Chapter 24 : Three Days

Three days is not a long time.

Three days is, in fact, the exact amount of time a person can go from being a person who is happy to be a person who is panicking. Three days is the exact amount of time between. I want people to know I am with you too, and I have not heard from him since Tuesday, and I am a person who is fine.

Tuesday, we had dinner at his place. We had pad thai on the kitchen floor. We had Sophie on speakerphone. We had burned garlic bread in the trash. We had Lincoln on his lap. We had his hand across the takeout containers, his thumb on my knuckles. We had the small, careful, very specific way he looks at me, which is the way a man looks at a person he is going to be with, which is a way I have not stopped thinking about for three days.

Tuesday was good.

Tuesday was the kind of good that a person gets used to very fast, which is the kind of good that becomes a problem, because the second Tuesday stops being the shape of the day, the person who got used to it starts counting hours.

Wednesday, 9:00 a.m.

PT with Carlos. He is in a good mood. He is making me do things I do not want to do. He is a man who enjoys his job, which is annoying.

"Your shoulder's at ninety per cent," he says, after a series of exercises I have been complaining about for twenty minutes. "Your shoulders at ninety per cent, and your knee is solid. I think you are ready to go back to light work next week."

"I can work?"

"Light work. Desk work. No lifting. No PT for a while. I'm going to clear you."

I texted Aiden before I was in the Lyft.

I can work again!!

I wait.

I wait in the Lyft. I wait in the elevator of my building. I wait in my apartment, on my couch, with the candle lit, because I have finally lit the candle, because I am a person who is in a relationship and who is allowed to light candles.

I wait for six hours.

At three p.m., I text again.

Hello?

At five p.m., I check his hospital schedule. I do this by going to the Cedars-Sinai website and finding the surgical staff directory and looking at the on-call roster, which is a thing I have now done twice in my life, and which is a thing I am not proud of, but which is also a thing I am willing to do.

He is on call.

He is on call for twenty-four hours, which means he is in the hospital, which means he is doing surgeries, which means he is a person who is doing his job and not a person who is ignoring me on purpose, which is the kind of logic I have to keep reminding myself of, because the other part of my brain is the part that counts hours.

At 11:14 p.m. he texts.

Sorry. Emergency surgery. I'm exhausted.

I look at the timestamp. 11:14 p.m. The same time as the got home safe text. The same time as the texts that come when he is a person who is thinking about me at the end of a long day.

It's fine. Get some sleep.

I am waiting for the second text. The sleep. I'll see you on Tuesday. The ice is your knee. The small, private, very specific way he has of saying I am here, I am tired, but I am here.

There is no second text.

I put the phone down. I pick it up. I put it down. I go to bed at 1:00 a.m. I do not sleep. I lie in the dark and I think about a man in scrubs in a hospital in Los Angeles, and I think about a small gray dog in Silverlake, and I think about a kitchen floor, and I think about a hand across takeout containers, and I think about a man who said *I want people to know I am with you too,* and who has not texted me in thirteen hours.

I sleep at 2:00 a.m.

Thursday.

Nothing.

I text at 8:00 a.m. Good morning.

Nothing.

I text at 11:00 a.m. Coffee?

Nothing.

I text at 3:00 p.m. Did I do something?

Nothing.

I texted at 6:00 p.m. Okay.

Nothing.

I do not text at 11:14 p.m. I am not going to be the person who texts at 11:14 p.m. I am not going to be the person who chases a man across Los Angeles. I am a person who is allowed to be a person. I am a person who has a candle and a couch and a small grey dog she has met exactly once, and I am a person who is not going to chase anyone.

By 8:00 p.m. I have been staring at the candle for an hour. The candle is lit. The candle is doing its candle thing. The candle is not making me feel better. I am thinking about a man who is on call. I am thinking about a man who does this when he is stressed. I am thinking about a man who disappeared for two weeks in September, and who is now disappearing for two days in November, and who is going to keep disappearing because that is what Aiden Black does, that is the man I am dating, that is the small fact of the man.

I texted Sophie.

Is this the two weeks again?

She calls me within forty-five seconds.

"What's happening," she says.

"He is on call. He has not texted me in thirty-six hours."

"And?"

"And it is the same thing. He disappears. He gets busy. He goes quiet. He is the kind of man who does this."

"Emma. He is a surgeon. He is on call. He is in a hospital doing a thing that is more important than texting you."

"I know."

"You know."

"I know."

"Then why are you panicking?"

