The Measure(33)

“You know, I’ve been so focused on not letting anyone at the hospital find out, and not telling my family,” Hank said. “And in the meantime, I haven’t really cried or screamed or done whatever else you’re supposed to do.”

“Why not?”

Hank knew why he hadn’t cried at his father’s funeral, when he’d tried to stay strong for his mother, and why he hadn’t cried as Anika broke up with him, when he’d wanted to save face before the woman he admired. But this time, he didn’t know what was holding him back.

Anika picked up one of the pillows and offered it to Hank.

“Do you want me to punch it or something?” he asked.

“You can do whatever you want with it,” she said. “You wouldn’t know it when I’m in the OR, but I’ve always been a fan of a good pillow cry myself.”

Hank reluctantly took the pillow from Anika and stared at it silently.

“Do you want me to leave you alone?” she asked.

Hank looked up at her through blurry eyes. The black hair falling across her shoulder, even darker against the white of his shirt. The wet remnants of mascara smudged beneath her brown eyes. The sharp, pointed chin that she would rest atop her hands whenever she was working through a problem.

Suddenly Hank crammed the pillow against his face and began screaming violently into the soft fabric. Anika watched the veins in his forehead bursting underneath his skin, like they were howling as loudly as he was.

When he had fully exhausted himself, Hank dropped the pillow into his lap. “Do you think you could stay?” he asked.

Anika wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, and Hank finally allowed himself to be carried away by the waves of deep, full sobs that would appear, overwhelming him, squeezing all the air out of him, and then disappear, leaving him calm and quiet, a moment to recapture his breath, before the next wave inevitably swept him back beneath its undertow.

And through it all, Anika never let go, until Hank, at last, pulled away.



When Hank ran into her at the hospital the following week, Anika asked how he was doing.

“Well, I usually tell my patients in this position to try some sort of therapy or support group,” he said, “so I’m thinking I should put my money where my mouth is.”

Anika gave him the address of the Connelly Academy, a school near her apartment where several groups were being held, and Hank showed up that Sunday, a half hour late after a busy shift in the ER.

He peered through the door to Room 201, where those nearing the very end of their strings had gathered. Everyone was crying, rubbing each other’s backs, passing around a box of tissues. It looked depressing as hell. Hank wanted this group to make him feel better, not sadder than before.

He was about to leave when he heard faint laughter coming from three doors down, in Room 204, home to the short-stringers who still had more time left, who still measured the remainder of their strings in years instead of months. And Hank decided to check it out. Nobody needed to know that he didn’t actually belong there.





Maura




“Tonight, I want to talk about secrets,” Sean said, opening the evening’s discussion.

“Oh good, we haven’t had a theme in a while,” Maura whispered to Ben.

“And it sounds like a juicy one,” he added.

Ben and Maura’s proximity on their first night had led to a regular habit of sitting together. Maura appreciated Ben’s receptiveness to her sideline commentary, and Ben seemed grateful that Maura never took the sessions too seriously. Each of her lighthearted remarks poked a hole in the shell of doom and gloom that might otherwise have proven suffocating.

“I’m sure many of us spend a lot of emotional energy keeping things bottled up,” said Sean. “But when you’re already dealing with something so . . . significant, like your string, maybe it would help to lighten the rest of your load. If you’re comfortable, of course.”

“This ain’t fucking confession,” Carl grunted.

Maura’s thoughts briefly turned to her fight with Nina, the online obsession she’d been harboring for weeks. But hadn’t Maura been hiding something, too? She never did tell Nina about the pangs in the night, the little boy with the backpack and his mom.

“Well, I have something I’d like to get off my chest,” said Terrell.

Clearly pleased, Sean motioned for him to continue.

“It’s the whole Ted affair,” said Terrell.

“Who’s Ted?” asked Nihal.

“My ex-boyfriend,” Terrell said. “I stole an eight-hundred-dollar watch from him.”

Everyone waited for an explanation.

“Well, let me first say that I consider myself a very respectable person,” Terrell said, “and this is my only shameful deviation, like spending your whole life eating salads and then one day inhaling an entire chocolate cake. But, to make a long story short, Ted and I had been dating for almost a year when he decided to cheat on me in the most uninspired manner.”

“With your best friend?” Chelsea guessed.

“With a coworker during a late night at work. Like an idiot, he came home from the office with the wrong belt on, because apparently it was dark and every man in finance wears similar ugly black belts. So obviously I found out, and we broke up, and I decided to exact my revenge by taking something he cared about.”