Days of You & Me: Days Gone By
Word Count: 12.5k+ Warnings: Hospital talk. Sick people talk. People being shitty to hospital workers. Marriage talk. Slight alcoholism talk. Unprotected sex. Please read longer note HERE. Author’s Note: Thank you to @tauralmie and @darnitdraco as well as @marvelousmermaid for being my continuous shoulders to lean on throughout writing this series.
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September 27, 2003:
“I could kill you!” There’s not a single floor in this hospital that has known quiet or peace in days but I know I'm disturbing what little is left as I shove him away from me. “Were you drinking?”
If I thought my voice was raw last night, I know that I may never get it back after this morning—after the sobbing and the screaming and the begging.
Clock pressing into noon, I still haven’t eaten. I can’t do it, I can’t bring myself to do much of anything at all. Not after my phone cleaved through nightmares just to tell me that my worst one had come true.
Again. All I heard was her name and hospital and I’ve never driven so goddamn fast in my life. I didn't even lock the door.
“How can you ask me that, Alison?”
He’s practically my best friend now but he’s covered in fucking blood with a scar that’ll match his brother’s now.
“How can I ask you that? Maybe because you have a fucking habit, Tommy! Maybe because you have records because you won’t get help! Maybe because you were supposed to keep my family safe and there was a goddamn cop up your ass when I got here!”
“Ali, please.” His voice is tired, a deep well of exhaustion pouring up from out of him and his hands rest on my shoulders as he pushes me back into the wall begging me to calm down. “I got in trouble last night, yes,” he says. “But I wasn’t drinking and I wasn’t fighting, I was just out getting dinner and this asshole was harassing a waitress—when I told him to leave her alone, he swung at me and fell, ended up knocking himself out against the table as he did.”
“Promise?”
“I fucking promise, Alison, I knew I had an early morning and I knew I had to take y’all to the airport, I was not putting this family in danger.”
“Then why were you being questioned?” I haven’t gotten all the answers. Hell, I’ve practically received none at all. The accident was so early this morning that the sun wasn’t even up. Nobody was around to call for an ambulance until closer to seven and Tommy was unconscious until nine. By the time my phone rang, my whole world had flipped and I had no idea. “Tommy, I need to know how bad it really is.”
They won’t let me see them, either of them—I’m not family.
As far as any of the systems are concerned, I’m nothing to Joel or Sarah Miller and I don’t deserve the information on their wellbeing.
He takes a deep breath, thumbs stroking mirrored patterns into my bare shoulders. I don’t have clothes at the apartment anymore but I did have a pair of shorts and an old tank top in the donation box—it’s what I ran out of the house in.
“Tommy,” I breathe out. “Please tell me how bad it is.”
“Sarah got the worst of it.” He starts crying and I want to fall apart because Tommy Miller has never seemed capable of being sad to me but here he is. “Broke her leg,” he says, head shaking as he pushes a tear off to the side of his face. “Shattered her fucking ankle, Ali, she’s in surgery and”—he wipes his brow and winces at the pain as he brushes his stitches—“she’s not gonna play soccer again.”
“Okay.” I nod. “But her organs?” I ask. “Her brain? Her beautiful little face? That’s all good?”
"It's all perfect,” he says as he takes his jacket off. “You look like you’re fucking freezing, please take this.”
There’s blood on it and he’s changing the subject.
“And Joel?” I ask.
Tommy takes another deep breath and exhales hard. “He’s… in surgery, too,” he says, jaw setting hard. “I-I told them to do whatever they felt was necessary, I told them I’d sign off on it all, you know?” He shakes his head. “Alison, I’m sorry I didn’t call you sooner, they were yelling at me for decisions while treating me and the cop was here a-and they were the first thing on my mind, I'm sorry.” He steps forward again and pulls me into his chest, similar but not at all the same to his brother’s, and he folds his arms around my shoulders. “They're all I have too, Ali.”
“From the beginning, Tommy,” I beg. “I need to know everything.”
He takes a deep breath and clears his throat, says there was a lot of traffic from a concert last night as well as a UT game and they took a short cut to the airport instead of the highway, but as they went through a green light, they were t-boned right into Sarah’s side of the car. “Fucker fled the scene,” he drawls out on half a sob. “He just fucking left us there, that’s why the cop was here.”
“Do you think they’re gonna be okay?” I ask, the tears on my face seeping into the cotton of his undershirt. “I can’t lose them, Tommy, I just got them.”
He shrugs as he pushes me away, holding me just at arm’s length to make eye contact with me. “I’m just hoping for the best here, sweetheart, you’re the medical professional and I can’t have you being mad at Joel right now but he told me about some of the stuff you deal with and”—he breathes in again and tightens his grip—“please don’t leave me alone to deal with this on my own, Alison, we really need you right now.”
September 28, 2003:
Everything has felt like it’s going so slow and not slow enough.
I left the hospital yesterday after my initial talk with Tommy. I wanted to tell him to head home, to grab a shower, but I knew he shouldn’t be without observation. I knew, as well, that they wouldn’t tell me shit about Joel and Sarah and I couldn’t stand that, sitting alone in the place I had left just hours previously wondering if they were okay; which surgeons they had; if my favorite OR nurse was up there with Joel or Sarah; if she recognized them; if she was holding their hand because I couldn’t.
So, I left. I went back to the house and I took a shower, ate the untouched Chinese take out that Joel had bought for me, and paced the hallway between our room and hers putting shit together.
I couldn’t find his favorite shirt; couldn’t find hers; none of the books they had been reading or things they might’ve been interested in were. That’s when it occurred to me their suitcases were probably in the car and the car was probably in evidence and my heart started hurting all over again because Tommy was right—I do want to break down.
When I came back, he told me Joel was out of surgery and that he'd been moved into a room and they were just waiting on him to wake up. It’s been hours now and we’re still waiting.
Tommy and I switched spots throughout the day; me in Sarah’s room and then here; him in here and then Sarah’s room. The only reason I’m even being allowed to stay in either is because the staff does know me and they are very much putting their employment at risk by letting me be here past visiting hours as a non family member.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more pissed I get and it just leads me to looking over his or her vitals again to check that everything is okay.
Luckily, she woke up fairly quickly. She’s in pain with a cast almost up to her thigh and a couple of broken ribs for good measure but she’s okay; no signs of concussion or internal bleeding.
Her father, on the other hand, has both and, even though his heartbeat is steady, the longer he goes without opening his eyes, the more I want to scream at him.
I all but do that now in the aftermath a nurse coming in to check on him. She said she was hoping she’d be able to send breakfast in for him, asked if I wanted it still so I could get a bite to eat and made a comment about the bags under my eyes and how I should probably try to sleep, too.
“Joel, get up,” I beg him. “You’ve been unconscious for days now, Joel, fucking get up.” I have lost my voice, I don’t know where it is but I know that he can’t hear me and that hurts worse. “Joel, I need you to get up because there’s a little girl upstairs who needs her dad and I need you, too. Tommy needs you.”
