I knew what would happen the moment the grooms threw their garters in the air. It was too late to run screaming out of the crowd like a lunatic, so I tried to pull back my hands, maybe even shove them into my pockets. Too late. The garter fell right into my palms. It would be bad form to drop it like a stool sample that had not been placed into an appropriate container, right? With a resigned sigh, I watched the other garter sail over the heads of the cluster of singles and land on the one adult, unattached man who had chosen not to join the crowd: my ex, Dr. John Watson, III (or ‘Trip’ to his friends, in an attempt to avoid the inevitable Sherlock jokes).
The sea of people parted in front of me. Everyone stared and whispered and pushed me steadily, reluctantly forward. There was no graceful, drama-free way to get out of this. My stride became more confident when I noticed an unlikely bit of luck. The garter hadn’t fallen into John’s hands, but onto the head of the greatly affronted dog in his lap. I plucked the frilly garment off Frankie’s head, placed it on the table with my own and then, to the pug’s shock and bewilderment, I swept him into my arms.
The band, bless them, immediately started up and we twirled around the dance floor in my best impersonation of a two-footed waltz.
“How are you enjoying tonight’s festivities, Sir Francis Bacon?” I asked as we twirled across the dance floor. “You are a marvelous dancer. Did you take lessons?”
He harrumphed, which was touching; Frankie usually just stared intensely at people. So I adjusted him in my arms and attempted to salve his dignity by straightening his bowtie and monocle. The look suited the sober pug. Others joined us on the floor and I slowed to a simple sway, chatting amiably with my dance partner as if we were at a formal ball and he were a dashing young lord whose attention I’d caught.
I’d missed the little guy. Sure, his ‘furdaddy’ and I had only spent a handful of weeks together three months ago, but Frankie had immediately stared a place into my heart. John insisted the pug was merely observing our interactions and, strangely, I didn’t doubt it. That probably said as much about the man and dog as it did about me. Regardless, Frankie was a champion snuggler once his intellectual curiosity was satisfied, and sitting on the couch watching Netflix wasn’t the same without his warm, roly-poly, little body quietly snoring against my side.
I tried not to think of John brooding at his table, watching us dance. Tried not to wonder what he was thinking. Tried not to be furious at how he’d treated me.
The moment I met John had been straight out of a rom-com. The sounds around us dimmed, the camera zoomed in, and we both sucked in our breaths as our hands made contact in a simple handshake. I had somehow known he was different. Okay, maybe part of that was the pictures he’d shown me of his friends’ dogs wearing hats he’d crocheted for them, in a bout of intense boredom between semesters. But it didn’t take long to realize I had met someone brilliant and, much like me, simultaneously sober and silly. However, unlike me (most people described me as ‘adorable’), he was quietly sexy… the math professor everyone always sighed over and hoped would notice them. Behind horn-rimmed glasses, his golden brown eyes were intense and assessing. His brown hair was a little overgrown, he had a light beard, and he was always a little rumpled, as though he was always too distracted by abstract topological proofs to worry about his appearance.
I marveled at the fact that I’d gone so many years without meeting him, considering my best friend was engaged to a close friend of his. Of course, the couple had said we needed to meet each other, that we were kindred spirits. But I’d just laughed it off as a blindingly happy couple’s attempt to arrange all their single friends and family into pairs. It definitely was a matchmaking ploy, but they also had been right. I hated when Greg Moore was right, because he rarely refrained from saying ‘I told you so.’
Despite the fact that I worked the night shift at the hospital, John and I had spent every day and night texting when we weren’t together. He’d message me pictures of funny or cute things he saw during his waking hours. We’d show up unexpectedly at each other’s apartments with the perfect takeout order because we thought the other might have had a bad day. Although our sleep schedules clashed, we cuddled each other to sleep regardless of whether anything more intimate occurred. John aided and abetted my goofiness while also taking me seriously. He balanced me out and, as far as I could tell, I did the same for him. We were friends as much as lovers and everything felt… perfect.
When John abruptly stopped returning texts and didn’t answer the phone, I became concerned and retrieved the key he kept in a fake rock outside his apartment building. I let myself into his apartment, and was shocked to my core.
“What are you doing?” I’d cried.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” John said in a bored tone. He was sitting on his couch without a stitch of clothing, slowly working on eating the large block of Jarlsburg in his lap, while watching the fourth season of Supernatural.
Bastard!
“It looks like you’re having Naked Cheese Time without me. And, to the best of my knowledge, we’re barely halfway through Season 3. I don’t know if I can forgive you for this!” Despite the comically dramatic flair infused into my voice, I was pretty pissed. I’d really been looking forward to Naked Cheese Time.
He raised a supercilious brow. “I thought I was making myself perfectly clear when I stopped responding to your calls and texts. It’s over. Please put the key back where you found it.”
