These Three Words (3 page)

I tried to believe that this was the case, but looking at him in agony, I knew this was something worse than gas.

The paramedics began to load Gray on a gurney. He gripped my hand, or maybe I held on to his. Either way, we didn’t break our connection as they lifted him.

They started moving him and as we reached the doorway, I had no choice but to let go. I turned around, grabbed my purse and the envelope from the desk. Then I noticed that Gray kept an old picture of us on his desk in the corner, right where it had always been.

It was as if for that moment, time slowed as I looked at the eighteen-year-old versions of us. That picture was taken at our high school graduation. We’d still been best friends then.

I could almost hear my mother. “For goodness’ sake, Addie, move closer to him. Gray doesn’t bite.”

Softly, so she wouldn’t hear, I said, “But he does have cooties,” and I crossed my fingers, which was the surefire way of avoiding cootie contamination, as any third grader knew.

Gray might have grown up, but he’d heard me and seen the gesture. He’d smiled.

There he was in his black suit standing next to me in my yellow sundress with my fingers crossed.

I could see the smile playing across his lips.

Later, they took pictures of us in our caps and gowns, but this one had always been his favorite.

He’d kept it on his desk since they’d moved into these offices. But the tiny black plastic swan that was sitting next to it wasn’t normally there. We’d both taken them the night of our first date, but I hadn’t been sure he still had his.

Yet, here it was, right next to our picture. In other circumstances, it might make me sentimental. Maybe it would later, but for now, I put the picture and the swan in my purse and time went back to its normal speed.

“Addie,” Gray called. As soon as we were through the doorway, I took his hand again.

I knew the paramedics were still talking and maybe asking more questions. I was aware that they were doing things to Gray. But it was all peripheral. Like something you noticed out of the corner of your eyes, but didn’t care enough about to turn and really look at.

“Ad,” Gray said.

“Here I am, Gray. I’m not going anywhere.” Again I was aware of the papers I clutched in my other hand, and they seemed to be heavier than they were before.

Chapter Two

When we got to the hospital, someone gently removed my hand from Gray’s.

“Please,” I said. I didn’t want to be separated from him, but they wheeled him through a double door.

Someone—a nurse, maybe—took me to a desk where a woman asked me more questions about Gray. His mailing address and insurance information . . .

I’m not sure what I answered and what I didn’t. I’m not even sure if the answers I
did
give were correct.

I worried about Gray and kept trying to fight back the memories of the last time I was in this hospital giving some clerk information like this.

“I want to see my husband.”

The woman on the other side of the desk said, “Ma’am, you can have a seat in the waiting room and someone will come get you.”

“He needs me,” I said. For the first time in years—maybe the first time ever—Gray needed me and I didn’t want to let him down.

“As soon as you can go back with him, they’ll come get you. I’ll go and make sure they know you’re waiting,” she said kindly. She came out from behind her desk and I sat in the seat she steered me to. I gripped my purse and the envelope on my lap.

I was cold, despite the wool sweater, and I couldn’t seem to clear my head.

It was as if whatever was happening to Gray was affecting me, too.

The emergency room waiting area didn’t smell like any other part of the hospital. There was no harsh smell of disinfectant here. It seemed to permeate every other corner of the hospital, but here it was another smell entirely. The ER waiting room smelled of sweat and fear. It smelled of waiting and pain.

Two television sets on either end of the room created a hum that provided a background to the cacophony of voices. Some voices spoke with anger. Some voices were tinged with fear. And one young mother sat rocking a blanket-covered toddler, singing some lullaby for comfort.

“Honey,” said a woman’s voice.

For a moment, I thought the doctors had indeed come to get me, but it wasn’t a doctor. It was an elderly woman standing in front of me. She was older than the executively dressed Missy. This woman’s steely gray hair was wrapped and corded onto itself in a bun. She had glasses perched on the bridge of her nose that reminded me of a librarian I had in grade school. And she wore a frumpy dress and orthopedic shoes.

She also wore a serious expression as she thrust a cup at me.

“Here.” The bitter smell told me without looking down that it was coffee. “Drink it. It’ll do you good,” she said in such a motherly tone I felt tears well up in my eyes.

She took the seat next to me. “Who are you here for?” she asked.

“My husband.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Me, too.”

