Absence and the Heart

Danny unlocked his door and dropped his duffel bag in the corner. It swung shut behind him and he wearily leaned back against it, the exhaustion trying to pull him down into the floor. He knew if he gave in he'd just curl up on the on the hardwood and sleep for the next sixteen hours. He couldn't do that. He hadn't even bothered to change out of the scrubs he'd worn for the last trip into the OR tonight. Today had really taken everything out of him.

It had started like any other Saturday. Three cesareans for the day, spaced out so he'd have time to do paperwork and rest in between. It wasn't normal to have so many patients due so close together, but he had taken on Mindy's when she left for Haiti six months ago.

The first procedure went exactly as planned. Mother and child safe and sound resting a couple hours later and Danny congratulating himself on a job well done. It was the second procedure where things took a turn for the worse.

He slid down into the floor anyway. He dropped his head into his hands and just sat there. He didn't know when he'd be able to move again.

His second patient was a high risk case. Angela Arthur. Her previous cesarean coupled with her blood pressure problems and a high potential for a breech birth made Danny fairly certain that this was the best route to choose.

Things began to go wrong from the moment he made the first incision. The fetal heart rate began to drop inexplicably after regional anesthesia was administered, so Danny felt the need to get this procedure underway and completed quickly. His worry began to lessen once the child was safely on her way to the NICU. He was completing the final steps of the cesarean when Mrs. Arthut began to lose an unusually large amount of blood and her blood pressure dropped dramatically. By the time he finally found and sutured the uterine hemorrhage his patient had required several transfusions.

Danny knew that this happened sometimes, and he was in fact a good doctor, but it still had the ability to shake him. Instead of going home to rest before his next procedure, he went back to the office and dug out Mrs. Arthur's file. He always did this when he had a close call with a patient. He had laid the file out on his desk and poured over it for a couple hours. He was looking for something he missed. He felt there had to be some indication that she was at high risk for bleeding, but there was nothing. Not being able to find anything after hours of reviewing the file did make him feel better, but he really wished Mindy were there to take a look at it and come to the same conclusion. She was good to have around in times like these. He needed her reassurance that complications did sometimes inexplicably arise.

Danny lifted his head and leaned back against the door and stared into the space in front of him. Sometimes, when he was this exhausted, it seemed as though his brain was incapable of all thought. His eyes looked on blankly not taking much in. The early light of dawn began to filter through the windows on the east side of his apartment. There was a blue orchid in the window. Sitting pretty like nothing in the world could possibly ever go wrong, even though it's very existence in his apartment was a string of near death experiences. He couldn't count how many times he'd forgotten to water it. Surprisingly though, the beautiful flower had proven hardy.

Mindy had given him that orchid a long time ago, and at the time he had no clue what to do with it. The thing almost died shortly after he brought it home, and he felt guilty enough to call his mother and ask how to take care of it. He missed Mindy.

As much as they argued about trivialities, when it came to obstetrics they were a stalwart pair. She always took the time to go over his files when he had a worrisome patient. Looking things over with an extra pair of eyes, she always had insightful and helpful suggestions. She was a no nonsense warrior of a woman in the operating room. A confidence radiated from her Danny could only imagine projecting in day to day life. If Danny could be honest with himself, her abilities as a doctor impressed him to the point of admiration.

Before he could leave the office and go back to the hospital and get ready for his third cesarean Danny's pager had went off. Miss Allen. His third patient for the day had gone into labor unexpectedly and progressed much faster than anyone anticipated. He'd still felt shaken from his experience with Mrs. Arthur. He'd grabbed her files and prayed that nothing would go wrong with this birth.

This time his prayers had been answered. Although things had progressed pretty far by the time everyone arrived at the hospital, all the monitoring devices suggested that the labor would go smoothly. In actuality the quick progression was a positive sign. In the past Danny had tried repeatedly to talk Elizabeth Allen into putting her plans for a medically unnecessary procedure on hold. He explained to her that if any complications should arise it would not be hard for him to perform an emergency cesarean.

