I try to keep my voice even. Wish there were more air in this room. “I wrote that letter,” I say. “To you. Months ago, after . . .” My voice breaks. “After my boyfriend was killed in an accident.”
These words, and all the truth in them, are made of air, barely audible, but he hears them, and every muscle in his body tenses. He shakes his head.
“Before I knew you,” I add, with the unreasonable hope that somehow that’ll make a difference; but I know as soon as I look at Colton that it doesn’t.
He stands there silent, and statue still, except for the tiny motion of his jaw tightening.
I stand up, take a step toward him. “Colton, please—”
He backs away. “Did you know?” he asks, his voice cold. “When we met. Did you know who I was?”
The question sends a hot flood of tears to my eyes. “Yes,” I whisper.
Colton turns to go.
“Wait,” I plead. “Please. Let me just explain—”
He stops. Whips back around to face me. “Explain what? That you went looking for the person who got your boyfriend’s heart? That you found me after I signed a paper that said I didn’t want to be found?” Anger flashes over his face like the lightning over the ocean. “Or that you sat there next to me a few hours ago while I told you everything, and you said nothing?” He pauses, and something else flashes over his face. Maybe the memory of what came after that. But it’s gone just as quickly, and his voice goes hollow. “Which part did you want to explain?”
I open my mouth to answer, but the truth of what I’ve done leaves me speechless for a moment. And then I give the only explanation I can come up with.
“You never wrote back.”
I say it to the floor, not an accusation, but the explanation for it all, in its most simple, honest form.
Colton takes a step toward me. “And why do you think? I never wanted this. I never wanted any of this.” He looks directly into my eyes, and I swear I don’t recognize him at all. “Do me a favor,” he says. “Forget you knew me. Because I never should’ve known you.”
And then he’s gone. Through the automatic doors, out into the night.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Broken Heart Syndrome
“Broken heart syndrome is a condition in which extreme stress can lead to heart muscle failure. The failure is severe, but often short-term. . . .The cause of broken heart syndrome is not fully known. In most cases, symptoms are triggered by extreme emotional or physical stress, such as intense grief, anger, or surprise. Researchers think that the stress releases hormones that ‘stun’ the heart and affect its ability to pump blood to the body.”
—The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
I SIT IN the waiting room chair in a haze. I can’t move. My chest is caving in.
Faceless people come and go past the chairs where I sit. Garbled voices speak over the intercom. Gran is on one side of me, one hand tapping the armrest, the other resting on my knee. Ryan is on the other side. She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t say a word, and I’m not sure if it’s because she’s worrying about Dad or because she’s just as horrified by me as I am.
I am a horrible, selfish, lying person.
We wait, together in those chairs, but in our own separate worlds. A doctor comes to give us an update. Dad’s just been taken to surgery. Settle in. It’ll be a few hours. Mom comes back to us quiet, lips pressed together to maintain control. She looks small standing there in front of us. And so scared. It’s heart wrenching and terrifying at the same time.
Gran gets up and wraps her arms around Mom. “It’s going to be all right.” She can’t know for sure. None of us can, but we all cling to the sureness in Gran’s voice.
Mom nods into her shoulder, and her lip trembles. Her eyes well up, but when she sees Ryan and me, something shifts in her. She meets Gran’s eyes, and Gran releases her from the embrace. Mom wipes her own eyes, straightens up, and opens her arms for us to come to her. Becomes as strong and sure as she can for us as she repeats Gran’s words.
“It’s going to be all right.”
We all sit in a row: Gran, Ryan, Mom, me. We’re quiet as we wait, weighted with worry, but pulled closer by the strength we draw from one another. Eventually, exhaustion overcomes them. Gran falls asleep with her cheek propped on her fist. Ryan moves to an empty row of chairs and stretches out over them, and falls asleep the second she closes her eyes. Mom’s chin drops to her chest.
And then I am alone again.
My eyes burn, and my body aches for sleep, but my mind won’t allow it. The scene with Colton plays again and again in my mind as the clock ticks away the hours like a heartbeat. His hurt and anger, my guilt and shame. Secrets. Lies. Wounds that can’t be helped or treated. Damage that is irreversible.
I don’t know how much time has passed when the doctor appears in front of us. I put a hand on my mom’s shoulder, and she sits up immediately, blinking in the fluorescent light. The lines around her eyes are deep, but when she sees the doctor, she stands, alert.
He smiles. “The news is good.” Ryan and Gran are both up now too, and they join us around the doctor. “Surgery went smoothly, and we were able to remove the clot and place the stent. He’s up in recovery now.”
Mom hugs the doctor. “Thank you, thank you so much.”
His smile is sincere but tired as he pats her back. “He’s not awake yet, but I can have a nurse take you up so you’re there when the anesthesia wears off.”
When the doctor leaves us, a nurse comes to take Mom to Dad, and Gran decides she’ll stay and wait but that Ryan and I should go home. We don’t argue with her, and we don’t say anything as we walk down the hall, but we both seem to breathe the same sigh of relief. It only lasts a second for me, though. We walk out the same doors Colton did, and now there’s even more room in me to feel the full weight of what sent him through them. Guilt comes in like air with the next breath I take, and my heart and lungs carry it through every part of me.