A Missing Heart (16 page)

Brink also didn’t think to ask if she wanted to go to Cancun. Yet, Cammy is smiling. “I do, I always have it in my purse. I considered running away once, and I figured if I was going to do that, I might need a passport. Haven’t separated from it since.” She took that whole running away business seriously, and I didn’t. We never got too deep into the conversation on where we’d run away to, but she mentioned Canada. I loved the idea at that moment. I’ve always loved any idea Cammy has had.

“How long is the trip?” she asks. It’s something I should have considered asking too.

“Eight days. We’ll be back a week from Sunday.”

Cammy sits down on the seat we’re standing beside and places her hands over her eyes. “Crap. Crap. Crap.”

“What’s wrong?” I ask her.

“I’m supposed to meet with the dean next Friday to discuss a possible job placement for the summer. It’s a pretty big deal.”

“The ticket is refundable for the next thirty minutes. My pops knows people at the airline we’re flying with. No harm, no foul if you can’t go,” Brink says.

Cammy grinds her jaw back and forth for a long minute. “You folks ready to go?” the driver asks.

“I hate this whole ‘becoming an adult’ thing,” Cammy says, standing from her seat. “If I miss the interview, it will be next to one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.”

I nod, “I agree. I’ll stay here with you, and you can leave when you need to.”

“No,” she says sternly. “Brink, make sure he has a good time, and stay out of trouble, both of you.”

“Cam,” I say.

“AJ, don’t argue,” she says, with an accompanying smile. “This is what’s best. I promise.” She leans over and kisses my cheek. “Oh, and thank you for the sweet gesture, Brink. No one has ever done something so ridiculous for me.”

Brink laughs. “I am here to shock and awe.” He places his hands behind his head and lifts his feet up to sit sideways on the seat.

Cammy opens her bag and retrieves a white box. “Here. I brought this for us.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“Open it,” she tells me. I sit down in one of the seats and pull her down with me, creating a little privacy from Brink. I open the box, finding a cupcake with a “Happy Birthday” candy piece in the center. My heart feels as though it’s splitting back open from the wound that has hardly healed and I look up at her, finding the same pain swimming through her eyes. Cammy takes my hand within hers and squeezes tightly. “I hope she’s happy,” Cammy says.

“She is. She has to be. That’s why we’re going through pain, so she can be happy. It’s what good parents do, right?” I tell her, saying what I’ve done my best to convince myself of over the past year.

Cammy shakes her head and wraps a strand of hair behind her ear. “Send me a postcard,” she says while placing a kiss on my cheek. “And have fun, okay?”

I’m hardly able to agree before she makes her way off of the shuttle.

The thought that this could be another long or permanent goodbye makes my stomach hurt. I hate feeling like this because I think this might be it for me. This pain. It’s too much to continue living through.

She’s letting me go so I can live.

I have to let her go, so she can live too.

I stand up and glance over at Brink. “Bud, can you hold this shuttle for like five minutes? I just—”

Brink glances at his watch. “Yeah, we’re early. You have a few. You okay?”

“No.”

I step off the shuttle, running after her. “Cam!”

Her golden-brown waves spiral around her head as she stops and turns. “No way, AJ. You need to go and enjoy yourself,” she scolds me.

“Cammy,” I say, breathlessly, as I reach her.

“Yeah,” she asks with a small smile.

“I think we need to break things off now before it gets to be too much. It’s already too hard to handle. I need to be with you and I can’t be. This hurts too much. Missing our daughter, and you—it’s all too much.” What am I doing? Is this considered self-defense? God, I’m such an asshole. She just drove all the way up here with a goddamn cupcake for our daughter’s birthday, and now she probably thinks I’m saying this because she’s taking an interview over going to Cancun with me. “But it’s not because you can’t come to Cancun with me—”

“AJ,” she says, placing her hand up, gesturing me to stop. “I understand. Even though we had kind of taken a break, I was still thinking about you every minute of every day. It was one of the reasons why I came up here to see you—it had to be face to face and not over the phone.”

