Andy took a week and a half off when Cadell was discharged from the hospital. She stayed with him at his house, visited Emily every day and set up video chats between the two of them, and wonder of wonders, cooked for him.
This should be seen as a large step in their pretend relationship. As her mother groused at her every chance she got, Andy was too preoccupied and selfish to cook properly.
She made “sick food” for him, idlis and kitcheree and mild rice dishes, including more of the yogurt rice that he ate scoops of at her parents’ house. The starch-and-dairy dish had been pretty much the mildest thing on the table, the Indian equivalent of macaroni and cheese. She cut the usual number of chiles by two-thirds, and he ate even more of it.
A few days after she moved in, when Cadell could manage it, they began sitting with Emily, first in the PICU and then in the bright pediatric wing. Emily improved quickly, as transplant patients usually do. Most transplant patients make miraculous recoveries. It’s as if the rest of their bodies had been compensating for their diseased organ all those years, and once they are freed of what was dragging them down, they fly.
Andy’s favorite part of her job was watching children improve so quickly and become so vibrant that they astonished everyone.
At home, Andy and Cadell laughed a lot. They talked far into the night about silly memories and music and medicine and his band and her fellowship and Emily. She could talk to him about her job, careful not to violate HIPPA regulations, because he’d had a crash course in pediatric end-stage liver disease with Emily. He even had interesting ideas about several of her cases, connecting a few dots that she had been too close to see, and she made notes to try varying the doses of medications like he suggested.
She didn’t mention what he had said when he had been coming out of anesthesia, and he didn’t say anything about it either. From the blithe way that he talked about her impending wedding, she was pretty sure that he didn’t remember it at all. He probably hadn’t meant it.
One night, a few nights before she left him to marry someone else, she finally worked up the courage to ask him how he had gotten addicted to heroin.
“You don’t seem like the type,” she told him. “You certainly didn’t run away from the strain of a sick child.”
He moved his fork through the Chinese take-out that they had picked up after spending the day with Emily at the hospital. “My dad gave it to me the first time, when I was fourteen.”
“Why on Earth would a parent give a child an illegal narcotic drug?” Her voice was a little more judgmental and shrill than she had meant it to be, but seriously, why?
“It was for the pain,” he said, stretching his left shoulder. “I have problems with my shoulder and my back.”
“From the guitar?”
He nodded. “I have some scoliosis. I’ve always had it, from the time I was a little kid. When I play the guitar standing up, the strap rests on that shoulder, and that shoulder and my back take all the weight of the guitar. It’s getting worse. I have nerve pain down my arm and spine.”
“So it was for the pain,” she said. Suddenly, it all made sense.
He nodded some more, still staring at his food. “When I play, I sit down as much as possible, all the time at practice, and even during concerts for the ballads and slower songs, but I have to stand during the big numbers. The energy demands it. I can’t be sitting there on stage like a lump while everyone else is flying around the stage, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. It would look weird.”
“You practice so much.”
“Even holding my arm up to press the strings on the frets isn’t good. There’s just nothing that can be done.”
She held his hand. “Surgery?”
He shook his head. “They said I would have to take months off, not touch a guitar the whole time. I would lose my touch if I did that. I have to practice every day to maintain the skills. I can’t take a week off, let alone a month. I had my guitar in my hands less than twenty-four hours after the transplant, playing scales.”
He had. The lead singer, Xan Valentine, had brought Cadell’s guitar to the hospital, and Cadell had reached for the instrument with the fervor of an addict, nearly ripping it out of Xan’s hands and then hugging it as he played.
Andy slept in the guest bedroom. At first, she stayed away from his bed because Cadell was so very sore from the surgery and wouldn’t take anything stronger than ibuprofen, and then she slept in the other bedroom because she should.
She was getting married in a week. She certainly shouldn’t be sleeping in another man’s bed and playing stupid sexual exploration games with him.
She really shouldn’t.
