Happy Place

A GRAYING ONE-BEDROOM apartment we talk about painting robin’s-egg blue. The one we found online and, despite its cramped kitchen and small windows, believed we could turn into a home. The one where we will finally plan our wedding, after years of putting it off.

He’d hardly batted an eye when, after that first trip to my parents’ house, I’d broached the possibility of waiting to get married until I finished school. It wasn’t about what my mom said in the kitchen the night she met him, except inasmuch as I wanted her to see she was wrong.

I wanted her to see how well Wyn loved me, how patient and kind and good he was.

We can take our time, he promised, and when things didn’t come together, wedding-wise, during my final year at Columbia, it was obvious we’d have to plan it after we moved out to my residency.

It takes a few months to find my footing at the hospital. Or hospitals, rather. They have us bounce around, get experience in a lot of different environments. I’d thrived in medical school, like I’d always thrived in college and high school, but this is different. Things move too quickly, and I’m always trying to catch up. My feet and knees hurt from standing all day, and my brain can’t seem to store a map of any one hospital floor without blending it into another, so I’m always the tiniest bit late. Four weeks in, a fourth-year named Taye, with big dark curls and a model-esque stature, catches me by the shoulders as I’m hurrying past. “Breathe for a second,” she says. “Rushing makes you clumsy, and we can’t afford to be clumsy.”

I nod my understanding, but the conviction is somewhat dampened when I immediately knock a jar of pens off the reception desk as we’re parting ways.

Wyn’s the one who finds the wedding venue: a renovated warehouse overlooking the bay, with an opening this coming winter. “If you like it,” I say, “I like it.”

We put down the deposit. In the month that follows, though, we make little progress on the rest of the plan. There are too many decisions to be made, and everything costs too much, and despite his business degree, Wyn’s struggling to find work that pays above minimum wage.

“I’m terrible at interviews,” he says late one night, rubbing the stress from his face after yet another we’ve-decided-to-go-in-a-different-direction email.

“Only because you talk yourself down,” I promise, climbing into his lap, wreathing my arms around his neck. “Next time you’re in one, just answer every question like you’re answering for me.”

He nods somberly. “So when they ask for my best qualities, I tell them I’m amazing in bed.”

I snort into his neck, inhale his scent. “I mean, it worked for me getting my residency.”

He smooths my hair back, kisses the corner of my mouth.

“Answer how the people who love you would answer for you, Wyn,” I say.

He keeps trying. We keep trying.

He finds another bookstore job, but it’s barely over minimum wage, not enough to cover the rest of the rent, so after a couple more weeks, he takes another part-time gig, doing upholstery repair.

Then one morning, I come home from a graveyard shift and find him sitting at the table, still in his clothes from the day before, his phone on the ground with a crack through its screen.

“Wyn?” I say, heart in my throat.

He looks at me and breaks, descends into sobs. I go to him, kneel on the floor, take his weight as he slumps into me, his forehead against my shoulder, his hands wringing my scrubs so hard I think they might tear.

It takes him a long time to get out the words.

To tell me that Hank is gone.