Chapter 10 - The House Where Nobody Was Waiting
Emily was allowed to leave the hospital on a carefully planned outpatient schedule while her doctors prepared the next stage of treatment.
She needed frequent visits.
Her infection risk remained a concern.
Everyone made sure she understood the instructions.
But nobody seemed prepared for what happened when she arrived at her apartment.
The building stood on a quiet street behind a gas station.
It was smaller than I expected.
Three floors.
Faded yellow siding.
A narrow parking lot with weeds growing through the cracks.
I carried her overnight bag up the stairs while Linda helped her walk.
Emily insisted she was fine.
But by the second flight, she had to stop.
I tried not to look alarmed.
“Want a break?”
She nodded.
We stood beside a window overlooking the parking lot.
I remembered when we used to hike together.
Not serious hiking.
Just easy trails outside the city.
Emily always walked ahead and complained that I took too many pictures.
Now a flight of stairs had left her breathless.
At the apartment door, she searched for her keys.
Her hand shook.
I offered to hold the bag.
She handed it over.
Then she unlocked the door.
The apartment was neat.
Painfully neat.
A gray couch.
A small table.
A lamp beside the window.
A bookshelf filled with novels arranged by color.
And on the refrigerator, held in place by a magnet shaped like a sunflower, was a photograph from our wedding.
I stopped.
Emily noticed.
“Oh.”
She reached toward the picture.
“You don't have to—”
“No,” I said quickly.
“Please.”
She lowered her hand.
I stared at the photograph.
We were standing beneath a wooden arch.
Emily was laughing.
My tie was crooked.
Her hair was loose around her shoulders.
We looked so young.
So certain.
I wondered when certainty had become something we used against each other.
Linda began unpacking groceries.
I carried Emily's bag into the bedroom.
There was a small dresser beside the bed.
A stack of books.
Medication bottles arranged carefully on a tray.
And a framed photograph of a little pink blanket.
Grace.
I stood there longer than I intended.
Emily appeared in the doorway.
“I didn't know where else to put it.”
I turned.
“You don't have to explain.”
She leaned against the doorframe.
“This place was supposed to be temporary.”
I looked around.
“Was it?”
She nodded.
“I thought I'd find something bigger after I got settled.”
Then she laughed softly.
“Funny.”
“What is?”
“Now I'm just trying to stay out of the hospital long enough to remember where I put the coffee filters.”
I stepped closer.
“Emily.”
She looked up.
“Do you want help?”
“With what?”
“Not everything.”
I glanced around.
“Just today.”
She considered that.
Then nodded.
“Could you fix the bathroom light?”
I smiled.
“That's it?”
“It flickers.”
“I can do that.”
“And the cabinet door.”
“Anything else?”
She looked at me.
“Don't start making this your home.”
The smile disappeared from my face.
I nodded.
“Okay.”
She swallowed.
“I need somewhere that still belongs to me.”
“I understand.”
And this time, I did.
For the next month, I visited when she invited me.
Sometimes I brought groceries.
Sometimes I drove her to appointments.
Sometimes I spent twenty minutes replacing a hinge and left before dinner.
It wasn't romantic.
There were no dramatic declarations.
But something unfamiliar began growing between us.
Trust.
Not the old kind.
Not the trust of two people who assumed they would always forgive each other.
Something smaller.
More deliberate.
One Tuesday afternoon, I arrived to find Emily sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by unopened mail.
I crouched beside her.
“What happened?”
She looked embarrassed.
“Nothing.”
I waited.
She picked up a letter.
“Insurance.”
My stomach tightened.
“What about it?”
“A claim needs more information.”
“Can the hospital social worker help?”
“I already called.”
She rubbed her forehead.
“I'm just tired.”
I sat beside her.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then I asked, “Do you want help sorting it?”
She nodded.
We spent the next hour organizing letters into piles.
Medical.
Insurance.
Utilities.
Other.
One envelope carried the letterhead of a fertility clinic.
Emily picked it up quickly.
But not before I saw the name.
I looked at her.
“Why are they writing to you?”
She stared at the envelope.
“Old records.”
“From our treatments?”
She nodded.
I remembered the frozen embryos we had once discussed.
The consultations.
The appointments.
The decisions we eventually stopped making.
I had assumed that everything was closed when our marriage ended.
Emily held the envelope tightly.
“There's something I need to tell you.”
I waited.
She looked toward the window.
“When we separated, I contacted the clinic.”
I felt my pulse quicken.
“Why?”
“To ask about the embryos.”
I stared at her.
“Emily…”
“Nothing happened,” she said quickly.
“No transfer.”
“No treatment.”
“After my diagnosis, that wasn't even a possibility.”
She looked down.
“I just wanted to know what choices were still there.”
I nodded slowly.
“And?”
Her eyes filled.
“There are two embryos still in storage.”
The room became very quiet.
Two embryos.
Two possibilities.
Two pieces of a future we'd abandoned without ever deciding what they meant.
Emily looked at me.
“I don't want to make any decisions about them while I'm sick.”
I nodded.
“Then we won't.”
She seemed relieved.
But when I helped her gather the mail, she stopped me.
“Michael?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I tell you something terrible?”
I looked up.
She was crying now.
“Sometimes I think about those embryos more than I think about whether I'll survive.”
I took her hand.
She shook her head.
“I know that's awful.”
“No.”
“It feels selfish.”
“Emily.”
She met my eyes.
“It's grief.”
She cried harder.
And I held her hand until the shaking stopped.
That evening, after I returned home, I received a call from my boss.
His voice was strained.
“Michael, we need to talk about your attendance.”
I stood in my dark kitchen.
And for the first time in months, I realized that trying to become a different man would require more than good intentions.
It would require choices.
May you like
Some of them painful.
And I couldn't expect Emily to make those choices for me.
