Eric borrowed his company’s private jet to propose to me. We flew to Los Angeles, where he had reserved a table at Spago for lunch. Afterward, he took me on a boat ride into the middle of the ocean. We spent the afternoon riding waves and watching dolphins. It was a perfect day. On the plane ride back, the stars offering us their blessing, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Taking both my hands in his he said, “You are the woman I’ve been searching for my whole life. Please be my wife and give me the world.”
It’s impossible to give someone the world. You can show them glimpses of yours, hope they join you in it, but to give them the world means you have to be willing to give up your own. Nonetheless, I was sure I had fooled us both. That somehow, giving myself would be enough. Now he was telling me what I always suspected. I was not enough. He needed more from me. His love was an illusion, a fa?ade that would reveal its true nature soon enough. When my womb remained empty, he would choose between his dream and me. Destiny demanded I would lose.
“It’s too soon,” I say. Motioning around me at the empty house in our wake, I begin to make excuses. “We don’t know how to be parents.”
Memories start to filter in, crowding out the conversation.
Darkness falls. A young girl is walking down a hallway. Doors open and close, but no one sees her. Crying out, she begs them to hear her. The words stay lost in her head. There is no audio. Tears stream down her face, creating a puddle as vast as the open sea. In one last act of desperation, she slams her hands against a door, but the impact makes no sound. Falling to the ground, she understands she is alone and will always be.
“Hey,” Eric wraps his arms around me, jarring me. “I’m scared too. But we’ll be great parents. The best. Any child would be lucky to have you as his or her mother.” He kisses my shoulder. “I would have given anything to have been adopted as a child.” He assumes I understand his need, accept his decision. “I know it’s not the best time, with everything going on with your father. But if we don’t move on this, another couple will. This finally might be our chance.”
“No,” I say, facing him. Fight or flight—both options guarantee I lose. “I can’t do this right now. I’m sorry.”
Six in the morning. The sun has only started to peek above the horizon. Dew from the night before blankets the grass. Birds start to awake, chirping the arrival of a new day. The hospital corridor is quiet. A shift change in progress. Nurses hand charts to one another, everyone speaking in quiet tones. Visiting time isn’t for another two hours, but they are used to me coming at odd times. A daughter grieving for her father.
“He had a good night,” his nurse says. “Vitals were steady.”
“Thank you.”
I barely slept all night. Eric worked through the night while I lay awake in our bedroom. Maybe he needed distance, though I yearned for his warmth. I hear parents complain that they forget about one another standing under the same umbrella with their children. I wonder what they would say if I told them standing together, without children, can tear you apart.
Papa is asleep. That explanation is my only comfort when I visit him. I believe he is dreaming a wonderful dream, lost in the streets of his beloved India. That he is happy and safe wherever he is. After Papa fell into the coma, I researched the condition and people’s experiences. Patients claim to have heard things said in their presence, felt specific people around them. That gives me hope. Papa has to know I have not abandoned him. I will wait forever for him to open his eyes and see me standing here.