I keep talking to him like this, low and tear stained and pleading until I drift off in the uncomfortable chair at the side of his bed.
When I open my eyes again, it’s to him telling me to get up and asking if I’m real. He’s asking where he is and he’s asking me to say my full name and he’s asking for Sarah as he tries to stand independent of all the tubes tucked in to various parts of his body.
“You’re going to rip your stitches open.”
“Stitches?” The way his face twists makes the few in his cheek pull, too, and he pushes his head back and away into the pillows as his eyes dart everywhere. “Alison,” he breathes out, finally focusing in on me. “Fuck, you’re so young.”
“Yeah,” I laugh. “I do think you’ve given me some grays though.”
“If you’re here, where is Sarah?”
“She's upstairs in pediatrics,” I tell him. “Tommy's with her, they’re doing a puzzle. She has a broken leg.”
He lifts his head and I can tell it’s a little too quickly for him, his eyes bugging out beneath the head rush I’m sure he just experienced. “Broken leg?” He asks. "I don’t understand.”
“You were in a car accident,” I say and he nods like that was so obvious and I didn’t even need to tell him.
He says that makes sense, they were in a car accident that night and that's the last thing he remembers before—“can we go up and see her?”
“We need to get the doctor,” I insist. “We need to check your head, maybe run a CT scan, baby, and you need to eat. We can go up to her later.”
“I want to see her now,” he demands and it’s that low, dangerous tone he takes on when Tommy or one of the other guys has really pissed him off and I am trying not to take it personally but I can't help it because I'm the only one here to take it at all.
Having already pressed the button for the nurse, I sit back and agree with him. He can have arguments about leaving this room with somebody who still works here because I don’t have that fight in me right now. I know what he should do but I know what he wants to do and I know that he needs that.
But there’s no telling how much the accident impacted his head and I’m not transferring him to a wheelchair of my own accord until his stitches have been looked after.
Before he gets back from the CT scan, I have to call Tommy. I have to switch places with him because the doctors refuse to tell me anything, again, and there was an anger hanging in the room that I couldn’t handle either.
Which is fine, that’s okay. I’d be angry if I woke up in a hospital bed with no real information on what happened or what I went through, too. Hell, I was angry with my concussion and my broken ribs, and I still don’t feel like myself, so I can’t imagine how he feels knowing he was cut apart and stitched back together with no preparation.
Sarah was asleep when I went up so I went to find food instead, wandering around the overcrowded cafeteria looking for something that didn’t look three days old or otherwise cross contaminated with what was on the recall list from earlier in the week.
It’s hopeless or, at least, it feels like it—trying to make any decisions when I’m not allowed to make any decisions on the things that matter.
Joel’s room is empty when I find my way back on autopilot, having ignored former coworkers and their comments on the way back through the halls. One even joked that I just couldn't stay away from this place and then he noticed something in me and promptly excused himself out of my way.
I run into the doctor on the way to the elevator, ask about his whereabouts to which he apologizes, says I don’t work here anymore and he can’t tell me anything about a patient unless I’m immediate family or have a release of information.
At least the halls of the hospital are starting to clear out. Everything’s been loud with transports since early this morning; the university opened up a ward where med students and nursing students are taking on patients with supervision and that’s where they’re all headed.
I keep thinking that if they had done it sooner, we wouldn’t be here right now. If they had done it sooner, I wouldn’t have stayed over my final shift; wouldn’t have called Joel and told him to go on without me.
Or maybe we would be here but separated even further from one another, Joel in a bed and me in another and only Tommy and Andrea to hold it all together for us.
Tommy meets me at the elevator, says he was coming to find me and that he thinks he needed to give Joel a moment alone with Sarah anyway.
“Scans are good,” he says. “Stitches are good but they kept saying shit to me that I don’t understand—how to take care of his wound and what I should look for in his eyes for signs of trauma, Alison, what happens if I can’t tell.”
“I can,” I reassure him. “He was pretty angry at me.”
“Yeah, at you,” Tommy says. There’s stubble on his jaw now, thicker than Joel’s, and he runs his hand against the grain. “Not with you and I hope you understand the difference because I seem to remember you being pretty pissed off the day you got hurt.”
“Was I?”
“Not verbally.” He shakes his head and laughs. “But I could feel it and I think that’s what he’s holding onto now and I wish I could sign over the release of information, but that has to come down to him, Ali, you know the law.”
“I hate the law.”
“Sounding more and more like him every day,” he breathes out. “If only all this had happened next week instead.” He smiles before I can ask just what the fuck he’s talking about and it hits me suddenly what he’s reminded me of this whole time. Tommy and his grin; his charm; the mischief in his eyes. Like he’s always holding on to a secret. “Think they would’ve been more likely to tell you shit if they saw that ring on your finger.”
He asks for my keys then, says he’s gonna go pick up their suitcases from the police and look at what’s left of his car. When I remind him it’s Sunday, he reminds me that they know him down there and nods his head towards the hall that leads to Sarah’s room, leaving me with a push in the opposite direction.
There’s no anger in this room, just fear and relief all mixed in together and I can’t tell which one is hers and which one is his but I know that I’ve got both bunched up in my chest ready to explode.
“You look like hell, Murph,” a voice says, drawing closer. It’s Kara, one of the pediatric nurses who was on duty the day that Sarah broke her arm. Her scrubs are cute, they have Care Bears all over them; I was always jealous of the cartoon characters everybody got to wear to try and bring some joy in an otherwise overly sad space. Adults just get to suffer through pain while everybody looks the same around them.
“I feel like hell,” I tell her. “Friday was my last day here but here I am.”
She laughs. “Funny how hospitals always suck you back in.” She stands at the door with me, looking in as Joel just holds her hand. “I know nobody’s telling you shit and I doubt that hunky cowboy with his broken nose is good at regurgitating information, but she’s perfect, Alison, and she’s gonna make a full recovery.”
“Do you know if she’ll get to play soccer again?” I ask but she’s shaking her head before I even finish. Says she’s not an orthopedic surgeon or a physical therapist so she’s definitely not the one to ask that question of.
Then she’s gone with a nod of her head towards the room. “I'll leave you with your family but come find me later if you need a coffee or a hug.”
I don’t know that she can tell, but I can tell that he’s been crying and all the most exhausted parts of me feel weighed down further beneath that knowledge.
Briefly, I think about going back down to his room but I know that somebody needs to be here for when he’s ready to go back, too, so I just sit here and watch them until Sarah spots me and calls me in.
Even with her bright voice, I can tell she’s in pain and I wish I could take it from her. I wish it was my reconstructed leg in that cast and that her place was standing where I am beside her father.
Her father who looks up at me now and it’s not just that he’s been crying, he’s still crying with red rings around his tired eyes. He hiccups through a pitiful laugh and wraps his hand around my wrist to bring my palm to his lips.
Over and over again, he kisses against into the middle of my hand before finally holding it to his cheek to lean into.
