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He’d been asleep in an on-call room, N-95 casually hanging off the edge of the bed, when the call came. He slept through it, but awoke to the buzzing of texts on his phone.
Hospital broadcast text. “All elective surgeries are cancelled.”
Carina. “Where are you? You need to get food for your apartment.”
Amelia. “can u grab xtra masks, gloves, sanitizer, and give to Mag for me. Also diapers”
Webber. “Are you safe// do you need anything.”
He’d only been back in the hospital a few weeks; he’d done a two-week inpatient program, followed by daily outpatient therapy and monitoring. He was finally getting his sleep schedule under control and had started keeping track of his meals in the notebook he kept in his hip pocket. 5 am – banana, dry cereal. 1 pm – bad turkey sandwich, fountain coke, apple. 4 pm – clam chowder.
He knew these people were trying to help. These were his friends, his family. He wasn’t even the slightest bit irritated at their care: He felt good. He felt safe.
The only little bit that still wore away at him was the lack of a message from Meredith.
Sure, three kids, new-mom sister, other sister drowning in patients in the cardio-Covid wing; but he’d thought that the woman who helped him get help might check in.
He’d be ashamed if he didn’t remember what his therapist had said to him.
It’s okay to want things for selfish reasons, Andrew. You just have to recognize it.
He liked her; she was older, curly hair, dressed the way he expected: flowing linen and big, heavy stone amulets. Even now, when they did FaceTime therapy, he found himself oddly drawn to the paper drum that hung on the wall behind her desk.
He tapped out responses to his sister, Amelia, and Webber, and whipped out his little notebook to remind himself to get Amelia’s requests to Maggie.
He was scrawling the protein bar he was simultaneously stuffing into his face into his food log when the door slammed open, handle crashing against the bunk next to the door. Just as quickly, the door slammed shut, and he swallowed the mouthful of chocolate cranberry granola that had stuck in his mouth.
It was her. Of course it was.
“Andrew!” Her eyes flashed at him over her mask, concern and a flash of anger. “You should be at home resting.”
He shook his head. “I’m here for the foreseeable future, just like everyone else. Don’t worry. I just got six hours of uninterrupted sleep, and you caught me eating breakfast.”
She unhooked her mask from behind her ears, dark lines where it had been resting. “Good.” She pulled out the chair across from the bed where he was sitting. “They’re recommending we don’t go home to our families.”
He felt a sucker punch to the gut with that. “Who’s watching the kids?”
Meredith sighed heavily. “Amelia and Link.”
“I’m sorry, Mere.” She looked away, staring at the wall into the middle distance.
He didn’t know how to follow that up; in reality, he had no idea where they were. He had screamed at her, cried at her, lost her trust, lost everyone’s trust.
“Are you okay? How’s your anxiety?”
He knew, in his head, in his heart, that she was worried for him. But it felt… wrong. She couldn’t see her kids, she’d been battling with him for months, why should she care?
“It’s fine, honestly. I’ve been taking my meds, writing it down, writing everything down.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “When did you last talk to your therapist?”
He swallows down the anger in his throat. “Yesterday. We did it over the phone.”
She nodded again, looking away. “I’m glad, Andrew.”
They sat in silence for some minutes, listening to the constant pages over the hospital’s PA system, the sirens pulling up outside.
“Are you scared?” he wondered aloud. “Because I am.”
Her head swiveled back toward him, eyes sharp as knives. “Terrified.” And that’s when he saw it – her lip wobbling, her eyes shining.
And he couldn’t help himself.
He rose from his spot, kneeling in front of her, hands on her knees. “Meredith. It’s okay.”
Her voice shook – anger, tears, fear. “It isn’t. I’m worried about my kids. I’m worried about my sisters. I’m worried about you. I am exhausted and I just – I can’t.”
She’s worried about me. He remembered – you are allowed to be selfish – and grabbed her hands, which she had clasped in her lap.
“Please take me off that list, Meredith.”
She shook her head again. “No. I can’t forget what happened, Andrew. To watch someone I love again – to watch them –“
He knew. He had disappointed everyone. “I’m so sorry, Meredith. You have enough going on, and I was too stupid to help myself.”
“No.” Her voice was suddenly firm again, her eyes burning into his again. “No. You don’t apologize for this. You wouldn’t apologize for having cancer. You can’t apologize for what you couldn’t control. But I also can’t un-see, un-hear, un-experience what that was like for me.”
He knew this; he’d talked it over with his therapist a lot. None of this is your fault, Andrew; it’s brain chemistry, simple as that. But people are still going to feel how they feel about what happened.
