I Woke Up In The Er And My Doctor Was The Woman I Ghosted Two Years Ago

JournalismJourney

Transcript

00:00:00I woke up to white light, the sharp chemical smell of antiseptic, and the single worst face

00:00:05I could have possibly seen bent over my chart, Dr. Thea Kestrel, the woman I had met in a coffee

00:00:10shop in Copenhagen 23 months ago, kissed on a balcony in the rain, and ghosted three weeks

00:00:15later without ever telling her why. The woman who was now my attending physician, she did not look

00:00:21up from the chart. She did not need to. She already knew I was awake. She had probably known

00:00:26for the entire four seconds it had taken me to surface. The clipboard in her hand did not shake.

00:00:31The composure was absolute. I was in so much trouble. If you want to hear uncensored too hot

00:00:37for YouTube stories, check out my Patreon in the description, tell us where you are watching from,

00:00:41and subscribe. For about six seconds I thought I was hallucinating. Head trauma. Morphine dreams.

00:00:48The kind of guilty unconscious that invents faces you owe apologies to and puts them in places you

00:00:52cannot escape from. My mouth tasted like copper and plastic and the specific flatness that comes

00:00:57with IV fluids, and my ribs were letting me know, in a measured and extremely disappointed way,

00:01:03that the car that had hit my bicycle two mornings ago had not, in fact, been a minor event. I

00:01:09blinked.

00:01:09She was still there. The room came into sharper focus around her, which was the opposite of how it

00:01:14should have worked. Everything else in the hospital was soft-edged and fluorescent and forgettable.

00:01:19Thea was the one thing in the frame that my eyes refused to lose resolution on.

00:01:23Dark hair pinned at the back of her neck the way she had always pinned it when she was working.

00:01:28White coat over navy scrubs. A lanyard. A stethoscope. The small gold stud in her left ear

00:01:34that I had noticed on our second morning in her apartment when the sunlight had come through the

00:01:37window and caught it. She turned a page on the chart. Her fingers did not fumble. I watched her

00:01:43fingers and felt something in my chest that was absolutely not related to the three cracked ribs.

00:01:48Miss Marsden, she said. Her voice was exactly the way I remembered it and completely different.

00:01:54Low. Level. The consonants crisp the way they got when she was working in her second language

00:01:59and did not want to be misunderstood. But there was nothing personal in it. Nothing. If she had said

00:02:04my name like a question, if she had said it like a greeting, if she had said it like anything,

00:02:09I could have worked with it. She said it like she had read it off a chart five minutes ago

00:02:13and was

00:02:14confirming the identity of a stranger. You were admitted at 6.40 yesterday morning, she continued.

00:02:19Three rib fractures, left side, uncomplicated, mild concussion, sprained left wrist. You have been in

00:02:26and out of consciousness for approximately 31 hours. The CT from admission is clear. The MRI we did this

00:02:32morning is clear. Your pain is being managed. You are going to be fine. I opened my mouth. Nothing came

00:02:39out. She finally looked at me. It was the most controlled act of looking I had ever been on

00:02:44the receiving end of. She met my eyes for exactly as long as a doctor needs to establish that a

00:02:49patient is tracking. And then her gaze moved not to the monitors, not to my IV, but to the pen

00:02:54in her

00:02:55hand, which she uncapped and then capped again and then set in the pocket of her coat with the kind

00:02:59of deliberate choreography that told me she was buying herself half a second. Do you have any

00:03:04questions about your condition, she said? Not a question. A sentence. I said, Thea. She did not

00:03:10flinch. She did not acknowledge it. She wrote something on the chart. Dr. Kestrel, she said,

00:03:16without looking up. I'll be seeing you on rounds in the morning. Dr. Park is handling the evening.

00:03:21Press the call button if the pain becomes unmanageable. You can expect to be here for

00:03:25another three to four days for observation. She turned and walked out of the room. She did not look

00:03:30back. I lay there for a long time. The ceiling tiles had the small perforations that hospital

00:03:36ceiling tiles always have. I counted them in a 10 by 10 grid and then lost count because my head

00:03:41was

00:03:42doing something expensive. And then I closed my eyes and understood, with the particular clarity

00:03:46that comes from concussion and shame, that I had done the following things in the past three minutes.

00:03:51I had woken up in a hospital in a city I had moved to four months ago. I had recognized

00:03:57the

00:03:57attending physician as the woman I had spent three weeks in love with in Copenhagen. I had watched

00:04:02her look at me and then threw me with a professionalism so total it felt like an

00:04:06accusation. And I had called her by her first name, in a patient room, in front of the nurse,

00:04:11who was still there adjusting my IV line, because apparently my self-preservation instincts had

00:04:16also been flattened by the sedan that ran the red light on Dearborn. The nurse, whose name tag said

00:04:21Marisol, looked at me with the patient sympathy of a woman who had been a nurse for 15 years and

00:04:26had

00:04:26seen every possible permutation of patient confusion. She'll be back in the morning,

00:04:30sweetheart, she said. Try to sleep. Press the button if you need me. Marisol, I said. Um,

00:04:37how long has Dr. Kestrel been here? Marisol paused with her hand on the IV pump. Her expression did not

00:04:42change, but something in her eyes clocked something and filed it for later. About 10 months, she said.

00:04:48She came from somewhere in Europe. Copenhagen, I think. She's our youngest attending on the floor.

00:04:53Okay, I said. Get some rest, Miss Marsden. She left. I did not sleep. I thought instead about

00:05:00Copenhagen. I had gone there for a three-month illustration residency in the autumn of the

00:05:05year I turned 26. I had just gotten out of a relationship with a man named Henrik, who was

00:05:10perfectly fine and perfectly wrong for me. And I had been, for the first time in my adult life,

00:05:15entirely alone in a city where I knew no one and had no reason to explain myself.

00:05:19It had felt like the first lungful of real air in years. I met Thea in the third week. She

00:05:25was in

00:05:25line behind me at a coffee shop near the Kongens-Nytorv metro station, and I had fumbled my

00:05:30wallet, and she had picked up the coins that rolled across the floor without commentary and handed them

00:05:35back to me with a small nod. I had said thank you in the English that marks you as American

00:05:39no matter

00:05:40how softly you say it, and she had smiled just the corner of her mouth, not even the full thing,

00:05:44and said, Degodating ruler vac. The good things roll away. I had laughed. I had laughed in a way

00:05:51that surprised me. We had gotten our coffees and sat at the same small table by the window because

00:05:56the place was full, and she had said, are you here for work? And I had said, I am here

00:06:01for

00:06:01illustration. And she had said, medical. And I had said, are you giving me a consultation or telling

00:06:07me what you do? And she had said, for the first time in what I would later understand was her

00:06:12very dry

00:06:13and very rarely deployed humor. That depends on how you take your coffee. I had been in that coffee

00:06:18shop for an hour and a half. I had left with her number. She was 32 then, an internal medicine

00:06:24resident finishing her specialization at Riggs Hospitalet. Danish mother, Norwegian father,

00:06:30the kind of bilingual childhood that had turned her English into a precise and slightly formal

00:06:34instrument that she sharpened in professional settings and softened in private ones. She had a

00:06:39bicycle. She had a two-room apartment on the fourth floor of a building in Österbro with a

00:06:44small balcony that faced a courtyard. She had two cups in her kitchen that matched and four that did

00:06:49not, and she drank tea in the morning and coffee at night and read novels in Norwegian because the

00:06:53translations were better. She was the most composed person I had ever met. She was also, in private,

00:07:00not what anyone who saw her, only in a white coat, would ever have guessed. We had three weeks.

00:07:05I had never, in my adult life, been looked at the way Thea Kestrel looked at me on the balcony

00:07:10on the

00:07:10night of the first thunderstorm. I had been kissed before. I had been wanted before. I had not been

00:07:16looked at like I was the answer to a question she had stopped asking because she had given up on

00:07:20anyone

00:07:20knowing how to give it to her. That look had changed the structure of my chest. That look had,

00:07:25actually, been the beginning of the thing that eventually made me run. Because here is what was true

00:07:30about me at 26. I had just escaped a relationship I had stayed in for two and a half years

00:07:35out of

00:07:35sheer inertia. I had a career that was barely a career. I had $212 in my checking account and four

00:07:42months left on a lease in a city I was planning to leave. I did not have the shape of

00:07:46a life I could

00:07:47offer anyone, much less a senior resident at a Danish teaching hospital with her own apartment and her

00:07:52own bicycle and her own settled, competent, chosen way of being in the world. I told myself that.

00:07:58I told myself that for eight days of increasing panic after I returned to New York at the end of

00:08:03the residency, I had left Copenhagen with a plan. The plan was to figure out my life in return,

00:08:09or have her visit, or negotiate the distance. The plan lasted six days. On the seventh day,

00:08:15she sent a photograph of the balcony in the rain with the caption, I miss you,

00:08:18and my entire chest caved in, and I did the worst thing I have ever done to another human being.