“You came up here to make our breakup official and you were going to leave without saying anything?”

She shrugs. “I didn’t want to ruin your trip. I figured it could wait until you got back.”

“So this is it, then,” I tell her.

“We kind of broke up before I left for D.C., then again three months later. Both times, we said goodbye, but it never felt like a goodbye. I still love you. I think I always will, and it’s making it hard for me to move on, so I’ve stayed still, thinking this could actually work in some alternate world. I know it can’t, though.” Her words sound like every thought I’ve had over the past six months. I’ve had drunken moments where I’ve forced myself to pretend like this girl didn’t leave her imprint on my life, but she’s a part of it forever, no matter what. Though, we aren’t in a place or at a time where we can be together.

“I’ve felt the same way,” I tell her. “This hurts, though, Cam. Does this mean we’re not going to talk anymore?” We shouldn't. It’ll make it worse.

“I—”

“Don’t answer me. I know what the answer should be,” I tell her.

She leaps toward me and squeezes me tightly, like a child holding a teddy bear during a thunderstorm. “I really, really do love you with all of my heart, AJ, but I think this is what we’re supposed to do right now.”

I hold her with the same amount of strength that she’s showing me. “I love you, Cam. I always will. No matter what life brings either of us, you will always be a part of my thoughts—my life, even if you aren’t beside me. Plus, goodbye doesn’t have to mean forever.”

Her back shudders beneath my grip and I know she’s crying. “I’m sorry for everything,” she says.

“I’m sorry for…everything too,” I tell her.

We say this often because we call our daughter… everything.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

IT WAS FOUR
hours before we were allowed in to see Tori. As we enter her room, the first thing I see are her glazed eyes and her flushed cheeks. She’s awake but staring into the wall across the room. Afraid of saying the wrong thing, I allow her parents to approach her first. They’ve got more experience with dealing with her like this. They say very little, though, and I’m guessing that’s what she needs at the moment.

“Mr. Cole,” an older doctor addresses me, placing his hand on my shoulder. “A word, please.” I follow the doctor out into the hallway, and Tori’s dad follows us. I may be responsible for her now, but I can’t blame her parents for their concern. Tori and I have only been together for a year and a half and they’ve been dealing with this half of her life, evidently.

The doctor brings us to a small, quiet waiting area a couple of doors down and closes the three of us inside. He takes a seat on one of the chairs, then pauses for a moment, nodding at the other chairs, suggesting we sit down. Tori’s dad takes a seat first and I follow suit. Maybe this is the doctor’s attempt to create the appearance of a calm environment, but in reality, I’m freaking out inside and there isn’t much a quiet room and soft voices are going to do to help this. “I know this is difficult,” he begins. “We had a psychiatrist come in to speak with Tori for a bit to find out the cause for her panic attack and breakdown.”

“Were you able to find anything out?” I ask hastily.

A tight-lipped, somewhat annoyed grimace stretches across the doctor’s mouth as he inhales sharply through his nose. “We were able to peel a single layer away, but as I’m sure you can understand; we have a patient confidentiality agreement preventing us from divulging details.”

Frustration fills me and instantly morphs into a type of anger I’ve been doing my best to keep at bay. Looking at the redness in Tori’s father’s face, I can assume I’m not the only one feeling this way.

“Had Tori threatened to harm herself before this incident?” the doctor asks.

“Just today, she mentioned it. Never before. She’s been mildly depressed since our son was born four months ago, and I’ve been encouraging her to see a doctor or a therapist. She has argued with me about it, and while she
is
supposedly seeing a therapist, I don’t know whether or not she’s suffering with postpartum depression since she has denied that was the case any time I’ve brought it up. She hasn’t even told me who her therapist is, or what she is seeing him or her for.”

