Bend Read online

  Pushing down the toilet seat and lid, I brace myself on it and somehow manage to stand up. My hands are shaking, my legs weak. I grab my sheer floral kimono robe from a peg on the wall and shrug into it, tugging the belt into a knot above my waist.

  Closing my eyes, I draw air into my lungs and let it flow down through me. It’s okay. I’m okay now.

  I open the door and find Jay right outside. He’s put on his boxer briefs, and his face is tight with worry. “What’s going on?”

  “Um.” Hugging myself with one arm, I lift the other up, pressing my fist to my mouth. “I think I just had a panic attack or something. Maybe a…a delayed reaction to—”

  He waits a couple of seconds, then says, “To what?”

  Okay. I can’t do this standing up. Brushing past him, I walk back into the bedroom. Plunk my butt down on the edge of my bed. Feel the mattress dip as he sits down next to me.

  “I had a pretty awful week, too,” I confess without looking at him.

  And then it spills out. All of it. I describe Tricia Michaelson, but of course, for her privacy, I can only give him the basics: thirty-nine-year-old patient, thirty-seven weeks pregnant. No fetal heartbeat. Me, chickening out and running to Dr. Borawski for help.

  The look on Tricia’s face when we came back into the room. She knew something was wrong.

  The look on her face when the ultrasound confirmed it.

  The look on her face when she asked what would happen next. Borawski calmly and apologetically listing the steps. Me, handing her tissues, squeezing her shoulder for comfort, feeling utterly useless and helpless.

  And when the doctor left the room, Tricia asking me in that fragile voice if I would be there with her. I could see in her eyes that she knew what my answer would be, and it made me hesitate. It was on the tip of my tongue to say that, no, I’m not a midwife. I don’t work in L&D. Being there at her side when she gave birth to her dead baby was not my job.

  But she hadn’t wanted us to call anyone for her. I asked her about it again, and she gave me her story. She and her girlfriend had decided they wanted a child. Tricia did the artificial insemination. Four months into the pregnancy, her girlfriend bailed. Tricia’s family lives on the East Coast. She was going to move back to be closer to them and have a support network, but she hadn’t found a way to do it yet.

  “So I went home on Wednesday, changed my clothes, and then I met her at the hospital,” I tell Jay. “It went pretty quick. She was induced at eight p.m., and by four-thirty in the morning it was over.”

  I don’t give him any more details. I know I don’t have to. He’s done rotation in L&D. There’s no need to describe to him the sight of Tricia holding her quiet, unmoving child, so carefully swaddled by the nurses. No need to explain to him how it made me feel—thankfully, because I have no words for it.

  When I’m done, he silently wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me into him. I sink against him, my forehead ending up in the crook of his neck, and we sit like that for a long while.

  “You know what keeps going through my mind?” I say when I muster up the energy to talk again. “In the office, before we found out what had happened, she mentioned Dr. Crane was pressuring her to schedule an induction, and I wanted to tell her not to let herself be bullied.”

  “But you didn’t tell her that,” Jay points out, his voice a low and rumbling murmur.

  I let out a snort, my lips twisting miserably. “Which only makes me marginally less of an idiot.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself. You know that, right?” He draws away from me to gaze into my eyes, tucking my hair behind my ear. “You gave her the best care that you could. To think you can do more than that is like swimming upstream.”

  Something snaps inside me. Tears press behind my eyes, and I let go, let them flow. Jay pulls me into his lap and wraps his arms around me.

  He holds me while the floodgates open.

  Holds me until I’m empty.

  When I feel somewhat pulled together again, I slide off his lap and go to the bathroom to get a tissue, blow my nose, and splash some water on my face. Returning to the bedroom, I find Jay in the process of getting dressed.

  “You know,” I say as he buckles the belt on his shorts, “before last week we would’ve told each other about this stuff as soon as it happened.”

  “Yeah.” He picks his shirt off the floor, shoves his arms into the short sleeves, and pulls it on over his head. “Told you things would change.”