“Hi.”
There is so much pain in his coffee colored eyes. Not just physical either but the same kind of hurt he held there when Sarah broke her arm and I broke my ribs. Like he feels bad because he wasn’t there to protect us.
Except, I know he’s feeling like he could’ve done more for her this time. Because he was there and he still failed to protect her like he could’ve done anything about the hit and run; like he could’ve done anything about being unconscious and bleeding out on the inside.
“I wasn’t very nice earlier,” he drawls out, accent thicker than I’ve ever heard it. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
“That's fine, I was just happy to hear your voice.”
“Me, too,” Sarah says. “I was really scared and Uncle Tommy didn’t really know what was going on either.”
“Why didn’t you—“ He looks from her to me.
Shaking my head, I tell him we’ll talk about it later. Because if I start talking, I either won’t stop or I’ll start crying and I can’t have Sarah seeing me like that. So I pull a chair up next to them, between the wheelchair and the bed, and apologize to Sarah for how horrible the hospital gowns are and tell her that if she gets bored of books, I’ll buy her a Gameboy. “I'll go to the store later and get you a whole bunch of pajama pants that can be altered so they can be half shorts and half pants. Okay?”
She nods but I’m not sure she knows exactly what I mean, really. Not when her eyes are far away and her head looks like it’s too heavy for her neck.
It’s the pain meds and Joel doesn’t want to leave her yet but we need to let her rest but only after I’ve let him strain himself to stand up and bend down to kiss her forehead does he let me fix her blankets.
“You seemed really shook up,” I finally observe as I help him back into his own bed. “Pain meds not good enough while you were out?”
Big hands frame my face the moment I sit him down in front of me, biceps flexing to pull me forward, and he opens my mouth with his as fingers slide back to grip firmly in the hair at the base of my skull.
“Don't strain too hard,” I tell him. “Your stitches.”
Joel laughs and it warms me over with how light it sounds; how it reaches his tired eyes. “I don’t fucking care about stitches, you have no idea how happy I am right now.”
“Well, somebody oughta be.”
“Scared the hell out of you, didn’t we?” He asks.
On a nod, I take a deep breath. “Marry me.”
More laughter as his eyes dart across my face and his features set. “I was supposed to ask you.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t,” I tell him. “You got your permission and your answer forever ago and you did nothing with it.” My arms are crossed over my chest, protection to this vulnerable part of me thumping hard against my ribcage. “And I wasn’t asking.”
“You're impatient,” he tries to laugh it off. “I was—“
“Asking in Wyoming,” I finish for him, hiccuping on the last word as tears start to fall out. “Yeah, I was able to parse that out from what Tommy said but I have sat here all weekend being denied information about you and information about Sarah because I wasn’t formally attached to either of you so”—I take another deep breath, desperate for air and confidence and this hurt to subside—“y-you are going to marry me, Joel Alexander Miller, and you are going to like it.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” he breathes out. “I'm going to like it very much.”
September 25, 2004:
“Ice cream before dinner?” Joel drawls out, placing his keys and phone on the coffee table before sitting down. “Again?”
“I'm wearing really cute lingerie under my pajamas,” I whisper. “Don’t make me lock myself in the bathroom and take it off all alone, it was very hard to get on.”
He laughs and covers his eyes. “I'm guessing Sarah’s not home yet then?”
“No, she’s home,” I tell him. “She's in the backyard reading with her feet in that little kiddie pool and her iPod on full blast in her ears. I told her I’d come get her when you get home, she really wants burgers for dinner but she says, specifically, that she wants daddy’s burgers.”
“I take it you went ahead and bought everything I need to make ‘em?”
“Oh, of course.”
Stroking his hair back when he groans, he asks if I'm really wearing cute lingerie beneath my pajamas and just what exactly I was hoping to accomplish with it. “Been going between job sites all day and then went to check on the house progress, my love”—he leans forward and starts unlacing his boots—“I would’ve come home much sooner if I knew my girls wanted burgers and my wife wanted me.”
“I always want you,” I remind him, "and you should’ve prioritized coming home and starting your birthday early anyway.”
Groaning again, he starts to lean over as if he’s going to lay his head on my shoulder until he steals the rest of my ice cream sandwich instead. “I hate my birthday,” he grins out through a full mouth. “I was just gonna work on the house tomorrow.”
“No.”
“Yeah, baby, it’s almost done and I’d like to be moved in soon so I can fix this one up and get it ready to sell.”
“You don’t have to beat yourself up about selling this one though,” I reassure him. “My mom’s buying it.”
“And I really don’t feel like giving my mother in law a shitty fucking house, Alison, it’s been a year and I wish you and Tommy would get off my ass about pitching in with the labor still.”
He’s pissed because this is how every conversation about the business ends—with complaints that Tommy and I don’t let him do anything since the accident. Not that it stops him and not that it’s true either. We decided together that Tommy would go ahead with running the physical operations of things while Joel handled the background.
Originally, it was just until he was better and then more jobs started coming in; more crew had to be hired; more people had to be put in charge. Joel ended up buried further behind the desk and only drove from site to site to survey progress.
He pitches in where he can and I love him but I yell at him every time, especially when he was pitching in over Christmas and then again with the new house when they started work on it a few months ago. Turns out he and Tommy had bought the land real cheap years ago—acres of it with the intention to build neighboring houses and a shared backyard one day.
Our house started up first and, when it’s finished, Tommy will move in with Kara not far behind him the moment her lease is up.
Sarah had to stay in the hospital a lot longer than Joel did both because she’s a child and because her surgery was a lot more complicated. If Joel wasn't there, Tommy was and, when Tommy was, so was Kara. When she was discharged, he kept showing up. Said he was pulling a Joel Miller with her and hoped it was working. It helped that I gave him her coffee order before he even had to ask.
Unfortunately, they’re staying upstairs with us in the guest bedroom which is fine except for the fact that where Joel and I are quiet, Tommy and Kara absolutely are not. The space was originally meant for my mother and step-father when they came to visit but as soon as the plan changed, he redrew plans to add additional soundproofing.
“At least let me get Sarah’s room finished,” he begs. “That, our bathroom and the kitchen are the last to finish out, if you let Tommy and I work this weekend then I can send the painters in next week and then the inspection can happen, we can probably even move in by Halloween.”
“So what? Sarah and I can just have cake by ourselves? Joel…”
“Are you guys fighting?” Sarah asks, the sound of her cane hitting the hard flooring as she crosses the threshold.
“No, bug,” I tell her. “We're not fighting, your father is just being stubborn and says he’d rather work on the house than eat cake with us tomorrow.”
“Dad!” She stomps her good foot on the ground. “You promised you weren’t going to be all sad ass—“
“Hey!”
“—on your birthday, you promised you weren’t going to overwork and you promised you weren’t going to beat yourself up over the car accident.”
