Perfectly Undone. Jamie Raintree
know you have a hard time letting people in, Dylan. I understand that there are things I don’t understand about you. Hell, the fact that you can still surprise me after nine years is one of the things I love most about you. But I worry about you. It’s not healthy to keep everything locked up inside yourself. You don’t have to try so hard to keep everything under control. The world isn’t an operating room.”
It’s easy for him to say. He’s lived such a charmed life. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have everything you know and love torn to shreds before your eyes, like my life and my family was after my sister died.
I used to tell Abby my secrets, but since her death, I’ve been too afraid to trust anyone else with that raw, imperfect version of myself. I’ve been too afraid to trust the world. But Cooper doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know all the details of what happened that night.
“Are you going to pull out your blood pressure cuff?” I joke.
“I’m serious, Dylan.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s not you. You know it’s not you, right?” I ask him. I place my hand on his cheek. “You know how much I love you?”
My words seem to reassure him more than I would like, like he didn’t know.
I tell him.
Don’t I?
I feel it.
He takes my hand from his cheek and holds it to his chest, right over his heart.
“Maybe it’s time we focus a little more on us,” he says. I open my mouth to argue, but he goes on before I can. “I know you have the grant. But you love me. And I love you. God, Dylan, don’t you get how much? I’d do anything to make you happy.”
I watch my fingers run up and down the folds in the sheet instead of looking at him, instead of answering him.
“What can I do?” he urges. When I can’t come up with an answer, he sighs and softens his voice. “You know once you get this grant, work is going to be busier, not slower.”
“Maybe I can get fewer shifts at the hospital,” I offer hopelessly.
“Can you?” he asks. “I don’t mean, will they let you. I mean, will you let yourself?”
I scoot closer to him and bury my face against his chest, feel his chin against the top of my head. His body melts beneath mine, no doubt with the belief that his words have gotten through to me. But the responsibility I carry lives deep in my bones. I can’t lose focus at the moment of truth.
“I just love you, Dylan. I want to see you happy, and I’m not sure you are anymore.”
“I’m happy with you,” I whisper.
To that, he has nothing else to say.
I close my eyes and count his heartbeats, hiding in the immediacy of him.
The following Tuesday morning, the rain comes down like candy from a piñata. The drops are intermittent but heavy and invasive—the kind that assault the top of your head and bleed down your scalp. I stride across the hospital parking lot, using my hand to shield my eyes from the sunrise as it rekindles its romance with seven o’clock.
Over the last week, I’ve hardly left these few square miles, spending all my spare time in my office preparing my application. Between patient exams and three deliveries, spare time has been hard to come by. The first couple of nights I tried to work at home, but although Cooper never said a word about me skipping dinner, I felt his disappointment permeating all the air under our roof, seeping into every word I wrote. I could no longer decipher which disappointment was his and which was mine. It was easier to stay away.
Last night, though, when I sneaked into our bedroom after working until midnight in the clinic and curled up with my back to him in the dark, he reached out for me in his sleep. That simple gesture has gotten me through many tough times—to know that even in his unconsciousness, and even when he’s unsure about my choices, he’s never unsure about us. Still, I didn’t turn to him. I could have. He would have woken up for me. I could have let him take me in his arms, and we would have been Dylan and Cooper for a night, or just an hour. We could have been the can’t keep our hands off each other young couple we once were, instead of Dr. Michels and Dr. Caldwell, making appointments to see each other. I know that’s what he really wants from me. Putting work first was always the story of our relationship. There’s never been a time when we haven’t been studying, applying for grants, making it through one class at a time, one day at the hospital at a time. Except for the past two years, since Cooper finished his residency and found a nine-to-five. He’s ready for me to find a comfortable routine, too—to find a comfortable ease together.
I just don’t have the energy to reassure him yet again. All I can think about right now is my purpose—that which is greater than me.
As I step off the curb toward the emergency entrance, an ambulance comes barreling into the drop-off lane, the back doors flying open and EMTs pulling the patient out on a stretcher. It’s a common sight, but I step back onto the curb, startled—both by its abrupt appearance, and that after all these years working in a hospital, I still associate the red-and-white lights with only one person. I close my eyes and force a deep breath into my lungs.
When I open them again, I notice a packet of flower seeds where it’s been discarded in the ditch. I’ve seen hundreds of them in my life—scattered on the kitchen counter, hidden in drawers around the house, bound together by a rubber band in the garage, and torn open and empty on the porch. Gardening is my mom’s passion. But with Abby still in the forefront of my mind, it’s her face I see, not Mom’s—fragile and broken, like the seeds, with their package marred by dirt and water. It feels like a sign. I crouch down to pick up the paper envelope, wipe it with my palm and slip it into my pocket. Then I run into the hospital, out of the rain.
“Good afternoon, Erika,” I say as I enter the exam room later that day.
It’s Mrs. Martinez’s monthly checkup. She sits straight-backed on the exam table in a flowing white blouse that’s tucked into a taut pencil skirt. Her long black hair is pulled into a side ponytail, and her bright red lipstick is freshly applied. I try to imagine how much of this will change by the time she hits forty weeks, and a grin pulls at the corner of my mouth. Doctors aren’t supposed to have favorite patients—I, of all people, understand why—but I’ve always enjoyed my visits with Erika, a strong, successful businesswoman with a sense of humor.
“Afternoon, Dylan,” she drawls. She’s always made it a point to call me by my first name, and I never felt the need to correct her, so it’s become an inside joke between us. In truth, I savor the intimacy.
Her husband, Andrew, is here for the first time, and I introduce myself. He’s an unassuming man behind his glasses, the reflection of a computer screen almost still visible on his lenses. This surprises me. I imagined her husband would be someone bigger with a presence large enough to rival hers, but his quiet air balances her—the yin to her yang. A good fit. That’s one part of being an obstetrician I didn’t expect—how much my patients would teach me about relationships.
“Erika has said a lot of good things about you,” he tells me over his eager handshake.
“Likewise,” I say with a smile. “You’re quite the lucky guy.”
“I know it,” he says earnestly, casting a glance at Erika. She blushes, something I never imagined I’d see her do. There’s an innocence to their love, even after six years together. In our first years together, Cooper and I were passionate, but never innocent.
“Oh, don’t let him fool you,” Erika says. “He calls me a pain in the ass five times a day.”
“The best ones are,” he says, and we all laugh.
“All right,