She looked me up and down suspiciously then picked up a phone and said something in a hushed tone. When she hung up the receiver, she leaned in toward the glass between us and said, “Dr. Meyers is in surgery at the moment.” She reached for a piece of paper and wrote the hospital phone number on it and handed it to me through the little hole. “You can call back during regular business hours and leave a message with his secretary if you’d like.” She spoke to me as if I were either a child or a crazy person.
“Okay.” I took the piece of paper and walked out of the sliding glass doors, staring at the paper in my hands in disbelief. Had she called him? I wondered. Did he tell her to say that to me? There was no way, I thought. I shuffled back to Nate’s truck, still freezing. I turned it on and cranked up the heater and then I cried, that pathetic type of crying like when you pee your pants in kindergarten and you’re filled with a mixture of shame and regret for holding it so long. Then, when everyone starts laughing at your wet jeans, you get angry and want to scream Screw all of you! After the kids stop laughing, you never want to see them again because you’re the only kindergartener who ever peed her pants on the story rug while Ms. Alexander read The Giving Tree for the twelfth time. Everyone else was sitting crisscross applesauce while you were fidgeting about, trying to hold it until the end of the story when the teacher asked what the moral was so you could say, “It’s about being generous to your friends,” even though, later in life, you learn the story is really about a selfish little bastard who sucked the life out of the only thing that gave a shit about him. But you never got the chance for your shining moment because you peed on the story rug, got laughed at, then cried pathetic tears.
Not that that happened to me . . .
I regretted following him out here and believing he cared for me the same way I cared for him. I honked the horn and revved the gas in anger, but no one was listening. I watched a helicopter land on the helipad above the hospital and wished briefly that it would land on top of me. That’s when the really pathetic tears started, the “I feel sorry for myself” tears—and there were plenty in Nate’s truck that night. I cranked up the heater even more, got the cab toasty warm, shut the engine down, and dozed off with snot on my face and sweater.
I woke to the early morning light blasting me through the front window. Squinting, I desperately tried to clean the crusted snot off my face with spit on the back of my wool sleeve, which might’ve been about as low as I’d felt in a long time. Dignity was quickly running away from me and I wasn’t chasing after her. The entrance to the hospital was now open. I walked through the glass doors, thinking hell hath no fury like a . . . well, you know the expression.
On the fourth floor, I found a group of doctors standing in a circle. Nate was in the bunch. I walked at a determined pace right up to him, handed his keys over, and said, “Gas is on empty and I didn’t have any money after paying for that eighty-eight-dollar bottle of wine you ordered. And by the way, I spent the night in the parking lot in your truck freezing my ass off so I’m gonna head home now.”
“Excuse me,” he mumbled to the other doctors before stepping out of the circle. “Ava,” he called to me as I walked away. “That man was on the transplant list. He’s getting a heart today. There’s a whole team here. My colleague, Olivia, flew in late last night to assist on this. It’s a huge deal . . . Ava!” he shouted.
I stopped and turned slowly to face him. My dignity was back and she was standing in the corner, demanding that I straighten my shoulders. So I did. “Okay,” I said. I was feeling defeated but I didn’t want him to see.
“Okay what?”
“You don’t have to explain anything. I just spent the night in a parking lot in your truck and I’m tired and I have no money. Can I borrow a few dollars to catch a bus back to the ranch?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”
“Where did you think I was?”
He pulled his wallet from his back pocket but paused before opening it then shook his head. “Why don’t you stay here for a bit and get some sleep? I’m sure I can find you a bed.”
“Where did you think I was?” I repeated.
Nate looked more exhausted than I felt. “Ava, I’m so sorry. I feel terrible about . . . about everything. I didn’t realize.”
“You said that but I want you to answer my question.”
“I was up all night in surgery. I wasn’t thinking.”
“About me?” It pained me to smile, but I did. Bitterly. “You weren’t thinking about me?”
“Are we fighting?”
“No.” I shook my head determinedly. “We’re not fighting. Don’t sweat it. You’re busy, I get it.” I looked down at the wallet he was still clutching in his hands. He saw where my eyes landed and opened it, pulling out three hundred dollar bills, and handed them over. I pinched one bill and pulled it from the stack. “This is humiliating,” I said. I swallowed and tried desperately to fight back the tears welling in my eyes. He reached up to smooth the hair from my face, but I stopped him and did it myself. “Somehow taking money from you like this, after following you here, after freezing and sleeping in your truck, feels more humiliating than being beaten by my husband.”