Within These Walls (8 page)

“Ugh! Maybe we should just stay here for the night,” she said.

“No!” I immediately shot down the suggestion. My legs revived in an instant at the thought of spending the night anywhere but in a king-sized bed with Megan, and I jogged to catch up with her.

We finally made it to our rental car a few blocks away, and I slowed the last few steps.

Closing the gap between us, I pushed her against the car. “If we stay here, we’ll be sleeping on some nasty-smelling sofa with a bunch of drunk college kids.”

“We were drunk college kids just a few weeks ago, if you’ve forgotten.”

“Yes, but we’re not anymore, and we have this amazing”—I kissed her shoulder—“wonderful”—I moved across to her collarbone—“huge”—I left a trail of kisses up to her lips where I stopped and hovered—“hotel room. I really want to make good use of it, don’t you?”

I could feel her breath growing heavy with each kiss to her skin. By the time my lips were almost touching hers, she was practically panting.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Yes, what, Megan?”

“Yes, I want to go back to the hotel room,” she answered.

I couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face. I quickly planted a kiss on her lips and slapped her ass. “Good, so you’ll drive then?”

Being the loving, agreeable person she was—she’d taken the keys and gotten in the driver’s side of the car, ready to drive even though it should have been me.

Those were some of the last moments I’d had with her while she was still conscious. Minutes after that glass had been raining down on us as the screech of metal permanently seared itself into my brain.

I’d looked over at her as the world spun and thought of all the things I wanted to say before we died and couldn’t. So many things I could have said in those last few minutes in that parking lot if I’d known.

We’d never lived together. After graduation, we’d boxed everything up, and focused on finally moving in together, but first, we had a bit of fun planned.

After she’d died, I had nothing left of her and nowhere to go where she would still be present. Her parents had taken her ashes and buried them in a family plot near their home in Chicago. I was done with school and I didn’t want to go home because she wasn’t there. So, I never left California. I never left the hospital. I’d just roamed the halls until Margaret offered me a job.

That was why days off were so difficult. I had no life in California outside the hospital. It wasn’t just a job for me. It was where I felt most alive—or as alive as I could be anymore.

When the person you were meant to spend your life with died before that life had a chance to even begin, how would you survive? For me, I’d just kept putting one foot in front of the other, coming back to the place where I could feel her presence the most.

I was like a living ghost.

When I had days that were worse than others, I would find myself returning to that hallway, back to the room where I had held her hand, looked down at her battered and bruised body, and tried to will her back to life. Walking down the hospital halls now, I knew she wasn’t there anymore, but she had been once. If I closed my eyes, I could almost see her there.

That was kind of like living, wasn’t it?

In a desperate attempt to flee my dark thoughts and my empty apartment, I tried venturing out into the world on my second day off. Early that morning, I threw on a pair of shorts and an old T-shirt, slipped on my running shoes, and took off for the beach. It was at least five miles away from my apartment, which was absolutely perfect. I didn’t want to come back home until I was so exhausted that I could barely stand.

By about mile four, I’d established a nice rhythm, and my legs were burning. My feet hit the pavement, one after the other, and my mind went blank as I listened to the white noise around me. It was a weekday, so the streets were mostly absent of laughing and playing children, but there was still plenty of life to listen to. A group of mothers walked by, chatting about whatever it was that moms talked about, lawnmowers buzzed, and cars zoomed by. I let my mind zone out, and in what felt like a matter of minutes, I found myself staring out at the crystal-blue water of the Pacific.

It was early June. Even though California kids were still in school, the rest of the U.S. was happily enjoying summer vacation. It hadn’t quite reached peak season yet for tourism, but it was starting to. The Santa Monica Pier was busy today. I decided to steer clear of my normal run down the pier. Instead, I headed left to cool down and walk through the sand.

I kicked off my shoes and headed down to the water. The sand was warm from the heat of the sun, and I felt the stark contrast when the chilly water from the ocean hit my feet. The turquoise waves were endless, stretching out in every direction as far as my eyes could see. The rays from the sun above flickered and sparkled on the water as it danced its way back and forth to the shoreline.

I’d made it probably a quarter of a mile down the beach when I heard my name being yelled from behind me. I knew maybe four people in the entire LA area—five, if I included my pizza delivery guy—so at first, I didn’t respond. But how many people in the world were named Jude? My mother hadn’t exactly stuck with the top ten baby names.

I turned around and saw Dr. Marcus approaching me. With sand still in his hair, he was clad in a sleek black wet suit.

“Hey, J-Man!” he greeted me, giving me a hard wet pat on the back. His wet suit was unzipped to his waist, baring his tanned chest and surfer physique.

I had to give the man props. For a middle-aged dude, Dr. Marcus was built.

“What are you doing out in the sun and in my neck of the woods? Did you finally decide to take me up on my offer for surfing lessons?” he joked, grinning, as he looked at me through his shades.

I took a quick glance out towards the waves and shook my head. “Definitely not. I’ve still got a little too much New Yorker in me to surf any waves,” I joked. Immediately, I regretted my words. I’d never told Dr. Marcus where I was from. Trying to avoid any follow-up questions regarding my city of origin, I added, “Just out for a run, and I thought I’d cool down for a bit.”

“Nice. Well, I’m headed up, he said as his eyes drifted up to the boardwalk. “Waves are shit today. Want to grab a bite with me? They make great fish tacos.” He pointed to a Mexican place just up the way.

