselor looked over my transcripts and gave her permission. Within a month, I’d managed to pack up my meager belongings, secure housing on campus along with a part-time waitressing job closer to school and sublet our apartment to a single mother with a five-year-old daughter. When I saw the track marks on the woman’s arms and the unfocused look in her eyes and as I handed over the keys, I looked at that child and hoped she wouldn’t burn her little hands the first time she had to make her own pot of Ramen noodles.
I’ve taken care of people for twenty-seven years. It’s what I know; it’s in my blood. Having my nursing license almost taken away from me was like someone cut off one of my limbs. I don’t know how to do anything else. I don’t WANT to do anything else. Even though I was initially adamant in my refusal to work with Cole, I knew I would do it. No matter how much pent up anger and sadness I had inside of me, I would never turn down the opportunity to help someone. Taking care of someone you love is a hell of a lot different than taking care of a stranger. You want what’s best for all of your patients, but when your heart is involved, it turns into an obsession. It happened when I took care of Parker a few years ago and it’s happening now with Cole. Working in the ICU, you see plenty of people come in who never regain that spark of life. No matter what you do, no matter what miracles modern medicine can provide, they just didn’t have the will to go on. It hurts and there are moments you feel like you failed them, but there’s always someone new coming in to switch your focus to. The ICU is a revolving door of people afflicted with every malady you can think of. These people come and go and you move on to try and do something different, better and more effective for the next person.
With someone you love, that’s not an option. They are a part of your life, your heart and your soul. If they don’t make it, if they don’t thrive with the help you give them, you yourself might as well die.
It never really bothered me that I didn’t have a family of my own. How can you miss something you never had? How can you dream about something, crave something you know nothing about? I put myself through nursing school, I got a good job, bought my own home, dated men who I never even considered settling down with… and then I met Cole. I packed up my life once again and left DC for good to be with him. He was everything I never knew I wanted. He represented stability and comfort and, for once in my life, I had someone taking care of me. We built a life together, we made plans for the future and I pictured myself being welcomed into his family. I dreamed about having a mother figure who would fuss over me, go shopping with me and give me the love I never had from my own mother. I thought about having a father for the first time in my life, someone who would be firm yet kind and dole out advice. Even after meeting his parents and realizing my childish dreams would never come to light, I still felt complete because I had Cole. He filled an empty space inside me that no parental substitute could ever match. Cole was everything to me and, as long as it didn’t bother him that his family didn’t welcome me with open arms, I wasn’t going to let it affect me. Even now, after I finally understand why he left, there’s still a giant, gaping hole in my heart that not even the truth can fill.
As I sit here under the covers with Cole’s medical records on my lap, I realize that I might not be able to save him and that scares the shit out of me. Not only does he have a shattered knee that he may never be able to fully use again no matter what kind of physical therapy I torture him with, his mind and his memories are filled with nightmares and horrors that I’m not sure anyone can heal. Despite the lies I told myself while he was gone, I know I never stopped loving him. He’s owned my whole heart from the first moment I saw him and when he left, he took it with him. Coming back to me and finally sharing those missing pieces of his life was like giving me back a piece of myself. I never thought loving Cole would be dangerous. How could something that came so easily and so naturally hurt so much? I’m finding it hard to stay angry with him now that I understand exactly why he went on that mission, but his leaving was the catalyst for everything that went wrong in my life.
I can’t hold him completely responsible for what I suffered when so much of it was my own doing, but I know it wouldn’t have happened had he been with me. If he’d just explained things to me beforehand instead of walking away, I would have had something to hold on to, something to keep me strong when Vivien tried to tear it all away from me. Leaving me alone and vulnerable created the perfect opening for Vivien to swoop in and sink her claws into my life. In the end, loving Cole brought me nothing but pain, but how the hell do I keep my heart closed off from him now? The walls I so carefully built started crumbling the moment I heard his voice again. The sound of my name on his lips put the first crack in my armor and every second I’ve spent with him since has made it spread. Six weeks of physical therapy and what, I’m supposed to just walk away when it’s done? It would be fitting payback considering that’s exactly what he did to me, but that’s not who I am. I’m not a vindictive, mean person. I can tell he wants me back, wants our life back exactly the way it was, but he doesn’t understand that won’t ever be possible. I am not the woman he left a year ago; life has broken me beyond repair. I suspect he’ll change his tune about wanting to pick up where we left off once I tell him what happened while he was gone. Maybe that’s exactly how it needs to be. If I tell him, he’ll walk away on his own and I won’t have to.