“I’m sorry,” I parroted back. We both knew that the words were hollow and without any real impact.

I’m sorry
was probably one of the most meaningless phrases anyone ever came up with.

Being sorry never changed anything. It was a passive response to a situation.

Action. Action brought about change.

The problem was, there was no action open to me right now. Gray’s situation was in the hands of the medical staff. There was nothing I could do for him but wait.

“I’m Maude,” she said, as if I’d asked. As if we were sitting beside each other at an event. As if we were simply two strangers just passing time together.

She didn’t wait for me to introduce myself. She said, “It’s hard to wait to hear about someone you love. I keep thinking, what if Bertie doesn’t make it? I’ve only had him for fifteen years and that’s not long enough. I met him at the Piggly Wiggly in Waunakee, Wisconsin,” she said.

It took me a moment to register that she’d said her husband was the reason she was here. Maude’s eyes glazed over a bit as she lost herself in the memory—as if she were no longer here and now, but had magically slid back in time to Waunakee, Wisconsin, and was standing in a Piggly Wiggly grocery store.

Even the tenor of her voice changed. It was just a breath above a whisper and she spoke slowly as she continued, “We’d both been married and widowed, but I didn’t know that at first. No, the first time I saw him, he was simply a man standing in the produce section looking lost. I hadn’t planned on going shopping that day, but I’d had a hankering for apple crisp. I hadn’t made it forever because it’s no fun to cook for just one. But I stopped at the store on a whim.

“It was as if meeting Bertie was meant to be. As if we were meant to fall in love and start a new chapter of our lives together. You see, there he was, standing by the apples as if he were just waiting for me.”

I watched as she came back to the present with regret. If she could, she’d have stayed at the Piggly Wiggly on that day so long ago. I could almost smell the apples and hear the shopping carts rattling in the background as she smiled shyly at the stranger . . . her Bertie.

But there was no staying in the past. The present weighed so heavily that it only allowed her that brief respite of visiting with that cherished memory.

Maude looked around the waiting room, as if hoping to see that long-ago moment. “Bertie and I, we both had lost someone, and we realized that we couldn’t go back, but we could make a new start. We could start again together. We both felt the pain of losing someone we loved, but we found joy in a new beginning with each other.” She leaned closer and whispered, “Fifteen years we’ve been together, day in and day out. I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose him. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to start over for a third time.”

She gave a small hiccup as she made the confession. I leaned closer and hugged her even though hugging strangers wasn’t something I usually did. But I realized that Maude wasn’t really a stranger. I might have just met her, but I knew her because I understood her pain. I wasn’t sure how I’d start over if I lost Gray.

It didn’t make sense, of course, but there it was.

“You’ll do what needs to be done,” I told her. “That’s all any of us can do . . . what needs to be done. We can’t look too far ahead. Sometimes it’s easier to simply put one foot in front of the other, take one step at a time, and don’t think too much about what’s around the next corner.”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s all I can do. I just need to take one step at a time and not borrow trouble.”

In that moment, she made her decision. Her Bertie was here, and she was trusting he’d be okay.

“I hope you have many more years together,” I said.

She asked, “When did you meet your husband?”

This was an easy question to answer. I’d told the story of our meeting so many times in the past that I was pretty sure I’d lost the actual memory somewhere in the story of the memory.

“I met Gray first day of kindergarten. I remember walking to the door of the classroom. The room smelled of crayons and glue. And it was loud. I was holding my mother’s hand as I looked inside. The room seemed so big and it was filled with strangers. I remember feeling so small. My mom kissed me, told me to be good, and then left. I cried as she disappeared down the hall. But Gray walked over, put his arm around me, and told me,
It’s okay. I’m here
. And it was okay. He was there all through school. First as my best friend and later . . .”

Now I dipped my toes in the past—back in a time when he was my everything, just as I was his.

How simple things had been back in school. I knew who I was and I knew what I wanted.

Back then, I’d been Gray’s Addie and he was all I wanted.

“They’ll both be just fine,” my new friend said. Maude patted my leg. “After we met at the grocery store, Bertie took me to dinner at the diner. Why don’t you tell me about your first date.”

I shook my head and it jostled the coffee I’d forgotten I was holding. A drop splashed on the envelope, magnifying a small portion of Gray’s name. I took a sip of the now-cold coffee, ensuring that I wouldn’t spill it again, and wiped my finger across the drop on his name, smudging it.

