Set Wide the Window

"Do you come here often?" It was a cliche question made even more cliche by the fact that it was being asked in an emergency room. I rolled my eyes. Having been in the lowest spiral of my life over the last three weeks, the last thing I wanted to do was trade banter with a triage nurse at three o'clock in the morning. No matter how attractive or Australian they were.

I was there with a busted shoulder...again. As a result of an old rugby injury, I had managed to dislocate my bum arm in the middle of the night after coming home late from work (as a bartender) and getting myself into a clean-and-rearrange-the-entire-house spree.

No one else was home, so instead of accruing the cost of an ambulance ride, I got myself into the car and made my way to the local E.R.

Now, I was stuck alone in a bone-cold hospital room with a throbbing shoulder and an equally throbbing headache.

"I just want to get home," I told my comedian nurse, who informed me he was a student and a stand-in. "It's been a long day."

"I understand. Let's get that shoulder back in and get a quick x-ray, just to be on the safe side. Then we'll get you set up with a sling and back home. Who should I call to pick you up?"

It was a question that made my bowels clench.

There was no one to call. I was a woman who lived alone, and my relationship with my family was...less than ideal. I had been in and out of the hospital for everything from kidney failure to head injuries and most of those stays had been navigated alone. My family wasn't the "close" type and that had filtered into my adult life, which distinctly lacked a lot of close friendly relationships.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"If I can't drive myself I'll have to call a cab."

My Australian caretaker frowned and made a note on my chart.

"We'll have to give you something for pain and maybe even a muscle relaxer to get that shoulder back in. You won't be able to drive home safely. I'll check in with you again when we're setting up your discharge."

I wanted to tell him that it would be the same answer later but felt ashamed so I said nothing. A few minutes later a new nurse appeared and gave me a tablet and a couple of quick blood draws before wheeling me down the hall and around a couple of sharp corners to the waiting x-ray department.

A little more than an hour later, I was back in the triage department lying in a bed staring at the season. My shoulder was back in place and wrapped tightly in a fuzzy black sling that was cushioned my injured arm over a large, shaped pillow.

I was counting the holes in the ceiling tiles when the Australian appeared again. This time, he still held my chart, but he also held a paper bag filled with the medications I would need to take home with me.

"The doctor has signed off on your discharge," he told me. "He's also given you something for the kidney infection."

My lows got lower and lower.

"He wanted me to stress again that you really need to follow up with orthopedics. That shoulder is going to need surgery unless you want something like this to happen again. He's put a reference here for someone in Grasswood who can get you in as soon as next week."

I got up from the bed and snatched the paper and the bag of medicine. I was annoyed, exhausted, and in pain. Seeing the first sunlight peek through the hospital windows, I knew it had to be 5 o'clock in the morning - if not later. All I wanted to do was get home.

"Thanks for the help. Can you call me a taxi?"

"There aren't any taxis here this early," he told me. "This town isn't that big. Who can I call to pick you up?"

***

It was not the way I wanted to meet the man who would change my life. For many years after this first meeting, I cringed. Who wants to fall when they're already at the lowest point in their life? Certainly not me. But that's exactly what happened.

The Australian (let's call him H) and I spent the summer together. Beer gardens. Waterfall hikes. We even drove across the state to visit the country's biggest tree house.

We connected on every level that mattered. Even though he had been raised on the other side of the world, in a family that loved him, our childhoods had been much the same. It turns out the Blue Mountains were just as isolated, just as stretching as a mundane upbringing in Tennessee had been.

It was the first relationship in which I had connected with someone on a soul level. We were absolute reflections of one another. There was nothing I could say that he would not understand. There was no mistake so grave that he would not forgive it.

But it wasn't meant to last.

At the end of the summer, I received a dream job offer that would take me six-thousand miles away. It was the chance of a lifetime and my one shot to escape the chaos that was living in the midst of a spiraling family.

When I got the email, I was both excited and heartbroken.

H had just been accepted into a dream fellowship, bringing him one step closer to his goal of lead on a major research project, and a potential tenure at a top university. It was a five-year fellowship. Rejecting it could mean career suicide.

The feeling in the pit of my belly was indescribable.

We had the first of many conversations a few nights later, over a candlelit dinner in H's small apartment. The evening started with a small BBQ, where H introduced me to a few of his closest Aussie friends. When they went home, H broke out the candles and nice bottle of wine he had been saving, along with the chocolate torte he had been practicing at for weeks.

I didn't wait long to rip off the bandage.

"Good news: I got the job." I blurted it out as our glasses touched in cheers. There wasn't much more that needed to be explained. He knew exactly what I was talking about...as he always did.

H's reaction was one of grace and absolute excitement.

"That's incredible! Wow. You've been waiting for this for a long time. Congratulations!"

He was being genuine, but both of us were smart enough to feel the uncomfortable questions brewing in between.

Without another thought, I leaped into the mess that was waiting.

"It's for five years. The same length as your fellowship. I don't know what to do, H. I've been waiting for something like this for so long. It could be my one shot to get out of here. But you can't come with me. I know that. What does this mean? I don't want to leave you but I can't say no."

He interrupted my frantic, rambling thoughts with a kiss. Reaching up, he gently stroked a curl behind my ear. For a long while, he said nothing. When he did speak at last, it was short.

"Life takes us unknowable places, E. We couldn't predict meeting each other and we can't predict the ending either. This is a great opportunity for you. You deserve it, and you deserve the life that's waiting for you far away from here."

We sat up talking for hours. At 3AM, I fell asleep with my head on his shoulder and our hands intertwined.

Four months later, I was on a plane bound for Scotland. New opportunities beckoned and a new life called. H met me at the airport, even going so far as to buy a ticket so he could sit with me beyond the security barrier.

When they called for final boarding, I was a mess of tears.

"Please don't cry." My pain was clear and present on H's face. He didn't want to lose me any more than I wanted to walk away, but what choice did we have? How could we start a fantasy across an ocean? It wasn't fair to either of us. We knew what we had to do and we tried to be grateful for what was left.

"I don't want to leave you." It was pathetic, but it was the only truth I had for him.

"You're not. You're flying into your future, E. Please be happy. If not for you, then for me."

Those words played over and over again in my head as the plane took off and cut into the wash of thick white clouds that shrouded the skies over Birmingham, Alabama.

***

H sent me one last card about a year after my move abroad.

Communication between the two of us was thinning out as we both became busier and busier in the lives that were taking off for both of us professionally.

What had once been daily texts, and daily phone calls, was now petering out to cards on holidays and the brief acknowledgment on social media. It was awkward, and I got the distinct impression that there was a guilt involved to it - for both of us.

When I got his final card, I knew it was the end. There was nothing else that it could be.

"I love you, Shrubs. No matter where life takes us, know that. And know that I will always be looking over the hill for you. I want your greatness, E. I always will. 'Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.' Become that greatness. With all my love. - H"

My heart clenched and I held his card to it. Waves of pain, relief, love, and things I could not name rippled through me.

We never spoke again after that card and our lives drifted entirely apart as we drifted into new lives on entirely different shores. H fell into his routine and I fell into mine. The future became our present as he went on to become the researcher he dreamed of and I became the writer I longed to be. I never stopped looking over the horizon for him, though, and I know he will never stop looking for me.

As we traverse this ocean of life, I can't help but wonder... will our ships inevitably cross again? Even in a universe so big, it feels like it's only a matter of time. But that's the beauty of open windows. If ever those paths converge again, there will always be a place for that love to come through, a small space where the light can leak through.