00:08:23I blocked her number. I did not respond. I did not explain. I did not tell her that I was

00:08:29terrified

00:08:30of being 26 and broke and unfinished across an ocean from someone who had seen me clearly and

00:08:35wanted me anyway. I did not tell her that every time I thought about calling her back,

00:08:39I felt like I was going to disintegrate. I did not tell her anything. I let the silence do the

00:08:44telling,

00:08:44which is, of course, the cruelest version. She sent two more messages through an email address

00:08:49she had found somehow. I read them both and did not reply. Then she stopped. I told myself,

00:08:55for months, that I had done her a favor, a clean cut. I told myself this until I stopped believing

00:09:01it, which took about a year, and then I told myself I was too late, and then I moved to

00:09:06Chicago for a

00:09:07graphic design contract and tried to construct a life that was at least shaped like adulthood,

00:09:11and I thought about her approximately every 11 days on average. I had not known she had left

00:09:16Copenhagen. I had not known she was in Chicago. I had not known that when the sedan ran the red

00:09:21light and I went over my handlebars on Dearborn Street, the hospital the ambulance would take

00:09:25me to was the hospital where she had been the attending internist on the medicine service for

00:09:3010 months. The good things roll away. I lay in the hospital bed and thought about that and did not

00:09:35sleep for most of the night. Rounds happened at 7.15. I heard them coming down the hallway,

00:09:40the particular combined cadence of attending, senior resident, two interns, and a medical student.

00:09:45The murmur of the case presentation, the soft squeak of shoes on linoleum. I had time. I had

00:09:52time to arrange my face. I had time to decide how I was going to look at her when she

00:09:56came in.

00:09:57I spent that time trying to wake up enough to have a working nervous system, which was not quite

00:10:01successful. The medical student presented my case. Ivy Marsden, 28, admitted 36 hours ago motor vehicle

00:10:08collision versus bicycle, stable, rib fractures, concussion. I noticed that nobody looked at me during

00:10:13the presentation. This was normal. Patients in the room are not the audience during rounds.

00:10:18I had gone to art school, not medical school, but I knew how the choreography worked. Then Thea stepped

00:10:24forward to the bedside. Miss Marsden, she said, any new pain, any shortness of breath, any changes in

00:10:31vision. No. Bowel sounds normal. I, I don't know what normal is. A ghost of something at the corner of

00:10:38her mouth that might have been amusement or might have been muscle memory from a joke I had made in

00:10:42her

00:10:42kitchen in Copenhagen about how Danes and Americans have different ideas about what a normal

00:10:47breakfast looks like. It was gone before I could be sure. Dr. Okafor, she said to the senior resident,

00:10:54assess and report. Dr. Okafor, who was warm and who introduced herself to me by name and asked how I

00:10:59was doing before she put her hands on me, listened to my chest with professional gentleness. Thea watched.

00:11:05The rest of the team watched. Clear, Dr. Okafor said. Good. Thea turned to the medical student.

00:11:12Plan. The medical student, who looked 23 and deeply afraid of everyone in the room, said,

00:11:17continue current analgesia. Monitor. Encourage incentive spirometry every waking hour to prevent

00:11:24atelectasis given the rib fractures. Plan for discharge in two to three days, pending symptom

00:11:29resolution. Correct. The team moved on. Thea did not look at me before she left. The door clicked

00:11:35shut behind them. I lay there. I looked at the ceiling. I said, out loud, to the empty room,

00:11:41okay. Marisol came in ten minutes later to check my vitals. She took my blood pressure. She wrote

00:11:46something on a clipboard. She did not say anything for a while. Then she said, without looking at me,

00:11:52you want to tell me what the story is, or do you want me to stay out of it? I

00:11:57said, is it that obvious?

00:11:59She said, I've been a nurse on this floor for 11 years. I know what a doctor looks like when

00:12:03she's

00:12:03doing her job. I also know what a doctor looks like when she's doing her job in the particular

00:12:08room she does not want to be in. It is not obvious to anyone who is not looking for it,

00:12:12but I am looking for it, because it is my job to look for it. I considered her. I said

00:12:17I knew her.

00:12:18Before. Two years ago. I did not handle it well. Marisol finished her notes. She hung the

00:12:24clipboard back on the foot of the bed. I am going to say one thing, and then I am going

00:12:28to stay out

00:12:29of it, she said. She is a very good doctor. She is also a very private person. What she does

00:12:35in this

00:12:35room for the next three days, she will do professionally. What happens outside this

00:12:39room is not my business. But I will tell you one thing, because you seem to be a reasonable human

00:12:44being, and because I have a soft spot for reasonable human beings who have had their bicycle

00:12:49hit by a car. She has not had a patient in this room that she has looked at the way

00:12:52she looked at

00:12:53you yesterday. Not in the 10 months I have worked with her. That is all I have to say. She

00:12:58picked

00:12:58up her tray. Press the button if you need me, she said. She left. I closed my eyes. I spent

00:13:04the rest

00:13:04of the morning looking at the ceiling, taking my incentive spirometer breaths, and thinking about

00:13:09the word composure. Thea had always had it. It had been part of what drew me to her in the

00:13:14first

00:13:14place. The way she inhabited rooms economically, without apology, without the constant low-grade

00:13:20performance of American professional femininity that I had been exhausted by my whole life.

00:13:24She had moved through the world like she had already decided what she thought of it,

00:13:28and was waiting to be pleasantly surprised. She had a way of listening that made you understand

00:13:32you had never actually been listened to before. She had a way of not speaking that was more

00:13:36communicative than most people's words. I had watched her use that composure in small ways,

00:13:41across those three weeks. The way she handled the cafe owner who tried to short her on change.

00:13:46The way she answered the phone when her mother called. The way she looked at me in the soft

00:13:50morning light, before she said anything, as if she were making sure she had gotten the inventory

00:13:55right and I was all still there. I had not, until this morning, ever seen her use that composure

00:14:00against me. It was a different tool in that configuration. It was a kind of weaponry. It was the most

00:14:06devastating performance of politeness I had ever been on the receiving end of, and it was,

00:14:10I understood with increasing clarity across the course of the day, entirely earned. She owed me

00:14:16nothing. She owed me less than nothing. What she was giving me, across rounds and across the cursory

00:14:22evening check-in that she handed off to a resident instead of doing herself, was exactly the professional

00:14:26floor of care and not one inch more. This was not cruelty. This was accounting. By the afternoon of

00:14:32the second day, I had made a decision. I was going to apologize. Not in a way that asked for

00:14:37anything. Not in a way that expected anything. Just in a way that said the one thing I had failed

00:14:43to say two years ago, which was, I am sorry I was wrong, you did not deserve it, I am

00:14:47saying this to

00:14:48you now because you should have heard it then. I spent an hour composing it in my head. I spent

00:14:52another hour revising it. I spent a third hour second-guessing whether I had any right to offer

00:14:57it at all. Given that an apology received in a hospital bed from a patient to her attending physician

00:15:02was a configuration with about 40 layers of inappropriateness baked into it, most of them

00:15:07on my end. I decided to offer it anyway. She came for the evening check that she had not been

00:15:13doing,

00:15:14uncharacteristically. Marisol had mentioned at some point that Dr. Kestrel had been asked to

00:15:19consult on a transfer from the ICU, which apparently meant she was in the building later than she

00:15:23otherwise would have been, and apparently also meant that she had swung back to my room because I did not

00:15:28know why. I was refusing, for my own preservation, to develop a theory. She came in at 9.40. She

00:15:34was

00:15:35more tired than she had been in the morning. I could see it in the way her shoulders sat,

00:15:39in the way she had loosened the top button of her shirt by exactly one button, which was as close

00:15:43to

00:15:44disheveled as Thea Kestrel ever got. The lanyard was still around her neck. The stethoscope was still

00:15:49around her neck. The white coat was slightly open. Miss Marsden, she said. Thea. Dr. Kestrel.

00:15:56Please, I said quietly. Please, for three minutes, can we... Can I say something to you?

00:16:01She stopped at the foot of the bed. She did not speak. She did not turn to leave. She did

00:16:06not tell

00:16:06me to address her by her title again. This was, in the language of Thea Kestrel, an enormous thing.

00:16:13I said, I am sorry. She looked at the monitor above my head. I am sorry I blocked your number.

00:16:18I am sorry

00:16:19I did not reply to your messages. I am sorry I left you without an explanation. I was 26 and

00:16:24I was scared,

00:16:25and none of that is a reason and none of it is an excuse, and I have thought about it

00:16:29approximately

00:16:29every 11 days for two years, and I did not know I was going to see you. I would not

00:16:34have said this

00:16:34if I had planned this. I am saying it because I woke up and you were in my room and

00:16:39you have treated

00:16:39me with more professionalism than I deserved and I owe you. I owe you the one thing I failed to

00:16:44give

00:16:45you, which is an acknowledgement that you deserved better, from me. You deserved so much better from me.

00:16:50I stopped. I was shaking. I was shaking hard enough that I could see the IV line tremor.

00:16:56She stood at the foot of the bed for a very long time. When she spoke, her voice was measured

00:17:01in a

00:17:01way that told me she had known this apology was coming from the second she had read my chart 36

00:17:05hours ago. She had prepared for it. She had prepared the response. Thank you, she said. I appreciate the

00:17:12acknowledgement. I think it is important you know that the appropriate context for any further

00:17:17personal conversation is not this room and will not be this room for as long as you are my patient.

00:17:23I will be continuing your care through discharge, at which point any further communication between us

00:17:28will no longer involve a conflict of interest. Until then, I will ask you to keep our interactions

00:17:32appropriate to this setting. Do you understand? Yes. Good. I will see you on morning rounds.