He stares at the scar on her right ankle, angry and raised still and his jaw sets. “Sarah, the sooner we get the house done, the sooner you don’t have to deal with the stairs—you’ll have a bathroom with a shower that’s easy for you to get in and out of.”
“It's not that bad,” she insists, hands gesturing out and down at the discolored skin on her leg. “You’re already super far ahead on the thing, one day isn’t going to kill any of us and you owe me for making me have my stupid Quinces in a pink cast.”
“Don't look at me,” I say as he turns his head for back up. “She's right, she didn’t want that party after everything that happened and you made her have it and you made her get a pink cast for her final one even though she wanted a purple one, Joel, you don’t always get to have your way.”
After months of doctors and appointments and casts being taken off for physical therapy only to be put back on again, she got her final one taken off in the second week of August. She’s been really overwhelmed by the entire ordeal and her father’s insistence that she have that party only served to stoke that into a low simmering anger.
“There was nothing you could do to prevent that accident, Joel Miller—“
“—I could have insisted on changing our flights, too.”
“Hey, bug, can you go into daddy’s office and put your headphones in?”
His head hangs the moment she rolls her eyes and I watch as she walks back towards his office. Almost there, she turns and decides to go back out to the backyard, calling back to me that she wants to put her feet in the water for a little longer and sliding the door shut behind her.
“She's right, one day isn’t going to set anything behind,” I finally say. “I know you didn’t like your birthday before and I know you associate it with the day she got hurt now but that anniversary is actually on Sunday.”
Joel pushes himself back into the cushions with a defeated breath. “You've both been through a lot this last year,” he says. “Her leg and your grandmother, PG”—he lifts his head and looks up at me again—“I just want to finally have these spaces for you both to be comfortable.”
At the mention of my grandmother, my heart squeezes uncomfortably. Her death broke the family, even Sarah cried for days about it with me. It’s why my mom is moving here finally, there’s nothing really to keep her up in Massachusetts now and her brother got the house. She’s even been back and forth to Texas already to help with taking care of Sarah; helped get her application to the arts high school together. She was the one who came up with the idea of getting Sarah a cane after she heard us complaining about the chafing the crutches were doing to her underarms—even convinced her she looked cool when she couldn’t stop crying about needing it at all.
I could stay right here and argue with him all night but I don’t want to. This isn’t how I’d planned out my Friday and it’s certainly not the one I want to live. Not when I’m hungry and tired and could be spending the time with Sarah that I know he wants to spend with her, too. Except he barely lets himself because he's doing that shit where he frets and overcompensates and overwhelms us with the way he tries to take care of us.
He thinks the accident was his fault because he should’ve changed the flights. He thinks he failed her because he couldn’t predict the future and now he’s overcompensating with taking care of her in a way that makes her feel like a burden and not the teenage girl she very much is and should be allowed to be.
"She lost soccer, Joel,” I call back over my shoulder on the way to the kitchen. If he doesn’t want to get started on the burgers then I will. “She lost soccer and she lost her classmates and she lost her friends but she didn't need to lose her dad, too.”
“Yeah, well I thought I lost her,” he says, so loud it feels like it's right beside me. “I thought I lost her and I thought I lost you so excuse me if I want to do right by the both of you.”
He’s still on the couch when I look back at him, legs spread wide with his broad shoulders curved inward. “Doing right by us isn’t denying us the right to celebrate you when we thought we’d lost you, too,” I tell him. There’s a migraine building behind my eyes now and what I wanted to do tonight clearly isn’t happening because he’s too worried about losing a day’s worth of work on something that isn’t that pressing at all. “It's not isolating yourself away and working yourself to the bone on building a walk in shower in her en suite, baby, you’re not even a fucking plumber. Just leave it to the professionals.”
It wasn't even like this to begin with. The first few months he was just focused on healing himself and then focused on driving her back and forth to her appointments on the days that I couldn’t. But he’s been exhibiting more and more guilt as time moves up to the first anniversary of this; guilt that he healed faster than her and how it wasn’t fair—isn’t fair.
Warm hands settle on my shoulders before sliding forward to cross over my chest and pull me back into his. “I have watched you take care of my little girl for a year and it’s made me fall more in love with you,” he whispers. “And I really didn’t think that was possible after how much further I fell when you demanded I marry you in that hospital room, because all you wanted to do was take care of us.” His lips press into the crown of my head. “I don’t even think my parents liked each other this much.”
“I don’t really like you right now,” I say, tone flat even though I want to melt into him. Especially when he laughs.
“Why? Because I’m stubborn as hell and just want to build you your dream house?”
“Don’t be an asshole, Joel,” I say, turning in his arms to lean back against the counter. “This isn’t because you’re stubborn, this is because you feel guilty and you are overcompensating with longer and longer hours. We started on the house earlier than planned,” I remind him. “I got a job and we dipped into our savings and my mom and her husband took over the mortgage of this house already so that we could focus on building Sarah an accessible space that she could be comfortable in and be our happy, bright girl again, Joel.” He presses his thumb into the swell of my cheek and pushes away a fallen tear. “Better not become a fucking tradition for me to cry on your birthday, I’ll kick your fucking ass.”
“You’re being really mean to me.”
“Oh, you haven’t seen mean, honey.” Because he hasn’t, not from me. Because I’ve only ever wanted to talk things out with him and make time for him. “Sarah and I are trying here and you were here with us and then you decided that she was fine enough that you could focus on the next steps to make it even better and I love you,” I tell him. “I love you so much but she is fifteen and she is angry and she misses her dad treating her like a person and not some doll that needs to be handled with care.”
He smoothes a hand down his beard and scratches beneath his chin, eyes squinting to study me. “Have I really been that bad?”
Shrugging, I tell him I kept thinking he was gonna snap himself out of it. “I thought it was just something you needed to go through, I thought you were seeing your therapist about it.”
After a recommendation from Dr. Bonner during one of the sessions he attended with me, he started seeing a therapist earlier in the year. Not that he was happy about it and not that he’s been consistent either. Not when he thinks Sarah seeing hers is more important. He doesn’t like it when I remind him that both things can be important because, again, martyring himself is his top priority.
“This is the last birthday you’re going to have with only one child, Joel.” His eyebrows raise and he looks at me like he’s looking for the joke but it’s not. It’s also not the way I had planned out to tell him but my plans have been thrown off a lot tonight so that one wasn’t much of a loss either. “She just wants to have cake with her dad but, between you and me, I think she deserves a hell of a lot more.”
A beat and then another followed by a few more as I watch the gears and calculations turn behind his eyes. Finally, he takes a deep breath. “We could take her to Dave and Busters,” he says on the exhale. “Or maybe the zoo?”
Considering for a moment, I tell him the zoo’s too much walking. “Dave and Busters though, that sounds fun and they have food there so she won’t feel bad for resting if she needs to.”
“And, um”—he gestures towards my midsection, eyes darting down my body and back up as if he’s seeing me for the first time—“ho-how—”
“We don’t use condoms and I’m not on birth control.”
