When I got back to Vanessa’s apartment after work that night, she was sitting on the couch, glued to the television screen, flipping through the channels. The apartment still smelled like cheap Mexican takeout. I could tell she had been crying.
“Bad day?” I asked her. She nodded her head ‘yes.’
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, throwing my bag down and approaching the couch.
“I don’t think that I’m ready to talk about it yet,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, “when you are, let me know.” She nodded and kept flipping channels. I picked my bag back up and went to the spare bedroom—my bedroom for the past few weeks— and threw my stuff down and took my shoes off. Unbuttoning my pants as I walked, I opened the closet door and grabbed a pair of pajama bottoms to change into. On the closet floor there was a basket that hadn’t been there that morning. Trying as hard as I could not to peek inside (read: not at all), I saw a pile of picture frames with assorted pictures of Vanessa and Marcus. I knelt down and picked the first one up—a sterling silver Tiffany picture frame filled with Vanessa and Marcus’s wedding photo. I ran my finger along the side and felt a tear come to my eye. I could barely imagine how hard this was going to be for Vanessa if it was this sad for me.
“Did you eat yet?” Vanessa called out from the living room. I jumped up like a kid who had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, almost dropping the frame that I was holding in the process. “There’s some leftover chicken fajita if you want it.”
“Thanks,” I said, making a fast exit from the closet and changing into my pajama bottoms as quickly as I could, practically tripping out of my black work pants as I did so. I walked back to the living room in a walk-run to account for the time I’d been nosing around Vanessa’s guest bedroom. “I’m not really hungry,” I said, throwing a pillow against the side of Vanessa’s lounging body and putting my head down. She continued flipping through the channels.
“I have some Lean Cuisine frozen pizzas,” she said.
I jumped up from the couch and headed towards the freezer. I noticed that Vanessa had thrown out the carton of Rocky Road ice cream that had been there just this morning. Marcus’s favorite.
“Did Marcus move his things out?” I asked, turning from the freezer to face Vanessa. Her eyes stayed glued to the television screen.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s strange, though. He was never really here that much, so the place doesn’t seem any emptier.”
“How do you feel?” I asked, taking the frozen pizza out of its box and turning the oven on.
“Sad, mainly.”
“Sad, because it’s sad, or sad, because you did the wrong thing?”
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“It’s never too late to change things if you did the wrong thing,” I told her.
“Do you really think that?” she asked, turning to look at me. I answered her quickly. I didn’t need to think about it at all—I really did.
What if when Jack had asked me, I’d seriously considered whether one of us should leave the firm? What if I hadn’t shrugged it off? Hadn’t shrugged him off?
And why had I done that? For a job that I didn’t really like? Not that I would have immediately quit my job for a kiss, but maybe if I’d taken him more seriously back then, I wouldn’t have let the last two years just pass me by. Jack would never have gotten engaged and I would never have met Douglas and Jack and I would be together. Like I told Vanessa, you can’t change the past, but it was never too late to change your future.
Those very words came back to haunt me the following morning.
“You can’t change the past, but you can change your future,” she sung, leaning over my bed at 6 a.m.
“Five more minutes, mom,” I moaned as I tried to pull a pillow over my head.
“No way!” Vanessa yelled as she pulled the pillow off my head, “You said that we were turning over a new leaf today!”
“That was really more for you than me,” I said, eyes still tightly shut, “I meant that you should turn over a new leaf today. My leaf is just fine.”
“You said,” Vanessa reminded me as she opened the wood blinds, “that you were going to start training for next year’s marathon with me.”
“Heat of the moment,” I said, opening my eyes slowly. It was so early in the morning that the room didn’t get much lighter with the blinds open. “I didn’t really mean it.”
“Well, I’m holding you to it,” Vanessa said, grabbing the blanket off my bed and dragging it behind her as she left my bedroom, “Get up. We leave in fifteen.”
A half hour later, we were out on the city streets—Vanessa looking great in skin tight running pants and a snug fitting Howard University sweatshirt, and me looking like I’d just rolled out of bed in yoga pants that I really never used for actual yoga, but wore more for just bumming around the apartment, paired with the cashmere hoodie that I’d worn the night before and grabbed off my bedroom floor that morning.
“I feel better already,” Vanessa said, jogging in place as we waited at the light to cross over Fifth Avenue to get into the park at the 72nd Street entrance. “Don’t you?” Now, I wish I could be one of those people who says something like, ‘You know, once I got out there, I felt great!’ I really do. But, I’m not. Once I got out there, I didn’t feel great. In fact, I felt worse. The sad fact was that I was absolutely exhausted by the time we’d jogged from 3rd Avenue to Central Park.
