I Hate That I Still Want Her

Chapter5

Chapter 5: The Waiting Room

The hospital corridor smelled exactly the way Ethan remembered hospital corridors smelling, antiseptic and fluorescent and something underneath that he had never been able to name, something that felt like fear given a scent. He had not been inside a hospital since his father's final week, four years ago, and his body seemed to remember that fact independently of his mind, his hands trembling slightly as he sat in a plastic chair outside a curtained bay, still wearing the same suit he had worn to Amelia's office that morning, now creased and damp with a cold sweat he could not seem to shake.

He kept replaying the sound she had made when her knees gave out, a small, startled exhale, almost apologetic, as though even collapsing felt to her like an imposition on someone else's day. He kept seeing the exact moment her eyes had lost focus, the way her hand had still been reaching weakly for the edge of the desk even as the rest of her body stopped listening to her. He had held dying men before, had sat with his own father through the last brutal week of his illness, and some old, unwelcome instinct in his chest had recognized the shape of that particular fear the moment it happened, the specific, wordless terror of watching a body fail in real time.

Sophie arrived eleven minutes after his call, half running down the corridor with her coat still half on, and the look on her face when she saw him sitting there, gray and shaking, told him she had already guessed the worst before he said a word.

She collapsed at the office, he said, standing as she reached him. I caught her before she hit the floor. They took her back almost immediately, something about her oxygen levels and her heart rate, I don't fully understand the terms they were using, Sophie, they wouldn't tell me anything because I'm not family.

Sophie's face crumpled for exactly one second before she visibly forced it back into something functional, the same practiced composure Ethan now recognized as a skill she had been forced to develop far too young. Okay, she said, mostly to herself. Okay. This has happened before. It's happened twice before, both times right before a bad scan result, her body sort of warns her, I guess, before the scans confirm it. It doesn't always mean the worst. It doesn't always mean the worst, Ethan.

She said it a second time like she was trying to convince herself as much as him, and Ethan understood, watching her, that Sophie Cross had spent five years becoming an expert in the particular art of hoping carefully, hoping in small, defensible increments that would not shatter her completely if the worst arrived anyway. He remembered, with a fresh stab of guilt, all the family dinners he had missed, all the birthdays and small crises he had known nothing about because he had spent five years refusing to let anyone mention the Cross name in his presence. Sophie had grown up in the space of that silence, had aged years in a handful of seasons while he was busy nursing a wound that, it turned out, had never been what he thought it was.

I should have been here, he said quietly, more to himself than to her. For all of it. The diagnosis, the treatments, whatever came after. I should have been here and instead I spent five years being angry at the wrong version of what happened.

You couldn't have known, Sophie said, though her voice lacked real conviction, and even as she said it he could see her deciding, visibly, not to let him off that easily. Though if I am honest, Ethan, some small, petty part of me has spent five years wishing you had fought harder to find out the truth instead of just accepting the worst possible version of my sister and walking away from it. I know that's not entirely fair. I know what she told you was designed to be believed. But you loved her. I always thought love was supposed to ask more questions than that.

The accusation landed exactly where she intended it to land, and Ethan did not defend himself against it, because some part of him had been asking the same question all night, turning it over in the dark hours at his dining table between reading contract clauses and hating a friend he had trusted for a decade. He did not answer her. There was nothing to say that would not sound like an excuse, and he had promised himself, somewhere around four in the morning, that he was done making excuses where Amelia was concerned.

A doctor emerged from behind the curtain twenty minutes later, a composed woman in her forties with kind, tired eyes and a manner that suggested she had delivered every possible version of news a human being could receive and had learned, somewhere along the way, exactly how to do it without flinching. Sophie stood immediately.

Dr. Chen, she said. Please.

Dr. Naomi Chen glanced briefly at Ethan, a question in her eyes that Sophie answered before he could. He's family, Sophie said firmly, and something in Ethan's chest cracked open at the ease with which she said it, at the years of unspoken forgiveness contained in that single, generous lie. Please, just tell us.

She's stable, Dr. Chen said, and Ethan felt his knees nearly give out with relief before her next sentence arrived to complicate it. Her collapse was consistent with severe anemia and exhaustion, likely brought on by stress and a disrupted sleep pattern over these past few weeks, combined with lower than ideal nutrition. It is not, in itself, evidence of recurrence. But given her history, and given that her routine scan was already scheduled for tomorrow, I would like to move it up. We can do it this evening while she is already admitted.

Sophie exhaled shakily. Can we see her.