00:17:38She turned. Thea. She stopped. One hand on the doorframe. I just, I need to say one more thing.

00:17:44She did not turn around. Her shoulders had gone very still. You don't have to respond. You don't

00:17:50have to say anything. I just, I need you to know that I saw what you just did. Closing that.

00:17:54I saw

00:17:55the cost of it. I saw how careful you just were with me. And I, I don't deserve that care,

00:18:00but I see

00:18:00it. And I am grateful. A long silence. She said, without turning, Miss Marsden, please do not make me

00:18:07more aware of my own restraint than I already am. She left. I sat in the bed shaking for 10

00:18:13minutes.

00:18:14The monitor showed my pulse climbing. A nurse, not Marisol, someone on the night shift came in and

00:18:19asked if I was experiencing pain. And I said no. And she adjusted something on the pump and told me

00:18:24to press the button if I needed her and left. I lay there and thought about the words, please do

00:18:29not

00:18:29make me more aware of my own restraint than I already am. And I understood, for the first time since

00:18:34I had

00:18:35woken up in that bed, that whatever I had done to her two years ago, whatever damage I had caused,

00:18:40whatever silence I had inflicted, she had carried it into a new city and a new job and a new

00:18:45life.

00:18:45And she had not let it calcify her. And she was now at 940 on a Thursday night in a

00:18:51hospital room

00:18:51with the overhead lights dimmed for sleep. Still the person who had once handed me back my coins in a

00:18:56coffee shop and said the good things roll away. She had not become smaller. She had become more careful.

00:19:02That was worse, in a way, than if she had become cold. The next morning she did not come to

00:19:07rounds.

00:19:08Dr. Okafor ran them without her. Dr. Kestrel is consulting on a transfer case,

00:19:13Dr. Okafor said to the team. Dr. Park and I will be handling the service today.

00:19:18She looked at me once, briefly, in a way that suggested she had been informed.

00:19:22I did not know what she had been informed of. I did not ask. My ribs hurt less.

00:19:27My concussion fog was lifting. I was, by every clinical measure, doing well. I could be discharged

00:19:33tomorrow, probably. I would go back to my apartment in Pilsen and I would email my editor and I would

00:19:39apologize for missing the deadline because of the being hit by a car thing. And I would get a new

00:19:43bicycle, or maybe not get a new bicycle. And I would think about Thea Kestrel every single day of

00:19:49whatever came next. I would not, probably, ever see her again outside this hospital. Except.

00:19:54Except. Except the thing she had said at the door. The restraint comment. The way her shoulders had

00:19:59gone still when I told her I saw the cost. The fact that she had come to my room at

00:20:03940 at all,

00:20:04when she could have sent Dr. Park, when she could have handed it off, when she could have put an

00:20:09entire functional wall between us for the 48 hours remaining. She had not done that. She had come

00:20:14herself. She had come tired. And one button loosened. And she had stood at the foot of my bed and

00:20:20let me

00:20:20say the sentence I owed her. That was not nothing. I ate my dinner. I watched the light in the

00:20:25window

00:20:26change from afternoon to evening to the deep Chicago blue that happens about an hour before it is

00:20:30actually night. I did my incentive spirometer. I slept for maybe an hour. At 11 in the evening,

00:20:37after visiting hours, after the nurse who was supposed to do the evening check had finished,

00:20:41I heard a knock on my door that was different from the nurse's knock. Nurses knocked and entered.

00:20:46This knock asked permission. Come in, I said. Thea closed the door behind her. She was still in

00:20:52her white coat. Her stethoscope was still around her neck. Her face was composed in a way that told

00:20:57me her composure was costing her something it had not cost her this morning. The dim hallway light

00:21:02framed her from behind and I could not, for a second, read her expression at all. I am off shift

00:21:07in 12 minutes, she said. I stared at her. I want to be very clear with you about something,

00:21:12she said. When I am off shift, I am not your attending. I am a physician at this hospital

00:21:17and you are a patient and that is a conflict I am not willing to pretend does not exist.

00:21:22So I am not going to act on it. I am, however, going to stand in this room for 12

00:21:26minutes and

00:21:27say something to you that I have been unable to say to any version of you for two years.

00:21:31I am saying it now because if I do not say it now, while you are still a patient and

00:21:36it is still

00:21:36appropriate to only say it and not do anything about it, I am going to say it in a way

00:21:41that I will not be

00:21:42able to unsay. Do you understand? I said, yes. She said when you blocked my number. In December.

00:21:49Two years ago. She stopped. She looked at the ceiling for a moment. She said, that was the worst

00:21:55thing that had happened to me in my adult life up to that point. I want you to know that.

00:21:59I want you

00:22:00to know it in a way that does not allow you to minimize it. You did not do something to

00:22:04someone

00:22:04who would be fine. You did something to someone who was not fine. It took me about 11 months to

00:22:09become fine. That is not a guilt trip and it is not a reproach. It is information. You asked to

00:22:15apologize and I accepted the apology, which I did two hours ago. I accept it. I forgive you. I am

00:22:22telling you this other thing because I want the accounting to be complete. I could not speak.

00:22:27She said, is there anything you want to say? I said, yes. She waited. I said, I was scared of

00:22:34how much I

00:22:34wanted you. I had never been wanted like that. I had never wanted someone like that. I did not have,

00:22:40I did not have anything to give you and I could not stand the idea of giving you what I

00:22:44had and

00:22:44you realizing it was not enough. So I left first. That is a child's logic. I know that. I have

00:22:51known

00:22:51that for two years. I am telling you because you deserve the whole picture of my cowardice and not

00:22:56just the edited version. She stood very still. She said, thank you. She said, I am leaving this room

00:23:02in 90 seconds because my shift ends in nine minutes and I need to not be in this room when

00:23:07my shift ends. I nodded. She turned. She stopped at the door. She said, I am going to discharge you

00:23:13tomorrow morning. Okay. You will receive a follow-up appointment in two weeks. It will not be with me.

00:23:19You will see Dr. Park for the follow-up. This is because I am going to call you at the

00:23:23phone number

00:23:24in your chart approximately four hours after I sign your discharge paperwork. And when I call you,

00:23:29it will no longer be a conflict of interest because you will no longer be my patient and I will

00:23:34no

00:23:35longer be your physician. And we will have a separate and unrelated conversation that we have

00:23:39been unable to have for two years because you blocked my number. And because I then respected

00:23:44that block for two years. And because now for the first time in two years, you have given me

00:23:49information that makes me want to not respect it anymore. She put her hand on the doorframe is that

00:23:55she said. And for the first time, her voice was not level, not measured. Is that a thing you would

00:24:01pick up the phone for? I said, yes. I said, Thea, yes, please. Yes. She nodded once. She walked out.

00:24:10The door clicked shut. The hallway was very quiet. Somewhere down the corridor, a monitor beeped in

00:24:15the slow rhythm of a stable patient. Somewhere further, a cart rolled past on rubber wheels.

00:24:20The overhead lights in my room stayed dim. I lay in the bed with my hands shaking and my ribs

00:24:25aching

00:24:25and my heart doing something expensive and completely irresponsible. And I understood in

00:24:31the particular clarity that comes from 12 minutes of the most honest conversation I had ever had with

00:24:36another adult human being that I was not going to sleep. I was not going to sleep tonight. I was

00:24:42not

00:24:42going to sleep tomorrow. I was not going to sleep until approximately four hours after she signed my

00:24:47discharge paperwork and my phone rang in my kitchen in Pilsen. And then I would find out whether the

00:24:52rest of my life was going to begin with me picking up on the first ring or the second. I

00:24:57thought about

00:24:57the balcony in Estabro in the rain. I thought about the coins on the floor of the coffee shop. I

00:25:02thought

00:25:02about the way she had looked at me that first night, with the storm coming in over the rooftops and

00:25:07her

00:25:07fingers warm against my jaw, like she had been waiting her whole life to find a face she wanted to

00:25:12memorize and was not going to waste the chance. I thought about how I had thrown that away at 26

00:25:17because I had been too scared of my own smallness to let someone steady look at me and mean it.