His lips purse and he pushes out a hard breath. “You're a fucking smartass, sweetheart, I know exactly how we made it. I wanted to know how far along you are and how are we going to tell Sarah?”
“Not very far,” I shrug. “I was going to tell you tonight but in a much cooler way.”
“Lingerie?”
“Yeah.” I nod, watching as he starts to roll his sleeves up so he can start dinner with the ingredients I got out. “And we don’t have to worry about telling her, she already knows.”
Joel looks over at me with one raised eyebrow. “Y'all both been keeping this secret from me?”
“I only just found out this week so it hasn’t been very long,” I promise. “She was in the car when the doctor called, I couldn’t not cry about it.”
We said we’d start trying when we started building the house but I also wanted to wait until Sarah’s cast was off for good—we were all struggling with getting her up and down the stairs, I didn’t want to add a pregnant belly to the mix. Especially not when it had been so many changes already. I went ahead and had my birth control taken out in May, though, because I knew it would take a while to get me back to normal.
“I didn't expect it to take this soon,” he says, focusing on forming the patties in his hands. “H-how far along are you really?”
“Sixteen—do not touch your face,” I say as he drops the raw meat in his hands and hangs his head.
“Alison, I have to get the house done.”
“It’s a day, Joel,” I remind him. “Dave and fucking Busters.”
He’s asking questions as I start back into the living room and towards the stairs.
When’s the due date? March.
Is it a boy or a girl? I don’t fucking know and I don’t fucking care.
What about names? Let’s think on that and decide at the birth.
Where are you going? To take my bra off because I didn’t think my plan through and it’s itchy.
Seriously, Alison, what about the names?
“How about”—I turn to him—“I come up with girl names and you come up with boy names, just don’t pick something fucking stupid like Tyler or Jaxon with an x.”
“Baby.” His tone might as well be a warning and a question rolled into one as it follows me up the stairs. “Ali. Come back down here.”
January 3, 2005:
These paint fumes make me want to scream and I cannot escape them. Even hiding out in Sarah’s room downstairs all day with all the windows open in the house didn’t help.
Even the fancy air purifier Joel insisted on putting in every single room didn’t help.
Really, I thought I’d escaped the vomiting part of pregnancy, given how under the radar the first trimester flew. But the migraines mean I’ve spent the better half of the last few months pushing my head into the toilet and today has been no different.
"How's my girl?” Joel’s voice cuts through the darkness as he opens the door, a new wave of nausea hitting me with the smell of paint that comes in. Sarah helped me back up the stairs and into my bed about an hour ago and I couldn’t stop apologizing.
Because the whole reason we put her room by the kitchen is so she wouldn’t have to bother with the stairs anymore. She just made a joke about how it made sense she was helping me with the stairs after I spent a year helping her with them. Plus, she assured me it was fine, she wasn’t bothered at all.
She even stopped using the cane shortly after we moved in.
“Why did you let me decide to repaint the baby’s room?” I ask him through tears. I’m sure that not eating all day hasn’t helped. Tommy even offered to drive me somewhere to get away from it but we spent thirty seconds in the car and I begged him to stop so I could throw up out the open door before I finally just walked back to the house.
Truthfully the migraine has subsided enough with the darkness and the open windows but the nausea has stayed and I’m completely over it.
I’m completely over every single part of this.
“Hey.” I feel his rough hands on me, sliding up the expanse of my back beneath my shirt. “I let you decide to repaint the baby’s room because you cried over how jarring the orange really was and you wanted it to be green instead, like our room.”
Even he smells like paint but I can’t not turn to him or push my nose straight into the crook of his neck. Really, it's the only relief I've gotten all day. Because the smell isn't sticking to his skin, it’s sticking to his clothes.
“I think the first trimester was such a breeze because it was tricking me about what was coming,” I tell him. “What if our baby hates me?”
His hand slips back down to curve around the swell of my belly and it doesn’t even feel large anymore, I feel like I’m the one who dwarfs him now. “Our baby doesn’t hate you,” he says and there is a stretch inside me I feel reach towards his touch and his voice. “Everybody in this family is stubborn and pregnancy is already hard, baby. We didn't know the paint would do this to you.”
“We didn’t know this baby would do this to me.”
“Oh, pretty girl,” he whispers, kissing into the crown of my head, “we just know better for next time.”
“Next time?”
“Oh yeah,” he confirms. “I’m pumping you full of as many babies as you’ll let me give you.”
“What if I don’t want anymore?” I ask. "After this? I don’t know if I can do this again.”
He releases a breath and laughs. “Then I’ll get my sac snipped and pump you full of nothing,” he shrugs. “Either way, you get whatever you want out of me including the honeymoon you deserve.”
Again with the honeymoon I deserve and it’s making me cry again, harder this time, and the baby kicks up against his hand as if he’s the one who upset me in the first place.
Pulling back and looking down at me, he swipes his thumb along the swell of my cheek and asks, “what are these for?”
“You're doing it again, Joel,” I tell him. Sitting up is a struggle between the light head and the no food and the stomach the size of a house but I push forward anyway as he asks what exactly it is he’s doing. “You're perfect,” I whine, “but overcompensating again.” Getting into the house was what I deserved, getting the correct shade of paint was what I deserved, doing and redoing things that I had no problem with was what I deserved. Now he’s talking about a honeymoon we both have not taken and cannot take like I'm the one pushing for it.
“That's not what I'm doing, baby,” he promises, pulling me close to his chest again. “Please don’t cry on our anniversary,” he whispers. “Please don’t be sad, I don’t want you to be sad or think that I'm babying you, I just want to give you the best and I couldn’t give you a wedding or a honeymoon, we didn’t even make the trip to Wyoming, sweetheart. You didn’t sign up to take care of Sarah and I through recovery.”
“Yes, I fucking did, Joel,” I tell him. "That is exactly what I fucking did because I would have sucked your dick without a ring on my finger until my final fucking breath. But hospitals and doctors and school systems and disability services don’t give a fuck about parents who don't have pieces of paper to prove who we are and—“
“Hey, take a breath,” he tells me, guiding me through the action. “I know you did, I should’ve chosen my words better, but you know how I get around your pretty ass. What I meant is that you shouldn't have had to,” he says. “You shouldn’t have had to marry me in our kid’s hospital room just like she shouldn’t have been there; you shouldn’t have had to take care of her through recovery just like she shouldn't have had to go through it.”
It’s barely seven and the sun is already gone but even in the flat dark of our room, I can make out every single line in his face and how they move with his words.
“You had to bottle a lot of shit back up to deal with all the things that happened very quickly,” he goes on. “They’re still happening and you swallowed that and put your shields back up because people needed you in ways I wish we didn’t need you and you’re all over the place because this baby isn’t letting you do that anymore, okay?”
He's right. Tommy told me to get it the fuck together and I’ve kept it that way this whole time. Until we moved. We moved and Sarah was able to be more independent with her primary sized bedroom downstairs and her physical therapy and I got put on bed rest.
