CHAPTER FOUR

NOT LIKELY

Holly bolted to the door and yanked it open. “Hey. Nurse. Are you a nurse? This machine is going off in here. Somebody should check it, right?” She moved into the hall, and I heard her authoritative voice asking for help. “Nurse!”

“See?” Katie said. “It’s like having a dog that barks at every leaf.”

“Remember that night back in college when that guy had you pinned at the bar? She walked up to him and said, ‘What you’re doing is both abusive and illegal. I’ve called the police. They told me to wait patiently to give a statement.’ He scurried off, she had two drinks, and went from laughing to crying like a sorority girl about how much she loved the law and living with us and tequila. After that she threw up in a red Solo cup, and we drove her home.” I felt myself smile despite the stark difference between past Holly and current Holly.

“She acts so tough,” said Katie.

“She is tough. She’s tough on me.”

As a thousand times before, my thoughts returned to the night of our college graduation. Holly and I had lain on the floor in the spinning living room, both of us too sloshed to make it up the stairs to our beds. We were steps from the bathroom in case Holly, the most nauseous drunkard in the land, needed a toilet.

I’d left Holly’s side to get a wet dishtowel for her face, and Katie’s boyfriend, Mike, had been in the kitchen, downing a bag of stale taco chips. When I returned to the living room with the towel and a glass of water for me, Holly was upright, an ugly brown-and-gold afghan around her shoulders with a pissed-off look on her face.

“What’s wrong?” I slumped to my knees trying not to spill the water.

“I heard you, Sam. I heard you say I was disgusting.” She looked pale, sweaty, and furious.

“What are you talking about?” My heartbeat surged; the sugary wine I’d swallowed along with Angry Hammered Holly left me woozy. All I wanted was to close my eyes.

“Just now. I was in the bathroom, I heard you two.” She burped and imitated Mike’s voice, “‘She wants you.’ I heard you slap him and say, ‘Disgusting. Don’t be disgusting.’” This last part she sneered.

I was so confused. I took a sip from the water glass, forced my eyes to stay open. “Yeah, he said that, and then he made a V with his fingers and slurped his tongue through it. I hit him. You know how gross he is. I don’t know why Katie likes him.”

“You should have stood up for me.”

I put my head on the pillow we shared, pulled my own quilt over my shoulders, tried to lighten things like my mother used to. “You are a bit disgusting when you throw up in the sink.”

“Sam!” she said, her voice going up an octave.

I only remembered falling asleep after that. The next morning she had gone without saying goodbye. In retrospect, once I knew she was gay, I realized that maybe Mike’s comment made her so self-conscious, so aware of the world’s homophobia, she had to get out of there. But, that almost made it worse in some ways. How could she have, to use today’s language, callously ghosted me?

“She was tough on me for a while too.” Katie repositioned herself in the bed, pulled the sheet up an inch. “Remember she went to Europe instead of being in my wedding, but eventually I think my divorce and cancer brought her around.”

“I had a husband die!” I said like we were in a tragedy competition—the winner getting Holly’s testy friendship. I’d never forgotten the funeral, me pregnant, feeling overwhelmed in every way possible, and even in my confusion and grief, who was I waiting to see at the grave site? Holly. She didn’t call or write, let alone come to the ceremony. In some ways that hurt most of all. What could I have possibly done that merited this kind of rejection?

“Maybe Jeff’s death happened too long ago. She was completely wrapped up in her career. It was just a coincidence she was in town for Maddie’s birth. I tried, Sam.”

“I know. I know you did.”

From the hall, Holly’s loud, bossy voice shot into the room ahead of her. “It’s here. This thing is beeping,” she said. I glanced at Katie, and she shook her head.

The thing about Holly was that you always knew when she was near. She talked as she entered a room as a time management technique. If you were the one she was talking to, you had to catch up or miss everything.

I sighed loudly sitting next to Katie, and she touched my arm.

“Is her blood pressure up or something?”

Katie and I waited to see who Holly was speaking to.

“People come in here all the time and push buttons without proper assessment. Could you come and take a look? A real look.”

“Oh God,” I said, just as Holly and Beautiful Man walked into the room.

He stopped a few feet from the foot of Katie’s bed. “Oh, hi.” He looked genuinely happy to see me. But who wouldn’t be happy to see a friendly face when Holly was in cross-examination mode?

“Hi,” I said, and I pointed to Katie. “This is my friend.” I realized my mistake a second too late and swung my finger in an arc and pointed to Holly and said, “This is my friend too. Both of these people are my friends. I’m visiting this one. That one is also here.”

I could feel Katie and Holly staring at me. Beautiful Man was staring at me too. Not for good reasons, though.

“Yes,” Holly said, “I’m here too.”

Beautiful Man pushed a button on the IV machine, and it shut down.