00:25:21I thought about how she had just, in 12 minutes, offered me the thing I had spent two years

00:25:26believing I had permanently destroyed. I did not deserve it. That was the truth. I did not deserve

00:25:32it. I was going to accept it anyway. Because Thea Kestrel had decided, for her own reasons,

00:25:38that she was willing to offer it and the only thing worse than not deserving a second chance was

00:25:43turning down a second chance you did not deserve when it was extended to you by the one person

00:25:47whose forgiveness you had failed to ask. 4. I lay in the dark and watched the clock above the door

00:25:53move its slow red digits from 11.53 to midnight to 1 in the morning to 2, and I thought

00:25:58about the exact

00:25:59timbre of her voice when she had said, Is that a thing you would pick up the phone for? It

00:26:03was the

00:26:04smallest crack in her composure I had ever heard. It was the whole story. At 3 in the morning, I

00:26:09let

00:26:09myself think about the balcony one more time, the way her hand had found the small of my back,

00:26:14the way she had said my name like it was the one word in the English language she had been

00:26:18saving

00:26:18for exactly the right moment, the way the rain had come in sideways and we had not moved for a

00:26:23long

00:26:23time, and she had looked at me in a way that had rearranged every assumption I had ever made about

00:26:28what being wanted was supposed to feel like. I fell asleep thinking about her hand on my back and

00:26:32about tomorrow's phone call. I was going to pick up on the first ring. I was not going to be

00:26:3726 this

00:26:38time. I was not going to run. I was going to stand in the wreckage of what I had done

00:26:43and let her look

00:26:43at me across it and decide for herself, with all the information, whether there was anything on the

00:26:48other side of it worth walking toward. It was the least I owed her. It was also the most I

00:26:53had ever

00:26:54been willing to offer anyone. I woke at 7 to the sound of the breakfast cart in the hallway and

00:26:59the

00:26:59first gray light of a Chicago morning coming through the blinds, and I understood that I had exactly

00:27:04five hours left as her patient and then approximately four hours left as a person waiting for a phone

00:27:09call, and then the rest of my life would start, one way or another, with whatever was on the other

00:27:15end of that line. The breakfast tray had oatmeal and a small container of fruit and a carton of apple

00:27:20juice. I had no intention of drinking. Marisol came in at 7.40 and told me in the warm, efficient

00:27:25voice of a woman ending a shift that Dr. Kestrel had signed the paperwork at 6.30 that morning,

00:27:31that discharge would be processed by 9, that the follow-up appointment was scheduled with

00:27:36Dr. Park in two weeks, that my Uber would meet me at the main entrance on Wacker. She said this

00:27:41all in one breath. Then she said more quietly, Get home safe, Miss Marsden. Take care of your ribs.

00:27:48I said, Marisol. She said I know. She squeezed my shoulder once, with the particular benediction of

00:27:54a nurse who had watched something unfold across three nights that she had chosen, for reasons of her

00:27:58own, not to comment on. Then she left. Thea came with the team at 8.15. She was already in

00:28:05a fresh

00:28:05white coat. Her hair was pinned. The stethoscope was around her neck. She was, in every observable

00:28:11detail, the same woman who had walked out of this room nine hours ago, and completely different,

00:28:17because I knew now what was underneath the coat and she knew that I knew. She ran through my discharge

00:28:21instructions with the clinical precision of someone who had decided to be only a doctor for the next

00:28:2611 minutes. Dr. Okafor and the medical student and two interns stood behind her. She listed the warning

00:28:32signs. She told me no lifting over 10 pounds. She told me to sleep elevated for the first week.

00:28:38She reminded me that rib fractures take six to eight weeks to fully heal, and that this would feel worse

00:28:43before it felt better. She told me to use the incentive spirometer every waking hour for seven more days.

00:28:49She did not touch me. She did not, at any point during the exam, make eye contact for longer than

00:28:55a doctor needed to confirm a patient was tracking. But when she signed the final form on the clipboard

00:29:00and handed it to Dr. Okafor to process, her hand paused on the pen. Half a second. The smallest

00:29:06possible hesitation. She capped the pen. She set it in her coat pocket. She said,

00:29:11Take care of yourself, Miss Marsden. I said, I will. She turned. She walked out. The team followed

00:29:18her. The door clicked shut and stayed shut. I sat in the bed for a long time. Then I got

00:29:23up,

00:29:24slowly, with the careful economy of a woman with three cracked ribs, and I put on the clothes my

00:29:29sister had dropped off the day before, a soft gray cardigan, loose jeans, the flat shoes I had not

00:29:35worn since moving to Chicago, because they were comfortable, and I had been performing professional

00:29:39competence in boots instead. I put my phone in my pocket. I signed the forms the discharge nurse

00:29:45brought. I rode down in the elevator. The main entrance of the hospital faced Wacker Drive.

00:29:50The lake was gray that morning, the wind coming in off the water with the specific bite that Chicago

00:29:55reserves for people who have not yet learned to layer properly. I stood under the awning for the

00:29:59two minutes it took my Uber to arrive, and I looked up at the hospital, the tall gray facade,

00:30:04the many small windows, the ninth floor where my room had been, the window I could almost

00:30:09identify, and I thought, she is in that building right now. She is on that floor right now. She is

00:30:15doing rounds for the next patient, and she is going to think about the phone call she is going

00:30:19to make at approximately 1230 this afternoon, and she is going to manage that thought the way she

00:30:24manages everything, with the composure of a woman who has decided the honest version is the only one

00:30:29worth keeping. The Uber arrived. I got in. We pulled away from the curb. I watched the hospital get

00:30:35smaller in the side mirror for as long as I could see it. The driver was a man in his

00:30:3960s who did not

00:30:40say anything after confirming my address, which I was grateful for in a way I had not known I was

00:30:45going to need to be grateful for. The city moved past the window in the specific way Chicago moves

00:30:50past car windows in late October flat gray sky, the brown and red brick of the river warehouses,

00:30:56the bridge girders going dark with the early afternoon cold coming in, the lake appearing and

00:31:01disappearing between buildings like a rumor. I looked at all of it, and I looked at none of it.

00:31:06My body was cataloging the distance between me and the hospital, and my mind was already in the

00:31:10kitchen in Pilsen waiting for the phone to ring. My apartment was on the third floor of a three flat

00:31:15in Pilsen, a neighborhood I had chosen because the rent was almost reasonable and the light was good

00:31:19for illustration work, and I had liked the murals on the side of the taqueria at the end of my

00:31:24block.

00:31:24I let myself in. The cat I was feeding for my downstairs neighbor had not touched the dry food.

00:31:29The plants were still alive. The dishes I had left in the sink the morning of the accident were

00:31:34still in the sink. There was a piece of mail on the floor inside the door, the utility bill I

00:31:38had

00:31:38been avoiding, which had finally escalated itself to a paper envelope. I picked it up with the small

00:31:43grunt that rib fractures extract from you every time you bend over, and I dropped it on the kitchen

00:31:48counter. The apartment was quiet in the way that apartments are quiet when you have been away for

00:31:53four days. I made tea instead of coffee because my stomach was doing something that was either nerves

00:31:58or residual painkillers or both. I sat in the armchair by the window. The cottonwood tree across

00:32:03the alley was half bare, the leaves that were still on it going gold. I looked at the phone on

00:32:09the side

00:32:09table. I moved it to the arm of the chair. Then I moved it back to the side table. Then

00:32:14I picked it

00:32:14up and held it in my hand. It was 9.40 in the morning. I had approximately three hours. I

00:32:20spent the

00:32:21first of those three hours trying not to think about anything. This worked for approximately six

00:32:26minutes. Then I thought about everything at once for 48 minutes, which was worse. Then I stood up,

00:32:32slowly, and did the careful version of straightening up my apartment, loading the dishwasher one plate

00:32:37at a time, pushing the laundry basket into the bedroom with my foot because I was not supposed to

00:32:41lift, wiping down the kitchen counter, putting the mail in the pile on the desk. At 10.50 I called

00:32:47my

00:32:47sister. Marjorie picked up on the second ring. She said,

00:32:50Are you home? I said, I am home. She said, Are the ribs okay? I said, The ribs are fine.

00:32:58She said,

00:32:59Are you okay? There was a pause. I said, The attending physician at the hospital was Thea.

00:33:04A longer pause. Marjorie was two years older than me. She had been the person I called eight days after

00:33:11coming back from Copenhagen, the night I understood I was going to block Thea's number. She had,

00:33:16very carefully, over the course of that phone call, told me she thought I was making a mistake.

00:33:21She had been, for the next two years, the only person in my life who knew what I had done

00:33:26and

00:33:27occasionally asked, without pressing, whether I ever thought about contacting her. Marjorie said,

00:33:32Thea Kestrel. I said, Yes, she said, from Copenhagen. I said, Yes. She said, The doctor. I said,

00:33:40She is an attending in internal medicine in Chicago. She has been here for 10 months. She was my attending

00:33:47for three days. Marjorie said, Ivy. I said, She is going to call me at noon. Marjorie said,

00:33:54Jesus. I said, I am not going to run this time. Marjorie said, I know you aren't. I said,

00:34:00You don't know that. She said, I know you aren't. I said, Marjorie, I'm scared. She said,

00:34:06Of course you're scared. You should be scared. This is scary. Being scared is not the same as

00:34:12running. You're allowed to be scared. You're not allowed to run. I said, Okay. She said,

00:34:18Call me after. I said, Okay. I hung up. I made another cup of tea, which was a mistake,

00:34:25because by 11.30, I had had three cups of tea and my nervous system was doing something it was

00:34:30unprepared for, and I sat in the armchair by the window and watched the kitchen clock move its slow

00:34:35black hands from 11.30 to 11.45 to 11.50 to 11.55 to 11.58, and I understood

00:34:41that my heart had not

00:34:42felt this specific way since Copenhagen. The phone rang at 11.59. I picked up on the first ring.

00:34:49I said, Hi. She said, Hi. The silence that followed was not empty. It was the silence of two people

00:34:56who

00:34:56had done the difficult part already and were now standing at the threshold of something that

00:35:00required a different kind of courage. She said, I have about 40 minutes. I said, I have all afternoon.

00:35:07A small sound, not a laugh, something closer to an exhale. She said, I want to ask you something,

00:35:14and I want you to answer honestly, and I want you to know that any answer is acceptable,

00:35:19including the one where you tell me this has been too much and you need time to think.

00:35:23I said, Okay. She said, Can I see you this weekend? In a setting that is not a hospital.

00:35:28For dinner. I said, Saturday. She said, Saturday. I said, Tell me where. I'll come to you.

