Page 121 of After the Snap

I want him to tell me what to do so badly that it crowds the back of my throat. I already don’t know whether I should take the test again, but somehow that feels like the easier question. The harder one is whether wanting this means I’m supposed to keep going until I get there, or if there’s some point where refusing to stop becomes its own kind of stupidity. Instead, I pull my hand away and wrap it around my mug again.

“I don’t know. Part of me wants to register again, but when I think about studying again, I feel sick. And that’s what makes this so fucking hard. I can still picture being a doctor.”

If the score had taken the wanting with it, at least I would know what it meant. I could grieve the future I thought I was going to have instead of still being able to see it every time I close my eyes.

“But I don’t know if I can do this again.”

Dad reaches across the table and covers my hand with his. “Then you don’t have to decide today.”

I should take his words as permission to breathe, but all I hear is today. Eventually, I still have to choose. He doesn’t tell me three attempts is enough or remind me how hard I’ve worked or promise that the fourth time will be different. I want him to because if Dad tells me to try again, then trying again becomes the next thing. If he tells me I’ve done enough, maybe I can stop without wondering whether I gave up too soon.

“Do you remember Mom’s first hospital stay?”

I was young enough that most of it comes back in pieces, but I remember how tightly she held my hand while everyone gave us numbers and possibilities that didn’t tell us whether she was going to live or die. Then one of her doctors pulled a chair beside the bed and told her what they knew, what they didn’t, and what they were going to do next. He talked to her instead of around her, and for the first time since we got there, Mom looked less afraid.

“I told you I wanted to be like him. I haven’t stopped wanting it.” My throat tightens around the admission. “It would be so much easier if I did.”

Dad squeezes my hand, and I wait. Some part of me still expects him to give me an answer, but the longer he sits there, the more I understand he isn’t going to. I hate how much that hurts because some part of me still believed that if I told him everything, he would see something I couldn’t. He knows what the last three attempts have done to me. There isn’t a choice he can point me toward without the possibility that I’ll wish I’d made the other one.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Dad’s hand stays wrapped around mine, and I wait for the panic that usually follows an admission like that. It’s there, but it doesn’t swallow everything else. I take a drink of my coffee, grimacing when I realize it’s gone lukewarm.

“This is terrible now.”

“You’ve been holding it hostage for half an hour.”

I smile as I set the mug down. “Are you still mad at Jubal?”

“Yes.”

Knowing Dad is still angry pinches somewhere beneath my ribs, but after everything he said this morning, it doesn’t scare me the way it would have two days ago. “I haven’t seen him since Thanksgiving.”

“I talked to him yesterday after practice.”

My stomach twists. Jubal walked into Dad’s anger without me knowing, and I have no idea what happened once he did.

“How is he?”

“He’s worried about you.”

Jubal left this house after I stood outside and told him I’d been too afraid of what Dad might do to keep my promise to him, and he walked away, still worried about me.

“I hurt him.”

Two days without him haven’t made me miss him any less. I want to see his face and reach for him, even if he isn’t ready to reach back yet. I want the chance to listen when he tells me what the last two days have been like for him instead of trying to imagine it from here.

Dad’s fingers tighten around mine. “He loves you, you know.”

Jubal told me he thought he was falling in love with me. I can still see his face when he said it, the way he gave me something that big and let me sit there with it without asking for anything in return. Dad knows because Jubal stood in front of him yesterday while everything between them was still angry and hurt and uncertain and said it out loud.

“He told you?” I look down at our joined hands. “What did you say?”

“That’s between Jubal and me.”

I look back at Dad, but whatever I’m about to ask disappears. If I want to know what Jubal said yesterday, I need to hear it from him.

“I need to go.”