I hesitated, worried my little slip-up might bring on an onslaught of personal questions, but Dr. Marcus appeared to be nothing but genuine in his offer. In the many years we’d known each other, he never pressed me for personal information. I didn’t know why, but I was suddenly paranoid he would do so now.

“Sure. Sounds good,” I answered.

We stopped at his truck, and he did that magical quick-change thing that surfers did. Less than two minutes later, he was out of his wet suit and sporting a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I looked down at my trashy T-shirt and thought about the fact that I’d run five miles here, so I probably didn’t smell too great.

As we walked through the parking lot and entered the restaurant though, I felt the tension ease.

The place was small and had maybe four tables that were all mismatched green and white plastic with a few similar tables outside. The menu was written with a dry-erase marker on a white board, and no one spoke a single world of English. With the laid-back and casual atmosphere, I figured my less than stellar appearance wouldn’t be an issue.

We picked a green table outside. I swore the plastic chair legs bowed a little when I sat in it. An old tube television was mounted in the corner with CNN streaming. Dr. Marcus ordered for us—in Spanish, of course. Besides knowing the words
dos
and
gracias
, I had no idea what he had said.

My father had spent a fortune on private language tutors, so I’d have a leg up on several languages when I went to prep school. We’d quickly found out that language was not one of my strengths. I believed my tutor had told my father that based on my aptitude for language arts, I was lucky to have learned English.

“You into trading?” Dr. Marcus asked, pulling my head away from the tiny numbers scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen.

I’d left my old life behind, but I would still find myself checking in every now and then whenever I saw that ticker. Maybe I wanted to see them fail without me—or maybe I wanted to see them succeed.

I was a fucked-up mess.

“No, it’s just the dude complex. TV is on, so I’ve got to stare at it,” I said in a hopeless attempt at a joke.

He gave me a doubtful look, but we carried on. After that, we chatted a bit about stupid stuff—the weather, current events, and whether we thought the brand of coffee in the hospital cafeteria had been changed—until our food finally arrived.

He hadn’t been kidding. With fresh halibut and handmade tortillas, the fish tacos were amazing. We inhaled all of them in minutes. Letting everything settle, we sipped on beers and ate chips and salsa as we watched skaters and runners pass by. Dr. Marcus seemed to be in no hurry. It was either his day off as well, or he would be working the late shift.

Suddenly, my last shift lunch break with Lailah came rushing back, and here I was, having lunch with her doctor.

No better time to find some answers.

“Hey, Dr. Marcus, you’re Lailah Buchanan’s doctor, right?”

After taking a swig from his Corona, he slowly pulled the bottle away from his lips and set it down on the table. “Yeah, I am. Actually, I have been since she was an infant. Why?”

That surprised me. “Since she was an infant? But you don’t do pediatrics? Did you, at one time?”

He looked out past the sand to the water he so desperately loved. Without turning back toward me, he just continued to stare out at the crystal-blue water as he answered, “No, I’ve never done pediatrics. There’s some history between her mother and me. It’s…complicated. When I found out about Lailah, I immediately took her on as a patient. There was no question about it. She saw a pediatric cardiologist as well when she was growing up, but I oversaw everything medically related to her.” He paused as his eyes traveled back to the table and eventually to me. “Why the sudden interest in Lailah?” he asked with a bit of suspicion.

It reminded me of the first time I’d met Megan’s father. After Megan and I had been dating for about two months, her family had invited me over for Easter Weekend. Her father had followed me around that weekend like a hawk. I didn’t think I’d turned a single corner the entire time I was there without finding myself face-to-face with his baby-blue eyes.

“I’m just curious, I guess. I’ve been in her room and talked to her a few times. I’ve spoken to a lot of the patients on that floor,” I said, trying to take the focus away from Lailah. “It’s so different from the ER. Each room I visit, I meet the person and get to know them,” I lied.

The only two people I’d actually spoken to were Nash, the crazy writer, and Lailah. In my mind, everyone else I had interacted with on that floor remained exactly how ER patients had been to me—completely faceless.

“Patients do that to you,” he offered. “Lailah is special to me. She’s got a tough road ahead of her. Both of them do,” he said, obviously speaking of her mother.

“Lailah said she almost had a transplant before,” I said, glad he had been the one to turn the conversation back around to Lailah.

“Yes, it was devastating.”

“Do you know what happened?” I already knew what he’d say.

The date Lailah had given me already confirmed what I feared. As May had been coming to a close three years ago, I had been on my knees in a hospital hallway, begging my future father-in-law not to take Megan away from me.

“The family changed their minds. It happens more than you would think. I stayed out of the entire thing. It was too personal for me. Considering I had gone against protocol and told Lailah about everything before it was final, I couldn’t risk my medical license by getting more involved. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to beg that family to reconsider.”

If only he knew that I was the reason they’d said no…

“But she’ll get her chance again, right?” I asked in an upbeat tone.

“I hope so. I really hope so,” he said.

We finished our beers, and I insisted on splitting the tab.

“No way. I invited you J-Man,” he said, holding up his hands in protest.

“We’re splitting it, Dr. Marcus. Otherwise, this is like a date. By paying, you would make me the chick, and I’m definitely not putting a skirt on for you.” I grinned.

“All right, all right. I won’t pay for your damn tacos, man! Chill.” He laughed.

After I turned down his offer for a ride home, we said our good-byes, and I headed down the road toward home. The sun was perched high in the sky, just starting to hover over the water, as it prepared for its dazzling sunset display. I decided to walk most of the way home. I was still pretty full from lunch, and I needed a bit more time to dwell on all the swirling thoughts running through my mind.