Page 47 of The Best Bad Decision

Hours pass by before she picks up the call. It’s only been a handful of seconds, but I’ve aged another few decades. My lungs have hardened. She whispers my name and my breath comes out in a wheeze. Suddenly, my phone buzzes again and lights up with a video request as her face fills my screen. A balm for my desperate soul.

“I needed to see you,” she says through tears. Her eyes are red and swollen, her voice thick. Her curls are stretched out like she’s had her hands in her hair for hours. But she’s still the most fucking beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. “I need to know you’re safe. Tell me you’re safe, Cam. Tell me you’re okay.”

My beautiful girl, with her strong will and wild heart, looksbroken.

“Please,” she whispers.

“I’m okay,” I choke out. “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my flight.”

“Oh, thankGod.” She breaks down. Heavy sobs wrack her slight frame and she curls into herself, wrapping her arms around her knees as she cries. Her sobs make unintelligible sounds, each gasp and cry a knife to my gut.

My throat is raw from retching and sadness, it aches with the promise of the tears prickling at my eyes; my whole body is begging to sweep Amie into my arms and hold her. Just hold her. I need to be close to her. For once, maybe the first time in the four years since we met, I don’t even want her naked. I just want her close. I want to hold her close, I want to know she’s safe because she’s with me, in my arms. I want to protect her. Because if she’s not with me, my body can’t remember how to breathe.

“I’m okay, baby,” I mumble. “You’re okay. We’re okay.”

“I’ve never been so scared in my life,” she whispers. Her cries slow to whimpers and then to sniffles, and for a little while, we just sit on the line, listening to each other breathing. I don’t know how much time passes. But if I can hear her breathing, I know she’s safe. And then I can breathe, too.

“I know, honey. I’m okay. We’re okay.”

I don’t know what else to say. There’s nothing left. I hurt all over. My head is pounding, every breath another hammer blow to my skull. My friends are gone. Something went wrong. It could’ve been me. I miss my daughter. I miss Amie. I hate being so far away all the time.

Travelling is part of my job. It’s my whole job, really. But while others in my line of work get to go home to their families, I go home to an empty studio apartment while my family—my heart—lives a few thousand miles away, on the other side of an ocean.

“We’re okay,” she repeats, a barely-there whisper I have to strain my ears to hear. “We’re gonna be okay.”

twenty-seven

Cam

Not even a weekafter the crash that claimed the lives of twelve of my friends, I call Amie from a hotel room in Frankfurt. It’s been tough to step into the flight deck this week. That day—that crash—served as a sobering reminder of my mortality, of the reality of what happens in my job when things go wrong. Amie and I made the decision not to say anything about the accident around Maisy. She doesn’t need to know the danger that surrounds our jobs every time we leave for work, and she certainly doesn’t need to be exposed to any freshly-surfaced anxieties.

But things between me and Amie have been different since then, too. Easier, almost. It’s like the crash brought us closer, in a morbid kind of way. Like the prospect of losing each other gave some kind of validity to our relationship, completely independent of Maisy. It’s like the way I feel about her screams louder in my head now.

Germany is one hour ahead of London, so for the first time since we were last in the same place, it’s just as dark outside for me as it is for my girls. When she answers, I’m greeted with dark circles under eyes that are devoid of their usual sparkle, and she looks like she’s in bed, propped up and surrounded by throw pillows with Maisy, Roger and Daddy Bear bundled up and sleeping on her chest.

“Hey, Amie, what’s going on?”

“Mae’s sick,” she sighs, swiping a finger under her eye. “She has a fever and she’s been saying her ears hurt. And she threw up last night, too.”

“Oh, shit,” I say, rubbing a hand over my face. “Do you need me to come to London? I’m already in Europe, I can call out and get a flight over—”

“No, don’t be silly,” she says tiredly, shaking her head. “You’re working, she’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”

“I mean it, Amie,” I say. “I want to take care of you. Both of you.”

“I know,” she concedes softly. “I know. And you do. But kids get sick sometimes. Actually, they get sick a lot. It happens. I’m already off work this week anyway.”

“Do you think she has stomach flu or something? Do you want me to order some food or medicine for you?”

“No.” She smiles—laughs, even—although it’s wry and humourless. It’s not the Amie smile I’ve come to know, the one I’ve been mastering the art of creating. I don’t know if I like this smile.

“No, I don’t think it’s anything like that. Like I said, kids get sick. And I think she threw up… she cried herself to sleep after we hung up last night. She cried so hard she couldn’t breathe and she made herself sick. God, she misses you so much, Cam.”

My stomach twists. Not for the first time, I think it might fall out of my ass.

NowIcan’t breathe.

I’ve been hit in the balls with a poorly-thrown football and even that didn’t hurt as much as hearing that my little girl misses me so muchshe cried until she threw up. I want to yell or throw something, bury my face in a pillow and scream, but I can’t.

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