15. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

F orrest sat on the wooden desk chair next to his bed, and stared at the way Lucy's hair spread across the pillowcase, covering the entire surface. He wasn't sure why she always kept it confined, never letting it loose in all of its striking glory. Probably something stupid her mother had said years ago, something that if he heard, he would burn to erase.

The sky outside the window had a subtle, greenish tone. In the next half hour, the first rays would peek out. Forrest was in awe of the night that had just passed, unable to fully grasp the experience.

At almost forty, Forrest had come to assume that he knew most of what life had to offer. He had never, though, experienced anything that compared to this. He had not known he could feel passion so overwhelming. In his youth, he had feared the possibility, feared the loss of control that might come with such passion. But after two decades of convenience-based relationships, he had become complacent, quite certain he was incapable of overwhelming feelings, safe from the danger they would pose. Perhaps it was the motherless childhood or the constant presence of addiction in the periphery of his life, but Forrest had been certain he was damaged goods, too leery of human relationships to ever connect with another in the ways that made the dukes on Lucy's book covers give up their standing for the poor governess.

Last night made him question all of these assumptions. He was damaged goods, alright. But his ability to feel control-stripping, all-consuming passion was well intact. And Forrest feared it was terribly dangerous, especially for Lucy.

Lucy stirred, turning from her side to her back, the sheet stretching taught against her breasts. Forrest's hand knew how they felt to the touch. He clenched his fists.

Forrest had also assumed he knew Lucy, knew her nature, but last night she had proven she was so much more than his assumptions. And for that, Forrest regretted not seeing sooner how strong and assertive and powerful she was. He had confined her to her roles. She was intelligent, hard-working, resourceful Lucy, the best departmental secretary PSU had ever seen, the most promising student he'd ever taught, the best damn editor for over-ambitious academics. Somehow, he had missed that she was also a woman capable of great passion. After a lifetime of believing he could accurately label women, Forrest had somehow missed the one woman with whom he had been closest. In the face of such failure, Forrest rued his own arrogance.

Forrest picked up the pants that had been discarded at the foot of the bed, and with feather-light steps, left the room, sucking in as he squeezed through the doorway that had been squeaking since he was fourteen. He retrieved the phone from the pants pocket to check the time. Five thirty in the morning. He would go ahead and prepare to return to the hospital. Sleep was impossible now.

Just as he was tucking in his shirt, the phone rang. A picture popped up onto his screen, a picture of Grace with her children, Forrest's niece and nephew. Forrest's hands shook as he slid the answer bar across the screen.

***

The sun shone through the window directly onto Lucy's face, demanding she rise. She ached in all the best ways, the ways that told her she had lived sublimely in her body the night before. She stretched, enjoying the warmth of the sun.

As Lucy became more aware, though, she realized the house was too quiet, too still. Suddenly, she was no longer centered in her body with all of her morning-after glow. She was Lucy O'Shields, a person whose mother had regularly pointed out was overly cerebral. And cerebral-Lucy was reclaiming her turf.

Bullet-pointed facts ran through Lucy’s thoughts, each one on the heels of the last. Lucy was the secretary of the PSU English Department, and she had just spent the most passionate night of her life with a professor of the PSU English Department. She had not come to the evening a virgin, but she had never been with anyone the way she had been last night, never experienced that level of passion and abandon. Forrest Graham, her co-worker, her friend, had been for a single evening her lover. And Mr. Graham was sick, so very sick.

Covers landed in a heap as Lucy threw them off and began dressing. She picked her pants up off the floor and pulled them on, jumping twice to pull them up. It did not make the process more efficient, but she was beyond logic. She just wanted to not be bare, not have her body be an artifact of what had transpired the night before.

Just as she was pulling the green blouse over her head, Lucy noticed that a handwritten note was sitting beneath her phone, both of which had been placed on the stack of essays on Forrest's desk. Lucy moved the phone to the side, finding her name written on the paper in handwriting as familiar as her own.

She unfolded the paper to find a short note: "Lucy, Gracie called, and my father has taken a turn for the worse. I didn’t want to wake you so early, so I'm taking dad's truck to the hospital. Please know that I'll be okay. Don't worry. I'll see you later, Forrest."

Lucy wanted to stop and decipher each terse sentence. Don't worry? I'll see you later? Lucy was not sure what Forrest meant. Was she supposed to come? Was he planning on stoically facing the death of his father without the support of his friends? Should Lucy step back, go to Paducah, and let him be?

Lucy thought about calling Miriam and asking for a list of instructions that would take her through this day. It would be infinitely useful to possess a formula for how to console a friend slash co-worker with whom one had slept the previous evening. And if anyone could draft such a plan, it would be Miriam.

But in Lucy's gut, she already knew what she was going to do. She would drive to the hospital. She would sit next to Forrest and wait with him. She would be present as she had always been for him. And perhaps most importantly, she would not speak about whatever it was that had passed between them last night. It would wait.

