Page 33 of Parallel

He exhales. “If it were to stop growing…there are people who are okay. They just sit with it, and we monitor and hope for the best.”

He’s doing what all doctors do, pretending my one wispy tendril of hope is something far more solid and stable than it is. Except I don’t want the best-case scenario. I want the likely one. “But mine is growing. So how long if it continues at the current rate?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Let’s hold off on making predictions just yet. I’ve got a call in to the best oncologist in the city. He’s on vacation but I should hear back by Monday.” I just look at him, waiting, and he relents. “If it keeps growing at the current rate, you might have a few years.”

A few years, and he’s probably still giving me a best-case scenario. It’s just as likely to mean one year.

My whole life, I wanted two things—to become an architect and to become a mother, and now neither of them will happen. I brush at the tears streaming down my face. It takes me a minute or two before I get it under control.

“You don’t have to stay,” I tell him once I’ve pulled myself together. “I’m sure you have things to do.”

He squeezes my hand. “I’m not leaving unless you force me to.”

We are silent for a moment. The truth is, no matter how badly I don’t want to be dreaming about him, don’t want to persuade myself I feel something for him…there is no one else in the world I want here in his place.

I glance out the window, at the dwindling light, and brace myself as I ask a question I’ve avoided all this time. “You don’t have to be home to someone?”

“I made arrangements.”

Ouch. “You’re married?”

His eyes shift away. “No, but I have a girlfriend, Meg. She’s a pulmonologist here, actually. I told her I was working late.”

My heart sinks. He’s got a girlfriend and she’s a doctor too. It leaves an extremely bitter taste in my mouth, jealousy and also panic. In a few years I’ll be gone and she’ll still be here with him. “You should go home to her then,” I tell him, the words grating in my throat on the way out. “I’ll be fine.”

“Quinn,” he says quietly, staring between clasped hands at the floor, “I want to stay.”

I hear need in his voice, and torment, and the sound of it opens this Pandora’s box inside me. My eyes close. I want to soothe his torment and my own. I want to forget the entire world exists aside from him. But the world does exist, and in it I’ve made certain promises.

“I’ll have to invite both of you to the wedding,” I reply. “Two doctors would come in handy, given the odds the bride is going to pass out.”

My forced cheerfulness fools no one. “Maybe—” he starts. “Never mind.”

“No, come on. You started, so finish it.”

His lashes lower, shuttering his expression. “Maybe you should postpone it,” he says. “The stress of a wedding…I’m not sure it’s what you need right now.”

“People have already bought plane tickets. We’d lose all our deposits.”

“You’re not even sure you want to marry the guy,” Nick says. His hands are clenched so tightly on the top railing of my bed that they are nearly bloodless. “A few lost deposits should be the least of your concerns.”

I stiffen. “I never said I didn’t want to marry him.”

“You didn’t have to say it,” he replies, glaring at me. “I told you he couldn’t get here until tomorrow and you didn’t even blink. And every time you’ve mentioned him, it’s like you’re talking about a work friend, or a cousin. You don’t feel the way you should about him.”

“Oh, but you do with Meg?” I lash out and regret the words immediately. I don’t sound like a patient, or even a friend—I sound like a very, very jealous girlfriend.

“No,” he says, his eyes nearly translucent in the dim room. “Because if I felt the right way about her, I probably wouldn’t be in here with you.”

Relief washes over me, sweeps beneath me and raises me high. I allow myself to float there, on its surface. It will all come to nothing, but just for this one night, I’m going to pretend he is mine.

17

NICK

I told the nursing staff I was staying late because Quinn was an old friend from college. This would probably have aroused less suspicion if she was a slightly less attractive old friend from college.

I order in dinner from an Italian place down on MacArthur. As I pull the containers from the bag, I realize this feels a bit like a first date, and a bit like a night with someone I’ve known all my life. Her eyes are smokier than normal, her face flushed. If this was even a first date I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off her.