Since You Happened by Holly Hall
Chapter 16
In the weeks that follow, I’m stuck in that space of wondering whether or not my life is a dream. I could chalk it up to early relationship excitement, but I think it’s a lot more than that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to go so far as to say that Landon is the man of my dreams—I would never think to combine those qualities to create the enigmatic man who has somehow made himself a space in the jigsaw puzzle that is my life—but the unexpectedness makes our relationship that much more exciting.
Landon grounds me in ways I need to be grounded. My thoughts are always on the go, drifting somewhere high above the city streets I walk daily, but he refocuses them on the here and now. He gives me something to look forward to almost every day, when much of my life before was spent so focused on trying to forget the past that I failed to notice a lot of wonderful things around me.
It isn’t all rainbows and puppies, though; some days are better than others. Some nights, Landon spends more time brooding than talking, and though I wish there were a window into his thoughts, I respect him enough to stay out of them. There’s a lot he still hasn’t shared with me, but I’m okay with that. I understand what it’s like to want to forget. And we share enough about our present days and future plans not to dwell on what’s happened in the past.
With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, Landon’s busier than ever. He’s set some lofty goals concerning the bookstore—he wants the proceeds to benefit three organizations per month during the holiday season instead of one—so he’s often working on ways to market his business so there will be plenty to go around. And that’s when he’s not shooting for the paper or editing his work.
As for me, no day at work is the same as the last. We have our quiet days—as quiet as an emergency room can be—addressing strange illnesses, breaks and sprains, foreign objects up the noses of small children, but sometimes we have a day like today where I doubt myself more than others and come home feeling like my body and spirit have both taken a beating.
I strip immediately, dumping my scrubs into the wash, and sit beneath the showerhead for what feels like an hour. It’s one of those days where I’m content to do nothing after my shift but pull on some pajamas and curl up on the couch with a bottle of wine.
No matter how broken down I feel, I don’t ever question whether I should remain in the field of nursing—I know for a fact that I could never quit—but there are some days that I carry around on my shoulders for a week. Then I have days where I’m rewarded with a simple “thank you,” or a sincere smile, and that somehow gets me through that slump and onto the next one.
The sound of my phone ringing pulls me from the depths of sleep, announcing a call coming in from one MR FARRAR. My voice is still thick when I answer, betraying the fact that I’m sleeping at seven p.m.
“Hey. You okay?” he immediately asks with concern.
“It was a long night.”
“Anything I can do?”
“I don’t think so.” I blow out a breath.
“Alright. Well I’ll come over anyway for my own selfish reasons.”
I nod, though he can’t see me. “Okay.”
After I hang up, I see that it’s not the first call I’ve received. My mother has called twice, and Landon called once before I answered. I toss my phone just out of reach onto the couch and switch on the TV.
Landon arrives after about twenty minutes, dressed in joggers and a long-sleeved workout shirt, and my eyes automatically drift to the backpack he’s carrying on his shoulder when he walks in. He holds up a brown paper bag with a wine bottle peeking out of the top and hands it over, pressing a kiss to my temple as I accept it.
I pull the bottle out, inspecting the label. “I think I’ll have to keep you.”
“I hope so,” he replies, taking his backpack to my bedroom.
“What’s with the bag?” I call after him while grabbing a couple of glasses. I hear some rummaging around before Landon reappears in only his joggers.
“Well, you sounded like you could use some cheering up. And I happen to be very, very good at that,” he says, stopping in front of me and kissing me softly on the lips. “I thought I could cheer you up all night. And maybe tomorrow. And who knows, maybe tomorrow night, if you’ll let me. It doesn’t make sense for me to go back and forth between here and my apartment.”
If I thought him bringing his work over was a big deal, I was sorely prepared for how I would feel when he brought a bag. With stuff in it. He wants to stay multiple nights. Even amidst my emotional fog, my mind registers how exciting this is. I guess even when you’re an adult, the novelty of a multi-night sleepover never quite wears off.
“I just came from the gym, though, so I need to shower. Want to join?”
I settle back against the counter, emitting a loaded sigh. My body feels wrung out like an old rag. I’m not sure my heart would be in it, even though that thought sounds half-insane as I stand here taking him in—lean muscles and all.
“Tonight isn’t good for me,” I finally say, and his eyes soften when he steps closer.
“I’m going to shower so you won’t smell me when I cuddle the shit out of you later. Then you can tell me about it.” He draws me closer by the shoulders and places a kiss right in between my eyes.
“Okay,” I whisper.
I settle onto the couch with my glass tucked into my chest, listening as the stream of the showerhead kicks on and off, cutting through the silence. When Landon finally emerges, I can smell my soap on his skin again when he sits beside me and tucks me into his side.
