Waiting
Taylor doesn’t ask me to come to the hospital with him. He doesn’t have to. Just one look at him, shaking like a leaf and holding the cell phone out in front of him like he’s not even sure it’s real, and I know he won’t make it on his own. I dig my keys out of my pocket and wrap my arm tightly around him, steering him toward the front door rather than out the side where he’s parked. He doesn’t question me at all, just lets himself be drug along.
I’m doing this for Taylor, though. Not for Natalie. I hate myself for still being so angry at her for even existing, but I don’t think that feeling will ever leave me, no matter what. Something is seriously wrong right now; even I know that. She’s only about a month along, give or take a few weeks. Whatever she’s going to the hospital for right now can’t possibly be good, so just for the moment, I can try to shove down my real feelings and just be there for Taylor and, consequently, her.
I don’t suppose I’ve ever truly done anything nice for her – at least nothing that really mattered – except the time I agreed to date her broken hearted best friend. That one worked out really well for me. I can’t help thinking about Kate right now, though. She doesn’t like to talk about it, but we’ve been through this too – twice. I still don’t have any words for Taylor that might be any comfort at all. There’s nothing that helps when you’re faced with the thought of your child ceasing to exist before it ever really lived.
So I don’t try to comfort him at all, and he doesn’t say a word either. The only words passed between the two of us are the name and location of the hospital. Soon enough, we’re pulling into the parking lot. Taylor’s out of my truck before I’ve even got the key out of the ignition. I want to tell him that it doesn’t matter how quickly he moves, it won’t change a thing, but I don’t. It might be true, but it just sounds so callous.
I trail behind Taylor as he practically sprints into the emergency room, catching up with him only when he skids to a stop at the front desk. I place my hand on his back and he nearly jumps a foot in the air. That doesn’t deter me, though. I keep my hand there, rubbing gentle circles, while he gets the information he needs from the woman behind the desk.
Once he knows where to go, he turns back to me as though he’s suddenly remembered I exist. With a slight frown, he asks, “Do you mind waiting here?”
“No, I’ll be fine,” I reply, shaking my head.
Taylor opens his mouth to speak again, then closes it. With a tiny nod, he walks away, toward a row of curtained off rooms. I turn around and survey the room until I finally find a corner with a row of empty chairs. I don’t feel like being near any more people than absolutely necessary.
If I were honest with Taylor, I would have told him that I much prefer waiting out here. I would be useless back there with him, crowding up the room during what is a very private moment for him and his wife. If I were completely honest, though, I would have told him that I don’t want to be in the hospital at all right now.
It’s not that I hate hospitals. I always thought that was such a weird thing to say. Are there people who actually like hospitals? Anyone who genuinely enjoys those little paper thin gowns and being surrounded by hoards of sick people have far more problems than I do. It’s just that I’ve been here before in exactly Taylor’s position. I’ve held Kate’s hand while she waited for tests that would hopefully reveal why it kept happening to us.
None of the tests ever did. Nothing was wrong, they said, and I suppose our two kids proved that. I think we’ve both always known that something was wrong, though – something that couldn’t be shown on some doctor’s test.
This is why I hate hospitals. Because there’s nothing to do but sit in the waiting room and think, think, think until my head feels like it might explode. Whatever happens today, I have a feeling it’s going to change everything. I don’t know yet what that means, but I can feel the shifting as tangibly as if the earth were actually rearranging itself underneath my feet.
At some point, I can’t take it anymore. I have to get out of there. I pass a vending machine my way out and I buy myself a bag of chips and a Mountain Dew, since I still haven’t eaten a single thing all day. It’s not a balanced lunch, but it will have to do. With my lunch in hand, I climb back into my truck to eat and read the mindless video game book I’m pretty sure is in the truck’s floorboard. It won’t totally distract my mind, but it’s enough for now.
I only make it a chapter or two into the book before I start to drift off. It happens so suddenly that I can’t fight it off or even fully realize it’s happening. I only realize I’ve fallen asleep when a knock on the window I’m resting my head against wakes me up.
