from St. Paul. Their bodies were never recovered from the Bering Sea.
For a while, I imagined it something like the Titanic sinking, and my mom clinging to a door as my dad held her hand. I’m sure it was nothing like that, but my dad was the most romantic person I know, so I bet he put her life before his until the very end. On their twentieth wedding anniversary, the night before their fishing trip, he shut down the bar and serenaded my mom with a candlelit dinner and hundreds of red roses all over the floor.
Nearly ten years later, we still find dried rose petals randomly in the bar and smile every time. There’s even an old pickle jar of roses on the bar with my parents’ picture on the front of it.
Without words, a nurse makes her way inside. Tucking her blonde hair behind her ear, she doesn’t say anything. She stands motionless before me, watching my reaction to her. I know the face, the eyes, the expression she wears. I’m not surprised she came to see me. I figured as much. Why wouldn’t she be curious about me?
I blink a few times. I don’t need to look at her name tag to know her name. “What are you doing in here? Do you work here or are you coming to inject me with poison because I slept with your husband?”
There’s a lift of her lips. As if maybe she finds me funny. Sighing, she steps closer, an aura of elegance about her as she retrieves my chart. She swipes through pages I assume of my history. I wonder if any of it shocks her. The sickness, the temporary life, seventeen-year-old receives a donor's heart. Does she see the infections that followed? The way my body tried so hard to reject the heart three different times, and then somehow, someway, let me keep it? I’m curious what the doctor’s notes might be. I can imagine they’re something similar to, beware, this one’s feisty?
Or, maybe she’s curious if that chart will tell her about my relationship with her husband? Does she know that I erased him from my life as easily as he came into it? Perished every message, photo, all the memories that reminded me that I had been too trusting.
Norah peers down tenderly at me. She reaches for my hand, and I let her take it, as weird as it is to be holding hands with my ex-boyfriend’s soon-to-be ex-wife whom I didn’t know about until three days ago. “I know you didn’t know he was married.”
That’s her first words to me. At the time when she showed up at the restaurant with her divorce papers in hand, she didn’t say anything to me. At least I didn’t hear anything. All I could focus on was the liar before me pleading with his wife not to divorce him.
I try to take a deep breath, but I can’t with my lungs in the condition they’re in. So I remove my hand from hers and smile up at her. “I didn’t. If I had, I would have never….” I pause, redirecting my words. “I’m not that kind of woman.”
“I know, sweetie.” Her pain reflects in her eyes like a mirror to mine. “I don’t blame you at all. You’ve been through enough. I’m just sorry you got wrapped up with him.”
I don’t like the way she says I’ve been through a lot. I haven’t, really. Not more than most. Everyone has shit they’re dealing with or have been through. Even this woman. Her fucking husband cheated on her. Not once either. He had a legit relationship with me and proposed. That’s as two-faced as it gets.
I stare at her hand and the missing wedding ring. “Did you leave him?”
She nods, her pink lips pressed into a tight smile. “I did. I filed for divorce when I saw him leaving the bar with you two weeks before that night in the restaurant.” Her weight shifts from one foot to another, and suddenly, nervousness marks her features. She swallows. “The really shitty part? I’m pregnant.”
“Holy shit,” I gasp, slapping my hand over my mouth, and then I start into a fit of coughing. It feels like my lungs are literally going to explode in my chest. “Are you sure?”
“I’m a nurse, honey. I’m sure.”
“He proposed to me that night,” I blurt, having no idea where I’m going with that. “I threw the ring in the ocean, and I’m super sorry