Page 74 of Maybe in Another Life

And I push.

We get through two big hallways before I need a rest.

“I’ll take it from here,” he says, grabbing the back of my chair and pushing me forward. He leads us to an elevator and pushes the call button. “You sleepy? You want to head back?”

I turn as best I can to look at him. “Let’s say I’m not sleepy, what would we do?”

He laughs. The elevator opens. He pushes me in. “I should have known you wouldn’t choose sleep.”

“You didn’t answer my question. What would we do?”

He ignores me for the moment and pushes the button for the second floor. We descend. When the door opens, he pushes me out and down a long hallway.

“You’re really not going to tell me?”

Henry smiles and shakes his head. And then we turn a corner, and he opens a door.

The cold, fresh air rushes over me.

He pushes me through. We are on a smoking patio. A tiny, dirty, dingy, sooty, beautiful, refreshing, life-affirming smoking patio.

I breathe in deeply.

I can hear cars driving by. I can see city lights. I can smell tar and metal. Finally, there are no walls or windows between me and the spinning world.

Despite my best efforts, I feel myself tearing up.

The air funneling in and out of my lungs feels better, brighter, than all the air I’ve inhaled since I woke up. I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of traffic. When a few of my tears fall from my eyes, Henry crouches down next to me.

He is on my level. Once again, we are face-to-face.

He pulls a tissue out of his pocket and hands it to me. And right then, as his hand grazes mine and I catch his eye, I don’t need to wonder what would happen if he and I met at a dinner party. I know what would happen.

He would walk me home.

“Ready?” he says. “To go back?”

“Yeah,” I say, because I know it’s time, because I know he has a job to do, because I know we aren’t supposed to be out here. Not because I’m ready. I’m not ready. But as he pushes me through that door and it closes behind us, I am, for the first time, so full of joy to be alive that I’d be happy going just about anywhere.

“You’re a great nurse,” I tell him as we head back. “Do you know that?”

“I hope so,” he says. “I love my job. It’s the only thing I’ve ever really felt I was meant for.”

We get back to my room. He puts my wheelchair by my bed.

He puts his arms underneath me. “Put your arms around my neck,” he says. And I do.

He lifts me and holds me there for a moment, the full weight of my body in his arms. I am so close to him that I can smell his soap on his skin, the chocolate still faintly on his breath. His eyelashes are longer and darker than I noticed before, his lips fuller. He has a faint scar under his left eye.

He puts me down in my bed. I swear he holds on to me just a moment longer than he needs to.

It is perhaps the most romantic moment of my life, and I’m in a hospital gown.

Life is unpredictable beyond measure.

“Excuse me,” comes a stern voice from the hallway. Both Henry and I look up to see a female nurse standing in the doorway to my room. She is older and a bit weathered. She has her light-colored hair pulled up in a butterfly clip. She is wearing pale pink scrubs and a patterned matching scrub jacket.

Henry pulls away from me abruptly.

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