“Don’t do that without looking at her,” Holly said. “How do you know she isn’t having a heart attack or something?”

“Do you feel like you’re having a heart attack?” Beautiful Man asked Katie.

“No. My heart feels fine, thank you. I’m not supersure about my ovaries, though. Does that machine say anything about my ovaries?”

“No, we haven’t hooked up the ovary ultrasound yet.”

That’s when I realized that Beautiful Man was no dummy. He had judged the Holly situation and knew how to join in the fun like a girl on the playground jumping into a double Dutch competition.

“Why haven’t you hooked up the ovary ultrasound? Why are we waiting on that?” Holly looked outraged, and I felt a twinge of guilt.

“We only have one in-house. And there are ovaries down the hall that need some sonar.”

“How much is an ovary ultrasound machine? Can we buy our own?”

As much as I wanted to keep going with this line of questioning, I couldn’t do it. It looked like Holly and I were going to be driving together across the country, and I didn’t want another line checked on a long document of slights between us. “The IV bag is empty. That’s why it’s beeping, Holly.”

“Get a new bag,” she said, pivoting like a champ.

I said, “Get a new bag” to Beautiful Man, and he smiled. He offered his hand to Holly. “I’m a resident working with Dr. Chopra, but I’m rotating off this service, and so, am sorry to say, I won’t be working with . . .”

“Katie Martin. Ovary difficulties,” Katie said.

I have spent years watching men meet Katie and fall in love with her. Beautiful Man was not immune to Katie’s innocent mantrap essence. To a certain kind of man I thought she must smell like sugar cookies and home-baked bread. Online dating didn’t get the same response. She was just an attractive woman in a sea of other attractive women, but in person she was irresistible to men. Asshat Tom notwithstanding.

“Are you the chief resident?” Holly interrupted.

“As much as I am an expert-in-training on ovary difficulties, no, I am not the chief resident. I am qualified to find someone to change this IV bag, though, and I’ll do that right away.

“Drew Lewis,” he said to Holly and shook her hand, and then he turned to me. “This is the situation you needed to sleep for?”

“Yes.” Ugh, he just exposed me.

“And this one is the one who is good at everything?”

The look of surprise and delight on Holly’s face was worth every odd moment I’d had with Dr. Drew Lewis, Beautiful Man. I felt like he’d opened the doghouse door and I could stroll out at my leisure. But then he said, “And this is your best friend?” He pointed to Katie.

This guy might know how to read a situation, but he didn’t know a thing about female friendship dynamics.

I stuttered, “They are both my best friends. We are all besties. We’ve been friends for nearly thirty years.”

“Okay, listen, Dr. Dreamboat,” Holly said. “You gotta go get a new bag. Isn’t this an emergency? The bag is dry. Also, could you price out an ovary detector? Because I’d like to look into purchasing one for Katie. We’ll donate it after Katie gets discharged.”

To his credit, he did not seem offended by Holly and her power plays; instead, he smiled at me and gave me the lightest of winks. Not the smarmy wink of the cruise ship captain hoping to entertain a girl on the lido deck. No, a kind of tiny flick of his long lashes that felt like a tip of his hat rather than an I’ll see you in my cabin later .

Men typically did not notice me. I must emit the smell of meh and a second-favorite childhood shoe. I tried to wink back, managing only to squeeze both my eyes shut.

What a fun, dumb interaction, I thought, but something dawned on me, and I followed Dr. Beautiful Man out of the room. When I got to the hall, I didn’t see him. I scanned both directions, but then I heard a laugh and saw a hair flip.

Behind a large desk-like partition that separated the medical staff from the hallway and the patients stood Dr. Lewis. He was talking to a young woman with a white coat. He pointed over his shoulder in the direction of Katie’s room, and the woman nodded but didn’t move.

I rested my arms on the cool laminate desk and watched. She looked up at him through her eyelashes, a big smile on her lips. She nodded and slid her hand down a long strand of blonde hair, pulling it through her fingers while gazing at Drew’s face. Watching two attractive people interact in the wild was so very National Geographic . The preening, the eyelash batting, everything but the dung beetles and dirt were present right here in the middle of Saint Mary’s Hospital. I looked closer and saw one other thing missing: Dr. Lewis didn’t seem to know that mating moves were happening right in front of him.

“Thanks,” he said, turning away, and he missed a second hair flip, this one more pronounced than the first.

Then he saw me and because I was staring, I saw him see me. When he did, his face turned from ice cap to sunshine. It reminded me of everything I’d lost when my husband died years ago: the recognition that you are visible and welcome. This was the kind of greeting that occurred between two people who were not a threat or in debt or in any way tormenting each other.

“Hey,” he said. “Looking for a place for nap number two?”

“Soon, maybe. If things don’t calm down in that room over there, I might need to spend the night.”