“Am I expected to go work a full day after this?” I asked Vanessa. She pretended not to hear me, continuing to run, nodding at other runners as we passed in a bizarre super secret handshake sort of way. There was this weird subculture of runners in the park, a subculture that Vanessa was clearly a part of. A subculture of people who actually enjoyed getting up at daybreak.
These were not my people.
“So, do you want to talk about things?” she asked me, giving a brief glance in my direction.
“No,” I said (between huffs and puffs), “Do you?”
“Well,” she said, “running certainly clears my head. Helps me to think about things.”
“Why can’t you get that from taking a shower like regular people?” I asked her. “That way you don’t have to get all sweaty.”
“I think in the shower, too,” she said.
“So, what are you thinking?” I said.
“This is going to sound crazy, but I’m so embarrassed about my marriage breaking up.”
“That doesn’t sound crazy,” I said, still huffing and puffing. “That’s totally natural. You know, you don’t have to tell anyone for a while. It’s your business. The whole firm doesn’t need to know every little piece of our lives. You can take your time in processing it by yourself.”
“Yeah, I guess,” she said.
“And before you know it, you’ll be back out there,” I said. “You’ll find someone even better.”
“The thought of dating in Manhattan totally terrifies me. What if there are no men left?”
“There will be plenty of men left,” I said with a laugh, even though that exact thought had gone through my mind more than once. “You should just take your time. It’s also okay to be alone for a while.”
“I don’t know how to be alone,” she said.
“Well, not completely alone,” I said. “I mean, you still have your friends. We can go out for dinner all the time, go to the movies, shop….”
“We do that already,” she said, stifling a laugh.
“I know,” I said. “I just meant that you’re not going to be alone, alone. If you want to, it’s okay to give yourself time to be single and not looking for someone new.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” she said.
“That’s okay,” I said, “I’ll show you.” Vanessa smiled at me and I smiled back. I knew that Vanessa would be just fine. It was just a matter of making her realize that she’d be fine, too.
She led us over to Poet’s Walk, a beautiful tree lined path with enormous sculptures of famous poets and writers. I took a deep breath of fresh air and decided that I would be just fine, too.
“Hey, Vanessa!” a voice called out from ahead of us.
“Hey!” Vanessa called out as the other runner approached us. She introduced me to a friend of hers from the Road Runners Club. Another woman who was similarly attired in skintight running pants and a fitted sweatshirt that she looked great in. I smiled and tried not to look completely winded as I shook her hand and she and Vanessa jogged in place and talked about next year’s New York City Marathon. I had stopped jogging altogether, puzzling over what time the hot dog vendors set up their carts. I know, I know, a hot dog would have been totally inappropriate this early in the morning, but I figured that a hot salted pretzel couldn’t hurt. Purely for medical reasons, that is. What? A girl has to keep up her blood sugar, doesn’t she?
“Brooke, you should keep running in place,” Vanessa said to me, still immersed in her conversation about the marathon. I pretended not to hear and instead adjusted my ponytail.
A few minutes later, we were back to running through the park, Vanessa, still nodding at random other runners and me, trying to look as if I was not at death’s door. I was getting the hang of it for a while, and as we began winding down, I was proud that I’d gone the whole time without dying. Vanessa slowed our pace to a ‘cool down’ speed and I began to fantasize about the hot shower I would take when we got back to the apartment. Still quite a bit away, I could see the 72nd Street traffic light, beckoning me like a siren calling out to a tired sailor on the high seas. We got closer and closer, and a smile came to my face. I could even see the vendors beginning to set up their carts for the day, as I wondered if Vanessa had brought any cash so that she could buy me a congratulatory pretzel. I could hear the traffic roaring down Fifth Avenue and I silently patted myself on the back for a job well done.
Maybe this would be the new me. A healthier, more positive me who woke up early and went running and nodded to other runners as I ran. A motivated me who faces challenges head on and tackles every obstacle in her way. The kind of woman who doesn’t get flummoxed by the mere prospect of going to her ex-boyfriend’s wedding. Who goes with her head held high, with a real-life boyfriend as opposed to a faux Scottish boyfriend, and behaves like the normal well adjusted big time lawyer that she is as opposed to alienating the faux Scottish boyfriend she has realized she is in love with.
This is what turning over a new leaf was all about! I turned to Vanessa, all ready to tell her about my epiphany and lost my footing for a brief instant. I felt something under my foot and it caused my entire body to jerk sideways. I heard Vanessa call something out about a hot dog, which really puzzled me, and then I went down.
