A Thousand Letters(2)

"I don't know what to do."

My fingers wound together in my lap, squeezing and twisting. "For now, wait for your brother." I couldn't say his name, such a simple thing, still beyond me. "How long will your dad be in the hospital?"

"Two days. He's stable now, speaking, but he can't walk, can't feed himself. He fell asleep and I couldn't … I couldn't be the only one who knew. I needed you. God, what are we going to do, Elliot?"

Her eyes were bright and sparkling behind thick, dark, tear-soaked lashes, her brows stitched together with fear and sadness and grief.

"Have you spoken to hospice yet?"

She shook her head and buried her face in her hands. "We're meeting tonight with a social worker. Dad wants to come home, so we've got to make a plan, figure everything out, but I … I just …"

"What can I do?" I laid a hand on her back.

"I don't even know. Wade lands at five-thirty at La Guardia — we're meeting at the hospital. He doesn't know, I don't want to text him, don't want him to find out that way. I've got to tell him when he's here. But I … I don't want to be alone until then. Please, will you come with me to the hospital?" Her eyes were big, shining, begging me. "I wouldn't ask if things were different."

I swallowed my emotions, swallowed my fears. She needed me, and I'd be there. "Of course I'll go with you."

She looked sorry she'd asked. "Are you sure? It's been so long."

I shook my head, just a small motion. "Don't think about that. I'll take care of everything, okay? I need to make some calls, though. Will you be okay here in my room? I'll be just outside if you need anything, just call for me."

She nodded again, looking grateful and relieved, and I guided her to lie down, tucking her into my bed. I closed the curtains and left her there in my room.

Fresh tears fell as I walked through my sister's quiet home, up the stairs and to the window seat overlooking the Manhattan street. My sister and her husband were at work, and the kids would be asleep for a little while yet. I had time to help, and I'd do whatever I could.

First, I texted my sister Mary and told her what happened. My phone dinged within minutes with a reply, rare because she was a resident at Mt. Sinai and was always busy. Also uncommon because she was one of the least affable people on the planet, rarely showing concern for anyone other than herself, outside of her job. Her cold detachment helped her disconnect from her patients, and her bedside manner left something to be desired. But today she was obliging, offering promises to have Charlie come home early to take care of the kids so I could go to the hospital with Sophie.

After that, I texted Sophie's younger sister and asked her to text me when she was home from school in the hopes I could keep the lid on it all until her brother was home.

Wade.

His name again, the sting of it ever unexpected.

As I sat in the window seat, bathed by the cool winter sun, I thought of him, worrying as I so often did. I imagined him on the plane over the Atlantic, not knowing what was going on. Not knowing what he was walking into.

I knew what his father meant to him. He'd already lost his mother, and now … now everything would rest on his shoulders.

More tears fell, and I pulled my legs into my chest, head pressed to my knees, shoulders sagging, heart aching as I mustered the strength to calm myself so I could check on the kids.

I climbed the stairs to the third floor, peeking in on the sleeping children. They were peaceful, faces slack and lips puckered, lashes against their cheeks and chests rising and falling. I wished for a long moment that I could find relief that complete.

Down I went again to the second floor and took my seat once more, my head resting against the glass as I sifted my way through all that had come to pass.

In an hour, my world had been brought to a stop. In five hours, it would begin to turn backward, back to my past, back to the boy I loved. The boy I ruined.

The first time I saw him, I was fifteen and he was sixteen, the boy with the dark shock of hair and broad shoulders, with eyes gray and cool as December and a smile as bright and warm as June. I remember walking into their house with Sophie just a few days after we met and finding him there in the living room, tall and beautiful, the light shining in through the window as he worked on his homework. He saw me, and I stopped, and he stopped, and time stopped.

The last time I saw him, I was seventeen, and he stood before me with tears in his eyes as he begged me to say yes. Begged me to go with him. Begged me to be his forever. Begged me to change my mind. But I couldn't. Didn't matter how much I wanted to, because I did. I would have given him the world. But in the end, it hadn't been up to me.

He left the next day for the Army. That was seven years ago.

It felt like yesterday. It felt like another lifetime. It felt like I relived the moment every single day.

I'd written him almost every day, pleading at first for forgiveness, telling him I'd changed my mind, begging him to come back to me. After a year, my letters grew angry, accusing, my hurt and rejection pouring out of me and onto the paper, though the transference never relieved me. And then I found resignation, and I'd stopped sending my letters completely.

He never answered me. Not once. Not a single word, not from any avenue.

But I was still connected to him through Sophie and her dad, though they rarely mentioned his name around me. I knew when Wade came home, though he never stayed for more than a night or two before moving on, back to wherever he was based, back to Iraq. Afghanistan. Now Germany. I knew very little, but I took comfort in that he was alive — fear had weighed on me every moment he was deployed throughout the course of the war.