She is asking for her sister, Dr. Chen said, and then, after a small, deliberate pause that suggested she had made a judgment call of her own, added, and she mentioned a name I did not recognize. Ethan. She said if an Ethan is here, and if he wants to, he can come in as well.

Sophie went first, disappearing behind the curtain for a long, quiet stretch of minutes while Ethan sat frozen in the corridor, replaying that single sentence, if he wants to, as though there had ever been any universe in which he did not want to. When Sophie finally emerged, her eyes were red but her expression had softened into something that looked almost like permission.

She wants to talk to you, Sophie said. Alone. Ethan, whatever she says in there, please, just listen. Do not fight her on it. Not today.

He nodded, though he had no idea what he was agreeing to, and pushed through the curtain into a small, dim bay where Amelia lay propped against thin pillows, an IV taped into the back of one pale hand, a monitor beeping steadily beside her in a rhythm that felt, absurdly, like the only honest thing in the entire building. She looked smaller in the hospital gown than she had looked in her tailored office clothes that morning, smaller and younger, and for one disorienting moment Ethan saw, superimposed over the guarded, formidable woman in front of him, the nineteen year old girl who used to fall asleep on his shoulder during long car rides, utterly unafraid of the future.

Hey, he said softly, easing into the chair beside her bed.

Hey, she said back, and her voice was rough, exhausted, stripped of every ounce of the armor she had worn in her office that morning. I am sorry you had to see that.

Do not apologize to me. Not for this. Not ever for this.

She was quiet for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, one hand absently tracing the tape holding her IV in place. I have thought about this conversation for five years, she said finally. I used to lie awake and script it, what I would say if you ever found out the truth, how I would explain it so you would not hate me for the years I stole from both of us. And now here we are, and I cannot remember a single word of any of it.

Then do not script anything, he said. Just tell me the truth. All of it. I do not need it perfect, Amelia. I just need it real.

She turned her head to look at him, eyes glassy in the dim light, and something in her expression shifted, some final wall coming down after five years of holding it steady through sheer force of will. I was so scared, she said, voice breaking. Not of dying, exactly. I was scared of what dying would do to you. I watched my mother disappear taking care of my father, watched her stop being a person and start being only a caretaker, watched her grieve him for two years before he even died, and I thought, I cannot do that to Ethan. I cannot let him spend his twenties in waiting rooms hoping I survive. I would rather he hate me and live than love me and waste his life on a maybe.

You did not get to decide that for me, he said, but gently now, all the anger from that morning drained out of him by the sight of her in that bed. That was my life too, Amelia. You did not just take your future away from me. You took mine away from myself.

I know, she whispered. I know that now. I did not know it then. I was nineteen and terrified and I thought I was being brave.

You were being brave, he said. You were just also being wrong. Both things can be true.

A faint, watery laugh escaped her, quickly swallowed by a wince as the movement pulled at the IV line. For a moment neither of them said anything, the monitor beeping steadily between them, and Ethan reached out, slowly, giving her every opportunity to pull away, and closed his hand gently around hers.

She did not pull away.

Dr. Chen is moving my scan up to tonight, Amelia said eventually, staring at their joined hands rather than his face. I will know something by morning. Maybe sooner.

I am not going anywhere, he said.

You say that now.

I mean it now, and I will mean it tomorrow, and I will mean it whatever the scan says, he said, tightening his hand around hers. I already lost five years I cannot get back, Amelia. I am not losing whatever time is left by walking away again.

She closed her eyes, a single tear sliding sideways into the pillow, and for a long moment the only sound in the small curtained bay was the steady, mechanical rhythm of the monitor counting out her heartbeat like a metronome neither of them could afford to trust completely.

The curtain rustled. A nurse stepped partway through, apologetic, professional. Ms. Cross, we are ready to take you down for imaging.

Amelia's hand tightened around his, sudden and fierce, and when she looked at him this time there was no armor left at all, just plain, unguarded fear. Ethan, she said. If it is bad. If tonight's scan shows what I have spent two years terrified it would show.

Do not, he started.

Let me finish, she said, and something in her voice, low and urgent, made the small hairs on the back of his neck rise. There is something else you need to know first, something I never told Sophie, something I have never told anyone, and if I do not say it now I do not know if I will have the courage to say it after.

The nurse waited politely by the curtain. Ethan leaned closer, heart hammering, and Amelia's fingers dug into his hand hard enough to bruise as she whispered, barely audible over the monitor's steady beep, five words that stopped his entire understanding of the last five years dead i

n its tracks.

Marcus knew before I did.