My first date with Gray wasn’t something I wanted to share. On the surface, it wasn’t even much of a first date, but it was the moment when a lifelong friendship changed and became something more. I’d hold on to that story. But I owed Maude a memory in return for her sharing the Piggly Wiggly, so I pulled out something else. Not a date, but one of those moments I’d almost forgotten until now.

“I can tell you about our first dance. I went to our junior prom with Chip Smuthers, and Gray took Candy Hawthorne. We all went together. Chip drove—he had some new fancy car, I don’t remember the make. But I do remember it was red . . .”

“You’re sure it looks okay?” Gray asked for the umpteenth time.

I felt bad. I knew that he was going to be one of the only guys not wearing a tux at the prom. He tried to pretend he didn’t care, but I knew he did. Even if he weren’t my friend, I’d have known it.

“I think your suit says you aren’t a lemming. You don’t jump off a cliff because everyone else does. You’re not afraid to stand out in a crowd.”

He offered me a wry smile. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”

Gray had worked all through high school, but unlike some of the kids with jobs, his money went toward helping his mom pay the living expenses. He couldn’t spare any of it for a tux rental.

I slugged his arm in response. He didn’t grin, like other guys might have, but there was a gleam in his eye that I could read almost as if he’d said the words. That gleam said that I hit like a girl.

It was a standard joke between us.

But before he could actually say the words, Chip arrived all properly tuxed. We stayed and let my mom take the obligatory pictures. Me with Chip and then me with Gray. Everyone in school knew that Gray and I were friends. Best friends. They all knew that Gray was here at my house almost as often as I was at his house.

After my mother had enough pictures to fill a coffee table book, the three of us went to Candy’s, where her mother repeated the process.

Rather than go out to a restaurant for dinner, Candy’s mom had offered to make us a formal meal.

She served it all grown up and proper. She used a white tablecloth with cloth napkins. She put candles in the center of the table and laid out multiple forks.

It was easy to believe we were eating in a restaurant.

Gray held a chair out for Candy and gently helped her slide it under the table. I waited for Chip to do the same for me. He simply sat down. I started to seat myself, but Gray noticed and pushed me in as well.

Mrs. Hawthorne started with shrimp cocktails, then salads, finally steaks and baked potatoes. She made us a chocolate mousse for dessert.

When we got to Chip’s fancy car, Gray held the back door for Candy, while Chip simply walked to the driver’s door.

Gray got my door then walked around the car and let himself in.

I turned around and said, “I could have done it.”

“Normally, I’d agree. Everyday Addie is perfectly capable of getting her own door. But my mom always says that sometimes all girls like being treated like a princess. And Princess Addie deserved to have her door opened for her.”

A princess is just how I felt as I walked into the school gym with Chip on one side of me and Gray on the other. Candy was on Gray’s opposite side.

The prom committee had transformed the bleachers and center court of the gym into a room that Disney would be proud of. There were small white lights dripping from all over the gym ceiling. They’d hung a gauzy material between the lights and the ceiling, too. The bleachers were hidden behind some white, gauzy fabric panels. White tablecloths, white chairs. More candles and tiny lights.

The overall effect was very princess-worthy. The four of us sat together at a table at the back of the room.

The official prom theme was “A Moment Like This.” Kelly Clarkson blared the song over and over through the night. After that initial impression, the rest of the night was a blur. I wasn’t much of a dancer, but Chip was. Gray wasn’t a dancer either, but Candy was. That meant Candy and Chip spent most of the night dancing together or with other people while Gray and I held our table.

At one point Gray looked at me and said, “You realize we’re both dating people with food names.”

I hadn’t, but I laughed as he said the words. “Maybe our senior year, we should try for people with plant names? Fern for you, and . . .” I was running through guys in our class, trying to find a name that would fit.

“Reed,” Gray supplied.

“Ew.” Reed Maverick had a name that sounded made up and he was cover-model gorgeous. It wasn’t so much the fact he was really good-looking that put me off, but rather the fact he knew he was good-looking and was comfortable using that gift from nature to his advantage. Fern at least was president of student council and was part of the prom committee who’d spent so much time working on making tonight a success. Fern had some sense of purpose and competence about her that Reed was lacking.