“Yeah.” He kept his hands over hers, her shaking subsiding.
“It’s just – hard. To love someone and be pushed away.”
It was like the air had been sucked out of the room around them. They hadn’t really discussed everything; he’d come back to work, she’d kept him at arm’s length. They hadn’t slept together since before Richard’s illness.
The disease in the air around them had only added more chaos.
In the back of his mind, he knew it was risky, for the two of them to be in this room together. The virus was everywhere. He realized their hands were touching; unwashed hands, potentially.
But he couldn’t bring himself to care.
“Meredith.” His voice was low and gravelly. “I know I can’t apologize. But I need you to know – I didn’t mean any of it.”
“Any of what?” Meredith’s voice was quiet, questioning.
“I did love you. I do love you. You’ve been there for me the whole time, even when I pushed you away. I was – not in my right mind. I am now.”
She shook her head. “I can’t know that you are now, either.”
His stomach dropped. He knew that was true; that it was going to take ages to earn back everyone’s trust. Carina’s. Webber’s. Bailey’s.
Meredith’s.
He rose up on his knees, sliding his arms up her arms to encircle her shoulders. It was awkward, but he needed to look her directly in the eye.
“You’ll be able to trust me again one day. Eventually. I promise.”
She looked at him, shaky-eyed, and began to cry again. “I’m sorry, Andrew, I am just… so exhausted.” Her voice broke on exhausted, as if her voice were trying to make her point.
“I’ve got you.” He lifted her in his arms, feather-light, and brought her over to the bed, pulling the covers over and tucking them around her. He turned toward the door, when he heard her voice creak out.
“Please stay.”
The world was crashing down around them, but his chest bloomed with warmth. He snapped the lock on the door – only two people allowed in a room at a time, anyway – and dragged the chair toward the bed.
“I’m right here.” Her hand escaped from under the blanket, circling his wrist.
“Andrew, please.”
He couldn’t breathe.
“I have no right to ask anything of you right now, and I know you are working hard on your own health, but – please. I need you.”
He had never heard her so defeated, so open.
He lifted the covers and slipped between them, snaking an arm over her waist and one under her head, feeling her snuggle into him.
“Thank you.”
Her body relaxed, tension flowing out, and he let himself relax into her. He knew they didn’t have long – someone’s phone was bound to screech out in the quiet of the on-call room, beckoning them further into a hospital filled with death – but he knew he could enjoy it.
Be selfish, Andrew.
He laid his head down on the pillow next to her, feeling her breath even out against his neck. He splayed his hand over her back, rubbing aimlessly, trying to soothe.
He felt her lips on his neck, and suddenly his whole body was alert.
“Meredith – what –“
“Shhhhh.” Her eyes looked up at him, as crystalline blue as they’d ever been, framed by dark circles and dry skin. He wondered if any of them would ever be free of the dents in their faces from constant mask-wearing. He knew that Meredith was still beautiful, even with the world crashing down around them.
Her lips pressed to his, and it was like no time had passed at all. Scrubs ripped off, hands woven into hair, almost forgetting to breathe. He had missed this. He knew he wasn’t supposed to – and he supposed his therapist would have a lot to say about it – but they were surrounded by death. Bathing in it. Other humans were poisonous; everything about their lives was changing. But this – this was the same.
Later, as their breath slowed and they cocooned in the heat under the covers, Meredith murmured quietly. “That probably broke the hospital’s physical distancing policy.”
Andrew looked at her, unable to read her face, until it broke out into a smile and a laugh.
“Honestly, Andrew, the world might be ending. I think a little emergency sex was in order.”
He laughed. “Might as well go out on a high.”
As if preordained, a phone clanged in a far corner of the room. They scrambled for their clothes; it was Andrew’s phone, which had slid from his pocket under the bed against the opposite wall. He dashed across the room and grabbed it from the floor before Meredith stood up.
Meredith pulled her scrub top over her head, angling away from Andrew in a kind of pointless modesty. He slipped on his pants, reading the page his phone, when he felt her arms snake around his waist from behind him.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she murmured, planting a kiss between his shoulder blades. He leaned back into her touch, feeling the warmth and exhaustion bleed out of her, slipping his phone back into his pocket with one hand and grabbing her hands with the other.
“I’m glad too.” He grabbed one of her hands, bringing it to his mouth, and brushing his lips across it. She spun him in front of her to look at him.
“If the world doesn’t end today – which it probably will – dinner later? Right here? No masks, just Twinkies from the vending machine?”
Andrew smiled. “Count on it.”