John’s pug seemed nearly as upset as I was at his daddy’s response. It might just be hope and a mistaken memory, but deep down I was certain that John’s eyes were saying the exact opposite of his words, that he didn’t want to end things. And yet, it was what he was doing. Frankie ran to me on his tiny little legs and I felt an added twinge in my heart. I was losing a dog, too.
“What happened? What changed?” I asked.
“I can’t hide it anymore,” John said, looking at the television rather than at me. “My friend Xander and I have secretly been in a relationship for nearly a year now. My plan worked brilliantly. He’s very jealous of the time I spent with you, and we’ve finally gotten serious enough to share our love with the world. We’re even going to Greg and Dani’s wedding together. So it would be best if you and I stop seeing each other.”
I wasn’t just shocked. I knew he was lying. But why? And did it matter? He was done with me. My brain couldn’t make sense of what had just happened and, in a fog, I said goodbye to little Frankie the pug and left.
Greg’s baby brother, Julian, was the so-called lover’s roommate at the time, and he didn’t believe John’s words any more than I did. So we concocted a hair-brained scheme to make them jealous by starting a pretend relationship of our own. The scheme was mostly effective. They confessed they weren’t in a relationship and Xander swept Julian Moore off his feet. John, however jealous he may have been, did not fall at my feet in slavish adoration and profess his undying love. Instead, he did his best to start an argument by insulting me. I’ve done my best to avoid him ever since and my efforts were surprisingly effective, given our incestuously tight circle of friends (all of John’s friends were in relationships with the Moore brothers). But there was no dodging Julian Moore’s wedding, and now here I was slow-dancing with John’s chubby little dog on New Year’s Eve.
The music cut out and the countdown to midnight began. Frankie licked my chin goodbye as Julian’s nephew stole the pug from my arms. John strode up as if he had every right to talk to me, as if he had put a claim on me that he intended to collect immediately.
He wrapped an arm around my waist to pull me close as he cupped my face with one hand. John might be thin as a beanpole, but he was still ten inches taller than I and proportionally built, with broad shoulders and a lightly muscled body. I had always felt safe and protected in his arms. But not tonight.
First Greg Moore’s wedding, now Julian Moore’s wedding. If he did this whole dance-and-piss-Tommy-off thing at Logan Moore’s wedding the trifecta would be complete and I’d have to take extreme measures. I went to an Ivy League school; I could probably find a way to thoroughly dispose of John’s body along with any murderous evidence.
“John, let me go,” I told him and tried to wiggle out of his grasp. “You can’t just keep fucking with my emotions like this. I really cared about you.”
“I– I understand. I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” he told me. His topaz eyes gazed into my own, warmth and caring and desperation in their depths. John brushed a tear from my cheek. A tear of fury. “Tommy, I’m not someone who can have a happily ever after. But you… You deserve everything. Joy… devotion… passion… Everything. You have no idea how much I wish I could be the person to give that to you. But at least I can step aside so you can find the man who will.”
John bent to me and paused within an inch of my lips, as if in warning, or as if he were warring with himself. Weak man that I am, I tilted my head and closed the distance, expecting a tender brush of the lips.
His mouth crushed down on mine and he held me tight, nearly lifting me off my feet. His tongue licked its way into my mouth, swirled with mine. The heat from his body and the whisper of his cologne surrounded me. I lost myself in that kiss. And then he was gone. Striding off the dance floor. Out of the ballroom. Out of my life. Without a backward glance.
“No. Absolutely not. You are not doing this to me.” I loved Julian Moore, but he was asking too much. I was not running across the county just to play Florence Nightingale to John. “Plenty of single people get food poisoning every day. He’ll deal with it.”
Apparently, the entire extended Moore family ate food that Chance the Kitchen Jinx had touched, and now they all had food poisoning. As did every one of their friends. Except me. John and I had alternating custody of Sunday dinners at the Moores’. And John deserved the food poisoning, dammit. If it wasn’t for the fact that Julian was already miserable, I’d reach through the phone and slap him. Okay, not slap him, but I’d spill tomato juice on his designer shirt or something equally reprehensible.
“You don’t understand,” Julian explained. “Trip’s not responding to anyone’s calls or texts. You’re the only one in any shape to drive over to his place and check on him. Tommy, I’m really worried. He’s- it’s been out of control for months, if you know what I mean.”
I didn’t really care that John was behaving badly, but I didn’t get a chance to say that because Julian’s newly-adopted son began screaming about four people and three bathrooms and serious architectural design flaws.
“Use a bucket!” Julian shouted.
“I’m not using a BUCKET!” the boy’s voice went up an octave with the last word.
“It’s a perfectly good bucket,” Julian reasoned, a little humor infusing his voice. “There are kids in China who’d be thrilled to have a bucket like this.”