And yet, while she cared for him, when they talked, she felt every bit as womanly as she had when she had been naked in his bed. There was a calmness, a serenity, and a power to this feeling of responsibility and connection.
Cadell didn’t push for anything more, of course. He never pushed her.
It was an anti-honeymoon for them, a man and a woman alone with time to find themselves and each other. There was no sex, no physical intimacy, just bittersweet time to prepare themselves for the end of their relationship. Their relief that Emily was recovering quickly and well was a sweet scent in the air. Other than that, they ate meals together, talked and laughed, all the things that people did during that first blush of love, except that they discussed children they wouldn’t have together, and their futures that would be apart.
Instead of a new beginning, this was their ending.
A day before she moved out to get married, Cadell was pretty much back to normal, he cooked spaghetti with marinara sauce, garlic bread, and salad for her. She didn’t mention the jars in the recycling bins, but it was really tasty.
On the morning of the first day of Andy’s wedding—for it was indeed a three-day celebration of Hindu custom—she packed her few outfits and extra shoes that she had at Cadell’s house into her rollie bag and prepared to toss it in her car.
Cadell met her in the foyer and reached to take her bag from her.
She dodged his hand. “Not yet. Nothing over thirty pounds.”
He ducked and picked up the bag with two of his fingers through the handle. “This isn’t thirty pounds.”
She gave up. “Okay, fine, thanks.”
“Okay, fine, you’re welcome,” he parroted with her intonation. It was a thing they did.
He carried the little bag to the garage where her car, a gray Honda Accord, looked so stupidly anonymous sitting next to Cadell’s sleek, midnight-blue BMW.
She stopped on the steps leading down into the garage, closing the door behind herself.
A Honda Accord.
Why did Andy have a Honda Accord?
Because everyone she knew drove a damn Honda Accord. Both her parents owned Honda Accords. Her friends all drove Honda Accords until they had enough kids or their in-laws moved in with them, and then they graduated to Honda Odysseys or Pilots.
Every single one of them.
And a lot of the Hondas were painted in shades of gray.
Not the fun kind of “shades of gray,” either. The most scared, staid, monochromatic kind of gray that didn’t show dirt and kept its resale value because it didn’t offend anyone. It was neither black nor white nor any color. Gray was the mist of not being able to think for herself.
Her parents’ neighborhood looked like the most boring Honda dealership in New Jersey, filmed in black and white.
And so when it came time for Andy to buy a car after she graduated from medical school because she needed one to commute and have some semblance of independence, she was issued her gray Honda Accord.
It took a rock star to buy a deadly blue Bimmer.
Cadell stopped and looked back at her. “What?”
She looked up at him. “I hate my car.”
He glanced at it and then back at her. “Then buy a different one.”
“Everyone I know has a Honda Accord. Everyone just assumed that I would buy a Honda Accord, and I did. And I bought a gray one just like everyone else.”
He set her suitcase on the ground. “You can buy any car you want to.”
“No, I can’t. I can’t afford to buy a BMW like you. Certainly not one like that.”
“Do you want a BMW?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She stared at the cars, at the enormous gulf of life experience that must exist between the two people who had bought them.
“Do you want a BMW or do you just not want a Honda anymore?”
“I don’t know.”
He walked over to her. “You can have mine.”
“I couldn’t. My parents would freak if I drove up in something like that.”
“So?” He was watching her eyes very closely.
“I could never have something like that. It’s not sensible. It’s not rational. It’s a rock star’s car, not a surgeon’s.”
He fished his car key fob thing out of his pocket and held it out to her. “Take it.”
“Like for a drive?” She had been driving him around in her Honda.
“No. I’ll sign the pink slip. It takes premium gas.”
“I couldn’t. Of course, I couldn’t. I couldn’t take your car. It’s an irrationally expensive car, and I could never accept a car from you.”
