I thought you might be dead. You have a dangerous job and you hadn’t posted on Instagram in days. You didn’t answer your phone, you wouldn’t answer texts, and I began to wonder if you were dead.
I even Googled your name with “obituary.” Nothing came up, except your dad.
Of course, you weren’t dead. You had a mom who loves you to check on you. You had grandparents, siblings, friends, and coworkers. You were undoubtedly just drunk somewhere, talking trash or becoming someone’s blood brother, and left your phone in a ditch. But I was worried.
You would be flattered to know that I was worried. I didn’t know how to tell you I was worried without you asking why I was worried and what I was going to do about it.
I wrote you a note on the dry erase board in the room that you keep your lizard in and I regretted never telling you. I wondered if you had seen it. I wondered if you’d erased it, or if you kept it around to haunt you the way I’d watch Cillian Murphy, whose chiseled cheekbones and piercing eyes reminded me of you. I wondered if you missed me and I hoped you weren’t dead.
I know you think it wasn’t, but it was a coincidence that we got stuck in the same elevator at the same hospital.
You’d brought someone to the ER and left him with the married nurse you’d had an affair with four years before we met. (I know she didn’t tell you she was married at the time, or whatever – sorry to bring it up.) I was there to visit my sister who was in the ICU on the seventh floor. I said things I shouldn’t have and you said things you shouldn’t have and then we parted ways. Except we couldn’t because we were stuck in an elevator.
You accused me of doing something awful – something I would never do. Not even to my worst enemy. It hurt. A lot. I didn’t forgive you and I don’t forgive you. And I didn’t listen to your side of the story because I didn’t care. And I should’ve given you a chance to say what you needed to say because there were things you wanted to tell me, but I didn’t.
Now, here we are. And you’re not dead. But you won’t speak to me, so I wish I was.
You keep pushing a button that just rings and rings. No one answers. But you keep trying because that’s what you do. It’s what you’ve always done.
It’s what you did when you were six, or seven, or eight, or nine years old and your dad was so drunk he could barely drive. You took the wheel to keep him from crashing his truck with you and your sister next to him in the front seat.
It’s what you did when your college girlfriend cheated on you with one of her friends and you found out because you had a gut feeling and you checked her phone.
It’s what you did when you rescued your little sister from the cops the night she and her boyfriend were high and drove the wrong way on the highway and had drugs in their car.
You feel like nothing you do is ever good enough, but you keep trying anyway.
“I won’t settle,” you told me when we first met. And I understand why now. The goal posts keep moving. If they’re ever stationary, you move them yourself.
All of these are signs that you are someone who is miserable and incapable of loving someone without hurting them, but I’ve watched you feed your lizard even when you’re mad at her.
I’m not perfect. I drink caffeine too late in the day to be able to sleep well at night. I’m disorganized and always in a hurry. But I’m not clingy, whiny, or too good for anyone or anything, including you. If it matters, I didn’t consider settling down with you to be settling.
“Can you please stop,” I say.
Your piercing eyes look at the corner closest to me, but not at me.
At least you stop though. There’s the echo of silence again.
“Do you have service in here,” you ask.
Talking at me, not to me, as usual.
You’ve been trying to load the internet on your phone to look up the hospital’s number. You won’t dial 911 for obvious reasons. And you’ve mumbled about being able to climb out (because you spend hours in the gym every day), but we both know you’re too much of a gentleman to ever leave me here.
But then you also wouldn’t try to pull me out with you because that would require touching me and you’ve sworn to everyone who’d come if you called 911 that you’ll never touch me again. Ever.
I’m staring now at the scar on your hand where you ran it across the blade of a stranger’s sword in the middle of a bar and thinking about how stupid you can be for a smart person.
“I don’t,” I say. But I don’t even bother to check.
I have places to be, too, you know? And you’d only be off to the next emergency you’ll never follow up on anyway.
You know what’s always bothered me? You risk your life to save somebody and then you never even ask if they lived. Does that still make you a hero? Sure. But the people you’re saving are faceless and soulless to you. Why?
Did you always not want to know? I doubt it. My money’s on you always caring. There was probably one time some kid or elderly person didn’t make it. And it broke you. So, you stopped asking.
“Let’s get out of here,” you say.
“No,” I say.
You finally look at me. Your eyes rove over every inch of my face in a fraction of a second. I used to think you could actually see into my soul when you did that, but I know now you were probably just trying to gauge my worthiness to be so close to you. Was I pretty enough? Smart enough? Surface level questions. Nothing half as deep as I’d hoped.
“It’s time,” you say.
“I just need five more minutes,” I say.
And I think about all of the things I love about you, but never told you. I think about everyone you’ve saved and will save, and the people whose lives will be better because you lived. I think about how brave you are when it comes to life, and about how scared you are when it comes to love. And about how I just can’t settle for that.
“Okay,” I say.
The elevator jerks up and the doors are pried open from outside. We emerge and go our separate ways, as on fire as we ever were.
– ©️ 2021 Portia July.
Portia July 