My body hit the pavement with a thud, like a sack of potatoes, as I tried to break my fall with my hands.
“Brooke!” Vanessa cried out as she knelt down on the ground next to me. A crowd began to gather around us. The pain coming from my ankle was searing, and I grabbed it and bent my head down towards my knee.
“Is your friend okay?” I heard a stranger ask Vanessa.
“She tripped on that hot dog,” Vanessa said. I looked up to see the offending hot dog rolling away as Vanessa began yelling at the vendor about how we were lawyers and she was going to sue him. I knew that hot dogs weren’t particularly good for you, but this was ridiculous.
“I think I need to go to the hospital,” I said to Vanessa as she helped me to my feet. Or, foot as the case may be. I put my arm over her shoulder as I hopped with her to the curb.
“Should we get that vendor’s license number?” Vanessa asked me.
“I’m in too much pain to think about possible future lawsuits,” I said.
“I’m taking you right to Mt. Sinai Hospital,” Vanessa said as a taxi cab stopped to pick us up.
“Mt. Sinai?” I asked. “That’s 30 blocks away. We need to go to Lenox Hill, it’s 5 blocks away.”
“We can’t go to Lenox Hill,” Vanessa said, opening the cab door and gently helping me in. “Mt. Sinai Hospital, please,” she said to the cab driver. He wrote down our destination while we sat there at the red light.
“She means Lenox Hill, sir,” I said, looking at Vanessa. “I’m in a bit of pain here.” He shot me a dirty look in the rear view mirror as he erased our former destination and began to scribble down the new one.
“Marcus is at Lenox Hill,” Vanessa said, looking down.
“We’re not going to see him,” I said, still clutching my ankle, “It’s a big hospital. If you want, you can even just drop me off and go home. Slow the cab down to a cool five and just roll me out. Lenox Hill, sir.”
“It’s a really small hospital and I can’t leave you alone,” she said. “She means Mt. Sinai. Sorry for the confusion.”
“Marcus is in surgery,” I pleaded, “We are going to the emergency room. I don’t mean to be insensitive, really I don’t, but I don’t think that I can make it ‘til 100th Street. Sir, it’s Lenox Hill.”
“What if you need surgery?” Vanessa asked, “Mt. Sinai, please.”
“What if I need surgery? I need surgery?” I said and as tears began to fall from my eyes. “I don’t need surgery. Do I need surgery?”
“Ladies,” the cab driver said, “what’s it gonna’ be?” The “Don’t Walk” sign had come up and I could tell that our red light was about to turn green.
“Lenox Hill!” I said.
“She means Mt. Sinai,” Vanessa said.
“No, I don’t!” I said, “Vanessa, for the love of God!!! Lenox Hill!”
The cab hopped the traffic light on red and took a sharp turn onto 72th Street as Vanessa and I stared each other down. Neither of us even moved as the cab lurched as it turned. We were like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday at the OK Corral, even though we were actually in a taxi cab and I think that those guys were on the same side. But you get the general point I was trying to make with that one.
“Ladies,” the cab driver said, “We’re going to compromise and take you to Weil-Cornell New York Presb on 68th Street, okay?”
“Thank you,” we called out in unison.
Our cabbie ripped across town to York Avenue and I was hopping into the emergency room in 2 minutes flat.
“Maybe your friend can help you to a seat so that you can fill out these forms,” the admitting nurse said to me with a smile as she handed me a clipboard filled with papers.
“I’m here alone,” I said to the admitting nurse as I steadied myself on a wall, “my best friend has absolutely no regard for my health whatsoever.”
“She tripped on a hot dog in the park,” Vanessa said, ignoring me completely, “And now she has blinding pain in her ankle.”
“Can you walk on it?” the nurse asked me, silencing a laugh.
“It’s not funny,” I said to the nurse.
“She can’t walk on it,” Vanessa said.
“I’ll take care of these two, Nurse Carlson,” an English accent from behind us announced, “are they checked in?”
“Yes, they are Dr. Locke,” the nurse said, smiling coyly at the doctor.
I turned around and recognized a set of immaculately groomed dreadlocks. They were held back by that same chocolate colored bandana he wore when we first met him at Millie’s art gallery.
“Christian?” Vanessa said. “Brooke, you remember Christian from my mom’s art gallery, don’t you?”
“It was a week ago,” I said, still clutching the wall, “so, yes.”