  I press my lips together. Why does he always fall back on that smug, told-you-so refrain? “It doesn’t have to be like that.”

  He throws me a look, saying nothing. Moves toward me. Stops half an arm’s length away, still saying nothing.

  Which says plenty.

  I give it one last try. Clutching at the front of his shirt, I bunch the fabric in my hand as I tug him closer. Tilt my head back and meet his eyes. “I don’t want to see you just once a week, Jay.”

  There’s a short pause. “How about tomorrow? I’ll have a few hours in the late afternoon before I go to work.”

  “Okay.”

  He bends down and presses his lips against mine. It’s a quick kiss but soft and briefly lingering. And then he leaves.

  I should be perfectly happy with how things are going between us.

  So why aren’t I?

  Want anything from Starbucks?

  The text from Mia pops up as I’m standing at my kitchen counter, browsing some news Web sites on my phone with a mug of steaming, fragrant coffee in my hand. Breakfast was an energy bar and a banana, which I downed in as many bites as I have fingers to count them.

  It’s Friday morning, my watch shows six fifteen, and I’m waiting for Mia to come pick me up so we can get started on our seven-hour drive to her parents’ house for her grandmother’s birthday party tonight.

  No, thanks, I message her back.

  My phone buzzes as her reply arrives: Ok be there in ten.

  I take another sip of my black coffee, the liquid washing bitter and hot over my tongue and leaving a burning trail down my throat. With almost a whole week of day shifts behind me, my body clock has finally adjusted back to what feels like a more natural rhythm. I’ve always been a morning person. So I’m feeling pretty good today, despite work last night running long.

  It’s probably because I’ve been good about taking care of myself the past couple of weeks. Getting enough sleep, plenty of exercise, and, since spending more time with Mia, I’ve been eating better. She’s a great cook, the kind who seems to genuinely enjoy making food for other people. Even though it’s questionable if she should be allowed to use big kitchen knives.

  And yeah, I’ve been getting laid. A lot. As in almost every day, which is impressive considering our conflicting schedules. It kind of feels like we’re making up for lost time…but it’s more than that.

  The truth is, I can’t get enough of her. She’s the first thing I think about in the morning. Whenever I have a second of downtime during the day, my thoughts drift to her. And when I go to sleep, it’s with visions of her in my mind.

  I still feel like I’m doing this against my better judgment, though. This new dimension to my relationship with Mia is like an addiction—a comparison that doesn’t sit well. I’ve spent the past ten years of my life making damn sure I’m always doing the right thing, the responsible thing, while also not allowing anyone else to derail me from my goals.

  And that’s been pretty easy to do. Until now. I apparently don’t have the strength to stop myself, even though I know exactly why I shouldn’t be having sex with Mia.

  It’s because I’ll never be able to just think of her as my friend with benefits. She means too much to me.

  It’s because the last thing I need these final two years before I’m ready to move on with my career is entanglements that’ll make it more difficult to go. Leaving my best friend will be hard enough already.

  It’s because there’s so much she doesn’t know
about me and my past, and I can’t stomach the thought of telling her any of it.

  But despite all of that, I guess we’ve reached a kind of compromise. She’s been respecting my rules, not saying a word about them even though I know she thinks they’re stupid. And I’ve been trying not to worry and just roll with things.

  It’s all good.

  Yup.

  Swallowing the rest of my coffee, I rinse out the mug and leave it in the sink. Then I stuff my phone and my wallet in my pockets, grab my duffel and my suit bag from where I left them by the door, and head outside. The air is mild and crisp, birds are chirping, and the sprinklers are swishing and sputtering.

  Her MINI pulls up to the curb just as I walk down the driveway. Its tailgate pops open first, then the driver-side door, and I see Mia scooting her seat back.

  Which means she’s adjusting it for my longer legs. Which means she’s expecting me to drive.

  “You’re driving first,” she says as she jumps out of the idling car, as if that’s not obvious already.