Just inches away from me, Taylor’s face is deathly pale, a drastic change from the tan he was sporting earlier as a souvenir from his vacation. With one hand, I rub my tired eyes and with the other I roll my window down.
“Can we get out of here?” Taylor asks.
I just nod. I should tell him to go back in there and be with his wife, but I’m feeling selfish. I’ll have plenty of time to beat myself up for this later. So, without a word, I unlock the passenger side and motion for Taylor to get in. He slides into the passenger seat like he wants to disappear into it and I know I should say something, anything at all. I just don’t know what.
“She lost the baby,” he says.
I nod, because I’m not really surprised. I won’t tell Taylor, but I think it was pretty much a given that if she hadn’t, she would before leaving the hospital today. I just had a bad feeling about it, but Taylor doesn’t need to hear that. I’m not sure what he does need to hear, though.
“Shouldn’t you…” I say, letting myself trail off because I don’t dare tell Taylor what to do.
He shakes his head. “No. Let’s get out of here. Please.”
Even though a small part of me still wants to argue with him, I don’t. I just slip my key into the ignition and steer my truck out of the hospital parking lot. Taylor didn’t say where he wanted to go, but I can’t stop thinking about our conversation earlier about camping out behind our old house. Without asking him what he wants, I start driving in the direction of our old neighborhood, turning the radio up just to fill in the awful silence.
The driveway is blocked off with some rope, and Taylor sits patiently in the truck while I pull the little makeshift gate back so I can ease my truck further off the road and into the shade of a few old trees by the side of the house. I shut the truck off and we both sit there, still silent. I’m not sure why I thought it was a good idea to come here or what exactly I planned on us doing once we arrived. Now that we’re here, I just feel awkward and useless all over again.
Taylor steps out of the truck without a word, and I let him go. I’ll give him a head start just so I’m not following him like he’s a child or something. Maybe he just wants to be alone. It’s hard to give him what he wants when he doesn’t really tell me what that is.
After giving Taylor a little time to himself, I decide maybe it won’t hurt to join him. I step out of my truck and glance around the yard. It’s not remote at all, but it is fairly large and wooded. There’s plenty of room for Taylor to disappear, but after just a few steps I can smell the spicy smoke of his cigarettes. When he gets desperate, he’ll smoke any brand, but he always did prefer the cloves. Sometimes he could even talk me into smoking one, too, since they’re a little more like the herb I prefer, but I haven’t been able to get away with that for years.
I finally find him sitting beneath a big oak tree, slumped against it like he just sort of collapsed there rather than actually chose that spot to sit. He spots me out of the corner of his eye and pats the ground next to him. I may be pretty useless otherwise, but I’m definitely capable of sitting and inhaling his second hand smoke.
“How do you deal with it?” He asks, the words leaving his mouth along with a cloud of smoke.
I don’t have to ask what he’s referring to when he says it. Now I understand why he wanted to leave with him. I’m the only person who might understand what he’s feeling right now. That doesn’t mean I have any words of wisdom for him, though.
“It takes time,” I say. “It does get easier. You try to appreciate what you’ve got, you know?”
It’s bullshit and Taylor knows it is, but thankfully he doesn’t call me out on it. Maybe it will get easier for him and Natalie. I don’t know; I’ve never understood their relationship. For me and Kate, the pain was alleviated some with each new birth, but there was always this lingering feeling that something was wrong with us. If the doctors couldn’t explain why it happened, then maybe it was just a sign that we weren’t meant to have children together. I know she thought that, too, and maybe even believed it more than I did.
It would be easy to blame those miscarriages for this chasm in our marriage, but I know they aren’t the only thing driving us apart. I think the biggest reason it was doomed from the start is sitting right next to me, leaning his head against my shoulder and blowing out little puffs of smoke far too close to my face. That’s still wrong, though. It isn’t his fault that I fell in love with him.
I guess it is just my fault after all.
“You think we’ll be okay?” He asks.
I’m not sure which we he’s asking about, but I think either way the answer is an emphatic no. He and Natalie probably haven’t been okay in years, and he and I never should be a we in the first place.
“Yeah,” I reply, lying through my teeth yet again. “I think so.”