Page 85 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys
I set the phone face down, the same way you close a coffin.
Cassidy doesn’t say anything. She just reaches over, takes the mug from my hand, and replaces it with her own, still half full of coffee. The warmth startles me.
After a minute, she asks, “So it’s definitely triplets, right?”
I nod.
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what I keep thinking.”
She nods again, then leans back in the chair, arms folded. “Are you…okay?”
I want to lie, but the energy it would take is more than I have to spare. “Some days I can’t get out of bed. Some days I have to puke every half hour. Sometimes I think about calling my mom, but that’s just too complicated.” I pause, chew at the inside of my cheek. “It’s like being a ghost. My body keeps moving, but nothing’s really attached.”
Cass watches me with the sort of patience you only find in people who’ve had their own share of trainwrecks. “You’re not a ghost. You’re just—between.”
“Between what?”
She gives it a second, then says, “What you were, and whatever you’ll be after.”
I laugh. “That sounds like a bad motivational poster.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, “but I like it.”
We fall into silence again. I stare at the screen, the open tabs, the way the cursor blinks like a lifeline. I think about emailing the nutrition certification program, but my hands won’t type the message.
Cassidy heads to her shift at seven. She throws a sweatshirt over her scrubs and stops at the door, keys jangling. “If you need anything,” she says, “just call. I’ll answer, even if I’m up to my elbows in blood.”
I salute with the coffee mug. “Deal.”
She leaves, and I am alone with the glow of the laptop and the throb in my skull.
At midnight, I crawl into bed. I stare at the ceiling and try to imagine what my life will look like in three months, in six, in a year. It’s hard to picture anything but the inside of a hospital, or the glare of a camera, or the sterile white of an empty office.
I rest a hand on my stomach. It’s only a small rise, but I can feel the difference: a tautness under the skin, a new density that wasn’t there before. I imagine the three of them, curled together like a fist, already plotting the trouble they’ll make when they get out.
I close my eyes, and for the first time since the collapse, I don’t dream of the rink or the Storm or the way Beau looked at me when he left. I dream of running, legs strong, lungs clear, the air a perfect seventy degrees, and no cameras anywhere.
In the morning, there’s a bowl of oatmeal waiting on the stove. Next to it, a note:Day off today. Call me if you need a walk. Or a distraction. Or a witness.
I smile, just a little, and make myself eat. It stays down.
The sun is bright again. The air outside is full of construction noise and the racket of children who have not yet learned how to fear the world. I watch them from the window, hand on my belly, and think: maybe I can do this. Maybe all of us can.
I text Cassidy.
Can you find me the link for that remote nutrition thing? I think I’m ready to start.
The response is instant:On it.
I close my laptop, finish my tea, and wait for the nausea to subside.
I am still between, but at least I’m moving.
31
FINN