  “Excuse me?” I stop right in front of where she’s standing with a hand resting on the open door, her white-and-green cup of coffee in the other. Quiet music is coming from the speakers inside the car. She’s wearing dark capri leggings with bright-red Chucks and a denim jacket over a plain white tee. Her wavy hair is up in a messy ponytail, her eyes hidden behind her aviator sunglasses.

  I really want to kiss her. She’d taste like creamy coffee. Probably with a hint of caramel.

  “I’m exhausted,” she explains, taking a sip of her drink. “I don’t function before seven a.m.”

  “‘Can you please drive the first leg, Jay?’” I say while walking to the back of the car to throw my bags in on top of the folded-down seats. “See? It’s not hard to ask nicely.”

  She brushes past me just as I push the tailgate closed. “Okay, how about this? I’m so tired it’s not safe for me to be driving right now, so you need to do it.”

  I let out a snort. “It’s never safe for you to be driving.”

  “Right.” She makes a face at me over the roof of the car. “So you’re doing the world a favor, making it a better and safer place. That’s your thing, right?”

  With a shake of my head, I reply, “Let’s go.”

  We get in the car. I start adjusting the mirrors, and Mia sets her coffee down in her cup holder. On my side there’s a large, unopened bottle of water. Guess she got me something from Starbucks after all, which was thoughtful of her. Here’s some water for you, Jay. Now drive me to San Francisco.

  As I turn the AC vents so they’ll hit me—it’s not warm in here, but I like having air blowing on my face when I’m in a car—I notice from the corner of my eye that she’s tapping around on the Internet radio app on her phone. She’s picking a station called Today’s Hits.

  “Nope.” I snatch the phone out of her hand.

  “Hey!” Lunging, she tries to grab the phone back, but I switch it to my left hand, out of her reach. I’m kind of hoping she’ll decide to crawl on top of me. Doesn’t mean she’ll get the phone, but it’ll be fun to have her try.

  Sadly, she gives up.

  “Driver gets to pick the music,” I tell her.

  A noise of disgust comes from her throat. “Since when?”

  “Since you apparently invited me along on this trip to be your personal chauffeur.” I scroll through the list of stations, almost choosing some kind of modern alternative. She might not mind that too much, though, so I type in “Grunge” instead. Just to annoy her.

  A distorted guitar intro bleeds out of the speakers, and I turn it up before reaching for my seat belt. Making sure Mia is wearing hers, I put the car in Drive and hit the gas pedal.

  Swiveling the steering wheel and heading out of the parking lot, I make a quick mental comparison of the different routes to get to the freeway. It’s early enough that we should beat the absolute worst of rush hour, and being able to use the carpool lane will help a lot, but I’m still in kind of a hurry. If we get stuck in morning traffic, it’s going to be a long damn drive.

  “If I have to listen to that depressing music of yours, I’m probably gonna fall asleep,” she warns me as I’m slowing down for a red light.

  “So go to sleep then. I’ll deal.”

  She doesn’t answer, instead picking up her phone to start tapping and swiping away. The light turns green, and then we’re moving again. The few times I’ve driven her car, I’ve been surprised at how zippy it is. It accelerates well and handles like a go-cart. When she was buying it, I kind of hoped she’d pick the other MINI Cooper they had on the lot, the base model with the smallest engine, but she decided she could afford this one.

  So this is the one she got. And I get to have an anxiety attack at work every time paramedics call in a Code 3 and it’s a young female crash victim.

  It’s not that Mia is a bad driver. She’s not—though she’s quick to defend herself by pointing out that she’s never been in an accident, which to me is like saying there’s nothing wrong with smoking because you’ve never had cancer. No, the problem is she’s an aggressive driver. In her world, a yellow light means punch it, turn signals are for sissies, and speed limits are mere guidelines.

  As I’m making the slight turn onto the freeway on-ramp, Mia asks me about my shift yesterday, and I share the most interesting parts, including the wanted-to-says, of which there were several. We talk about that for a while, and then she goes back to looking at her phone while I follow the thankfully steady flow of traffic.