00:35:36She said, There is a place in Andersonville. It is quiet. It is owned by a Danish woman from

00:35:43Aarhus who will not recognize me because I have been there twice and both times I ordered in English.

00:35:48They do Smuribroad. I thought it might be, she paused. I thought it might be a useful location.

00:35:53I said, Smuribroad is exactly the right location. She said, Seven o'clock.

00:35:58I will text you the address. I said, Okay. There was another pause. She said, Ivy. She had not said

00:36:06my first name aloud in the hospital. Not once. She had said Miss Marsden every time, in every

00:36:11configuration, with the specific discipline of a woman who had decided the name was a line she was

00:36:16not going to cross until it was appropriate to cross it. Hearing it now, in the phone at 1159 on

00:36:22a

00:36:22Friday morning, in the quiet of my Pilsen kitchen, through the speaker of a smartphone with the cheap

00:36:27plastic resonance that phones always have. It was the first time in 23 months that she had said my

00:36:33name, and it landed in my chest the way it had landed the first time, on a balcony in Osterbroe

00:36:38in

00:36:39a thunderstorm, when I had been 26 and she had been 32 and I had understood, standing there in the

00:36:44rain,

00:36:45that I was in the specific trouble a person only gets in once in a life. I said, Yes. She

00:36:51said, I have

00:36:52thought about this phone call for a long time. I said, I know. She said, I am glad you picked

00:36:57up on

00:36:57the first ring. I said, I was always going to pick up on the first ring. She said, Saturday. I

00:37:03said,

00:37:03Saturday. She hung up. I sat in the armchair with the phone in my hand and looked out the window

00:37:08at

00:37:08the cottonwood tree on the other side of the alley and did not move for about 10 minutes.

00:37:12Then I called Marjorie. I said, She called. Marjorie said, And? I said, Saturday. Dinner. Andersonville.

00:37:21Marjorie said, Oh, Ivy. I said, I know. She said, I'm proud of you. I said, I haven't done anything

00:37:29yet.

00:37:29She said, You picked up the phone. You said yes to Saturday. You are doing the things. I said,

00:37:36I am doing the things. I spent the next 36 hours doing what I should have been doing for two

00:37:40years.

00:37:41I wrote the email to my editor apologizing for the missed deadline. I paid the bills I had been

00:37:46avoiding. I called my landlord about the kitchen faucet. I took my ribs seriously. I slept when I

00:37:52needed to sleep. I did not check my phone compulsively for a text from Thea because I

00:37:57understood that Thea Kestrel was not a woman who sent filler texts and whatever was going to happen

00:38:01on Saturday would happen on Saturday and nothing before it was going to matter. She did text me once

00:38:07on Friday evening with the address and the reservation time. She signed the text Thea,

00:38:12just her first name. No signature block, no doctor, no Kestrel. It was the smallest possible

00:38:18offering of the version of her that was not in the coat. I wrote back, See you Saturday.

00:38:22I did not add anything else. Saturday at 640, I took an Uber to Andersonville because I was not

00:38:28supposed to drive with the concussion recovery and because the wind off the lake was still brutal.

00:38:32I had dressed carefully a dark green dress I had owned for three years and almost never worn

00:38:36because it was the kind of dress that required a reason, a soft wool coat over it, boots that did

00:38:42not require me to think about them. I had put on a small amount of makeup, which I had not

00:38:46done in

00:38:47months. I had been honest with myself about why I was putting in the effort, which was that I wanted

00:38:51Thea Kestrel to look at me across a table and see a woman who had grown up since Copenhagen and

00:38:56I

00:38:56understood also that this wanting was part of the work I still had to do because the truth was I

00:39:02had grown up and the proof of that growing up was not going to be in the dress. It was

00:39:06going to be

00:39:06in whether I could sit across from her and tell the truth without flinching for two hours.

00:39:10The restaurant was on a side street off Clark. It was small, maybe 16 tables with warm light and

00:39:16dark wood and the specific Scandinavian quality of being both austere and welcoming that Danish

00:39:20places always have. I gave the reservation name at the door. The hostess, a woman in her 50s with

00:39:26gray blonde hair and a slight accent, led me to a table in the back corner by the window.

00:39:32Thea was already there. She stood up when I came in. She was wearing a dark charcoal sweater over a

00:39:37white collared shirt, dark jeans, the same small gold stud in her left ear. Her hair was down. She

00:39:43had not pinned it. I had not seen her hair down since Copenhagen. It was shorter than I remembered,

00:39:48cut to just above her collarbone, and it made her look simultaneously younger and more settled,

00:39:53which was a combination my eyes had not been expecting. She did not smile. She looked at me

00:39:58for exactly the right amount of time and then she pulled out my chair, which was a Danish thing,

00:40:03not a performed thing. Something she did because she had been raised in a house where people pulled

00:40:08out chairs for each other and had never stopped. I sat down. She sat down. She said,

00:40:13how are the ribs? I said, they are healing. She said, good. The waitress came. Thea ordered for us,

00:40:20in Danish, a small list of dishes that I could not follow. The waitress smiled at her in the way

00:40:25that

00:40:25Danes smile at other Danes when they encounter each other unexpectedly in America, which is a very

00:40:30specific smile, and then went away. Thea said, I ordered the four small plates that are good for

00:40:36this time of year. I hope that is acceptable. If there is something you do not eat, we can change

00:40:41it. I said, that is acceptable. We sat for a moment. She said, this is strange. I said, I know.

00:40:47She said, I have been thinking about what I want to say to you since Thursday night.

00:40:52I thought I had it in the right order. I have been sitting at this table for 20 minutes trying

00:40:57to remember what the order was. I said, we don't have to do it in order. She said, okay. She

00:41:04put

00:41:04her hands on the table. She looked at them for a moment. Then she looked up at me. She said,

00:41:09I left Copenhagen last year because I was not finding the kind of work I wanted at Riggs Hospitalet

00:41:14and because there was a position here that was a good professional opportunity. I did

00:41:18not leave because of you. I want you to know that. I did not reorganize my life around what

00:41:22you did. I reorganized my life around what I wanted, which is not the same thing. I said,

00:41:28I am glad. She said, I am telling you because I do not want you to think, later, that I

00:41:33came

00:41:34to Chicago because I was carrying you. That would be untrue. I came to Chicago because I wanted

00:41:39to. That you are here is she paused a coincidence I am still accounting for. I said, I came to

00:41:44Chicago four months ago for a graphic design contract at a small agency in the loop. I did

00:41:49not know you were here. I did not look. She said, I know. I looked at your social media once,

00:41:55about a year ago. You were in New York then. I saw a photograph of you at an illustration residency.

00:42:01You looked. She stopped. She said, you looked well. I said, I was not well. I was performing

00:42:08wellness very hard. She said, that tracks. Something in her tone, something dry and Danish

00:42:14and familiar from two years ago made something in my chest move. I said, can I ask you something?

00:42:20She said, yes. I said, why did you forgive me? She looked at me for a long moment. She said,

00:42:28I did not forgive you because I had to. I did not forgive you because you apologized,

00:42:32although the apology mattered. I forgave you because I sat in that hospital room on Thursday night

00:42:37and I looked at you and I understood that the version of you I had been angry at for 23

00:42:41months

00:42:42was not the version of you in the bed. The version of you in the bed was someone who had

00:42:46spent two

00:42:47years honestly accounting for what she had done. I can be angry at a person who refuses to account.

00:42:52I cannot be angry at a person who has accounted. I was tired of being angry. When the accounting

00:42:57arrived, I took it because I wanted to. I said, okay. She said, that is not the same as forgetting

00:43:04it.

00:43:04That is not the same as being unhurt. I am still hurt. I will probably be hurt about it for

00:43:09a long

00:43:09time. But hurt is different from angry. I said, I understand. She said, I need you to understand

00:43:16something else. She took a breath. She said, I am 34 years old. I have built a life in three

00:43:22cities in

00:43:22the last decade. I am not interested in beginning something with you that is going to require me

00:43:27at some point in the next six months to start managing my reactions around the possibility that

00:43:32you are going to disappear again. I am not going to do that. I cannot coach myself through another

00:43:37version of that. So if this is going to happen, whatever this is, I need you to understand that I

00:43:42am

00:43:42not going to be performing calm about the risk. I am going to be asking questions. I am going to

00:43:47be

00:43:47direct. If I get scared, I am going to say so. If I think you are drifting, I am going

00:43:52to tell you. I am

00:43:53not going to manage this by being careful. I am going to manage it by being honest. Can you do

00:43:58that

00:43:58with me? I said, yes. She said, think about it before you answer. I said, I have been thinking

00:44:05about it for 23 months. She looked at me. She said, okay. The food came. It was good. We ate

00:44:13it

00:44:13slowly. The conversation shifted, slowly, from the difficult territory to the territory of two people

00:44:19learning each other again. She told me about her new apartment in Lincoln Park and about the colleague

00:44:24who had become her friend and about the bicycle she had finally bought after six months of refusing

00:44:29on principle because Chicago drivers were not Copenhagen. Drivers. I told her about the

00:44:34illustration commissions I was working on and about my sister's new baby and about the way Chicago

00:44:38light in October had made me understand something about the Midwest I had not understood in New York.