“Your friend is intense,” he said.

“Yes, she is. I have a question for you. A favor and I’m not sure why you would even consider doing it. It might be illegal. But I feel desperate.”

“You had me at desperate and illegal.”

That sentence alone gave me courage. “My intense friend and I have to get my sick friend’s dog from her shitty ex-husband in California. It’s going to take some time; we have to drive. I know you aren’t working with Katie, but could you check in on her occasionally and text me how she’s doing?”

My words and the look on his face made me realize what I was asking of a relative stranger.

I said, “She’s single” at the same time he said, “Sure.” I laughed.

“You didn’t need to add that last bit.”

“That was gross of me,” I said.

“You’re doing me a favor.”

“How so?”

“My mentor says I have to work on my communication skills. Apparently I rush things. I’ll need her permission to talk with you. I can’t give you medical information, but I can check in as a friend.”

The pretty white-coated woman appeared at Drew’s shoulder and said, “Excuse me—when you’re done talking to your mom, could you sign off on something for me?” The woman stood there, confident in her beauty and in her history with all things male.

I felt my face go from an expression of curiosity to annoyance. “Hey . . .”

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” Drew said.

With no hair flip this time, she strolled away.

“Wow. How old do I look?” I touched my face.

“Not old enough to be my mom. Give me your phone.”

He gestured for me to put my pass code in, then deftly typed in his contact information. It felt wildly intimate to have his hands on my phone, which made me consider the last time someone other than my daughter had touched me. That made me think about Beautiful Man touching me, which made me feel like shutting my eyes and napping, maybe on his shoulder, on a gurney in the hall. The thought of being with a man, any man, and my neurons started to tap out one by one. If a man looked at me like the blonde had looked at Drew, I swear I might feel attractive enough to consider romance again. This was what Katie said anyway, that I’d feel different if it came my way. I knew attractiveness was part of the reason, but it was bigger than that, and we all knew it.

I concentrated on Beautiful Man’s hands. He had short nails that he clearly bit to keep trim, and he hit the round call circle, and almost immediately I heard a buzzing.

“There,” he said. “I’ll text you.”

“You don’t have to text me all the time. Just let me know how she’s doing. Her spirits, that kind of thing.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“I’ll remind you to brush your teeth and eat green leafy vegetables.”

“I’ll send you pictures of my artwork.”

“If you call me Mom, I’m going to report your number to AARP and tell them you want a long-term care insurance assessment.” I noticed his quick smile and tapped the phone to write Beautiful Man in the contact information.

“I have to do a bunch of stuff, but I’ll stop in before I leave and get the okay from your friend to convey information to you in case of an emergency.” He peered at my phone and said, “Who is Beau? I’m Drew.”

Startled, I said, “I don’t know what I was thinking,” and I hit the delete button. “I’m Samantha Arias. Katie will report nothing but hearts and flowers so we won’t worry. I need to know how she’s really doing—not necessarily medically.”

“Got it,” he said. “See ya.” He turned, stopped, and over his shoulder he said, “But what if I want to text you all the time?” and strolled off without waiting for an answer.

With a hit of pure pleasure, I typed Beautiful Drew into my phone and gently placed it into my back pocket.

Something had happened in Katie’s room while I was in the hall collecting Drew’s contact numbers and staring at his nice hands. Holly was frantically trying to lower the head of the bed, and Katie looked as pale as I had ever seen her.

“What’s going on?”

“Bebe was admitted to the hospital in Arizona. They aren’t coming.” She hit the remote control of the bed, and Katie’s legs started to rise and bend at the knee. “Ugh,” Holly said. “Which button do I push?”

I rushed to Katie’s side and said, “There,” and I pointed to the cartoon stick person next to the upside-down triangle on the control paddle.

“I got it,” Holly said, irritated, and Katie shot me a look that said, You gotta get her out of here .

“Is Bebe going to be okay?” I asked.

“Something about her oxygen needing to be monitored. They’re keeping her a couple of days for observation.” Holly hit another button, and the whole bed lifted like it was levitating. Holly said, “Christ, this thing is confusing. I’m trying to put her legs down.”

Katie sipped water from a waxy paper cup and swallowed, looking almost too tired to say anything.

The only way to get Holly off the puzzle of the bed mechanics was to give her something else to fight.

“Okay, you guys, it’s official. We’re going on a road trip.”

“I’m going,” said Holly, finally getting the bed moving in the right direction.

“We’re going, Holly. You and I will share the driving. When I get tired, I’ll sleep. I will manage all Peanut’s injections and his poop. You will do all the planning and navigation, and we will be back in less than a week.”

Holly eyed me as if there was some catch, and she said, “Maybe I should stay here now that Bradley and Bebe won’t be making the drive.”

Katie gave me an alarmed look.