“I want you.”
Joel’s laugh is deep and low, sticking somewhere inside that broad chest as he breathes deep and scrubs a hand down his beard. “You always want me, beautiful.”
"Don't call me beautiful, I feel like a house right now.”
“Pretty girl,” he drawls out, words lost as he pulls his shirt over his head. “I build houses for a living so I happen to think those are quite fucking beautiful.”
“You just agreed with me,” I say, tears welling up again.
Watching as he walks into the bathroom and switches the light on, he calls back that he did. “Because disagreeing with you gets you mad,” he says over the sound of newly running water. “Your headaches get worse when you’re angry so I’d prefer the sad.” He comes back into view and leans against the door frame, arms open in invitation. “Come get in the bath and I’ll bring up some toast you can chew on while you figure out what you want me to order for dinner.
“I'm so mean to you and you’re so perfect.”
Helping me undress, he hums an agreement. “The meanest and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
March 4, 2005:
Rough hands frame my face, turning my head towards him and he pushes away the tears but not as fast as they’re coming. It’s been hours of this and screaming, blinding pain. Even with the epidural, I feel like I’m being ripped apart from the inside out.
“You fucking listen to me, pretty girl,” Joel says, voice cutting through the blood rushing between my ears. “You are going to get through this, do you understand me?”
Drea made it seem like a breeze and my mom sure as fuck never said I gave her this much hell. No, all she could talk about was how I must’ve known my grandfather was an asshole and made this part as easy on her as possible.
"This is my punishment for wanting this child out of me,” I bite out. “This is your fault with your excitement and your big ass head, that’s why it’s taking so long.”
“I will buy you the biggest cheeseburger after this.”
“Fuck you, you’re buying me a porterhouse.”
He laughs and tries to guide me through another fucking deep breath but all I can do is cry. That’s all I’ve been able to do this whole time, through every fucking contraction and nightmare about just what kind of world I’m bringing our baby into. It’s all so full of war and death and sadness and it defeats me completely; bows me over right back into the hospital bed and away from his grip and his words encouraging me on.
“The doctor’s saying it’s just a couple of more pushes, Ali,” he whispers, head dropped low against my shoulder. I can feel the weight of his hand in mine as I squeeze down on the bones, his small encouragements telling me to fucking break it if I have to. “Just a couple of more pushes, baby, and then our baby is here.”
He keeps saying this and I keep thinking about pushing but I don’t know if I am, I can’t tell anymore and I tell him as much because that has to be wrong—something has to be wrong. I’m not doing this right and it’s not fair, all the people in history who have given birth with less support and less drugs than me and I’m the one who’s failing.
Before I know it, he’s pressing his nose into my cheek, beautiful and scarred as it is, followed by kiss after kiss as he tells me how proud he is. Which is so dumb because there’s nothing to be proud of, I haven’t done anything—I can’t do anything.
He pulls away from me then and I can’t handle his absence. I want him back and I must say that because he is, hand smoothing down across my hair to keep it from my face.
“You did it, baby,” he says. God, he practically cheers and a high pitched cry cleaves through every syllable at the same time seeming to last forever until it stops because the source is in my arms. “It's a girl,” he says and he’s so proud. “I told you it would be a girl.”
“She can be whatever she wants to be, Joel.”
“I don’t have any names,” he says. “I thought you'd think everything was stupid.”
I can’t take my eyes off of her, she looks so gross and, yet, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Already, I see Joel’s features in her face but that could be the drugs talking so I keep it to myself. “I’m really sorry that I threatened to cut your nose back off last month,” I say, looking up at him. “I didn’t mean it, I love your stupid nose.”
“I know,” he reassures me. “I know.”
“Your nose is the reason we’re here right now, oh my god.” That only serves to make him laugh and something about that makes her give over the smallest sound of contentment. “I want to name her after my grandma, Joel, can we do that?”
“Nora?”
When I look back to her, she’s looking up at me with the most suspicious look on her face; opening and closing her big, brown eyes against the bright lights. Her eyes are his and I feel like I’m being torn apart all over again. “Eleanor,” I correct him.
He starts to laugh and I feel his lips on me again as he nods into every kiss he presses to my cheek. “Eleanor,” he drawls out like a question, testing the weight of the name in his mouth. “Now we just have to ask your sister what middle name she decided for you, she’s kind of in charge around here but you’re probably used to her already.”
After the tests and the clean up and all the movements of Joel’s palm over my forehead and across the top of my head, I’m not just exhausted but I’m pretty sure I’m bald. But even being as tired as I am, I’ve never been this happy either.
Sarah pretty much refuses to let her go, walking around with her in her arms and looking down at her adoringly saying her full name over and over again.
Eleanor Charlotte Miller.
“We’ll have to do something about that, though,” she says to her little sister. “That's far too many syllables and I’ve gotten lazy since the accident.
She hasn’t but she thinks she has with the lack of sports.
Joel and I were pulled into a family session close to the end of her first semester at the arts high school where all she could do was cry and cry as the therapist explained that she has been going through an identity crisis. Soccer was such a large part of her life, her friends were such a large part of her life, and then they were both gone. Just like that without so much as a goodbye and she didn’t know how to start putting the pieces of herself back together again.
Again, Joel started drawing inward on himself after that, that same bullshit rhetoric that he failed her coming through as he tried to constantly improve on her room and the activities he felt were safe enough for her to do.
I didn’t let it last long. I had to remind him, again, that she wasn't a baby and she doesn’t like being treated like one, she said as much in the therapy session; that she feels like a different person now and it’s hard enough relearning that without being reminded constantly.
“Where’d your dad go?”
She looks up at me again with her smile stretched wide across her face. “He said something about a porterhouse and you saying he has a big, stupid head.”
“He shouldn’t tell you that I call him mean things sometimes.”
Her footsteps fall in a half circle around my bed from one side to the other and she laughs. “It’s not mean if it’s true,” she says down to her sister in her arms. “Is it, Ellie? Plus, if it gets mom over a hundred grams of protein then it’s worth it being a little mean to him isn’t it?”
“Protein, Sarah?” I ask her. "You shouldn’t be worried about that.”
“But I am,” she says, concern written all over her face as she looks up at me. “I read in one of your baby books that you lose a lot of calcium and protein while making a baby because you’re building their muscles and skeletons, which is terrifying, and then all the energy it took to go through seventeen hours of labor.”
“You shouldn’t know these things,” I laugh. “I mean, you should because it’s smart to know these things but you shouldn’t have to be worried about them—not for me.”
“Too late,” she shrugs. “Do you really think dad's the one remembering to replace your calcium supplements?”
“That's been you?”
“Yeah.” She’s looking back down at her sister and rocking her from side to side, smiling at what I can only hope is a smile back at her. She is the only person besides Joel I want holding my baby. “You and dad have been so busy with everything and also with me so I go to the convenience store next to school, it’s not a big deal.”
“It's the biggest deal,” I sniff out.
“Oh no, mom’s crying again.”