00:44:44We did not talk about the balcony. We did not talk about the three weeks. Those were on the table

00:44:49without being on the table and we both knew it and neither of us touched them yet. It was nearly

00:44:5310 when

00:44:53we left. She walked me to the corner. The wind had dropped. The cold was still there but it was

00:44:58the

00:44:59clean kind of cold. The kind that feels like a decision rather than a punishment. We stood at the

00:45:03corner of Clark and Farragut while I called an Uber. She said, will you see me again? I said, yes.

00:45:09She said, when? I said, when do you want to see me? She said, next Saturday. I said, next Saturday.

00:45:17She said, I am not going to touch you tonight. I said, I know. She said, I want to.

00:45:23I want you to know that. I am choosing not to because I want to know you are not going

00:45:28to

00:45:28disappear in the morning and I cannot know that yet. I am not punishing you. I am protecting both

00:45:34of us. I said, Thea, you don't have to explain. She said, I do have to explain. That is the

00:45:40thing

00:45:41I am telling you. I am going to explain everything. I am not going to let you guess anymore. I

00:45:46said,

00:45:46okay. The Uber pulled up. She stood with her hands in the pockets of her coat and she looked at

00:45:51me in

00:45:51the streetlight in the specific way she had always looked at me. And for a moment, I felt 26 again.

00:45:57And for a moment, I felt every one of the months that had passed since then. And both things existed

00:46:02at once in the same body. And I understood that this was going to be the way it was for

00:46:06a while.

00:46:07The old version of this and the new version layered and both of them real. I got in the Uber.

00:46:13I turned to look at her as we pulled away. She was still standing on the corner with her hands

00:46:17in

00:46:18her pockets. She lifted one hand in the small wave of a person who was not yet ready to turn

00:46:23away. I did not sleep much that night either. The next six weeks were the most careful six weeks

00:46:28of my adult life. We saw each other every Saturday, sometimes Thursdays, always with intention,

00:46:34always with planning, always with the particular discipline that Thea had said she was going to

00:46:38bring to this and that I was learning to meet her in. She was not performing patience. She was

00:46:43actually patient. She was a woman who had decided that this was going to be done correctly or not

00:46:48at all. And the correctness was not about rules. It was about honesty. And the honesty was slow

00:46:53because the damage had been real. I cooked for her twice at my apartment. She cooked for me once at

00:46:58hers. She made rug brood the way her mother made it and a dish of cold poached salmon with dill

00:47:04and

00:47:04fingerling potatoes. And I understood, watching her move in her small galley kitchen in the Lincoln Park

00:47:10apartment, that this was a woman whose hands knew what they were doing because she had been teaching

00:47:14them to cook for 30 years and I had not known in Copenhagen that we would ever be in a

00:47:19kitchen

00:47:19together on a different continent and I had almost made it so we never would be. She told me things

00:47:24across those six weeks that she had not told me in Copenhagen. About the mother in Roskilde who had a

00:47:31chronic condition that Thea managed from a distance. About the brother in Bergen she did not speak to for

00:47:36reasons she had not fully resolved. About the year she had spent in Berlin during medical school that

00:47:41had almost broken her. About the moment, three months after I had blocked her number, when she

00:47:46had almost flown to New York to demand an answer from me in person and the friend who had talked

00:47:50her out of it and what it had cost her to listen to the friend. I told her things too.

00:47:55About the

00:47:55relationship with Henrik. About the six months in New York after Copenhagen when I had not been

00:48:00functional. About the therapist I had found in Brooklyn who had helped me understand that the panic was

00:48:05older than Henrik and older than Thea that it was a thing that lived in me and had been finding

00:48:10reasons to run since I was 15 years old. About the year of actually working on it. About the Chicago

00:48:15move as an attempt to be somewhere I had not been before. About the way every day of the last

00:48:20four

00:48:20months had felt like practicing being a person. She listened to all of it with the particular quality

00:48:26of attention I had first noticed in Copenhagen the listening that made you understand you had not

00:48:30been listened to before. She asked questions. She did not reassure me. She let me sit in the

00:48:35uncomfortable parts instead of rushing past them and I understood, in the sitting, that being heard

00:48:41was not the same as being absolved and I did not need absolution. I needed to be known. She let

00:48:47me know

00:48:47her. I let her know me. There was a Saturday in the middle of those six weeks where we drove

00:48:52up the

00:48:52lake to a small town in Wisconsin because she had never seen the Midwest outside of Chicago and I had

00:48:58decided we should correct this. We went to an orchard that was well past apple season but was still open

00:49:03for cider and pumpkins and the specific last light of autumn theater that Midwestern orchards perform

00:49:08every October. She walked slowly through the rows of bare apple trees with her hands in the pockets of

00:49:13her coat and her face lifted to the sky in a way I had not seen her face lifted before

00:49:18and I watched

00:49:19her and I thought about how the version of Thea that existed in a wool coat on a dirt path

00:49:23between apple

00:49:24trees in Wisconsin was a version I had never, in Copenhagen, imagined having access to and I thought

00:49:30about how many versions of this woman I had almost refused by running at 26. We bought cider. We drove

00:49:37back down the lake road as the sun set over the water. Her hand was on the gear shift and

00:49:41I put my

00:49:41hand over hers without thinking about it and she did not move her hand and neither of us commented on

00:49:46it.

00:49:46That was a small thing. It was not a small thing. There was a Thursday evening in the fourth week

00:49:51where she called me on her way home from a 12-hour shift and asked if she could come over

00:49:56and not talk

00:49:56for a while because she had lost a patient that afternoon and she did not want to be alone but

00:50:01she

00:50:01did not have any words left. I said yes. She came over. She sat on my couch. I made her

00:50:07tea. She drank

00:50:08the tea. She held my hand. She did not cry. She was not a woman who cried. But she sat

00:50:13on my couch for

00:50:13three hours without saying anything and I sat next to her and did not ask any questions and eventually she

00:50:19said

00:50:19quietly thank you and I said anytime and she slept on my couch that night because it was too far

00:50:26to

00:50:27drive back to Lincoln Park and she did not want to be alone and I slept in my bed and

00:50:31in the morning

00:50:32she made coffee in my kitchen and I understood something I had not understood about her at 26

00:50:37which was that there were parts of her job that took pieces out of her that she was very careful

00:50:41not to share with anyone and she had in those three hours on my couch shared one of those pieces

00:50:46with

00:50:47me and I was never going to waste the trust of that. She left for work that morning with my

00:50:51spare

00:50:52key in her pocket. I had not given her the key. She had taken it from the hook by the

00:50:56door. Neither

00:50:57of us commented on it. We kissed for the first time the first time of the new chapter on the

00:51:02Thursday of

00:51:02the sixth week at the end of an evening that had been longer than either of us had planned in

00:51:07her

00:51:07kitchen after she had finished the dishes and I had been standing at her window looking at the

00:51:12lights of the apartment across the courtyard and she had come up behind me and put her hand on my

00:51:16shoulder not pulling me toward her just resting it there the way she had rested her hand on my back

00:51:22on a balcony two years and two months ago and I had turned around slowly and she had looked at

00:51:27me in

00:51:27the low kitchen light with every guard she had ever put up visibly set aside and she had said very

00:51:32quietly I think we have waited long enough. I said I think so. She cupped my jaw the way she

00:51:38had in

00:51:39Copenhagen and she kissed me slowly and it was not the kiss of 23 months ago. It was a different

00:51:44kiss. It was the kiss of two people who had in different cities and across a body of water and

00:51:50for a very long time decided separately to become the kind of people who could finally hold this

00:51:55without breaking it. It was patient. It was honest. It was in the particular way that restraint becomes

00:52:01its own kind of intensity when it has been held for long enough. The most devastating thing her mouth

00:52:07had ever done. I had forgotten or not forgotten but misplaced the specific way Thea Kestrel kissed

00:52:12like she was paying attention like the other person was something she had been given and was not going

00:52:18to waste. My hands found the front of her sweater and the wool was soft and warm and she was

00:52:22warm

00:52:22underneath it and her heart was doing something fast and so was mine and she pulled back just enough

00:52:27to look at me and the low kitchen light was on her face and she said are you staying tonight?

00:52:32I said

00:52:34yes. She said I want to be clear about what that means. I said I know what it means. She

00:52:39said say

00:52:39it anyway. I said it means I am staying tonight. It means I am going to be here in the

00:52:44morning. It

00:52:45means I am not going to disappear. It means if I start to feel the old thing I am going

00:52:50to tell you

00:52:50instead of acting on it. It means I am not 26 anymore and I am not going to behave like

00:52:55I am. She said

00:52:57okay. She said come here. I came there. Her bedroom was small. A bed with a dark blue duvet.

00:53:04One window with a fire escape and the blue dark of a November night behind it. A bookshelf with

00:53:10novels in three languages. A small photograph on the dresser of a woman who looked exactly like her

00:53:1530 years older standing next to a boat on a gray day. Her mother I understood without asking. She took

00:53:22off my sweater with the careful attention she gave everything. I took off hers. The light in the

00:53:27room was from the hallway. Soft and indirect. And she looked at me. Looked at me for a long moment

00:53:32with the specific quality of looking that had undone me on the balcony two years ago. And she

00:53:36said I did not forget anything. And I said neither did I. And we did not talk for a while

00:53:42after that.