She was unwavering in her desire to have it done this way though. And when the labor advancement plateaued somewhat in the middle she still begged Danny to do it anyway. He couldn't and wouldn't, but he promised not to leave the couple's side until the baby came. That's how Danny ended up so sleep deprived at such an early hour.

After leaving the delivery room Danny shuffled through the halls of the hospital making his way to the lounge. He'd needed to sit down for a minute before heading home, but he stopped short in the doorway when he saw the empty couch and flickering vending machine.

He couldn't think of any place he'd rather be less. The room looked so depressingly empty. There was a faint buzzing sound coming from the machine and some documentary about jazz playing on the muted TV. Had it looked like this before? Sure it had. It's just that lately when it looked like this a heaviness settled in his chest that he couldn't shake. That's when he'd decided to just pack it in and go home.

As sun rose higher and higher in the sky, Danny's apartment became illuminated and he felt foolish sitting in the floor in the light of day. He hauled himself up onto two feet and slowly walked over to the orchid basking in the pale yellow light of early morning. The petals were so blue sometimes he thought it must not be real. He touched one of the petals with the tip of his index finger. They were soft delicate little pillows, completely out of place in his apartment.

After Christina had left, the apartment had begun to take on its characteristic minimalistic atmosphere. Those ridiculous larger than life portraits of him came down immediately. It was really all he could do not to toss them in the dumpster and be done with it, but he wasn't a complete jerk. He did realize that photography was Christina's work and maybe she wanted to keep them.

He'd mailed them to her, at an exorbitant cost to himself, with a note that said, "You're right, I do apologize." And told her she could do what she liked with them, but that he didn't feel comfortable keeping them. He was actually surprised she hadn't done something vindictive with them. Like set them on fire and photograph that, then have a show titled "Bastard." He smiled at the thought, it wasn't exactly the most creative idea, but he was a doctor not an artist. He really deserved no less. Their last fight had been awful, and she was completely right about everything.

Danny had moped around like a lovesick schoolboy the week Mindy had left. The worst part was he hadn't even realized what he was doing. He was unresponsive when Christina tried to draw him into conversation at dinner. He seemed to have a never ending stream of monosyllabic replies just on the tip of his tongue. Whenever she would ask him a question, he would grunt out one of them and then look down into his wine glass wishing it weren't half empty. He'd really had no idea why he felt so down. If someone had asked him how he felt (and if he were the kind of person to answer that question) he would have said "deflated."

Christina was more perceptive than himself. She'd felt that something was wrong, and although she couldn't place just what it was, she was sure it had something to do with their relationship.

One night at dinner she broached the topic. She had begun with a simple question, "Danny are you feeling alright?"

He remembered looking up at her and saying, "Yeah sure." Then looking back down at the plate in front of him and sipping on the red wine in his right hand.

"Danny, I'm serious. Something's been off about you the past couple weeks. You haven't been sick or anything have you?" The look of genuine concern in her eyes actually surprised Danny. He really had thought that no one noticed his dip in mood.

"Sick? Nah, I'm healthy as a horse babe. I've just been overextending myself at work lately. I've got more patients than I'm used to. It's gotten me more exhausted than I've been in a really longtime." He picked up the wine again and then took a bit of the Chicken Florentine on his plate. "Dinner's great though. I really appreciate you doing things like this for me." He could hear the effort in his voice and it took him aback. Was he genuinely unhappy?

"I really don't feel like you are being honest with me. This is worse than med school. We may not have seen each other much back then, but when we did you still took the time to have a two sided conversation with me at dinner. We joked around and told each other things. These days I feel like we're just existing in the same space, but not interacting at all." She set her wine down. He could tell from her posture that she was ready to dig in to this conversation. "Danny, you can tell me if this isn't what you want. I know you feel some sort of obligation to make this work. Whether it's because of your religion or your family or something I don't know. Obligation isn't love, that this isn't the way it can be."