The doctor relaxes into his chair and crosses one leg over the other, radiating calm. He’s good. He can shut it all out, go home and pretend like today didn’t happen. Me, though, my life is in ruins and I feel like my body is being shocked with thousands of tiny electrodes. “I might go out on a limb in agreeing with her on the postpartum depression part of the equation because some of her symptoms point to a much different diagnosis, one that has been present for much longer than four months.” I know the amount of information I’m receiving right now is probably as much as I’m going to hear, but I’m sorting every fact out in my head like a puzzle, staring at the clues and not knowing which piece to start with first.

“Tori
has
suffered breakdowns many times throughout her life, but she has been okay for several years now, and we thought it all might have been a thing of the past. Sadly, it seems we were wrong,” her dad volunteers.

“It seems as though there may have been a trigger to reignite this issue,” the doctor says. “However, that piece of information is not one we were able to extract.”

“Never have been,” her dad concedes.

“Has Tori ever been enrolled in an inpatient rehabilitation program before?”

“What kind of rehab?” I ask the doctor. “She’s not taking drugs or drinking excessively.”

“It’s a different kind of rehab, Mr. Cole. When we have patients who have made an attempt at suicide, we like to take preventive measures in getting the patient better before releasing him or her back into their normal lifestyle.” Oh my God. We have a newborn at home, and my wife is about to be admitted to a psych ward? Is that what he’s suggesting in nice words?

“How long is a typical stay?” I ask.

“It depends on the patient. Everyone is different.”

Selfishly, I want to know what this will do to us. This is so out of the blue for me and nothing I’ve ever considered happening. My biggest worry was that my wife had fallen out of love with me or realized she never loved me in the first place. I didn’t consider that a serious issue might be the underlying cause of her behavior and mood swings.

“We will support whatever you feel is best, Doctor,” Tori’s dad says.

“I agree,” I add in, feeling like I’m at a loss for a happy ending to this situation, and even though I can’t imagine how hard this will be, I know it’s what has to happen. “Whatever it takes to get her better.” Can I be hopeful enough to think this could work or do I prepare myself for more disappointment? I have a history of believing everything is going to work out for the best and finding it not to be the case.

“There will be some paperwork coming your way, and we’re going to be following up with Tori in regards to the next steps.” The doctor stands from his seat and offers both Tori’s dad and myself a handshake.

He leaves the two of us in the small waiting room, both of us in silence. I may be the only one in complete disbelief, though. Her dad places an arm around my shoulder and claps his hand over my arm a few times. “Let’s get our girl some help,” he says.

The weight I’ve been carrying on my shoulders for months just got a hell of a lot heavier and I may be in some kind of shock.

When we re-enter Tori’s room, her mother is sitting on the edge of the bed, running her fingers through Tori’s matted strands of hair. “I’m sorry,” Tori tells her.

“Tori, I know you have no control over these situations. There’s no need to apologize,” her mother says in a loving way.

I make my way over to the bed and kneel down beside her, curious as to how she’ll react to me after her incredible flip-flopping behavior today. Without a word, I take her hand and bring it up to my lips. “I’ve been so worried about you,” I tell her.

“I owe you an apology too, AJ. I’ve been a horrible wife and mother for the past few months.” I shake my head to disagree with her. It’s the last thing I want her to be worrying about right this second. “You don’t have to pretend like it’s not true.”

“We’re going to get you the help you need, and things are going to be okay,” I reassure her. Though, I can’t help but wonder if what I’m saying is a lie. How could I know?

A weak smile struggles over her lips, and she reaches her hand up to my cheek. This is the Tori I know—not the small smile, but the gesture and the wide-eyed look. “I don’t know if that’s possible,” she says.

“Of course it is, T,” I assure her. I get that she may be feeling pessimistic if she’s been seeking help for years, regardless of hearing this for the first time today, but if rehab is new to her, maybe this will finally help. That’s what rehab is for, right?