00:53:42It was slow. It was honest. Her hands moved over me with the memory of three weeks in Copenhagen

00:53:48and the patience of two years. And the rain outside had turned to a steady soft wash against the window.

00:53:54And her mouth was warm against my throat and then my collarbone and then lower. And I understood with

00:54:00my eyes closed and her hands splayed flat against my ribs where they were still healing.

00:54:04Careful. So careful that she had been keeping this inside her composure for months. For the entire

00:54:09three days at the hospital. And that the composure had been real because the thing underneath it was

00:54:14real. And the thing underneath it had been waiting. And now it was not waiting anymore. She did not rush

00:54:19anything. She did not need to. I understood in those hours the difference between being wanted

00:54:24by someone who is hungry and being wanted by someone who is paying attention. I had been the

00:54:29first in my life many times. I had been the second, before Thea, exactly never. I was the second now.

00:54:35When the first gray light came through the window, we were still awake. Not because we were not tired.

00:54:41Because we had both decided, without saying it, that we were not going to let the first night end by

00:54:47falling asleep. We lay facing each other, her hands still on the same place on my ribs,

00:54:52her thumb moving very slowly. And she said, this is the part I was afraid of. I said, which part?

00:54:57She said, this part. The part where you are still here. The part where it is morning and you are

00:55:03not

00:55:03gone. I said, I am not going to be gone. She said, I know. I believe you. I am telling

00:55:10you that this

00:55:10part right now is the part I was afraid to believe in. I said, Thea. She said, yes. I said,

00:55:18I am not

00:55:19going to be gone. She closed her eyes. For the first time since I had woken up in the hospital

00:55:23bed,

00:55:24I watched her composure do something I had not seen it do before. It did not crack. It did not

00:55:29break.

00:55:29It simply set itself down. The way you set down a thing you have been carrying for a long time.

00:55:35The way you set down a thing when you finally understand you do not have to hold it anymore.

00:55:39She said, okay. She fell asleep with her hand on my ribs. I watched her for a long time.

00:55:45Then I fell asleep too. The panic came three weeks later. It came on a Tuesday evening,

00:55:51without warning, for no reason I could identify at the time or later. I was at my apartment.

00:55:56Thea was at hers. We had made plans for dinner on Friday. Everything was fine. Everything had

00:56:03been fine for three weeks. And then I was standing in my kitchen at 7 in the evening making pasta

00:56:07for

00:56:07dinner alone. And I felt the old thing arrive in my chest like a weather front. The same flat cold

00:56:12panic I had felt eight days after Copenhagen and many times since. And my first thought was I need

00:56:17to be alone. I need to go somewhere. I need to not have anyone looking at me for at least

00:56:22a week.

00:56:23And my second thought was, I need to turn off my phone. And my third thought was, this is the

00:56:28thing.

00:56:29This is the exact thing. You are doing the exact thing you promised you would not do.

00:56:34I stood at the stove for a long time with the pasta water at a rolling boil and my hand

00:56:38on the handle

00:56:38of the pot and my nervous system trying to convince me, as it always did in these moments, that running

00:56:43was self-protection. That it was actually the kind thing. That it was actually respectful of her.

00:56:49That she deserved better than me in this state and I was doing her a favor by disappearing for a

00:56:53few

00:56:53days. I turned off the stove. I drained the pasta. I left it in the colander. I went to the

00:56:59couch.

00:56:59I sat down. I picked up my phone. I called her. She picked up on the second ring. She said,

00:57:05Hi. I said, Thea. I heard her stop whatever she was doing. I heard the quality of her attention shift.

00:57:11On the other end of the phone, the way it shifted in person, the way you could hear across a

00:57:16wire

00:57:16because she was that kind of listener. She said, Tell me. I said, I am having the thing.

00:57:22She said, The thing you described to me. I said, Yes. It is happening right now. I don't,

00:57:28I don't know why. Nothing happened. Nothing set it off. It just arrived. I am sitting on my couch and

00:57:34I want to turn off my phone and I want to disappear for a week and I am not going

00:57:38to. I am telling you I

00:57:39am not going to. I am telling you because you asked me to tell you and I am telling you.

00:57:44She said,

00:57:45I am coming over. I said, You don't have to come over. She said, I am coming over. I was

00:57:52not asking.

00:57:53I am coming over because I want to be there and because you do not have to be alone with

00:57:56this

00:57:57and because I need to know you are not going to spiral if I am not there. Are you safe?

00:58:01I said,

00:58:02I am safe. I am just, I am just scared. She said, I know. I am getting my keys. I

00:58:08will be there in 20

00:58:08minutes. She was there in 18. She came in with her coat still on. She did not take it off

00:58:14immediately.

00:58:14She sat on the couch next to me and she put her arm around my shoulders and she did not

00:58:18say

00:58:19anything for a while. She just sat there with her arm around me and let me be inside the panic

00:58:23without trying to manage it out of me. After a long time, she said, Tell me what it feels like.

00:58:28I said, Like I need to leave. Like I need to be alone. Like I need to turn off every

00:58:34light in my

00:58:34life and disappear for a month. Like I am going to ruin this and the only way to not ruin

00:58:39it is to go

00:58:39away before I do. She said, The logic of it is, if you leave first, you have not been abandoned.

00:58:46I said, Yes. That is the exact logic. She said, Okay. And what do you know about the logic?

00:58:52I said, I know the logic is a lie. She said, How do you know? I said, Because I tried

00:58:59the logic once

00:59:00and it ruined the best thing that had ever happened to me and took me two years to come back

00:59:04from and I

00:59:05am not doing it again. She said, Okay. She said, What do you need from me right now? I said,

00:59:11I don't

00:59:12know. She said, Do you need me to stay? I said, Yes. I need you to stay. I need you

00:59:18to stay and I need

00:59:19you to be here when I wake up tomorrow and I need you to not treat me like a problem

00:59:23to solve. I just

00:59:24need you to be a person who is here while I have this. She said, I can do that. She

00:59:29took off her coat.

00:59:30She put it over the back of the couch. She sat back down. She pulled my feet into her lap.

00:59:34She said, We are going to order food because you did not eat. And we are going to watch something

00:59:39on television that is not about hospitals. And we are going to sit here. Does that work? I said,

00:59:45That works. We ordered Thai food. We watched a British cooking show. I cried at one point,

00:59:51quietly, without making a production out of it. And she did not try to stop me. She just kept her

00:59:56hand on my ankle and let me do what I needed to do. The panic crested sometime around 10 in

01:00:00the

01:00:01evening. And then, as panic does when you do not feed it by running, it began to subside.

01:00:05By midnight, I was tired in the particular way you are tired after panic, which is different from

01:00:10regular tired, which is a kind of tired that feels like your body has been asked to do a thing

01:00:15it did

01:00:15not want to do and has done it anyway and is now asking to be allowed to rest. She slept

01:00:20at my

01:00:20apartment. In the morning, she made coffee. She kissed me on the forehead on her way out the door.

01:00:25She said, Call me at lunch. I said, Okay. She said, I am proud of you. I said, I did

01:00:32not do

01:00:33anything. She said, You did the whole thing. You called me. You said the words. You stayed. That is

01:00:39the whole thing. She left for the hospital. I sat at the kitchen table and drank the coffee she had

01:00:44made me and looked at the plate with the remainders of last night's pad thai still congealing on it and

01:00:49understood, with the clarity that sometimes arrives in the morning after a difficult night, that I had just

01:00:54done the thing I had not done two years ago. I had picked up the phone instead of turning it

01:00:58off.

01:00:59I had said the sentence instead of disappearing. I had let her see me at the worst version of myself

01:01:04and she had sat on my couch and not managed me and she had gone home this morning to do

01:01:09her job

01:01:09and the thing that had not broken was the thing I had been convinced for two years that I could

01:01:13not

01:01:13keep from breaking. I called her at lunch. She picked up on the first ring. She said, How are you?

01:01:19I said, Better. Normal. Tired. She said, Good. I said, Thea. She said, Yes. I said, Thank you for

01:01:29coming over. She said, Ivy. Of course. I said, Of course. The months after that were, by every

01:01:35measure, the happiest months of my adult life. This is not a dramatic sentence. It is an accurate one.

01:01:41Happiness, as it turned out, was not a loud thing. It was a quiet thing. It was making coffee in

01:01:47the

01:01:47morning while she read in Norwegian at the kitchen table. It was her hand on the back of my neck

01:01:52when

01:01:52we stood in line at the pharmacy. It was the specific Danish swearing she did when she could

01:01:56not find her keys. It was her sending me articles from medical journals with the subject line,

01:02:01This made me think of you and turning out to be articles about illustration. It was at a dinner

01:02:06party at her colleague's apartment in Lincoln Park. The moment when her hand found mine under the table

01:02:11without looking and stayed there for the rest of the evening. The colleague's apartment dinner party

01:02:15was, In retrospect, the public moment I had not known I needed. It was at the home of another

01:02:21attending from her service, a woman in her 50s named Dr. Beatrice Nguyen, who had adopted Thea as

01:02:26a younger colleague the way senior attendings sometimes do. There were eight people at the

01:02:31table, a gastroenterologist and his husband, a cardiologist, Dr. Nguyen and her wife, me, Thea.