“Rough day at work?” he murmurs. I don’t look at him, but I can feel his chin move against my head when he speaks.
“Yeah. We lost someone last night.” When I finally say the words, they sound strangely disconnected, like they’re not really my own.
The ache in my chest grows. I don’t often share my work stories with anyone, unless you count the occurrences that are more strange than sad, like the man who punched me. But this story is one that makes me lose faith in humanity and fills my heart with a hatred I know doesn’t belong. It feels unbearably heavy keeping it to myself.
Landon’s silence tells me to go on when I’m ready.
“A mother and her daughter got hit by a car. Apparently, it was the husband who did it. On purpose. The little girl was taken to the children’s hospital. The mother died soon after she arrived.” I take a shaky breath. “In a hospital room somewhere, in the next few days, that little girl will be told that her mother is dead and her father is a murderer.”
I release a sigh and imagine all the hate leaving my heart with it. I don’t feel any better, but I do feel as if the weight on my shoulders has been somewhat lessened, shared between us now. Whether it’s because of the emotional awareness I sense in him, or because he just seems to be a really good listener, I’m not sure.
“I’m sorry,” he finally says, his voice genuine. “My mom always told me it takes the bravest of people to work the jobs that require them to witness loss more often than others. Whether it be a first responder, a doctor, a nurse . . . maybe that’s why I never considered those careers. I could never do what you do, Blake. But I’m sure each and every person you come into contact with in that hospital is thankful because of it.”
I swallow, though my throat feels thick and clumsy. I won’t cry.
“Do you ever consider leaving?”
I shake my head, almost automatically at first, then more purposefully as I consider something so impossible. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. “I could never leave. Even after the longest nights, the people we lose, the Doctor Jakes we come into contact with. I would never be satisfied with doing anything else.”
His hands grasp mine and he lifts them to his mouth, spreading kisses over my fingers and palms. “These hands work miracles, Blake. I’m lucky just to be able to hold them.”
I duck my head into Landon’s chest, and when he lays down, he pulls me with him so I can curl up against him. Even in this dark moment, he makes me see possibility. He makes me turn my thoughts to the future instead of dwelling on the past and slogging through the present. He makes me consider all the wonderful things that could come if we just hold onto whatever it is that we’ve found. That prospect fills me with both exhilaration and fear, but I’m not sure which is more prevalent. Right now, they both seem to occupy equal amounts of space inside me.
There’s only one thing remaining that holds me back from falling completely: it’s knowing that the people who make you feel amazing things can decide to stop just as quickly. And if you have relied at all on those people for any length of time, they leave a black hole behind in their absence, and it’s hard as hell to climb out of.
Landon is not a sure thing. No one can tell me how long I can expect him to stick around. But he’s here. And right now, that’s all I can ask for.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I whisper, my head nestled in the crook of his neck.
“Me too,” he responds quietly.
A little while later, my phone begins to vibrate insistently on the coffee table. I don’t move, but I feel Landon crane his neck to peer at the screen.
“Your mom,” he says.
I consider letting it go on to voicemail before I remember she called twice before. If I don’t pick up soon, her calling the police and reporting me as a missing person would not be far from the realm of possibility. I answer just before my automated message does.
“Hey honey! I’m not bothering you, am I? I thought, with it being a Thursday night, you wouldn’t have big plans. I guess I was wrong.”
“No, Mom, I don’t have big plans.” I scrape together my emotions, which have been scattered in the past twenty-four hours, and roll my eyes at Landon, who steals my glass of wine and takes a gulp. “I was just resting up after work. What’s going on?”
“Oh, not a whole lot. Your dad’s just been in and out, working on little projects around the house all day. I think he’s been to Home Depot three times. He wants to get the back porch ready for Thanksgiving. You’re still coming home for Thanksgiving, right?”
With everything that’s gone on lately, it’s slipped my mind that Thanksgiving is only a week away.
“Of course I’m still coming.” I steal my glass back from Landon and take a swig.
“Okay, I was just checking,” she says in a forced, high voice, as if she’s trying to make it clear that I’ve somehow inconvenienced her by not reassuring her about this sooner. “I want to get everything from the store before it gets too crazy. You know how it is around here—everyone going all at once and clogging up the checkout lanes.”
“I think it’s that way everywhere, Mom.”
“Well, I refuse to take part in it. I’m already almost done with my Christmas shopping. Maybe while you’re here, you can help pick out something for your cousins. Anyway, oh . . . what was I getting at?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Oh yeah. Would you rather I make pumpkin pie or cherry?”
