leaving, but …” She glanced at my hand once more, her fingers circling it, fidgeting, like I’d never seen from her before. “Something about it feels so right, and I have to do this for me.” She swallowed. “My whole life, I’ve put everyone else first, and now”—she wiped her eyes—“I need to get out there and find myself again.”
“Whitney …” I exhaled several times, waiting for the right response, and finally said, “Come here,” as I opened my arms.
She fell against my chest, carefully wrapping around me. “I’m sorry, Caleb.” The dampness soaked through my shirt. “So incredibly sorry.”
I held the back of her head. “Don’t be.”
“I had no idea how to tell you. I’ve wanted to so many times, but I didn’t have it in me. I feel sick at the thought of not being with you every day and being that far away.”
I buried my face in her neck, the coconut now faint, a scent that would stay with me, even when she wasn’t here. I was having a hard time with putting my mind there, the idea of letting her go an unbearable emotion.
I tightened my grip around her. “Goddamn it, I’m going to miss you.”
Her back shook, her nails gently stabbing my shoulders. “I hope you’ll be healed enough soon to come visit.”
I’d traveled through remote towns in South America; I knew how terrible the cell reception was, and Wi-Fi wasn’t available there. Our communication would be extremely limited, if there was any at all.
“A year?”
“It’s an eternity, I know.” She leaned back, her hand instantly going to my face. “I have no idea what this means for us. I don’t expect you to wait for me … I don’t know what I expect from any of this.”
As the gusts whipped past us, I remembered the way the flags had waved at the finish line moments before my world went dark. Now, it felt like it was happening again for an entirely different reason.
“When do you leave?”
She took several breaths before answering, “In a month.”
“Fuck.” I pulled her against me again, my lips pressing against the top of her head. “We have to make the most of the time you have left.”
Letting this woman go felt impossible. I couldn’t even imagine what that was going to feel like when it eventually happened, the hole she was going to leave when she got on the plane. An unknown time frame of when I’d see her again.
“Oh God, Caleb”—she gripped the back of my shirt, squeezing it in her fists—“am I making the biggest mistake of my life?”
I knew this decision must have been difficult. I also knew she had to go on this journey. I couldn’t be that selfish bastard who begged her to stay, not when she had already sacrificed so much out of guilt.
I ground my teeth together, convincing myself at the same time as I replied, “No.”
“Why do you believe that?”
“Because as much as I need you here, they need you more.” I used all the strength I had left to push the boulder out of my fucking throat. “You have no idea how much talent you possess, how good you are at nursing, how you’re going to change their lives, like you did mine.” I stopped her tears when they began to fall again. “You’re going to fight for them, the same way you fought for me.”
“How did I get so fortunate to have you?”
“Whitney,” I said as loudly as I could, only above a whisper, “I’m the lucky one.”
Fifteen
Prior to the bombing, one month would have stood for thirty monotonous days, filled with meetings and mundane conversations, maybe a trip to a country far away. The month leading up to Whitney’s departure, I could break the time down into hours, remembering each one as it passed but all moving so quickly. I wanted to break the face of the clock just to make it stop ticking.
We spent as much time as we could together. Afternoons outside in the park, dinners on my balcony, nights in my bed. She told me about her fears, her inability of speaking Spanish, not having the proper tools and medicine to care for the patients, afraid she would lose them to the lack of resources. I confessed the challenges of the new rhythm I was trying to find at work, determining the space of the boundaries I was still setting, searching for the enjoyment that I’d felt in my twenties whenever I stepped off the elevator