01:02:38Dr. Nguyen raised her glass at some point early in the dinner and said, Without preamble,

01:02:42I am glad you came, Ivy. Thea has not brought anyone to dinner in the two years I have known

01:02:47her. I had started to suspect she was a hologram. The gastroenterologist laughed. Thea said,

01:02:53In the dry voice she used when she had decided to meet Bea on Bea's own terms,

01:02:57Dr. Nguyen has strong opinions about my personal life that she expresses as sarcasm. You will get

01:03:02used to it. Dr. Nguyen said, I have strong opinions about her personal life because I am very fond of

01:03:08her

01:03:08and she does not let me in. You appear to have some experience with this. I did not flinch.

01:03:14I said, I have some experience with this. Thea's hand under the table found my knee and squeezed.

01:03:20The conversation moved on. At some point during dessert, Thea stood up to help clear and I stayed

01:03:27at the table and Dr. Nguyen leaned toward me and said, Quietly, She is a very private person. I have

01:03:34never seen her look at anyone the way she looks at you. I am glad you found your way to

01:03:38her. I said,

01:03:40Me too. She said, Take care of her, Ivy. I said, I intend to. She said, I believe you. That

01:03:47was all.

01:03:47On the walk back to Thea's apartment from Dr. Nguyen's, along the cold sidewalk of a Chicago Friday

01:03:52in December, Thea put her arm through mine. It was the first time she had done that in public.

01:03:57It was not a dramatic gesture. It was the gesture of a woman who had decided that this was not

01:04:03a

01:04:03thing she was going to hide anymore. She did not announce it. She just did it. I did not announce

01:04:08anything either. I just held onto her arm. We walked home in the cold. Spring came eventually.

01:04:14It always does. In Chicago. With a violence that almost makes you forget the winter.

01:04:18In early April, Thea and I went to Copenhagen for 10 days because we had decided separately and then

01:04:24together that we wanted to go back to the city where the first chapter had happened and see it

01:04:28with the new version of ourselves. We stayed in a hotel near the Kongens Nidorv metro station.

01:04:34On the third afternoon, we went to the coffee shop where she had handed me back my coins.

01:04:38The coffee shop was exactly the same. The small table by the window was empty. We sat at it.

01:04:44We ordered two coffees. We did not need to say anything about where we were.

01:04:48She said, Finally, you fumbled your wallet on purpose. I said, Absolutely not. I did not even

01:04:55know you were behind me. She said, I know. I am teasing you. She paused. She said, I am aware

01:05:01that

01:05:01I have not often teased you. I am working on it. I said, I have been hoping you would. She

01:05:07said,

01:05:08Here is something I have not told you. I saw you when you walked in that day, before the coins.

01:05:13I saw you in line and I thought, Who is that? And I thought about saying something to you.

01:05:18And I did not. Because I was a 32-year-old resident and I did not speak to strangers in

01:05:22coffee shops. I would have left the coffee shop without knowing you if you had not fumbled your

01:05:26wallet. I have thought about this many times. That the coins made the difference. I said,

01:05:32The coins made the difference. She said,

01:05:35To go to ting roller vac. I said, Say the other part. She said,

01:05:39The other part. I said, The part you used to say to me. She looked at me for a long

01:05:45moment.

01:05:45Her eyes were very clear in the Copenhagen afternoon light. She said,

01:05:50To go to ting roller vac. O no gon' comer de tilbage. I said, Translate it. She said,

01:05:55The good things roll away, and sometimes they come back. We sat in the coffee shop for a long time

01:06:01after that. The light moved across the table. A different waitress than the one who had served

01:06:05us two years ago came to ask if we wanted anything else. We said no in Danish, because Thea had

01:06:11been

01:06:11teaching me, and the waitress smiled the way people smile when a foreigner says something correctly,

01:06:16and she left. On the fifth day, we walked past Riggs Hospitalet. She did not say anything for a long

01:06:21block before we got there. The hospital was enormous, a gray modernist complex that looked

01:06:26nothing like the warm Chicago hospital where she worked now, more like a factory for healing than

01:06:31a place that resembled one. She pointed at a wing without going in. She said,

01:06:35I was in that building for nine years. Medical school. Residency. Almost all of my early

01:06:41specialization. I have not walked past this building in a year and a half. I said,

01:06:46How does it feel? She said,

01:06:49Smaller than I expected. That is a good sign, I think. We did not go in. We kept walking.

01:06:54At the corner, she said,

01:06:56I want you to know that moving to Chicago was something I did for myself. Not for a future

01:07:00with you that I could not have known was coming. I did it because this building had become too small

01:07:05for me. I want you to know that the life we have now is not a consolation prize for the

01:07:09life I could

01:07:10have had in Copenhagen. It is the life I chose. You are part of the life I chose, but you

01:07:16are not the

01:07:16reason I chose it. I said, I know. She said, I am saying it anyway. I said, I know. Thank

01:07:23you for

01:07:24saying it anyway. We walked on. On our last afternoon in Copenhagen, we walked across the

01:07:29harbor to Esterbro. We stopped in front of the building she had lived in. The fourth floor.

01:07:33The small balcony that faced the courtyard. There was a different name on the buzzer now.

01:07:38A young couple lived there probably or a new resident or someone else who was figuring out

01:07:42their life in a city that was not their city of origin. She looked up at the balcony for a

01:07:46long

01:07:46time. She said, I have not been back here since I moved out. I said, we don't have to go

01:07:52up. She

01:07:53said, I know. I was not asking to go up. I was saying I have not been back here since

01:07:58I moved out

01:07:59and I am here now and you are with me and I wanted to say that out loud so I

01:08:03would remember it properly.

01:08:04I said, okay. She said, I am not going to cry. I just want you to know I am considering

01:08:10it.

01:08:11I said, it would be okay if you did. She said, I know. She did not. She stood there with

01:08:17her arm

01:08:18through mine and she looked up at the balcony for another minute and then she turned and we walked

01:08:22back down the street toward the harbor and she held my hand on the plane home and we slept on

01:08:27each

01:08:27other's shoulders over the Atlantic and when we landed at O'Hare it was evening in Chicago and the

01:08:32trees were just starting to leaf out. We took a cab home. To her apartment because we had by that

01:08:37point, stop distinguishing between her apartment and mine in the way you stop distinguishing when

01:08:42the question of whose bed you are going to sleep in has become boring. We dropped our suitcases in

01:08:46the hallway. We did not unpack. She made tea. I sat at the kitchen table. She said, I have been

01:08:52thinking about something. I said, okay. She said, my lease is up in August. I was thinking we should

01:08:58find a place together. Something with more light for your illustration work and closer to the

01:09:03hospital and with a room that could be an office. I am not proposing anything bigger than that right

01:09:08now. I am just saying I would like to live with you. Not tomorrow. In August. I said, Thea. She

01:09:14said,

01:09:15I am saying it plainly so you do not have to guess. I said, yes. She said, think about it.

01:09:21I said,

01:09:22I have been thinking about it. She said, okay. She came around the table. She stood behind my chair.

01:09:28She put her hand on my shoulder. She said, welcome home. I said, I have been home since

01:09:33November. She said, I know. I am saying it anyway. I put my hand on top of hers. Sometimes in

01:09:40the

01:09:40months after that, I would think about the hospital. About the fluorescent lights and the specific

01:09:45chemical smell and the moment I had opened my eyes and seen her face over my chart. I would think

01:09:51about how close I had come two years earlier to never seeing her again. About the sedan that ran the

01:09:57red light on Dearborn. About the ambulance that took me to the closest hospital instead of the

01:10:01next closest. About Marisol who had read the room and stayed out of it. About the 12 minutes at 11

01:10:07in the evening when Thea had stood in the doorway of my hospital room and decided to tell me the

01:10:11truth.

01:10:11I would think about the coins in the coffee shop. I would think about how the good things roll away,

01:10:16sometimes, and how sometimes they come back. But only when both of the people involved have done the

01:10:21work of becoming people, the good things can find their way back to. I did not run again.

01:10:27The pattern, as it turned out, was not a thing that lived in me permanently. It was a thing I

01:10:31had

01:10:31been doing. I stopped doing it. The stopping was a decision and then the decision became a habit

01:10:36and then the habit became the shape of a life. Thea and I live together now, in an apartment in

01:10:42Andersonville, three blocks from the Danish restaurant, where we had dinner on the second

01:10:46Saturday of what became the rest of our life. She is the chief of her service at the hospital.

01:10:51She has a group of residents she mentors with the particular focused investment that she once

01:10:55brought to mentoring me through recovery. I do illustration work from the office in the

01:10:59apartment. The office has a window that faces east. The light in the morning is very good.

01:11:04My ribs healed on their own schedule. I have a small scar on my left wrist from the sprain that

01:11:09never quite went away. Thea touches it sometimes, in the way a person touches the small evidence of

01:11:14an event that changed everything. She does not talk about it much. I do not need her to.

01:11:19On the second anniversary of the morning, I had woken up in the hospital. Thea came home with a

01:11:24small paper bag from a coffee shop and inside the bag was a handful of coins, Danish coins,

01:11:30the ones she had kept in a jar in her apartment for two years and she poured them on the

01:11:33kitchen

01:11:34table between us without saying anything. And I picked them up one by one and put them back in

01:11:38the bag and gave the bag back to her. And we both understood what we were saying without either of

01:11:43us having to say it. The good things roll away. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes,

01:11:48if you are very lucky and very honest and willing to do the work, they come back and they stay.

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