After everything he’s been through, a part of me doesn’t want to burden him with my secrets. How much can one man take before he finally breaks? I know I need to tell him about his mother. I know I need to tell him about the baby. Listening to him tell me about Jared and how much it killed him, knowing that his friend would never experience anything with his unborn baby, I know Cole will be devastated learning about his own child. He’ll hate his parents, he’ll hate me and all of that love and trust I see shining in his eyes when he looks at me will disappear.
Cole wants answers. He deserves answers after sharing so much of himself with me. He’s a proud man and I know it’s killing him to rely on crutches and other people to get around. Even if I don’t have the power to heal his knee, I can do everything I can, use everything I’ve learned to make him realize that he’s still the
same strong, amazing man I’ve always known. I’ll prove to him that walking with a limp doesn’t make him less of a man. I’ll build him up as high as I can and hope that what I have to tell him doesn’t make him crumble.
The truth shall set you free, right? Unfortunately, my truth, when it’s finally revealed, will do nothing but lock me away in a prison of my own making.
“DID YOU JUST growl at me? Don’t make me put you back on the treadmill for another game of catch.”
I half glare, half smile over at Olivia as she puts her hands on her hips and taps her foot. She’s so fucking cute standing there, cracking the whip over me that it’s impossible for me to be angry. She’s wearing my favorite pale blue scrubs with her hair back in its usual ponytail and all I can think about is pulling that rubber band out and watching her hair spill around her face.
She wasn’t kidding when she told me that she got a sick thrill out of torturing her patients. She smiled sweetly at me as I shouted and cursed my way through a session on the treadmill, tossing a medicine ball at me so I couldn’t use the handrails. Now, she’s got me seated on a stool with wheels, making me push and pull myself all around the room using only the muscles in my legs. I have sweat dripping down my face and back and it feels like someone is stabbing my knee with a Goddamn knife.
Thinking back to what I went through during BUD/S SEAL Training, I feel like the biggest pussy in the world that this piddly shit is close to breaking me. During ‘Hell Week,’ the third week of basic conditioning in BUD/S, the largest number of trainees drop out. It consists of 5 ½ days of cold, wet, brutal training on fewer than four hours of sleep. Running, swimming, paddling, carrying boats on your head, sit-ups, push-ups, rolling in the sand and slogging through mud leaves you soaking wet and chilled to the bone. Constantly covered in itchy fucking sand that chafes your skin raw, the ocean wind cuts through you while the saltwater burns every tiny cut on your body. I made it through that week without a whimper or complaint. One hour with Olivia in the gym and I want to cry like a fucking baby. She’s got me doing my therapy in the gym located in her housing complex. When we lived together, I worked out in this room every day and then I went home to her. I’m trying not to think about how I’ll be leaving here when we’re done and going back to the guesthouse alone, instead of walking two blocks to the house we shared.
“You’re doing great,” Olivia encourages me as I grunt with the effort of pulling myself towards her. “I had a guy who had a hip replacement quit after fifteen minutes.”
I pause, looking up at her. “Hip replacement? What was he, like eighty?”
“Seventy-four, but still. You’re doing much better than him.”
She gives me a cheeky smile and I keep my growl in check this time.
Wonderful. I’m doing better than fake-hip-grandpa.
Instead of thinking about how out of shape I am, I focus on my family, using the anger I feel towards them to motivate me. When Olivia left the other day, I immediately got in my car and headed over to the main house. As my shitty luck would have it, my mother was out of town visiting my father at some fancy golf resort. Conveniently, all of my calls, voicemails and texts have gone unanswered. I’ve only seen my father once since I’ve been back and it wasn’t the happiest of reunions, so I’m not exactly rushing to give him a call. I was a little shocked to find out he’d retired from his position as Chief of Staff for UC San Diego Health System while I’d been away. I thought for sure my father would be one of those men who continued working until someone found him slumped over his desk from a heart attack. My father is most definitely not a quitter and his retirement at such a young age stinks of something foul. My mother, of course, brushed off my concerns, saying he was overworked and ready to relax and enjoy his family and the next phase of his life.
Bullshit.
