“Sure you do,” he says. “You’ve thought it from the beginning. That I was a stereotype, leaving my wife and kid for this young woman. Thinking with mydick. I’m not wrong, am I?” When I don’t respond, he nods, accepting my silence as confirmation. “But it wasn’t that simple, Sean. I…needed her. In a way that I can’t describe. She was the girl of my dreams. She wasin my dreams. I could never…not think of her.”
Brandon’s monitor beeps in the background, but it’s overtaken by the ringing in my ears. Brandon dreamt of Leila. He left Winona because he dreamt of her, maybe the way I once dreamt of Julian. And now he is lying in a hospital bed, impossibly old, impossibly sick. And my hair is white.
My mind takes in this information and draws the parallels, but when it tries to settle on the obvious conclusion, it grinds to a halt.Occam’s razor, I remind myself again.The simplest explanation is often the best one.But the simplest explanation—Julian and Leila are the cause of our rapid aging—is nonsensical.
But no more nonsensical than what’s happening to us. Because here we sit, Brandon forty going on eighty-three with a left-sided brain cancer he shouldn’t have developed for many more years, me with hair that turned silver-white overnight. My heart is off to the races, and I clutch the side rail of Brandon’s hospital bed, trying to keep myself upright. I can’t deny what I see with my eyes, feel with my hands, what the CT scans and MRI see in Brandon’s brain.Oh god.Was this…intentional? Were we prey all along?
I’ve been silent for too long, because Brandon clears his throat.
“I’m tired,” he says. “Thanks for checking in, Sean.”
It’s far from the only thing he needs to thank me for, but I interpret it as the dismissal that it is, steel myself, and stand.
“Don’t die,” I tell him from his hospital room door.
He cracks a small smile and tosses me a weak thumbs-up.
“I’ll try my best.”
I barely notice that I’ve made it home until I slide into my spot in my apartment’s parking garage. My body has gone through the motions,automatically taking me down the right streets and dodging pedestrians so that my mind can focus. The evening is eerily quiet, and I sit in my car so long that the automatic light turns out and I am shrouded in darkness. I can’t stop thinking about Brandon’s wizened face. Wrinkles deep as crevasses, blue eyes bleary and ringed with white.She was in my dreams, he said.
Onix greets me at the door and joins me on the couch. I pet him with one hand and with the other pull out my phone and open my photo gallery. I scroll back three years, to the last time Brandon and I were on good terms. The man looking back at me nearly knocks the breath out of my chest. I’ve never been attracted to Brandon, but it’s obvious that he was a handsome man. Vain too. Looking at him here I remember how he’d spent three months testing different types of pomade to induce the best front swoop, how tenacious he’d been about applying sunscreen so that he wouldn’t be the “only one aging” between the three of us.
I keep scrolling. Past birthday parties and nights out, past conferences during which I’d still throw my arm around his waist for pictures.
And then I land on one.
It’s the Palette company dinner. Leila had just taken over for the last device representative assigned to our cath lab, and she stands, beaming, next to Brandon in a baby-pink minidress. Brandon looks to the camera, but I note what I failed to that night—that his hand is low on her hip and his grip is tight. Two weeks later, I’d walk into the supply room to find them making out behind the balloon pumps.
I zoom in on Brandon’s face. Study it closely. It’s his hairline that catches my attention first, and I scroll up a picture, taken just two weeks before. I’m not mistaken. Where there had once been a full, straight line, there is suddenly a widow’s peak.
I call Winona. She’s driving from the suburbs during rush hour and picks up immediately.
“I have to tell you something,” I say to her. “You’re going to think I’m losing it, but please, hear me out.”
“One second, Sean,” Winona responds. “I’m in the car with Leila. We’re heading back to the hospital.”
My blood runs cold as ice.
“Hi, Sean,” Leila says, in a small, sweet voice. “It’s been a while.”
Twenty-Two
It’s strange, hearing Leila’s voice again, after what I’ve decided she’s capable of. Her voice sounds ragged, like she’s been crying, and the things she’s saying are perfectly appropriate and not at all sinister:I left my phone in the car this morning, I can’t believe this is happening, I told him to go to the doctor.
“I-I’m just so grateful to you both,” Leila says. “Winny told me what happened. That you were the one who called for help. I don’t know what would’ve happened if you hadn’t been there.”
Her familiarity with my best friend grates.Stop calling her that, I almost snap. Instead, I say, “I’m so sorry this is happening,” even as my heart beats out of my chest. I remember the fear in Brandon’s eyes just before he collapsed, and this little woman’s tinny voice is causing it to surge in me. I hate that a part of me wants to ask her about Julian. “Does Sophie know yet?”
“I’ll tell her tonight,” Winona says. I can hear the weariness in her voice. “Maybe I’ll keep her out of school next week? I don’t know.”
I feel silly all of a sudden, calling Winona to spout accusations that will most certainly sound like conspiracy theories while she is contending with telling her child that her daddy is terribly, horriblysick. For the last twenty years, I have told my best friend my every unfiltered thought. But this, I decide, is mine to bear. At least until I know for sure.
Winona texts me when she and Leila get to the hospital. She lost both of her parents on a hospital floor, she explains. Didn’t want to go alone.
The excuse doesn’t quite make sense to me. Leila works in hospitals. True, the cath lab is far removed from the inpatient floors, but she’s surrounded by potential triggers all day, every day. But Winny’s kindness is abundant, and so even though she could’ve told her ex-husband’s new wife to catch an Uber and suck it up, she took her hand and walked into the hospital with her.
Onix places a heavy paw on my chest. His sigh is soul deep, like he too is toiling over impossible questions.