“Here’s how I see it, Hol. Katie has a lot of friends who will sit with her, bring her food, help her take notes when the doctors come in and start spouting medical jargon. But only you and I are the kinds of friends who will drive cross-country to get her dog.”

Holly dropped the bed remote control and said, “I’ll have to check with Rosie.”

Katie’s face relaxed, and I said, “I’ll stop my mail,” as if calling the post office were the same thing as checking in with a loved one.

“Maddie leaves tomorrow?” said Katie.

I pushed away my disquiet and thought about what else I would have to rearrange to leave my life for the week. I’d notify the clinic, let them know I couldn’t work. They’d been bugging me to use up my vacation time, and I was up to date on my charting.

Nobody cared at book club if anyone missed a meeting. We were discussing Feng Shui Your Fridge for Better Digestion , and there was no way I was reading that book. With Maddie gone, there were fewer things on my schedule. I’d been sprinting toward her graduation from high school for so long. Volleyball season had merged into spring track meets, planning a graduation party, attending awards ceremonies, completing scholarship applications. Now that it was all over, I could see how I’d lived Maddie’s life and not mine. I knew that was what parents did, especially single parents. I also knew it wasn’t advisable if you wanted your empty nest not to be your desolate nest.

“So, that doctor. How do you know him?” Katie said while Holly seemed preoccupied with her phone.

“I don’t. I just ran into him in the hall.”

“He seemed kind of into you.”

I simultaneously rejected and enjoyed this. “It’s a constant problem. So many married Prince Charmings finding me asleep and falling in love with me.”

“They would fall in love with you if you let them.”

I threw my head back and laughed. “Look at me. I’m not exactly the kind of woman people think of when they think of a dream girl. A bit long in the tooth for that.”

“Is that what you think of me? Too old for love?”

I sat up straight as if I’d been zapped by an electrical spark. “Katie, no. No, I didn’t mean that. You are so adorable. Everything about you is dateable. I just let myself go.”

Katie had always been the girl everyone wanted. She had a sweetness about her but also a don’t-screw-with-me temper. It was a great combination for attracting men. It served her well until Tom showed up. His dysfunction slipped under all our radars. I’m certain Holly would say she’d never liked Tom, but I had to admit I’d loved him.

When we first met, Maddie was three. I’d been the kind of mom who was invisible except for in her daughter’s life, present at all parent-child activities, with no time for anything of her own. Tom had focused when he shook my hand. His smile—with its single dimple, his full lips—you had the feeling that they were all yours.

“The famous Samantha,” he’d said, with nothing but delight in his tone. He took my hand and covered it with his and pulled me into a chaste peck on the cheek. He smelled like sandalwood, a scent I associated with creativity and hard work. He locked his eyes on mine and said, “Katie means the world to me,” and I believed him.

There were flowers, love notes, invitations to moonlit picnics. His warmth was contagious. The gentle but unromantic Jeff, who had been utterly irresponsible, hadn’t been anything like Tom, so I admit I encouraged Katie. No one was like Tom. It was as if he had studied every romantic comedy and lobbed every tool from them in Katie’s direction. When we were in college, no one had used psychological terms to describe people, but during the divorce, we both became fluent in narcissist. Katie never had a chance.

In the stark light of the hospital room, where we should have been problem-solving cancer, we were talking about boys. It was college all over again, but without Holly’s stinging take on the absurdity of relationships.

“I’ve had the great love of my life. If I got another great love, it would water down the whole soul-mate idea. Jeff was my soul mate,” I said, flicking my gaze at Holly and wondering if she caught on to my lie. Wondering if she cared enough to tune in, knew enough from Katie to challenge me, cared if I told the truth.

Katie softened the moment. “You could have dinner with someone who was nice even if he didn’t speak to your”—Katie paused, allowing my false characterization of my relationship with Jeff—“soul.”

I shrugged. “You know me. I definitely want to leave my soul out of future relationships.”

Holly looked up from concentrating on her phone and said, “Okay, done.”

“What did you do?”

“We’re booked on a flight out to LA on Thursday. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“We? You booked mine too? That’s in two days,” I said.

“I used miles. I have thousands. And you said we should go. What are we waiting for?”

I looked at Katie, and she had the same expression on her face that I imagined I did: as if we were at a bus stop and we had to hop on or we’d get left behind. So many years of this, running behind Holly to catch up, trying to understand what was in her head, how she kept up the pace and why.

I shook my head and squeezed Katie’s hand. “Okay, then. I’d better pack a bag.” My phone buzzed, and I pulled it from my back pocket and was astonished to see Beautiful Drew had written:

BDREW: Hey Mom. Sup?

ME: I wrote: 1-800-AARP Insurance

BDREW: Hahaha. Have a good trip.

ME: Not likely.