The Other Side of the Pillow

My cell rang; it was Jemistry. I answered, “Hey, baby! I miss you!”

She giggled. “I crawled out of your bed about four o’clock this morning. How could you miss me already?”

“You left at four, and by five, I was ready to bawl my eyes out. I buried my head in my pillow to fight back the tears.”

“Now you’re exaggerating, but I have to admit that I miss you, too. So what are we doing for dinner tonight?”

As much as I wanted to see Jemistry, I didn’t want to carry my pain from work to her doorstep. “Maybe we can chill tonight. I had a long day.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me. I can tell when something’s wrong with you, baby.”

“I lost a patient today, and it’s hard on me. I wouldn’t be good company tonight. I promise you that.”

“Let me be the judge of that. You’re always there to comfort me when I have a hard day at work with all those rug rats I have to deal with. Let me reciprocate.”

“Sound

s tempting.” I sat back further in my chair, took off my glasses, and rubbed my eyes. “It’s going to be nearly impossible for me to relax, or be a good conversationalist.”

“We don’t have to go out anyplace. How about I come over to your place, cook you a quick dinner, and then we can curl up on the sofa and watch a good movie. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, and I can rub your back, your head, and even your dick for you until you fall asleep. How does that sound?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “That sounds very relaxing.”

“Exactly!” She paused. “Tevin, you have such a kind heart and I’m sure that you did whatever you could to save your patient.”

“I did.”

“You tried and that’s all that matters. But our lives must go on. One day, one of us will have to say good-bye to the other. Let’s not waste any time.”

“I’ll be home by seven,” I told her. “Use your key.”

“Bye, baby.”

I hung up and thought about all that had happened since Jemistry and I had become official two months earlier. My life had changed in that yurt up in Virginia, and while our sex was what legends were made of, it was more than that.

When I first met Jemistry, she was obviously upset with the world, but with men in particular. My common sense told me not to say a word to her, to let her sit there, finish off her martini, and sulk off into the night. But my heart instructed me to say something to her, to pursue her. There had only been a few times in my life when a woman had appealed to me right off the bat. The last woman who had that effect on me, I married.

Estella was like my fantasy woman. Fine, smart, attentive, passionate, and on track to become extremely successful. We had only dated less than six months before I popped the question. I was convinced that it would be the two of us against the world. We would face every challenge, every obstacle together, and raise a gaggle of children in a mansion fit for a king.

But God had other plans. The first miscarriage made us seemingly closer. The second miscarriage had us wondering what we had done to deserve it. The third miscarriage made us angry . . . her at me, and me at everyone else. I could barely function as a man, much less a doctor, and took a leave of absence to try to pull myself together. Estella went into a shell and completely withdrew from communicating with me, her parents, her coworkers, her friends, and everyone else.

I tried for two years to bring her smile back, but it never came. Every time she looked at me, all she saw were the children who would never be. She went behind my back and had her tubes tied. I was upset that she had robbed me of the possibility of being a father without my consent. Looking back, I understand why she did it. She never wanted to experience that type of pain again. I was not the one who had carried those fetuses inside of me. I was not the one who’d had to deal with their mangled bodies ejecting out of me. I was not the one who had to feel like a failure because my body could not carry a baby to term. Estella had been through more than I could ever realize until much later.

Just as I felt like a failure at the moment for not being able to save Mrs. Turner, despite all of my efforts and doing all of the right things, Estella had felt the same when she could not carry any of our children to term.

It had been years since I had spoken to her, but something made me pick up my office phone and dial her number. Remarkably, it was still the same number and she answered on the third ring.

“Hello, this is Estella Daniels.”

“This is Tevin Daniels.”

Silence.

“I was calling to check on you. I had no idea that you still carried my last name. Didn’t you ask for your maiden name back during the divorce?”