I have been all day. Really, I have been since my water broke because I wasn’t ready. I still don’t feel ready for this tiny little person relying on me for everything. Joel keeps telling me I’ll be perfect with a baby because I’m perfect with Sarah but I’m not so sure. Still, I’m so happy and that only makes me cry harder with my greasy hair and my already swollen face.
So happy as I watch both my girls together. My mother was sixteen when I was born and, even if I wasn’t the one who gave birth, I was sixteen when Sarah was born and there’s something that means so much to me now knowing that Sarah will be my age when Eleanor is hers.
July 20, 2006:
“Want!”
Ellie’s bouncing up and down in her high chair, hands up and out making grabby fists at me with her chubby little hands. She's always wearing this look like she has a secret and she’s suspicious of everybody because they may want to know it.
For a while, I thought that secret was because she knew how much I hated being pregnant and, so, she made sure to look like her dad out of spite. All these days and weeks and months I’ve watched her grow, she only looks more and more like him but then she pulls a face I’ve never seen on him and everybody points out that she might as well be my carbon copy.
“No!” She roars at me when I pick her up, wet wash rag in hand to clean the spaghetti mess off of her face.
“You know, for somebody who loves bath time so much, you sure do hate having your face touched.”
“Want!” Her little hands start making fists into my shirt and then she points at the cake I decorated and put out on the table. “Mama, want.”
“You have to wait for Sarah,” I tell her. “Remember, it’s Sarah’s birthday? Can you say birthday?”
Somewhere near her sixteenth birthday, Joel convinced me, finally, to just be a stay at home mom. That was what he wanted for me when I left the hospital, to settle into the changes we were making and figure out all these things about myself and learn and do without exhaustion taking me over.
He feels bad that I couldn’t. That I could only stay gone from nursing for just enough time to get him situated and get Sarah on a routine. So much was changing, yes, but so much had already changed with the accident and we were still scared about the business, I wanted to be pulling money in instead of just relying on my savings, that way if the business died out or her recovery cost more than it was estimated with insurance, we weren’t completely depleted.
I lucked out, really. I was able to take on a provider role in a family medical practice not far from home and I loved it. I loved the predictability of it all and having a set schedule. It was still medicine so it was still different enough that nothing was ever the same day by day, but it was more stable and I knew, better, what to expect.
But I’d been back at work for about a month last year when I came home crying and defeated. Joel had been working from home, Ellie’s play mat set out in his office floor, and I completely broke down on him. I felt bad for spending all day with other peoples and other peoples’ children while missing so much of my own children’s lives and the catalyst to this feeling was getting a call from him excitedly yelling that she had laughed.
She laughed and I missed it and I hated that.
Now, though, I don’t miss a single laugh unless she and Sarah are up to something. Which is usually what’s going on with the way Sarah keeps her sister attached to her hip.
“Rah!” Ellie screams out, bouncing up and down in my arms. “Rah Rah Rah!”
She refuses to say Sarah’s full name, I think she’ll call her Rah until the end of time at this point. At first, I thought she was just mimicking a sound she’d heard on television but then Sarah got home and she pulled herself up in her playpen to repeat the sound over and over again and that's when I realized it was her first word.
Her little excited repetition kicks up from her babbles the moment she hears the door shut downstairs, Joel’s and Sarah’s voices drifting up to us in the bathroom.
I told Joel I would pick her up from work today but he said he’d leave the job site early to get her instead. She got a job at one of those pottery workshop places like the one we went to a few years ago. They have a coffee shop attached and she’s half barista, half teacher and loves every second of it. Joel told her she didn’t need to get a job, the business is doing well and she’s more than taken care of, but she insisted that it was more about experience and making friends.
Besides, she wants to make and use her own money to buy a car for herself and pay for her college applications and all the books she’s been reading.
More often than not, we’re at the bookstore. Not just the regular bookstore but the college bookstore as well as she’s picking up psychology textbooks she’s under no requirement to read. Alongside my baby books, she’s been reading so much about developmental psychology and applies the things she’s read to Ellie.
Ellie who starts bouncing happily again in my arms as we head back downstairs, freshly washed and changed and dressed back up to go out to dinner with her sister, because she sees Sarah and doesn’t want anybody else.
“You'll never believe what your daughter did today,” Joel says, handing me a drink from the little cafe and taking the baby from me. “She informed me that she’s applied for dual enrollment at the community college so she can get most of her required bullshit”—he leans forward—“that's the wording she used by the way—out of the way so that she can enter UT as a junior when she’s nineteen and, get this, she’s been accepted. Starts next month.”
“Yeah, I know,” I tell him. “Who do you think helped her with her application and essay? That’s why she wants us to take her car shopping this weekend.”
“She's so responsible,” he says, looking down at Ellie. “Daddy’s going to be in his fifties when you’re seventeen and I’m starting to think she was my trick baby; because she was so good and you’re already so rotten.”
He ends the sentence by pretending to chew on her neck, her little giggles going insane as he declares how sweet she still is. I don’t see just him in her features in these moments, I see Sarah, too. I see Sarah and how he must have been with her when she was this small.
“Don’t forget to tell her you’re joking,” Sarah says as she comes back into the room. “She has to know that when you tell her she’s rotten that you’re joking.”
“Okay, Dr. Miller,” he agrees with her. “Since you and Ali share everything, you wanna maybe tell her what we did today while I go get changed?”
She takes Ellie from him and laughs as her sister snuggles right into the crook of her neck and shoos him up the stairs when he stops to look down, that same look like she has a secret she’s trying to keep on her face. Except, whereas Ellie looks like she would keep it all to herself, Sarah only ever looks like she’s bursting to spill every detail.
“Thank you for the drink, bug,” I say, holding up the cup. “Besides giving your father a heart attack over how grown up you are, what’d you do today?”
She sits on the other side of the couch from me and faces my direction, pulling her feet up underneath her before settling Ellie on her lap and smiles. “So, a couple of months ago, dad asked me if I wanted him to help me buy a car for my birthday and he wasn’t happy when I told him I already had that handled.”
“Sounds like him.”
“Yeah,” she rolls her eyes. “He wants to make sure it’s got all the safety specs or whatever, like, calm down, it’s not like Uncle Tommy taught me how to drive.”
“He just worries,” I tell her. “Is that what y’all did today, though? Are you going to tell me you both played hooky from work and now there’s a new car in the driveway?”
“No,” she laughs and, when she does, Ellie laughs alongside her. “We did play hooky but not to look at cars, we’ve actually been working with a lawyer the last couple of months,” she goes on and takes a deep breath, tearing up as she releases it. “I told him that what I wanted for my birthday was for you to adopt me and that I was really afraid of asking if you would because I know you didn’t sign up for me when you and him got together.”
“Sarah, I one hundred percent signed up for you, too.”
The moment I start crying, Ellie looks up at her sister and notices she is, too, which only makes her own face twist up and turn an angry red as she forces her own tears out.