As she walked out to the car, Lucy twisted her hair back into a bun at the top of her head. She opened the door, taking one last look at the home where Forrest's adolescent years were preserved. Shivering in the crisp morning air, she hopped into the car.

A little past seven, Lucy arrived at the hospital. As she walked into the waiting room, she immediately saw Gracie walking out of the ICU area. The look on her face told Lucy the grim reality.

Gracie noticed Lucy, turning her path to her, red eyes still moist.

"Oh Lucy, he didn't make it. Dad didn't make it through the night."

Lucy embraced Gracie. She thought of all the small, incidental phone calls she took weekly from Forrest’s father. She thought of how the phone would never again ring with a call from Mr. Graham. She tried to digest the news, to see how it fit into all that had changed in her own life over the past evening. Then, she felt ashamed for thinking of herself, of how this impacted her. "I'm so sorry, Gracie. Was Forrest able to make it before he passed?"

"Yes, thank God. He was here for the last few minutes. But Dad never woke up. I don't know if he even knew we were there."

As Lucy stepped back, she said, "Yes, but it was important you two were here for yourselves. I was with my mom, and it helped."

Even as the embrace ended, Gracie held on to Lucy's hands. She looked directly into Lucy's eyes, the blatant grief disconcerting to see on a face so similar to Forrest's. Squeezing Lucy's hands, Gracie said, "Lucy, he’s going to need you. He’s hurting badly."

"I'm not sure what I can do, Gracie, but I'll try."

"That’s all, Lucy. Just your presence will be enough."

A moment of silence passed between them.

"Lucy, I have to go fill out some paperwork. Can you go to Dad's old room and sit with Forrest? He’s still in there, and I don't want him to be alone."

Lucy's stomach flipped. She desperately wanted to enter the room and alleviate in some way Forrest’s grief. If she were in the office, she’d have supplies to meet the moment. But what if meeting this moment of profound grief required something different of her in the reality ushered forth by the previous evening? How did she meet this moment not only as his colleague or friend, but as - maybe - something more? Regardless, Lucy wouldn’t allow her mind running amok prevent her from being the friend Forrest needed.

"Of course, Gracie. Whatever you need."

And with that, Lucy walked back to, once again, be with Forrest. When she arrived in the room, Lucy found Forrest facing the empty space where the hospital bed had been. She stood behind him, looking at the slump of his shoulders, willing herself not to remember the strong lines of his bare back. He was unaware of her presence, and Lucy left it that way for a moment as she tried to decide what to say. Why had she not just called Miriam?

With one timid step forward, Forrest became aware he was not alone. When their eyes met, Lucy gasped at the sight of his dark eyes, his signature smile lines engulfed by dark circles. He didn't look like Forrest. He didn't look like Lucy's Forrest.

"Forrest." The word escaped on a gasp, and tears rose to the surface. She had not known Mr. Graham well, not well enough to mourn his passing too deeply. But Forrest. Seeing Forrest in grief, someone who normally avoided big emotions, preferring to live them from the safe distance of literature, was more than Lucy could bear. "Forrest, I'm so sorry."

She wanted desperately to walk up to him and touch his face or sit on his lap and wrap her arms around his neck. But she did not yet know what the previous night meant. She didn't know if the intimacy of the evening could exist in the daylight. So she repeated, "I'm so sorry."

Finally, Forrest spoke, but it was in a voice she hardly recognized, one filled with hurt and grief. In a hard, harsh whisper, he said, "No, Lucy. I'm sorry."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm so sorry I pulled you into all of this. You shouldn't have to take care of me. This was mine to do."

"But I wanted to be with you. I want to be with you. I want to help. All of us, everyone at the office wanted you to have one of us with you."

"Yes, and what did I do? How did I handle this? I lived out some high school fantasy while my dad was dying. I took the one woman who I've ever really cared about, and I took advantage of you. I did what Graham men do. I numbed myself to all the shit that is around me. And don't you see, Lucy? I used you to do it. And I'm so wretchedly sorry." His voice broke on the last words, barely able to make it to the end of what he had to say.

A million words flew across Lucy's conscience for how she might respond, but in the end, she was too stunned for complete sentences or reasoned thoughts or conclusions that would clean up the mess she and Forrest had just made. Had she simply been a tool Forrest had used? Was all the passion of the night before merely a numbing agent for Forrest? Lucy had felt anything but numb.

"Forrest? I don't understand..."

Just as Lucy flailed, unable to finish the sentence she had begun, Gracie walked into the room.

"I have the papers, Forrest. They said we can take them home and fill them out there. Do you want to head over to Dad's, and we'll get this done and maybe make some decisions about the funeral and all?"

Forrest looked at Lucy while he said, "Sure, Gracie."

Gracie said, "Lucy, would you like to join us."

Lucy looked away from Forrest to Gracie, "No Gracie. I'm going to head back to campus. I'll get the paperwork done for Forrest's bereavement leave."

"Thank you, Luce."

Lucy really wished he had not used her nickname.