  At least this part of our relationship hasn’t changed. Talking about work is something we do a lot, I realize, but it’s not usually something we get emotional over. The toddler drowning case got to me, yeah, which happens now and then. But I never let it drag me down. I couldn’t do this job if I allowed that. Life is filled with heartache, tragedy, and cruelty. It’s shit piled on top of shit. I’ve learned, through necessity, how to cope.

  Mia, though. She’s another story completely. Her breakdown a couple of weeks ago caught me completely off guard, and I’ve been trying to figure out how she’s dealing with it. She seems like she’s okay. Not that that means anything. You can never truly know what’s going on inside another person’s head, can you?

  Why did she decide to attend that patient’s stillbirth? A patient who wasn’t even her patient, and Mia chose to spend her own time to stay by that woman’s side through such a god-awful ordeal. I was—and still am—surprised and confused by it.

  Mia doesn’t like to step out of her comfort zone. It’d be pretty easy and fitting to call her privileged, sheltered, even kind of innocent. Not innocent in a way that makes her clueless about the uglier sides of life. More like an innocence based on lack of experience. She knows the shit exists. She just doesn’t have any idea what it’s like to be buried up to the neck in it.

  I don’t begrudge her that naiveté. Mia wouldn’t be Mia if she hadn’t grown up secure in the bosom of her picture-perfect family, with her successful and loving parents, who gave their kids everything children need—and also a whole lot of what they strictly speaking don’t. Such as enough college savings to pay for each of the three siblings’ entire educations. Buying this car was the first time Mia took on any kind of debt.

  Maybe I am just a little bitter about that. I’d love to be in that position, trying to build a career while owing nothing to anybody. She’s got a pretty sweet deal going there.

  I’m pretty sure Fuckface cheating on her was the most traumatic thing that ever happened to Mia. Which either says a lot about how little experience she has with shit, because that asshole just wasn’t a great loss, to either of us. Or it shows how hung up she was on him.

  How hung up she still is.

  I glance sideways to see what she’s doing and find her with her hands and phone limp in her lap, her head lolled up against the car door. Wow. That looks seriously uncomfortable, but she’s out. Guess she wasn’t joking about being tired.

  I alte
rnate between keeping an eye on the road and looking at her. Sleeping with her lips slightly parted, she draws shallow breaths in through her mouth, her expression smooth and serene.

  Beautiful Mia. Sharp-witted Mia. Passionate Mia.

  Unspoiled Mia. That fits, too—and maybe that’s why I can’t make myself reveal the uglier parts of my past.

  Because the shit? I don’t want it to touch her. I want her to stay just the way she is.

  My Mia. In this moment, at least, I can call her that.

  We’ve left the seemingly endless clusters of suburban housing developments and strip malls behind when Mia awakens, her head jerking upright. Straightening herself in the seat, she blinks out the window at the passing landscape.

  If she’s trying to figure out where we’re at, good luck to her. Lining the road on either side are hills covered in light-brown dirt and dry, yellow grass and dotted with bushes and low trees, and this is pretty much going to be our view for the next few hours. The I-5 is not the scenic route.

  She taps the power button on her phone and turns it off again right away, clearly checking the time. “Wow. Didn’t think I’d actually fall asleep.”

  I throw a glance at her. She’s yawning and stretching, arms raised, her slender body arched away from the seat back. I turn the music down a bit and ask, “Late night?”

  “Yeah, kinda.” From the corner of my eye I see her push her sunglasses up on her head, flip down the sun visor, and check her face in the mirror. “I went to a party at Angela’s.”

  Who? I take my eyes off the road for a second to frown questioningly at her.

  “Angela from work?” she clarifies while nudging the visor back into place.

  Oh, yeah. Now I remember. Tightening my grip on the wheel, tilting it slightly to steer us through a curve, I state flatly, “The one who knows about us. And wanted to meet me?”

  Mia is quiet for a second. Then she says with briskness that sounds kind of forced, “Right.”

  Not for the first time I’m wondering why I agreed to go on this trip. I got a bad feeling about it the minute she mentioned it that night two weeks ago, and this reminder of her inability to control her mouth isn’t doing much to diminish my foreboding.