Christian helped me into a wheelchair and walked us back to the examining area. He and Vanessa then carefully got me up onto a hospital bed where Christian pulled back the curtain to examine my ankle in private. Which was good since I hadn’t shaved my legs since the wedding.
Oh please. As if you shave your legs when no one’s going to see them.
“So, how was your ex-boyfriend’s wedding?” Christian asked as he poked and prodded my ankle.
“Fine,” I said. “Ouch!”
“Okay,” he said, “I’m going to put a little pressure on it. Tell me if this hurts.”
“Ouch.”
“So, everything worked out at the wedding?” he asked, still looking down at my ankle, “are you and Douglas back together?”
“It didn’t exactly work out the way I had planned,” I said. “Ouch.”
“Most things never do,” he said. “But that’s what makes life exciting, right?” Vanessa and I both stared back at him blankly. It was still before 8 o’clock in the morning—my usual wake up time—and I could do without my current “excitement.”
“So, whatever happened with that other guy,” Christian asked, now moving my leg around in circles, “the one who was at the opening with you two? He seemed very interested in you, Brooke.”
“Oh, that didn’t work out, either,” I said. Christian turned my ankle in a slow circle. “Ouch.”
“I see,” Christian said, looking up at me as he stopped poking and proding my ankle. “Okay, Brooke, the good news is that it’s not broken.”
“Thank you,” Vanessa said, taking on the maternal role, her hands clutching the metal bar of the hospital bed.
“You do have a nasty sprain here, though,” he said. “I’m going to put you on crutches for a while.”
“I can’t be on crutches!” I said. “I live in New York City! How will I get around? I walk everywhere—how will I walk? Or the subway—how will I get down the stairs to the subway?”
“Think of it as a good excuse to take cabs everywhere,” Vanessa said, and then added under her breath: “Which you sort of do anyway.”
“Staying positive,” Christian said. “That’s good, Vanessa. I’m glad to see that. I hear from your mom that you’re not having the best time of things lately.”
“I’ll be okay,” Vanessa said. “At least I’m not on crutches.”
“Ha ha,” I said.
“Well, if you ever need to talk about it,” Christian said, “you know where to find me.” Is this man flirting with Vanessa while he’s examining my ankle? The nerve! How is he going to give my ankle a proper analysis? This is why people are always complaining about the state of health care in the United States.
“I don’t need to talk about it,” Vanessa said, smoothing back her hair.
Even though the pain was maddening, all I could think was, if Vanessa marries yet another doctor before I’ve had a chance to marry even one, my mother will die. I can just hear her now: ‘Your friend married two doctors and you can’t even get a date!’
“So, I can’t go to work today, right?” I asked Christian.
“No, you can go to work,” he said, still preening in Vanessa’s general direction.
“Are you absolutely positively sure?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, eyes still glued on Vanessa.
“Because I don’t have to go to work,” I said, ever the trooper.
“Brooke, you can go,” he said.
“Can you check again?” I asked. He nodded ‘no’ to me without even looking my way. “Do I at least get some painkillers?”
“Let’s start with an ice pack and some ibuprofen. I’ll go get you a soft ice pack that you can use for the next 48 hours,” Christian said, as he pulled back the curtain and walked off to get me an ice pack, but not before he patted Vanessa on the hand before he did so.
“Don’t worry, Brooke,” Vanessa said. “Everything will work out.”
“It’s badly sprained, Vanessa,” I said. “It’s done. It’s over. There’s nothing to work out.”
“I meant the Jack thing,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “I guess I feel the same way about the Jack thing. I screwed up. It’s done. It’s over.”
“No, it’s not. With the Jack thing, it is in no way done or over. With the ankle thing, you’re just screwed.”
“Thank you for that sensitive commentary,” I said, grabbing at my ankle.
“I’m kidding!” she said. “It’s going to be fine! It’s not broken, and you’ll be back on your feet within weeks. In the meantime, you have an excuse to not exercise and take cabs everywhere! I would think that that would be your secret fantasy or something.”
“It would have been my fantasy if I also got a note saying that I couldn’t go to work.”
“I’ll work on it when he gets back,” Vanessa said, looking out past the curtain for Christian to return.
“Are you going to flirt with him some more?” I asked.
“I wasn’t flirting with him,” Vanessa said, toying with the zipper on her sweatshirt.
“Yes, you were,” I said. “You know, it’s okay if you were.”
“I know,” she said. “It just still feels like cheating somehow. I’m not ready to flirt with strangers just yet.”
“You don’t have to be ready yet,” I said. “Just take your time. Everything is going to work out the way it’s meant to.”
“I was just about to say the same thing to you.”