“What we had was enough. You have to know that.” She squeezed his hand. “You should finish the story. It’s a good one.”
His soul ached. “I can’t live without you.”
“Youdid.”
Walking out of that hospital room was among the hardest things Landon had ever done. It’s not often you have to consciously send signals from your brain to your body, first to ask your wobbly knees to bend, then to tell your legs to move. One step. Another. Five more to the door. Because it wasn’t just a door. It was her life.
It got a little easier once he was in the hallway—so bright, and sterile, and pungent, sickness and death barely concealed. Landon took a breath and realized that he was going to be sick. He hoped he could make it outside. Maybe find a tree or a thick hedge, somewhere to hunker down, but he didn’t want to run. Running in hospitals was an act reserved for emergencies, where there was panic because there was still hope. He turned a corner and pushed through the heavy door that led to the parking lot. No tree or shrub in sight, he braced himself against the nearest brick column and let it come.
“Jesus,” a voice said. The voice was familiar. Landon wiped his mouth and raised his eyes.
Conor.
He’d been there the day he’d married Rose, standing by his side holding his grandmother’s ring. He’d been there the day before their first couples counseling session, to be the one to tellhim hard truths before someone else would. He’d been there when Cordelia died, wiping sweat and vomit from his face and hands. And he was there now, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder.
“Poppy called you,” Landon said.
“Of course she did. But I’ll have you know that I started packing a bag the minute you dropped that phone on the ground.”
Of course he had. “But you—I mean, your work. You can’t just leave like that, can you?”
“If it’s important enough.”
How many times had Conor dropped everything for him? It was a question that Landon had considered before, but never interrogated. Too many times. Conor had thus far been spared death and disease in his own life, but death and disease come for us all in one form or another, one way or another. Landon felt a rush of love for Conor even thinking about the future trials he might go through. If he took the pill, could he find a way to still be the friend that Conor deserved? The scales felt so woefully unbalanced.
“She’s okay,” Landon said, anticipating the question. “Right now, she’s okay.” A light rain began to fall. Landon could see it in the glow of the streetlights lining the parking lot. So much had changed with just one rotation of the earth, Rose herself the day and night.
Conor slung his duffel to the ground. “And you?” he asked, implication clear:You are why I’m here.
If a hole opened up in the concrete right then, Landon would have jumped through. If a twister barreled through the parking lot, Landon would have walked straight toward the wall of wind. But despite the deep and undeniable sadness, he didn’t feel the urge to cry. Perhaps he’d left that grief at her bedside. “I don’t know,” hesaid. “She remembered everything.” He chanced a look at Conor, who didn’t seem surprised. If he had to name the expression that tugged at the corners of his kind eyes, it would have beensheepish.
Conor cleared his throat. “Can we sit somewhere?” he asked. “My back is killing me.”
“Did you know?” Landon did not want to go sit down. His body was thrumming with adrenaline. He felt he could scale a ten-foot wall right then, if he had to.
“That depends on exactly what you mean.”
Landon thought back to their phone call and Conor’s pointed questions. If he’d had the time to answer them, maybe Conor would have helped him come to the same conclusion that Rose had. Would it have changed anything? “What have you been seeing in Boston?” he asked.
Conor sighed. “We’ve lost a couple of pill patients,” he said. “The last one was not too long ago, back in July.”
“Tell me.”
Conor briefly hardened, every bit the doctor that he was. “We didn’t get the chance to talk to him—just his girlfriend—but his chart said he’d done two tours in Iraq. There were no notes about why he’d chosen to take the pill, but records said he’d been to the ER before for panic attacks so severe he’d needed sedation. I was working Fourth of July, and he came in after a fireworks show. His girlfriend said they’d started dating not long ago and she’d invited him to a backyard thing where her buddies had shot off about a thousand dollars’ worth of fireworks they’d bought over the border in New Hampshire. The guy’s nose started bleeding and she brought him in, but not fast enough. We were just getting ready to bring him to the OR when he coded.” Landon wished that it sounded nothing like what had happened to Rose, but hecould only lie to himself so many times a day. “My attending is working on a case study. She’s seen at least five cases at our hospital and thinks it’s a side effect when a patient who’s experienced trauma encounters a trigger. But Landon, this is all so new. There haven’t been any controlled studies. All I know for sure is that some things seem to be able to break through the pill, and some people aren’t capable of surviving it.”
“Some people like Rose,” Landon said.
“I haven’t seen anyone come through the other side,” Conor said, “exceptRose. She’s alive. She remembered everything, and she’s alive. That’s remarkable.”
The moment was serious as a funeral, but the laugh could not be helped. “She’s just going to take another pill. That’s what she told me. The blood was barely dry, and she already knew.”
Conor reached for Landon’s hand, and Landon didn’t have fight in him left to so much as shrug him off. “I’m going to tell you what I should have told you when I first saw this idea brewing behind that mop of hair,” Conor said, his voice firm but not unkind. “Something unthinkable happened to both of you. The worst thing in the world that can happen to a parent. But love, no matter how big, and deep, and fierce, does not give you the right to decide how she moves forward. Or if she moves forward at all.” He paused, to see if his words might sink in. “You have got to take care ofyou, Landon. Have you even thought about what it might look like to take care of you?”
Of course I have, Landon was about to say. But he bumped up against his lying quota once again.
“I know your heart is broken into about a million pieces. If you think taking that pill—knowing all the risks—is better than living this life, I will get you a pill myself. But I will fucking missyou.” His voice broke. “And for the record, I think you should try it first. Just try being you, for a little while. Try living and see what happens.”
Landon closed his eyes and pressed his palms to his cheekbones. When Cordelia died, he was certain he would never feel joy again. When Rose took the pill, his certainty deepened. But he could not deny that something had shifted in the last week. Something had shifted even in the last hour.