Page 97 of Maybe in Another Life

“Wow,” I tell her. “Your friend sounds nuts.”

“Yours, too,” she says.

“Think they’ll be OK?” I ask her.

“I know I’m supposed to say yes, but the truth is, I think they’re doomed.”

The two of us start laughing. It’s probably much, much funnier to us than it would seem to anyone else. But the way she says we’re doomed makes it clear just hownotdoomed we are. And that feels like something to let loose and laugh about.

After eleven days in this hospital, I’m leaving today. I’m going to end up right back here in forty-eight hours, albeit in the outpatient center. I’ll be seeing Ted, the earnest physical therapist, several times a week for the foreseeable future.

Dr. Winters has been prepping me for this. She has gone over all the details with me, and I know them backward and forward.

Gabby is here helping me pack up my things. I’ve got enough on my plate just trying to get to the bathroom on my own. But I’m making my way there slowly. I want to brush my teeth.

I use my walker to get close enough to the sink.

I stand in front of the mirror, and I truly see myself for the first time in almost two weeks. I have a faint bruise on the left side of my face, near my temple. I’m sure it was a doozy when I got here, but now it’s not too bad. I look pale, certainly. But if I had to guess, I’d say that’s as much from being inside the same building day after day as it is from any health concerns. My hair is a mess. I haven’t taken a proper shower in what feels like forever.

I’m looking forward to sleeping in a real bed and bathing myself, maybe blow-drying my hair. Apparently, preparations have to be made to make that work, too. Mark installed a seat in the shower. Oh, to clean myself unaided! These are the things that dreams are made of.

Now that I’m leaving the hospital, I am starting to realize just how much this has set me back. Weeks ago, I would have guessed that by now I’d at least have gone out and bought a car or started looking for a job. Instead, I’m not where I started but even further behind.

But I also know that I’ve come a long way in my recovery and as a person. I’ve faced things I might not have faced otherwise. And as I stare at myself in the mirror for the first time since I got here, I find myself ready to face the ugliest of truths: it might, in fact, be a merciful act of fate that I stand here, unencumbered by a budding life inside me.

I am not ready to be a mother.

I am nowhere near it.

I slowly brush my own teeth. They feel clean and slick when I am done.

“Why is there always pudding in your room?” Gabby asks me. I turn myself around in slow spurts of energy.

She has a chocolate pudding cup in her hand. I don’t know when it got here. But I know it was Henry.

He left me pudding at some point in the past day. He left me chocolate pudding. Doesn’t thatmeansomething?

Gabby is over the pudding. She has moved on to other things. “Dr. Winters should be here soon to check you out,” she says. “And I read all the documents. I’ve even been doing research on physical therapy rehabilitation—”

You don’t just leave pudding for someone you don’t care about.

“Can you get me the wheelchair?” I ask her.

“Oh,” she says. “Sure. I thought you were going to try to use the walker until it was time to go.”

“I’m going to find Henry,” I tell her.

“The night nurse?”

“He started working days on another floor. I’m gonna find him. I’m going to ask him out on a date.”

“Is that a good idea?” she says.

“He left me pudding,” I say. That is my only answer. She waits, hoping I have more, but I don’t. That’s all I’ve got.He left me pudding.

“Should I come with you?” she asks me once she realizes I’m not going to change my mind.

I shake my head. “I want to do this on my own.”

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