Elizabeth Scott - Between Here and Forever

When I get to the hospital, Clement is sitting outside, looking at his watch.

“You look like a little bird,” he says when he sees me. “Al that hair and those eyes.”

“Birds don’t have hair, Clement.”

“I know that,” he says, and sounds almost petulant for a moment, like a little kid, like Cole. “But feathers, hair, it’s bascial y the same thing. Is it so hard to take a compliment?”

“Thank you for saying I look like a bird,” I say, and he shakes his head at me and digs around in his pockets for a cough drop.

“Never loan your car to anyone,” he says as he unwraps the cough drop and pops it in his mouth. “You always end up waiting for it to come back.”

“You loaned your car to someone?” I didn’t know Clement liked anyone in Milford wel enough to loan them anything, much less his car.

“I told Eli he could take the car while I was at work,” Clement tel s me. “But here I am, done with work, and is my car here? No. His father was the same way, only he’d bring the car back with no gas in it. You don’t do that, do you?”

“I don’t have a car,” I tel him, pointing at my bike as I realize what has been right in front of me al along.

Clement is Eli’s grandfather. The family here that Eli talked about. The reason why he’s working at the hospital.

Talk about missing the obvious. I lock up my bike and tel myself I won’t ask Clement where Eli has gone, or what he’s done today.

“I’m sure Eli wil be here soon,” I say instead, which real y isn’t much better than asking about him because I’m stil mentioning him.

“I know,” Clement says. “He’s meeting you. What did he say to you in the cafeteria, anyway? He wouldn’t say anything when I asked him about it.”

“He’s not meeting me. He’s coming to see Tess.”

Clement snorts, then chokes on his cough drop. I know I should pound his back, but he feels so frail when I tentatively tap my hand against him that I’m afraid I’m going to snap him in half.

“Damn things,” he says, waving my hand away. “I’m always swal owing them. Harriet got me hooked on them, you know. Nagged and nagged me to give up smoking and final y brought home a box of lozenges that were supposed to help me quit. To this day, I spend more time taking them than I ever did sitting around for ten minutes after dinner with a cigar.”

“Wait. You’re not eating cough drops? You’re eating those things people take to quit smoking?”

“Who eats cough drops?” Clement says. “Do you know what those things taste like?”

“No,” I say, folding my arms across my chest. “We don’t have them over across the river. We just got chewing gum last year, you know.”

Clement grins at me, then glances out into the parking lot and says, “Ah, there’s Eli now.”

I fol ow Clement’s gaze and see a long, expensive car pul into the lot.

Eli gets out, moving toward us, and I swear I actual y shiver inside when I see him coming, this little hot jolt worming its way through me.

Remember Jack, I remind myself.

Remember Tess.

“Sorry,” Eli says as he reaches us, handing the keys to Clement. “I got—I was on the phone.”

“Is there gas in the car?” Clement says, and Eli grins, then nods.

“Good,” Clement says. “Now I can go back to work.” And then he heads back into the hospital, leaving me and Eli alone.

“I thought … I thought he was leaving,” I say, feeling a little awkward about being alone with Eli even though we’re in the hospital parking lot and there are a few people around. It’s just … wel , it’s the weekend. And Eli is standing next to me.

“He doesn’t like being home much,” Eli says. “He—he says he gets bored, but I think being there makes him sad.” He crosses his arms, tapping the fingers of his right hand against his elbow. “Were you—he didn’t say anything while you were waiting, did he?”

“Just that I look like a bird,” I say, and Eli stares at me.

“I don’t see it either,” I tel him, and we head inside.

“Hey,” I say, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“Someone cal ed in sick, and here I am. You know I’m not turning down extra pay.”

I walk over to her and look at Tess. “How is she?”

“I’m just checking her IVs,” Claire says. “They’re more short-staffed than usual, so I’m making sure no one’s running low on anything.”

I sit down in my usual chair and Eli comes in then, looking a little worried and hesitant.

“So, you’re Eli, who’s here to talk to Tess,” Claire says, and Eli nods, crossing his arms over his chest. I’m starting to think he’s shy. The fidgeting, the whole arm crossing thing—it’s al stuff people do when they’re nervous.

Claire looks at me, raising one eyebrow like she knows something, and then says, “Wel , I’ve got to get back to work, check more IVs and things.

Have fun.”

“Bye,” Eli says at the same time Claire says, “fun,” and that’s when I see Tess’s eyes move again. Under her closed lids, there is motion, like she’s seeing something. Like something—someone—is reaching her.

“Did you see that?” I say, standing up and leaning over Tess, wil ing her to open her eyes.

“See what?” Claire says, and Eli says, “Yes.”

The next few minutes are maddeningly slow. Tess doesn’t open her eyes, but the doctor on cal is paged, and I sit, impatiently waiting for him.

Claire won’t stay, though. She says she didn’t see anything.

“I’m sorry,” she says, after I’ve asked her for what feels like the thousandth time. “I wasn’t looking at Tess. I was talking to you.”

“But—”

“Abby, I real y do have to get back to work,” she says, and moves past me, not even looking back as she leaves the unit.

“Are you sure you paged the doctor?” I ask the nurse who supposedly made the cal , and she says, “I’m sure,” her voice fil ed with something that sounds an awful lot like pity.

I swal ow.

As I stand near the nursing station, waiting, Eli is a silent and weirdly reassuring presence. I like that he’s not trying to tel me how the doctor wil be here soon or anything like that. I glance at him a couple of times and he smiles at me, then goes back to drawing on a piece of paper he must have gotten from one of the nurses.

I walk over to him—not to stand near him, but to see what he’s drawing. I know it for the lie it is—I do want to see what he’s doing, but I also just want to be near him—and stil walk over there anyway.

Eli is not an artist. He’s just doodling, like I do sometimes, like lots of people do, squiggly lines and boxes, and it real y hits me that he’s a guy, past al his beauty, he’s a person, and then—

And then, for the first time in almost two years, I want to do something with a guy other than wait for him to go away. I want to touch him. Not in a just-thinking-about-it way, but for real. Not like—not like I did with Jack, I’m not that stupid, I’m not going to pretend I could ever be someone Eli would real y want to see—but I want him to hold my hand, tel me without words that everything wil be okay. That someone is here with me.

I haven’t wanted someone to comfort me in a long time, but I want it now.

“You don’t have to wait,” I tel Eli, because wanting something and acting on it are two very different things and I trust my heart and body about as much as I believe that the nurse who said she paged the doctor actual y paged him.

Which is to say, not much.

“I don’t mind,” he says, making another box on the right hand side of the paper, then the left.

“The doctor’s not going to come.”

“He’l come,” Eli says.