He dangled the fob by its ring off one fingertip between them. His biceps and shoulder muscles bulged under his tee shirt just from holding the silly little thing out to her. “You already accepted a quarter of a million dollars from me for your fellowship. This is just a used car.”
“You gave the money to the hospital. I couldn’t accept a gift directly from you. Ethics. I shouldn’t have even accepted that Danish from you, let alone a car, let alone that kind of car. And it’s not even a year old.”
“Then consider it a wedding present.”
“I’m not married yet.”
“An early wedding present.”
“What if I don’t get married?”
He moved his hand and the fob aside to look at her better. “Are you thinking about not going through with it?”
“No.” That wasn’t true. Andy was always honest, even when she had to tell parents that their child was dying. It was cruel to suggest that they could hope for a miracle that would never happen. “Things are going around in my head. I don’t know what to think. I’ve never thought about having a different car before.”
He picked up her hand. “Test drive it for the weekend. See if you like driving around in a rock star’s car.”
“I’ve ridden in it for months. The suspension is wound very tightly.”
He chuckled. “Yes, it has a sports car’s suspension. Yet, though it doesn’t look like a family car, it has a back seat, and Emily fits back there just fine. There’s even room for another kid. Emily’s friend, or something. And it runs great. Take it.”
She stared at the ostentatious car, fretting. It would always stand out in her parent’s neighborhood. “What would I tell my parents?”
“That your other car is staying with Stephanie for the week to be closer to the hospital.”
She looked up at him. “Smart aleck.”
He smiled a little, and he was still holding out the fob. “Are you thinking about canceling your wedding?”
She shouldn’t accept the car from him, and she shouldn’t ever, ever say her doubts about the wedding out loud.
Ever.
She should say no to both the car and to him, right now.
Do it.
Say the correct, sensible, expected thing. Don’t believe in magic. Don’t believe in miracles. Say no.
She said, “Yes.”
Cadell had his arms around Andy and slammed her up against the door before she could even draw a breath. His mouth found hers, hot on her lips. She opened her mouth and grabbed him around the neck with her arms, wanting every last second and every last taste of him.
He was on the step below her, but he was still several inches taller than she was. Cadell kissed her long and hard, his hands gripping her waist and his fingers tangled in her hair.
Finally, he slowed and stopped, his forehead pressed against hers, and his chest heaving with his ragged breath. He took one of her hands from around his neck and pressed the car key fob into it. “Take it. Reach out and take what you want.”
“What if I change my mind?”
“Then get in the car and come back to me. Or call me, and I’ll come get you.”
That wasn’t what she meant. She had meant about the car—what if she changed her mind about the car—but bittersweet desperation burst in her chest. “But you can’t drive.”
“I have the limo company in my top contacts. If you’re there, if you’re standing at the altar and change your mind, I’ll come get you.”
“It would be too late then. You wouldn’t be able to get there in time.”
“Then make sure that you call me in time.”
“Okay.”
“Have you already changed your mind? Can I take you upstairs and make love to you right now?”
She pressed herself against his chest and listened to his heartbeat. “I don’t have to make up my mind. Tonight is just the henna ceremony. It’s not the real wedding. It’s just kind of a bridal shower.”
“That’s not an answer,” he said, a growl in his voice.
She held him more tightly around his waist, the fob clenched in her fingers. “I don’t know what I should do.”
“I won’t tell you what to do. You’ve been told what to do your whole life. But I’ll tell you this: I’ll come for you. If you want to leave, I’ll come get you.”
“Emily is done. She should live a normal, healthy life now. You’re recovered. You don’t need me anymore.”
He bent and whispered in her ear, “Because I love you, because I loved you the first moment I laid eyes on you. Because I think everything about you is perfect. If this isn’t love, then I’ve never felt it. If this isn’t love, then I’ll live without it.”
That time, she could hear the music in his words.
She buried her face in his chest. “I love you, too, but they’ll disown me. They’ll turn their backs on me.”
“If you don’t want to go through with it, just reach out. I’ll be there.”