She stood up and walked around the table. She stood there beside Danny and put her hands on either side of his face. "I do love you, but I feel like you're somewhere else right now." Those words swept over him like ice water. He suddenly felt panicked. It was like she'd removed the mask he'd been wearing. A mask that he wasn't even aware of until she ripped it from his face. He truly was somewhere else most of the time. He didn't think about Christina in the context that she thought about him. It had felt like an obligation, a burden even. He didn't love her.

He picked up his wine glass again. "Danny, put the fucking wine down and look at me!" She was pleading now.

"You're right." The words passed through his lips of their own volition. He had no power to stop them. "I'm not in this anymore. The moment I stopped being angry at you for what you did was the moment I realized I hadn't been in it for a while." It was like the dawn rising up over the mountains in spring, burning away the fog settled in the valley.

"What are you talking about?" Her eyes flashed. "This is not what I meant." She pushed away from him and stomped towards the kitchen. He rose and followed her.

"Christina! I get it now." She was standing at the kitchen sink as he came up behind her. He took her by the waist gently and turned her around. "It's not fair, I get it. I should never have started this knowing that I didn't care anymore, but I was lonely, and I thought you were my path. I thought you were inevitable." He lifted his hand to gently brush away the strands of hair falling in her eyes.

"INEVITABLE! Don't you dare try to be gentle with me! That's what caused this mess Danny. You and your inability to speak what's in your heart because it isn't kind or gentle. How long would you have let this continue if I hadn't said something?" She wasn't on the verge of tears like he'd expected. There was a white hot rage in her eyes and her jaw was set.

"I hadn't even realized it until you said something."

"Oh, sure. Danny Castellano. A man without feelings or any perceptive abilities whatsoever." She pushed him away from her and stomped to the bedroom. "You know, I genuinely thought you had changed for the better, but you're the same clueless idiot you've always been!" She grabbed her overnight bag and started shoving her clothes into it.

"Danny, if things had continued this way I probably would have cheated on you again." The words were a slap in the face bringing back memories from the dark time after the divorce. "You never understood why I did it? You ignored me. You made no time for me. You cheated on me with med school. Eventually it hurt so much that I had to let you go, but I was stupid and naïve and I didn't realize what I was doing at the time." She zipped up her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

"And what exactly were you doing!? Letting the bartender at your favorite place fuck your misery away?!" The words came out explosively. She was stomping towards the door and he was following her. She stopped right at the entrance.

"No Danny, I was moving on. I had ceased to care, and I found someone else. And that's what you've done. Only we're not young and stupid anymore. There's no excuse for moving on before you finish things with me!" She slammed her bag down on the floor. "I forgot my camera. Don't touch this." And dashed back through the living room.

Danny had been frozen in place. He couldn't chase her around the apartment fighting like children. "What the hell are you talking about, Christina? You think there's someone else?" His question echoed across room. He was stunned by this statement. She had to be kidding him. "You think the only reason anyone would ever leave you is because they have someone waiting in the wings? THERE ISN'T ANYONE ELSE!"

She made her way back out into the living room, camera case in hand. "Oh, isn't there? Danny, do me a favor and think about it. Then later maybe you'll call me and apologize." She strode back to the door and picked up her bag. "You're right about not loving me, but you do love someone." She slipped through the door and slammed it behind her.

Danny had been so dazed at the time. He'd deluded himself into thinking that he didn't know what she was talking about. But, here he was, almost six months later, and he knew exactly.

Mindy had only been gone two weeks when Christina had left him. It hadn't been long enough for him to understand what was happening. He knew he had missed her in those two weeks, but he thought it was just because he'd gotten so used to her.

He'd thought that in a short time he would acclimate to her absence and just continue life as he had before. But there was a reason they had that saying about absence and the heart. Every minute she was away from him was a minute longer he had to think about what she meant to him.

Every time he walked by the lounge at the hospital and saw the empty couch he wanted to hit someone. Every time he walked past her office and saw the replacement they'd hired for the year she was away he wanted find a place to go and scream. Every time he saw two people on the subway chatting away and laughing he found himself glaring at them. He was miserable and she was thousands of miles away with someone she loved doing something worthwhile.