"Because I do not want to be the person who is panicking. Because I am not going to be the person who is panicking. Because the man I am dating disappeared for two weeks once and I am not going to do that again."

Sophie is quiet for a long time.

"Do you want to do something about it?" she asks, finally.

"Yes."

"Then do something about it."

Friday, 6:47 a.m.

I am standing in the lobby of Cedars-Sinai with two coffees. One black, one with caramel drizzle and oat milk and a small heart in the foam that the barista at the place on Beverly did not draw, that I drew myself, with a small piece of paper and a toothpick, while the barista watched me with the kind of patient face that people have when they realize a person has lost her mind.

I am at Cedars-Sinai. I have shown up at his hospital. I have shown up at the place where he works, with two coffees, at six forty-seven in the morning, because I have not heard from him in thirty-six hours and I am a person who has decided that she is not going to be the kind of person who waits.

I ask the front desk where the surgical break room is. The front desk woman is a different front desk woman. She does not know me. She tells me the fourth floor.

I take the elevator.

I walk down the hallway.

The break room is at the end of the corridor. The door is open. The light is on. There is a small table. There are vending machines. There is a small couch, the kind of couch that exists in hospital break rooms, the kind of couch that is meant to be sat on for five minutes and not for the four hours Aiden Black has been asleep on it.

He is asleep.

He is in scrubs. Navy. The grey sweater is folded on the arm of the couch, like a blanket. His badge is hanging from his pocket. He is on his side, his head on a folded sweatshirt. His shoes are still on. His hair is a mess. He looks like a man who did a fourteen-hour surgery and then sat in a break room and could not make it to his car.

He looks so tired he looks ten years older.

I stand in the doorway. I hold the two coffees. I do not wake him up for two full minutes. I let him sleep. I let him be a person who is sleeping in a break room in a hospital. I let him be a person who has not texted me, who has not meant to disappear, who has been doing the work he is supposed to do, and who has fallen asleep on a small couch because the alternative was driving home.

I put the coffee on the table. I sit down in the chair across from him. I wait.

He wakes up the way a surgeon wakes up. Fast. Alert. Eyes open. The kind of wake-up that is the result of a thousand pager beeps. He looks at the ceiling. He looks at the break room. He looks at me.

He looks guilty.

The kind of guilty that a man looks when he has been doing the work he is supposed to do, and the work has eaten the work he is not supposed to do, and the work he is not supposed to do is the work of being a person who texts the woman he is dating when he gets home safe.

"Emma. I did not mean to disappear."

"You did it again." My voice is shaking. I do not want it to be shaking. I want it to be the voice of a person who is fine. I want it to be the voice of a person who is a thirty-year-old woman with a job and a candle and a small grey dog. It is not that voice. It is the voice of a person who is hurt. "You just vanished."

"I know. I am sorry. It is a bad habit when I am stressed. The hospital gets loud, and the rest of the world gets small, and I forget that there is a person on the other end of the phone who is waiting."

"I am not going to chase you, Aiden."

He looks at me. He looks at me with the face of a man who has heard this before, except he has not heard it before, because I have not said it before, and I am saying it now, and it is the truest thing I have said in this whole thing.

"If we are doing this," I say, "you have to tell me. You have to text me. You have to be a person. You can not be the man who is fine and the man who is not fine. I am not going to date both."

He stands up. He is so tired. He is so tired that the act of standing up looks like a medical procedure. He stands up and he looks at me and his face is doing the thing it does when he is being honest, the thing it does when the professional mask is gone, the thing it does when he is a person, not a surgeon, not a doctor, not the man who is not allowed to touch me.

"You are right," he says. "I suck at this. But I want to do it right. With you."

Long pause. The kind of pause that has the small, broken garlic bread in it, and the kitchen floor in it, and the takeout containers in it, and Sophie on speakerphone in it, and Lincoln on his lap in it, and a forehead pressed against a forehead in a small PT room in it.

"Can we start over?" he asks. "Dinner. Tomorrow. My place. No hospital. No disappearing."

I nod.

He hugs me.

It is the first time he has hugged me. It is not the way a surgeon hugs a person. It is the way a man hugs a woman he is sorry to. It is the way a man hugs a woman he does not want to let go of. It smells like hospital soap and coffee. It smells like the man who has been a person for three days and is now trying to be a person for a long time.

I stand in the break room of Cedars-Sinai, in a man's arms, and I think: this is hard.

I think: but he is worth the hard.

To be continued...