Everything After(57)

Ezra had made a bottle for the baby from the powdered formula in the diaper bag and was sitting on the couch feeding her when Emily walked in. She couldn’t stop her brief smile when she saw him like that. But it disappeared when she remembered what she had to tell him. What they had to talk about.

“Hey,” she said.

He looked up. “How was the grandma?”

Emily shrugged, not sure how she even got through the call. “About what you’d expect. At least I was able to tell her that her daughter was still alive. That her granddaughter was safe.”

Ezra nodded. “At least she didn’t blame you.”

Emily sat down next to him. “That wasn’t fair of Malcolm’s mom,” she said. “And it wasn’t true. You know that, right? Want me to take Zoe?”

“Zoe and I have a good thing going,” he said, looking down at the baby. Emily wondered if there was an added analgesic quality to holding a baby, if Zoe made Ezra feel calmer. “We’re okay over here. And technically it was true. I didn’t save him. If I had figured something else out, he would’ve lived.”

Emily leaned against Ezra’s shoulder. If Zoe’s touch didn’t help, maybe hers would. Feeling his body against hers certainly helped Emily. “Or maybe you gave him an extra three or four years that he wouldn’t have had otherwise, if he’d seen a different doctor, gone to a different hospital.”

“It’s just . . .” Zoe had finished the bottle, and Ezra lifted her upright to burp her. “I go over every single treatment decision I made each time a patient dies, wondering what the outcome would’ve been if I’d done something different. And for Malcolm’s mom to say that . . .”

Zoe burped loudly and Ezra laughed. Then the baby did, too, reaching for Ezra’s glasses.

He let her take them, and Emily looked at him. He always seemed so vulnerable to her without his glasses on. As if a piece of his armor were missing.

“She seems like an easy baby,” Ezra said.

“I guess comparatively,” Emily answered. “But I don’t know if any baby is really easy. At least, not for a college kid at this point in her life.”

Emily leaned back against the couch and closed her eyes. She was past the point of exhaustion. She hadn’t slept in more than twenty-four hours.

“When you called me,” Ezra started, “was it because of your patient?”

Emily opened her eyes. “No,” she said, too tired to tell him anything but the complete truth, the words forming slowly in her brain. “It was because I was afraid I was going to lose you. I need you, Ezra.”

Ezra reached out his hand and stroked her hair. “We need to talk,” he said. “I need you, too. I realized that the minute I woke up and heard your voice on my voice mail. You’re the most important person in the world to me, and I let myself forget that.”

“I choose you,” Emily said. “Every morning, every afternoon, and every night.”

“I choose you, too.”

Ezra wrapped his arm around Emily and she laid her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes.

“You need to sleep,” he said.

“Mm-hmm,” she answered, almost asleep already.

“Go take a nap,” he told her. “I’ll change Zoe and let the hospital know I’ll be in late today. Then Zoe and I will hang for a couple of hours while you sleep.”

“Okay,” Emily said.

When she woke up four hours later, she still felt tired but at least coherent. She got out a clean pair of jeans and a cotton top, and, when she changed her underwear, realized that she had stopped bleeding. Her baby was all gone.





46



On her way back to the living room, Emily stopped to wash her face and brush her teeth. Through the bathroom door, she could hear Ezra reading a New York Times article out loud to Zoe as if it were a picture book. The rise and fall of his voice seemed incongruous with his words about the increasing price of prescription drugs.

She walked out of the bathroom and down the hall. Ezra and Zoe were on the floor on a towel, and she was chewing on a teething ring Emily had thrown into the diaper bag.

Ezra looked up at the sound of Emily’s steps. “She seems to like the sound of my voice,” he said. “And her grandmother texted you to tell you that she’ll be here around ten thirty.” He looked at his watch. “So not much longer.”

Emily sat down on the towel next to Ezra and picked up Zoe, cuddling the baby against her chest. Emily looked down at her. Zoe stuck her fist in her mouth and started sucking on it. “Are you hungry, sweet girl?”

“Do you know if she’s eating solids?” Ezra asked. “How old is she? Five months? Six?”

“Six,” Emily said. “And I know Tessa’s been trying, but last I heard, Zoe wasn’t so into it.” She looked at Zoe as she put her back down on the towel. “You like formula better, don’t you?”

While Emily walked into the kitchen to make Zoe a bottle, her mind flashed to an alternate future in which she was making bottles for their baby in this kitchen. Before her eyes could start to tear, she walked back into the living room and picked Zoe up again, slipping the bottle into her puckered lips. As Zoe drank, Emily started singing the first song that came into her mind: “Teach Your Children.”