My father had fifty-plus years to enjoy his family and he never once took the opportunity. What the hell would make him do so now, when Caroline and I are both adults and have our own lives? Trying to maintain a relationship with my father has always been strange and difficult. He left the child-rearing to my mother and the nannies she hired to keep us out of her hair and his standard reply our questions was always “Go ask your mother.” He never seemed to care one way or another what happened with Caroline and I, constantly adopting my mother’s opinions about what we should do with our lives. He always seemed inaccessible, sequestered away in his study when he was at home, sitting behind a huge oak desk that made approaching him nerve racking. Every once in a while, I’d catch him staring at me with a softness in his eyes that confused me, but as soon as I opened my mouth to try and have a personal conversation with him, he’d turn and walk away. It was almost like he was afraid to show any sort of weakness where his children were concerned, me in particular. I assumed it had something to do with the fact that I never conformed to the lifestyle he wanted me to lead, entering the military right out of high school instead of taking on his legacy of running UC San Diego’s medical center.
Every so often, Caroline was able to get him to let down his walls. I used to wonder if he was closer to her because she was adopted and he felt like he owed her something more, but I was never jealous of the relationship he shared with Caroline. I was happy that she had someone on her side since my mother seemed to be opposed to everything she said and did.
I’m curious about why my father left town as soon as I got back. Is he still pissed about the choices I made? Or does he have information about what happened with Olivia that my mother doesn’t want me to know? It’s absurd to think my mother would be able to control anything my father did, but I’ve seen her in action. I’ve witnessed her cutting him off mid-sentence and redirecting his words so they matched hers.
“What’s going on in that head of yours, Cole?”
My body jerks at the sound of Olivia’s soft voice. I continue pushing my feet across the carpet, voicing my thoughts out loud to take my mind off of the pain in my knee.
“Just thinking about my fucked up family. You know, we used to do these asinine Sunday dinners every weekend when my parents were in town. They were these stuffy, boring affairs where Caroline’s main goal was to make my mother scream in frustration and mine was to stay as quiet as possible so she wouldn’t tell me for the hundredth time that I was pissing my life away by joining the Navy.”
Olivia remains silent, sitting down on the edge of a weight bench while I continue moving in circles around the room.
“The day before I left for basic training, my dad told me that it took a really strong man to leave everything behind and go off to make his own future. It was the closest thing to a compliment he’d ever given me. My mother shot him a dirty look and made some snarky comment about his legacy at the hospital and my dad immediately changed his tune, telling me I was throwing everything away for a career that would never pay off. That’s how it always was between them. It’s like my dad wasn’t allowed to have his own opinions. I always thought my dad was the one who made all the decisions, but really, it was my mother. She can’t handle not being in charge of everything, not knowing every single detail about everyone and using it to her advantage.”
I stop moving and glance over at Olivia. She’s got her hands clasped in her lap, squeezing them so tightly that I wonder if she’s going to cut off her circulation.
“This is where you tell me that my parents only did what they thought was best for me because they love me,” I tell her with a laugh.
“I’m pretty sure you’ll never hear those words out of my mouth. Aside from the fact that your parents never liked me, I didn’t really have the best parental role model growing up, so I don’t see much truth in that statement.”
Shit. I’m such an asshole.
“Fuck, Liv. I’m sorry. I have no right to complain about anything.”
I knew all about Olivia’s mother and how she’d been forced to grow up long before she was ready. At least I had parents, as fucked up as they were. Olivia had no one.
&n
bsp; She unclasps her hands and rubs her palms across the top of her thighs, giving me a shrug. “Cole, it’s fine. My only regret is that I never got to experience what it was like to have a real family. It’s not your fault that your parents couldn’t accept me.”
“It is my fault. I should have pushed harder. Made them understand. Made them see what I did—that you’re worth more than all of us combined. At the first sign of their disapproval, I walked away and gave up trying because it was easier than fighting with them. I spent all my life fighting for things I wanted and it was exhausting. I didn’t care what they thought and I still don’t, but I should have fought harder for you. You were always worth the fight, Liv.”
She gives me a sad smile.
“So were you,” she whispers so softly that I almost didn’t hear it.
“You don’t have to fight for me. I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
The distrust I see in her eyes guts me. I made that promise to her once before and I blew it.
“That might change when your parents find out I’m helping you. Your mom… let’s just say she’s very protective of you. There’s no way she’s going to let me stick around and finish the job.”
A flash of anger washes over her face when she mentions my mother and it solidifies my theory that she was responsible for Olivia losing her job at the hospital.