I set all the money I had in the tray and left. On my way to the hospital, I began to feel the strangeness of the situation. I felt painfully anxious as I drove his truck to the hospital, knowing I might have to meet his colleagues.
Once there, I quickly learned that they had life-flighted the man to Nate’s hospital in Missoula, which was almost three hours away, and Nate had gone with them. I got back into the truck and headed to Missoula. Halfway there, he finally called.
“Ava, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m driving there now.”
“Oh.”
He was silent for several moments, which made me feel like a complete idiot. “I thought maybe you would need your truck.”
“That’s sweet of you.”
“I can turn around.”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll see you when you get here.” He sounded distracted.
The gas gauge was almost on empty when I pulled into the hospital parking lot in Missoula. I called Nate from my phone but he didn’t answer. I left a voicemail and hung up, thinking I would see him rush out to the parking lot within minutes. I went to the front entrance but the doors were locked. I pressed my forehead to the locked glass doors, hoping someone would see me. I knocked loudly and waited and then knocked again and waited some more, but no one came. I got back into his truck and wrapped my sweater around my bare knees to stay warm. I scrolled through my contacts for Trish’s number just before my phone went dead. It got so cold in his truck that my teeth started chattering. I remembered being that cold once before. It was on a rock in a valley with my dog curled up next to me to keep me warm while I wondered if my husband was dying alone in a tent in the middle of nowhere.
I cursed myself for being so stupid to drive hours from home with no money, but I’d had no other options. Staring at the front entrance, I kept hoping to see one lone soul that I could persuade to open the doors for me so I could get to Nate. After at least an hour, I got out and decided to run to keep myself warm. I ran up one dark street while shivering, my arms braced around me. The hospital glowed from where I stood on the darkened street.
I searched for a pay phone to call Trish or Bea collect, but I found nothing until I was standing in front of St. Francis Xavier Church. It was eerie and dark, and the building’s stone steeple cast a long, intimidating shadow that swallowed the moonlight and left me enshrouded in even more darkness. I tried to open the door to the church, hoping to find some refuge, or maybe a priest who could help me make a phone call, but the door was locked. When I pounded on it, the echoes through the nave of the church frightened me.
Heading back toward the hospital, I found the emergency room entrance on the other side. I wished I had thought of it sooner; of course, it was open. Once inside, I saw children coughing, women moaning, and a man sleeping across two dingy chairs with stains on the vinyl cushions. I remembered not liking hospitals when Jake was recovering from his accident, but now I just felt compassion for everyone around me. I went to the reception window, where I was greeted less than enthusiastically by a young woman, probably around my age, wearing blue scrubs and round Harry Potter–like spectacles. Her hair was pulled back into a pristine ponytail. I looked at my hazy reflection for a moment in the glass. I was shivering and wearing a dress that fell above my knees, and I could just make out mascara smears from the cold wind, which had made my eyes water fiercely.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Dr. Meyers.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m Dr. Meyers’s girlfriend.”
She looked me up and down suspiciously then picked up a phone and said something in a hushed tone. When she hung up the receiver, she leaned in toward the glass between us and said, “Dr. Meyers is in surgery at the moment.” She reached for a piece of paper and wrote the hospital phone number on it and handed it to me through the little hole. “You can call back during regular business hours and leave a message with his secretary if you’d like.” She spoke to me as if I were either a child or a crazy person.
“Okay.” I took the piece of paper and walked out of the sliding glass doors, staring at the paper in my hands in disbelief. Had she called him? I wondered. Did he tell her to say that to me? There was no way, I thought. I shuffled back to Nate’s truck, still freezing. I turned it on and cranked up the heater and then I cried, that pathetic type of crying like when you pee your pants in kindergarten and you’re filled with a mixture of shame and regret for holding it so long. Then, when everyone starts laughing at your wet jeans, you get angry and want to scream Screw all of you! After the kids stop laughing, you never want to see them again because you’re the only kindergartener who ever peed her pants on the story rug while Ms. Alexander read The Giving Tree for the twelfth time. Everyone else was sitting crisscross applesauce while you were fidgeting about, trying to hold it until the end of the story when the teacher asked what the moral was so you could say, “It’s about being generous to your friends,” even though, later in life, you learn the story is really about a selfish little bastard who sucked the life out of the only thing that gave a shit about him. But you never got the chance for your shining moment because you peed on the story rug, got laughed at, then cried pathetic tears.
Not that that happened to me . . .
I regretted following him out here and believing he cared for me the same way I cared for him. I honked the horn and revved the gas in anger, but no one was listening. I watched a helicopter land on the helipad above the hospital and wished briefly that it would land on top of me. That’s when the really pathetic tears started, the “I feel sorry for myself” tears—and there were plenty in Nate’s truck that night. I cranked up the heater even more, got the cab toasty warm, shut the engine down, and dozed off with snot on my face and sweater.