I smiled. Then I looked at the café door.
“Maybe I should’ve told her,” I said quietly. “Before. On the phone. Weeks ago.”
“Maybe,” Sal agreed. “Probably. But you can’t change that sitting out here on the sidewalk.”
“What if she runs?”
Sal looked at me for a long moment.
“Then at least you’ll know,” he said. “But if you run first, son, you’ll spend years wondering. You’ll lie awake at night thinking what if. Trust me. What if is a lot heavier than no.”
I took a long, deep breath.
“You’re pretty wise,” I said. “For a waiter.”
“Don’t tell my wife,” Sal said, standing up. “She thinks I’m an idiot.”
He picked up his tray. He walked over to the café door and held it open.
He bowed a little, like a butler in an old movie.
“After you, Romeo.”
I rolled inside.
I’d planned to text her first. From outside. Before she got there.
But she was already there.
She was sitting at a table by the window. She’d gotten there early too.
I knew it was her right away. I’d seen pictures. Dark curly hair pulled back in a clip. Big brown eyes. A light blue sweater. A cup of tea in front of her. She was reading the menu.
She looked up when the door opened.
She saw me, and she smiled.
Then her eyes moved down.
She saw the chair.
And then she looked back up at my face. Really looked at it.
The smile vanished from her face.
All the color drained out of it. All at once. Like somebody had pulled a plug.
She stood up so fast her chair scraped across the floor. Her tea sloshed over the side of the cup.
“No,” she said. “Oh God. Oh my God. It can’t be you.”
“Hannah,” I said. “Please. I should’ve told you. I know I should’ve told you, I’m so sorry—”
She put her hand over her mouth.
She was shaking. I could see it from across the room. Her whole body was shaking.
She stared at me for one more second.
Then she grabbed her bag off the back of her chair.
And she ran.
She ran right past me. Out the door. Past Sal, who was standing on the sidewalk with his tray, staring.
I turned my chair around in the doorway and watched her go. Running down the sidewalk. Not looking back. Her curly hair bouncing. Her bag banging against her hip.
She turned the corner, and she was gone.
I sat there in the doorway of Pemberton’s Café with a bunch of grocery-store tulips in my lap.
I felt like I’d shown up to my own funeral.
Sal came over slowly. He put one hand on my shoulder.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
After a while, he said, “You want a lemon tart, son? On the house.”
“No,” I said. “Thanks, Sal.”
“You want a coffee?”
“No.”
“You want me to go find her and yell at her?”
I almost laughed.
“No,” I said. “She has every right.”
“Nobody has the right to do that,” Sal said firmly.
I handed him the tulips.
“Give these to your wife,” I said. “Tell her they’re from an idiot.”
He looked down at the tulips. Then at me.
“She’ll like that,” he said quietly.
I thought I knew why she’d run.
I’d seen that look before. On Rachel’s face, in that hospital room.
I can’t do this.
I didn’t know a damn thing.
That night, I sat on my couch in the dark and texted her.
I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you. You deserved to know. I should have told you a long time ago. I was scared. That’s not an excuse. I’m sorry.
She didn’t answer.
I watched the screen for an hour. The message said Delivered. Then, at around ten o’clock, it said Read.
Still no answer.
I thought that was it.
I thought that was the end.
The next morning, I tried again.
Hannah, please. You don’t have to talk to me. You don’t have to see me again. Just tell me you’re okay.
Nothing.
I made coffee. I didn’t drink it.
I sat at my kitchen table and stared at the wall.
And I kept hearing her voice. Over and over. In my head.
It can’t be you.
That was the thing.
It kept bothering me. Like a splinter.
She didn’t say Oh my God, you’re in a wheelchair. She didn’t say You didn’t tell me. She didn’t say I can’t do this.
She said It can’t be you.
Like she recognized me.
Like she’d seen me before.
And I remembered the phone call. The first one.
You sound familiar. Like I’ve heard your voice somewhere before.
I picked up my phone.
I scrolled through my contacts. All the way down. Past people I hadn’t talked to in years.
I stopped on a name I hadn’t touched in three years.
Rachel.
I stared at it for a long time.
Then I texted her.
Rachel. It’s Matt. I need to ask you something.
She answered within two minutes.
Matt? Oh my God. Is everything okay? Are you okay?
I’m fine, I wrote. Do you remember the hospital? After my accident?
Of course I do.
I opened my photos. I found a picture Hannah had sent me a few weeks earlier. Her, in her scrubs, standing in a hospital break room, holding up a burnt muffin with a horrified expression. Exhibit A, she’d captioned it.
I sent it to Rachel.
Have you ever seen this woman before?
The three little dots appeared. Then disappeared.
They appeared again. Then disappeared.
Three times.
Then:
Yes. I remember her.
My heart started pounding.
Where from?
