“Don’t,” I start.
“To love you,” he repeats firmly. “I wanted to love you. And god, Sean, I did. Ido.”
They’re words he’s never used in real life, and hearing them from this apparition cements me as the pitiable, foolish woman I feared I’d become. I can hardly believe myself, that I could so desperately want to hear that Julian loved me that I would settle for recreating this encounter in my mind, one in which he begs on his hands and knees for me when in reality he’d walked out my door without looking back.
“Julian, please,” I say, clenching my teeth to keep from devolving into sobs.
His hands scrabble up my legs until they reach my hips, more beseeching than amorous, his head bent low over my lap in worship. His tears fall, heavy as heartbeats, onto the thin white silk covering my thighs.
“I love you,” he says. “In a way that I never thought myself capable. More than I’ve ever loved anyone. That’s why I had to walk away.”
“Stop.” My breaths are coming hard and fast; any minute now, I will break. “Go away. Let mesleep, Julian, please. I’m so tired.”
Julian goes still. I don’t turn away, breathing in, out, anything to keep from shattering in front of him. I am a bubble about to burst, and he waits me out for what could be minutes but feels like an eternity.
Eventually, as I knew he would, he gives up. I feel his grip slacken, his hands smooth down the path they followed until they hang limply on his lap.
“Okay,” he says. Then, more firmly, “Okay. But promise me something.”
I owe him nothing, but I am curious enough to hear his request.
“What?” I ask.
“Promise,” he says, “to forget me.”
I don’t answer him, but we both know that I will be doing no such thing.
I don’t dream of Julian again after that.
It’s disorienting, at first. I didn’t realize how accustomed I’d gotten to his company in my subconscious until he longer occupied it, until my dreams went back to being improbable reenactments of my memories and thoughts rather than the coherent visions I’d had whenI was with him. He disappears out of my life with the abruptness of a thunderclap and leaves no wake behind: no social media accounts to stalk, no selfies together to moon over.
Work has always been a gas, capable of filling the entire space of my life if I let it, and so I do. I pick the most complex cases off the add-on board and sign up for every research project, come home late, eat like shit, play with Onix, shed tears onto the keys of my piano. Whenever I use Palette’s devices, I look out for Leila, but she’s apparently away for “training,” and they send a plucky new guy in her stead.
To make matters worse, I get sick again. My head hurts all the time and I sweat through my pajamas every night. Everything turns my stomach; just the smell of Larry’s daily egg and bacon bagel leaves me retching. I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin.I feel, I write in my symptoms journal,like I’m going to die.
“Is everything okay?” Pamela asks me one evening, after we’ve finished the day’s cases and everyone has cleared out to go home. Her frown tells me she’s asking out of genuine concern, not just because she wants the tea. “You’ve been…off lately.”
The look I give her must be acerbic, because she holds up two hands in defense.
“I don’t mean in the lab!” she explains. “You’re actually more efficient in there, somehow. Which is freaky, because youlooktore up.”
She’s not wrong, but I still grimace.
“Thanks, Pamela.”
“I’m not saying it to be a jerk,” Pamela says. “I’m saying that something is clearly wrong, and that you should think about going to get checked out.”
I think of my symptom journal, of my primary care doctor’s already million-dollar workup, my recent trip to the emergency room. There is nothing wrong with me.
Still, I head to his office one more time.
Dr. Steinbeck is kind but seems a bit exasperated as he comes through the door. He’s accompanied by a young woman with the roundest, most globular eyes I’ve ever seen, whom he introduces as Helen, his medical student. When he tells her that I’m one of Broadview’s interventional cardiologists, she manages to look even more alarmed.
“Do you mind if Helen listens in?” Dr. Steinbeck asks.
“Sure,” I say, with a shrug.
I tell him my symptoms. They’re the same I’ve had before. Nausea, fatigue, body aches, sweats. All nonspecific, B symptoms.