Page 18 of Read Between the Stars

“Tired,” she answers with a deadpan expression.

“Does your head hurt?”

“A little, just where I bumped it.”

“Can you follow my finger with your eyes?” he asks, holding his finger up in front of her eyes and she watches it move from side to side and up and down. I watch as he continues his assessment and the sight gives me a jolt on the inside. Seeing Ben in sweats and a t-shirt, sitting on my daughter’s bed and talking to her, a vision of a father doting on his little girl flashes through me, making my heart speed up for a few beats. Different emotions stir together in my chest: a fondness for what could one day be, clashing with a mourning for what didn’t happen.

“I say she’s okay to sleep,” Ben’s voice brings me back to the present, and I realize he’s standing before me. He looks shy as he rubs at the back of his neck. “However, because I don’t have a medical license, it would be a good idea to call her primary doctor’s office and speak to the physician on call to verify. Let him know she had a clear CT, no nausea, has good cognitive response…” he trails off, as if he’s just realized he slipped into medical mode. I make no mention of it. It’s obviously a touchy subject for him, and if he wanted to talk about it, he would. I’m just grateful he was here during this time instead of on the other side of the world.

“Okay,” I nod before proceeding to walk him to the door. “Thanks for everything, again.”

“You’re welcome,” he turns to face me as we reach the door, and it’s now I remember we go back home to the city in the morning, and this may be the last we see of him.

“Look, um… I don’t know what your plans are, but if we don’t run into each other again, I want you to know we’re never going to forget you or what you did. And if you ever need anything, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Matt and Melanie know how to find me of course,” I finish with a bashful shrug and a half smile. I feel my heart glow warm when he gives me one back. A smile looks good on him, and it stays on his face as he nods at me before turning and heading out the door.

Chapter Seven

Ben

I was not expectingmy first 24 hours back in the States to be so action packed. So full of trauma, chaos andpeople.Again, Melanie owes me big time. After a night of choppy, restless sleep that I got after yesterday’s events, I’ve decided the last thing I’m ready to do is turn around and hop back on a plane for another day and a half worth of travelling. I need to reset, have some peace and quiet, recharge my batteries and all that. So I’m in my rental car and headed for the city, intent on taking Matt and Melanie up on their offer to hole up at their house there, at least for a of couple days.

I rock my head side to side as I cruise down the highway, trying to relieve the tension in my neck as I reflect on the train wreck this trip has been so far. Although…

The people I want so badly to complain about weren’t so bad. In fact, they all seem really good. Especially Kasey. She’s kind and respectful. Not only did she get Melanie to lay off me, but she had a wide open opportunity to riddle me with questions last night when I brought up my lapsed medical license, but she didn’t pry. She was grateful for my help and left it at that. And she seems like one hell of a mom. In fact, when she’s around or talking about her daughter, she lights up in a way that draws me in. And Luna’s a cute kid. She handled the trauma she suffered like a champ. I like kids, and they’ve always been kind of the exception for me, even during my dark days. They don’t care about who you are or where you’ve been.

With my eyes on the road, I try to sort out how long I should stick around before heading back to Bali, and my mind can’t help but drift back to the last time I left the country, which took no deliberation at all.

The reality of a normal day at work in the ER getting capsized by an incoming trauma that happened to be my wife fucked me up, you could say, and after she was laid to rest, I tore out of this place like my ass was on fire.

Actually… that’s not entirely true, but I did leave Seattle, the place I’d grown up and had met her. After the initial shock wore off, I went into survival mode, which for me means turning into a damn robot. I didn’t speak unless I had to, and even then, my responses were completely mechanical. During the funeral, I stared at the grass the entire time and didn’t listen to a damn word the minister said. As long as I pretended I was somewhere else, I could make believe it wasn’t happening. In hindsight, I realize that pretending I was somewhere else meant I had tobesomewhere else.

I couldn’t stand to be in our house with pictures of us everywhere, her endless collection of shoes lining the floor of our walk-in closet, her collection of random, kitschy coffee mugs in the cupboard from places we’d been, her favorite throw blanket that she liked to curl up and read with draped over the end of the couch. So I allowed her parents to go through it all and keep what they wanted, which was most of it. Unlike me, they wanted to hang on to every little piece of her. For me, every reminder was like torture. I let them have the insurance money as well, not wanting any remnant from what had happened to her. So instead, I sold the house once it was emptied out and left Seattle, looking for a fresh start. I thought maybe it would be easier to move on in a completely different city, nothing like where I had lived and walked around with Jamie. No favorite coffee shops or dive bars or park benches to heap painful memories on me.

