“But this looks like yours,” I say. “I don’t want to take your Bible.”
“I’ll get another one. And with any luck, I’ll give that one away too. I’m sort of like an encyclopedia salesman, but I’ve just got the one book and it’s free.”
“Good thing you don’t work on commission.”
“There she is,” he says and winks at me again.
I smile—it hurts, but it’s real underneath the strain.
“Is Jack here?” Oliver asks, and I nod. “You should sit with him. He needs you.”
I know Oliver is right. Jack is a wreck even though he’s putting on a brave face for me. This is our chance to come together for each other like we should have after we lost the baby. This is my chance to accept the comfort and support from Jack that I couldn’t let myself accept before.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Always,” Oliver says. “Keep me posted. Please.”
“I will. I’m going to rest here a minute.”
“Would you like me to stay?”
“I could use a moment alone,” I say, and when he raises his eyebrow I add, “Yeah, I know, I’m not alone in here.”
We stand up, and I start to hug him and then hesitate, unsure if I’m allowed to touch him really. He laughs that amazing and magical laugh of his and opens his arms to me. We embrace tightly, and he whispers into my ear words of peace and love. I don’t know that I hear them all, my mind as addled as it is, but I feel them and that’s all that matters.
A few minutes later, I round the corner from the chapel and run into Jack.
“What’s happened?” I say frantically.
“Was that him?” he says, pointing down the hallway—jabbing his finger angrily.
“Who?”
“Oliver,” Jack spits out. “Did you call that guy to come here?”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” I say and try to push past Jack. I get around him, but he grabs my wrist and pulls me back around to face him.
“Why? I’m right here, Nina. I’m right here at the hospital, going through all this with you, talking to the doctors and your family and being just as scared as you are and you go and call your boyfriend. I don’t get it.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” I yank free. “He’s a priest.”
Jack’s mouth is open to fling some comeback at me, but my words smack his cheek and he falls silent.
“What?” he asks.
“Never mind. Can we just go back to the room? Are Mom and Lola there? Did Ray get your message?”
We argue all the way down the hallway, but in the limbo of the elevator, we’re silent.
“Why weren’t Cassie and I enough for you?” Jack asks suddenly, pointedly, as the doors open onto the fifth floor. This is where we take another elevator to the ICU. It’s a secret transport that only goes to that floor, a portal into the waiting room of devastation.
“I can’t do this with you right now, Jack. It’s not a good time.”
I try to walk toward the second elevator, but he stops me again. Pulling me closer to him than I’ve been in a long time.
“It’s never a good time for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
And I do. I know exactly what he means. I just didn’t know he felt that way. I didn’t feel that way, but that’s not the point when you’re faced with the evidence of the message you sent. I know this is what he had wanted to ask earlier in the restaurant when steak and rosemary fingerling potatoes still made sense. I know this is what he wanted to ask every day for years.
“I just wanted more children,” I finally say. “Is that so awful?”
“Did you ever think the reason I didn’t want to try again after we lost him was that I didn’t want to get my heart broken?” Jack asks, holding us in place in front of the elevators—people coming and going around us. “Did you ever think I desperately needed to feel wanted for just a moment?”
I duck away from him and hurry through the hall to the other elevator, as if getting there first will accomplish anything. He catches up to me and steps between me and the silver door of doom.
“Don’t even try it,” I say, letting my fear bubble out as anger. “You wanted something easier than what we had. You wanted someone you didn’t feel obligated to when things got dark.”
“I wanted someone I didn’t care about,” Jack says, circling his hands tight on my wrists.
“That’s awful,” I say and yank free of him.
“You don’t understand. I didn’t want to care about her, and I didn’t want her to care about me. I didn’t want to get my heart broken. I didn’t want to fall in love. It wasn’t about that. It was about—”
“Sex.”
Jack lets go of my wrists and rubs his hands down the sides of his temples like he’s trying to explain a complicated concept to a toddler.
“No,” he says. “I wanted warmth and kissing and touching and connection. I wanted you—but you didn’t want me.”
The secret door opens, and we enter. It takes us up half a flight and into the waiting room.
“That’s not a reason to sleep with someone else,” I whisper harshly as we pass by all the people waiting for the next round of visiting hours.
“It is for a lot of people,” Jack says. “But—”
I push him aside and tell the attendant at the door who we are and why we’re there. She calls someone on the other side of the ICU entrance door, and we’re buzzed through. The automated doors slowly start to open.
“But not me. I didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?” I say, scooting through as soon as there’s an opening big enough for me to pass through.
“I didn’t sleep with anyone else,” he says, clipping my heel, he’s so close behind me. “Just because I said I wanted someone else doesn’t mean there was