“Okay,” Sarah says, looking down in an attempt to pacify Ellie. “It's okay, these are happy tears. Can you say happy?”
She doesn’t even try, just wails out of her little lungs until they almost give out before starting to babble for her dad over and over again. Because dad is the safety who comes running every time any of us cry, always there the moment he hears tears and it’s no different now as he takes the stairs two at a time while buttoning his shirt.
“Oh, my girls,” he says, wedging himself into the couch and opening his arms to encourage us into a hug. “It’s okay, I’m right here.”
Sarah and I settle into opposite sides of him as Ellie climbs up onto his chest and nuzzles her head down right over where his heart is beating. Her hair is wild as it stands, all dark brown and all over the place, but the way it’s sticking up as she settles down into him is pulling more laughter than tears from me now which makes her start up on the giggles again.
“So you’re going to say yes, right?” Sarah finally asks, her head popping into view behind her sister. “You’re going to sign the papers?”
“Oh, bug, that’s such a yes and I’m really sorry if I can’t stop crying at your dinner tonight.”
May 12, 2019:
“Oh my god, can you two cool it with your asshole voices?” Ellie asks, eyes bugging out as she commands both of us to be nice.
He blames her colorful language on me, says that she talks the way she does because I’m from Massachusetts because there’s no way in hell he could ever have taught her the words bullshit or motherfucker. At least, that’s his excuse for when she gets in trouble at school time and time again for calling her classmates little dicks.
“She's right, sweetheart,” I say, turning to Joel. “We're not being very nice.”
His jaw sets and his eyes flick between Sarah and her new boyfriend, George. Well, new to us. They’ve been seeing one another since before Christmas but she didn't want to make a big deal out of it, not with her final semester of her doctorate program needing her full attention. “I don’t think it’s impolite to say that I wanted a picture with just family.”
“That wasn't the impolite part, actually,” Ellie says. "The impolite part was saying that would be the one you’d frame because you don’t know how long this guy will last”—she turns her head back to him—“no offense, man, he's just really protective.”
“No, I get it,” he says, smiling up at Joel and I. “Like I said at the graduation, she talks about you two so much, I’m just really excited to finally meet you both.”
“And Ellie,” Joel says, squinting. “You’re not excited to meet her sister?”
“Honey.”
“Oh, actually, Ellie and I have met a bunch,” he says. “She and Sarah study together.”
Sarah is sinking down further and further into her seat, eyes wide as she looks to her sister as if begging for help as Joel turns his attention on her.
“You didn’t feel like telling us that you’ve known your sister’s boyfriend this whole time? Ellie,” he says her name like a warning and a question, “I thought we promised no secrets.”
“Shit, dad, it's not like I stole the nuclear codes, you’re being so weird right now. This wasn’t a secret, we met a few times when I was over at Sarah’s getting help with my homework. If you want a secret,” she says, throwing her hands up, “I'm fucking gay so like if you’re gonna be mad at anybody for anything, be mad at that.”
“Nobody's mad at you for being gay,” I tell her, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, “and that wasn’t a secret, honey, we’ve known.”
“You know?!”
“Well, yeah,” Joel says, "you and Shana aren’t very subtle with the way you look at one another.”
“Okay, so take it from me,” she says, placing her palm on her chest, “because I’m a great judge of character and George is very nice and Sarah has been very nervous about introducing you this whole time and we’re here to celebrate the fact that she’s a fucking doctor now, dad, so be nice.”
Joel takes a deep breath and nods. “I’m sorry, George,” he breathes out. “I’m just really protective.”
“I understand, Mr. Miller,” he says, smiling again. “I'm just some random guy to you, it more than makes sense you would want to frame the picture of just you and your girls but it would mean a lot to me if you could send me a copy of the one with me included.”
Joel nods again. “Of course.”
Sarah looks between me and Ellie, one eyebrow raised in question as if to ask just what the fuck is going on.
“Was I too hard on that boy?” Joel asks later. “I think I was too hard on that boy.”
We got home about an hour ago, after Ellie bullied us into going for ice cream because the dessert options at the restaurant were disgusting and obviously formulated for old farts like him.
“You know, Joel Alexander,” I start, gently setting his knee down before picking up the other, “this isn’t a question you would’ve been asking of your behavior fifteen years ago.”
“Yeah, well, I guess we have the young one to thank for that,” he breathes out, sucking in another hard breath as I dig into the underside of his leg. “She doesn't let me get away with shit.”
She really doesn’t. All that overprotective bullshit he does, all that overcompensating for weaknesses he does not have, never flew with her. Not when she learned how to say no and, later, learned how to call him on his shit. He finally got it together when she was about four, when I lost her brother and was a mess for so long about it. It was our third attempt at a second pregnancy, the farthest we’d gotten, when my body just shut down close to the end of the second trimester.
I cried and cried and Joel was perfect through it all. But there were moments when he was so overwhelming in taking care of me, that it only made everything I felt worse, and it’s because I knew he was ignoring his own pain about it. Ellie picked up on it, kept bringing up that he was sad, too, until he finally broke down because he hadn’t really let himself feel that pain for the other losses either.
He got a vasectomy the next week because he said he wasn’t putting me through that again but we both know he couldn’t handle it again either.
“And you say she picked up rudeness from me but her manners are impeccable, she just swears a lot—sounds a lot like her daddy.”
Joel pushes a laugh out and then winces, pulling his leg up and out of my hands. “She's not rude, she’s honest.”
“And so funny about it,” I agree, crawling up to straddle his waist and lay a kiss down on his bare chest. “You apologized,” I mumble, looking back up at him. “You’re just protective and afraid of your little girl getting her heart broken.”
His brown eyes are almost black in the low light of our room, wrinkles settled into the fine skin around them, and he fights the heaviness of his lids to look up at me. It’s hard believe that I was crying myself to sleep sixteen years ago, afraid that I would never see this version of him. This settled in version with sun spots and gray hair I sobbed over. Never once did I tell him that I convinced myself he’d find somebody else to grow old with; that I believed somebody else was meant to watch and love all of the ways he laughed and grew and ached and craved.
And that scar—the one I put on his nose.
I felt so much fear that I would never see the way it would fade out and only be noticeable to me. But here I am, sixteen years later having just watched our oldest become Dr. Sarah Miller while our youngest runs circles around us in every way. They are both the best versions of us and themselves and each other.
“You know,” I start, taking a deep breath to steady myself against the tears I know will come out tonight anyway, “she’s the same age I was when I met you and decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”
The same age I was when I put that scar on his nose and, now, it’s been years as I’ve watched it fade until only I, and the sun above us, can see it.
The grip this story has on me y’all. I am constantly reminded of how talented Wyn is every single time I read something of hers. This epilogue was just the icing on a very delicious cake and I loved every bite. If you ever find yourself having any bit of free time I highly suggest reading this, re reading it and then going through Wyn’s entire collection of stories. Ask me for my favs because I don’t shut up about them.