The hospital. That night. The night of your accident.
Are you sure?
Pretty sure. I remember her face. She was there. In your room.
Do you know her name?
No. She was a nurse, I think. Why? What’s going on?
So I told her. Not everything. Just enough. That Hannah and I had met online. That we’d been talking for four months. That she’d seen me at a café yesterday and run out the door.
Rachel didn’t answer for a long time.
Then:
Matt. Can I tell you something?
What?
I was awful to you.
I stared at the screen.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.
The dots appeared again.
You saved my life. You pushed me out of the way of a car. And I walked away from you when you needed me most. Four days later. I walked away.
Yeah, I wrote. You did.
I’m sorry. I was so scared. I was twenty-nine and I’d never been scared like that and I didn’t know what to do and I ran.
I know, I wrote.
And I did know. I think I always knew.
Maybe we could get coffee sometime? she wrote. Just to talk? I’d really like to see you.
I almost laughed.
Three years. Three years of nothing. Not one text. Not one call. Not on my birthday. Not on the anniversary of the accident. Nothing.
And she picked today to deliver her apology.
Rachel, I wrote. I don’t hate you. I mean that. But that part of my life is over.
She didn’t answer for a long time.
Then: Okay. I understand. I’m glad you’re okay, Matt. I really am.
Rachel had apparently been saving that apology for three years.
She picked a hell of a day to deliver it.
But she’d given me one useful thing.
Hannah and I had crossed paths before.
On the worst night of my life.
I picked up my phone again.
I called St. Joseph’s. The hospital where they’d taken me after the accident. Where I’d spent three weeks before they transferred me to rehab.
“St. Joseph’s, how can I direct your call?”
“Could you connect me with the fourth floor? Neuro step-down unit. I’m looking for Nancy Kowalczyk. She’s a charge nurse.”
“One moment, please.”
Hold music. Something with violins.
Then a voice. A voice I’d know anywhere.
“This is Nancy.”
Nancy had been my nurse for most of my time at St. Joseph’s.
She was in her fifties. Short gray hair. Reading glasses on a beaded chain around her neck. She’d been a nurse for thirty years and she had absolutely zero patience for nonsense. The other nurses were a little bit afraid of her.
She’d been the one who sat with me the night after Rachel broke up with me. The night I couldn’t stop staring at the ceiling.
She didn’t say anything that night. She just sat in the chair by my bed and did a crossword puzzle until I fell asleep. Every time she got stuck on a clue, she’d read it out loud to me.
Seven letters. Opposite of surrender.
Persist, I’d said.
She’d smiled and written it in.
“Nancy,” I said. “It’s Matt. Matt Kowalski. From three years ago. The car accident.”
“Matt?” Her voice went up an octave. “Matt Kowalski? Is everything okay, honey?”
“Everything’s fine. I just…” I took a breath. “I need to ask you something. In person. If that’s okay.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“Sounds serious,” she said.
“It is.”
“Come by this afternoon,” she said. “Four o’clock. I’m on till seven. I’ll meet you in the cafeteria.”
“I’ll be there.”
I got there at 3:45.
The hospital smelled exactly the same. Antiseptic and cafeteria coffee and something else, something I couldn’t name. It made my stomach turn over. I hadn’t been back since the day they transferred me to rehab.
I rolled through the lobby. Past the information desk. Past the gift shop with the balloons in the window. GET WELL SOON. The same balloons Rachel had brought me.
Nancy was waiting in the cafeteria.
She saw me coming and stood up. She came across the room and wrapped her arms around me before I’d even stopped rolling.
“Look at you!” she said, pulling back. She held my face in both hands. “You look so much better! You look healthy! You put on weight!”
“Thanks, Nancy. I’ve been working on it.”
“Still cooking?”
“Always.”
“Good.” She sat back down. “I knew you would. You used to talk about your grandmother’s pierogi in your sleep.”
I blinked. “I did?”
“Every night for a week. Pierogi and cabbage rolls. You’d wake up starving.”
We talked for a few minutes. About rehab. About my apartment. About Dolores, who Nancy apparently knew, and who apparently terrified everybody.
“She made me cry twice,” I said.
“Only twice? She must have liked you.”
Then I took a breath.
“Nancy,” I said. “I need to ask you something.”
I took out my phone. I pulled up the picture. Hannah, in her scrubs, holding up the burnt muffin.
I turned the phone around and held it out.
“Do you remember her?”
Nancy put on her reading glasses. She squinted at the screen.
Her face softened right away.
“Oh,” she said. “Hannah.”
“You know her?”
“Of course I know her. She worked on my floor for almost two years.” She smiled a little. “She’s a good nurse. One of the best I ever trained. Terrible cook, though. She brought cookies for the staff Christmas party once, and we had to open a window.”
“Can you tell me anything about her?”