I found myself in Houston, a place so incredibly different from Seattle, and for a moment, I was hopeful. I thought maybe it would be enough of a distraction to dull the grief just a little. When it came to applying for a job at a hospital is when I pretty much lost my shit. I figured it would be tough but that I could get through it so long as I didn’t work in the ER and applied for a simple internal medicine position instead. During the interview, I could feel my palms sweating and my blood running cold, and when it came to a tour of the hospital, I froze in the corridor leading to the ER. Seeing a gurney being pushed by through the automatic doors had me shaking as I was assaulted with flashbacks of Jamie being rushed by me, her hair matted to the side of her head with blood as medics hurried along beside her, bagging her and shouting out the necessary information.

Thirty-one year-old female, MVC, severe trauma to head and neck, blood pressure sixties over forties…

I froze in place and could feel the color drain out of my face. I made a hurried explanation, throwing together a stammering sentence about how I was sorry but didn’t think this was the right move for me. I immediately ran back to the apartment I was renting and packed up my meager belongings, thinking of nothing else but running. As if the memories and the grief had taken the form of some dark , grim and sinister beast that I couldn’t fight, that I could only run from, and it didn’t matter where to; so long as I left it far behind me. At the airport, I felt like some panicked, lost character in some weird sci-fi suspense movie, scanning the departures and not knowing where the fuck to go. Within the country felt automatically out of the question. I needed to put an ocean between myself and the beast; maybe two.

I remember trying to keep my composure and act as casual as possible as a ticket agent helped me decide on an excursion to Bali by way of Dubai. Without a thought, I handed over my credit card. On the long overnight flight I was left alone with my thoughts, which wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. It was quiet so I got to sort out some things in my head. I concluded that I needed peace. To not be around people that would ask me about my life; to be in a completely different setting than the one I lived in with Jamie; to be far away from the memories; and to no longer practice medicine. I had to live differently andbedifferent. Think of how some women dye their hair after a breakup. There seems to be some subconscious notion that if they change the way their former partner saw them, they can embrace the change and move on easier. This was me, but on an epic amount of steroids. To avoid letting that beast of grief sink its cold, sharp claws into my guts, I needed to live a completely different life, to practically assume some alternate identity so that it wouldn’t recognize me… so that even Jamie wouldn’t recognize me if she saw me.

When I arrived in Bali, I breathed a sigh of relief. I know how this sounds, and even then I knew it was psychosomatic. That I was pretending I was someone else who hadn’t been through what I had; but it was already helping, and that was all I cared about at the time, so I went with it. Then as time passed, I seemed to fall into some kind of comfortable rut, not wanting to let another person into my life.

As I pull up to Matt and Melanie’s house, I let out a small chuckle at how she crashed into my life whether I wanted her to or not, and how it led me here. Back in America, and in less than twenty-four hours, thrust into the most intense of social situations and re-engaging in old career habits. Talk about baptism by fire. The brat definitely owes me, but then again, she and her new husband are providing me with free lodging while I recuperate from the whole ordeal. And I suppose since I did make it through the situation without growling at anyone or screaming into a pillow, I could toss Mel a bone and give her suggestion of staying some thought -some thought -which will still end up with me boarding a plane back to my happy place of blissful isolation.

Using the key they gave me, I let myself into Matt and Mel’s house and take a look around. It’s tidy and clean, just right for relaxing and staying low key. I find my way to the bedroom, and while trying not to think about what kind of things have taken place on the king-sized bed, I drop my bag on the floor and collapse face first.

Kasey

Luna was definitely perkier after a full night’s sleep, but after filling her tummy full of breakfast and loading our things back in the car, she slept the whole drive back to the city. On the road, my mom did internet searches on what Ben had said about letting her sleep, and apparently that’s the common recommendation after a child is concussed. If they want to sleep, let them sleep and don’t give their brain too much activity for the first few days.

With that in mind, I give Luna a snack when we get home and let her go curl up in my bed to watch Moana. No doubt she’s enjoying all this spoiling, and the shock of almost losing her yesterday is still so raw, I’m not about to put a stop to it; not today.

My mom heads back to Arizona tomorrow and is bustling around getting her things together while I make myself a cup of coffee and curl up on the couch to zone out for a while. So much transpired yesterday, and while Luna’s accident took the cake, meeting Ben definitely left a mark.

In the months leading up to the wedding, Melanie had mentioned him fondly but didn’t say much about him, and she admitted that it was because she didn’t know a whole lot herself. Just that he was closed off since losing his wife a few years prior, but despite that, he’d been a good friend to her when she was there in Indonesia missing my brother. Yet another person I owe my life to.

Melanie was over there because Turn it Up’s PR agent had a past with her and wanted to sign the band without her interfering. He knew about my history and set me up, catching me having a slip-up on camera. He blackmailed Mel to leave the country in exchange for not going to the press with the video. When the air cleared she was able to come back home, and she deserves every bit of happiness with Matt.

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