I scowl into the phone. “Well, if I have to pick one, then pumpkin.” Landon is still watching my side of our conversation, but he’s wearing an amused, smug look on his face now.
“I guess I could make both if you’d rather have both.”
“Pumpkin is fine, Mom.”
“Alright. If you want cherry, maybe you could pick one up on the way. Just try to go ahead of time. Those lines are horrendous.”
“Will do.”
“Do you have company? Do I need to let you go?”
“No, you don’t have to let me go.” I imitate a sigh to hint to Landon that this conversation probably won’t be ending anytime soon. It would even be prolonged if I so much as hinted at having male company.
“Well, alright. Work going okay?”
“Same as always,” I respond, biting my lip.
“Alright. Don’t let them work you too hard. I know how they take advantage of you nurses. It should be a crime to leave hospitals so understaffed.”
“It should.”
“Alright, well, I’ll see you next week. If you remember anything you want for dinner, just let me know. Try to tell me in advance, though.
“I will—those horrendous lines and all. Love you, Mom.”
“Okay. Love you. Tell Haley I said hi.”
“I will. I’m sure she’ll say hi back. Love you.”
“Alright, bye!”
When I finally hang up and toss my phone back onto the table, Landon is still looking at me amusedly.
“What?”
“Your mom sounds fun,” he says, taking another sip from my glass.
“I’m not sure ‘fun’ is as accurate as exhausting.”
“I love it.”
“I’m glad you do. Are you going home for Thanksgiving?” The possibility of taking him home for the holidays hasn’t even entered my mind before now. Our relationship definitely isn’t there, yet, though it’s often strayed far from the path of what’s considered normal. My mother would probably gawk at him over the dinner table and send me secret messages behind his back, gesturing toward my left ring finger. Dad would just ask me how long I plan on keeping him.
“Probably. My mom would think it was poor manners if I didn’t.”
When we’ve drained my glass, I go to the kitchen to get the rest of the bottle. I divvy it up between us and settle back onto the couch.
“If you had to describe your mom in one word, what would it be?” The topic of parents hasn’t really been brought up yet; only when he told me how his dad inspired his love of photography. Now, after that particularly invigorating conversation with my mother, I’m curious.
“Meddlesome.”
“In what way?” After all, there can be harmless curiosity, and there can be meddlesome in the “I set you up with the stranger I met in the grocery store line” kind of way. Sadly, my mother has done that to me. Multiple times.
“She asks me about any women I’m seeing on a weekly basis and tries to set me up with her friends’ daughters when I tell her I’m not dating anyone. My mom is active in the community, so she has a lot of friends. And her friends have a lot of daughters.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “It must be so difficult being you, having all those girls thrown your way.”
He throws his hands up in the air exasperatedly. “It is. They’re those debutante types. All teased hair and insecurities.”
I conjure an image of a smiling beauty queen up in my mind, still not believing his predicament is nearly as bad as he says it is.
“Anyway, I’m sure she’s on the verge of submitting me to one of those reality TV dating shows.”
“Love watching them. Not so sure about participating,” I say with a sip.
“Same. About the participating. I don’t watch them,” he says. “Now describe your mom in just one word.”
“Motherly,” I answer immediately.
“That’s basically cheating,” he responds, deadpan.
“It’s not if you knew her. She finds it extremely difficult to accept that I’m an adult who successfully navigates the world every day on my own. I think she’d welcome me back home with open arms if I told her I up and quit my job and decided the adult life wasn’t for me.”
“I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty funny imagining you curled up at home on Little Mermaid sheets.” I go to swat his arm, but he catches my wrist and pulls me back onto his chest.
“Are you going to tell your mom about me?” he asks, after a minute or so of companionable silence.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I answer, purposefully being difficult. In any case, she would probably get too worked up about the fact that I have an almost-boyfriend to focus on any of the other relatives’ news. I don’t want to get her hopes up, placing daydreams of grandchildren back into her mind only to crush them again. She thought Sam was “the one.” He definitely wasn’t.
“Come on. Give your mom something to talk to the fellow customers about at the grocery store. Those lines will be long enough.”
“Then you’ll have to tell your mom. If you don’t want to be the next Bachelor.”
“Good point.”
“The debutantes will be devastated.”
We lie together on the couch almost all night, and at some point, between the discussion about our family and the joking around, the stress from the day begins to ebb away. I won’t be able to forget that woman’s face, or the thought of her daughter left without her mother and father, but after talking with Landon and reaffirming my passion for my job, it makes it easier to imagine walking into the hospital on Monday with the confidence I’ll need to help those who need to be helped.