“THEN YOU USE THE PERFECTLY GOOD BUCKET!” I tried not to laugh at the boy’s distress. Really, I did. Hopefully, the sounds of shuffling and door slamming kept my friend from hearing my giggles.
When Julian finally got back, I said, “Your son certainly i-”
“Are you seriously still sitting there? Am I going to have to call an ambulance and have them break his door down? I know Trip was a dick to you but you can’t possibly hate him this much!” Julian shouted.
“Don’t you think that’s going a bit far? You’re okay. Your husband’s okay. Your kids are okay. And I doubt any of you are paying attention to your phones either.”
Julian made a disgusted sound. “Doesn’t dehydration send blood sugar sky high? I mean, I’m pretty sure it was already high and he’ll get too confused to realize he’s in danger and I can’t believe I didn’t even think about him until an hour ago and you know what? Fuck you, I’m calling an ambulance.”
My blood ran cold and I could barely find the words to stop Julian from hanging up. Worrying about blood sugar could only mean one thing. “Joh– Trip’s diabetic? Are you sure?”
“Are you fucking with me? Of course I’m sure. How could you miss that? Never mind. Xander and Chance are his best friends and they don’t know either, but I assumed you did because you’ve actually seen him naked and you’re a nurse and-” Julian kept talking, but I was already out the door and running to my car. I was pretty sure I said something to let Julian know I was on the way before hanging up and putting my car into drive.
I’ve never driven so fast in my life. If a cop pulled me over… well, maybe I’d get a police escort. That would be good. It had been a solid six hours, maybe eight, since every single Moore had gotten sick. I tried not to expect the worst, but I couldn’t help myself from going through every possible scenario in my head. Maybe, just maybe, John had actually felt it coming on and taken enough insulin to nip any trouble in the bud, but the body’s reaction to this kind of illness was very difficult to anticipate correctly.
Thank god John had never moved the key-rock. I busted in like a one-man drug raid. Little Frankie was hysterical and whimpering as he led me to the bathroom, where I found John lying on the floor.
“Johnny… Wake up, baby.” I rubbed his arm, then up to his neck to feel his pulse. It wasn’t strong, but it wasn’t fading. And he was breathing. Both good signs. What could I say that would garner a reaction? “Frankie needs you to wake up. I think he’s hungry.”
“Ughhhhh” John moaned. Oh, thank god. “You can’t be here. I’m sick. It’s gross. Tell them not to send you here.”
“I’ve seen it all.” Unfortunately, as a trauma and emergency-medicine nurse, I really had. This was nothing. “Where is your insulin? Blood sugar monitor? Do you wear a pump?”
I’d never seen insulin in the fridge, and it definitely needed to be refrigerated.
“Don’t worry. No more food. Took off pump,” the moron said. “Go away. I’m gross.”
“Brilliant, Dr. Watson,” I snapped.
“Ph.D. Not M.D. I’m sick. Chance cooked.”
“Yeah I know, the Blevins curse. Now WHERE IS YOUR IN-SU-LIN?” I enunciated.
“Bed. Underneath. I’m gross. Don’t come over.” Add confusion to the list of danger symptoms. John’s little dog whimpered slightly, so I scooped Frankie into my arms and gave him a quick hug as I ran to the bedroom. “You’re such a good boy. You took care of your daddy until I could get here, and now I’ve got it handled. We’ll go to the hospital and everything will be okay and then I’ll come back for you and tell you everything that happened.”
There was a tiny cube-fridge under his bed, along with the metric shit-ton of medical supplies all diabetics had. Of course, the weirdly secretive ass had hidden his supplies under his bed like it was a stash of porn magazines he didn’t want his parents to find. I swore at John, tested his blood sugar, swore some more, gave him some rapid-acting insulin (his supply was extremely low, I noted), swore louder, and attempted to drag the excessively tall man out of the bathroom and support him as he got dressed. John continued to argue that he was gross and I shouldn’t come over, and I continued to swear, and Frankie followed us swearing in an upper-crust British dialect of Canine-ese (I wasn’t sure why the pug had a British accent when he was born here in New York, but it might be from all that Doctor Who he watched). I said a quick goodbye to the dog and walked John out to the car. He was shaky, but still able to walk. And complain. He was definitely able to complain.
Confusion, high blood sugar, pulse weakening, breathing depressed… John had never shown up in my ER, so I needed to get some sort of a medical history ASAP. I grabbed his phone and dialed his twin sister. I’d never spoken to her before, but they were close and she was the only person who’d know anything.
“Hi, Joy? This is Tommy P-”
“What happened? High or low?” she asked immediately.
“High. He got food poisoning along with every man, woman, and child in the Moore family. Brilliant man that he is, he took off his pump. I’ve got this for now…”
She was understandably pissed and worried and gave me as much info as she could during the far-too-long drive. This hadn’t even been his first E.R. visit this year, and he usually went to a different hospital so Greg and I wouldn’t know about it. I assured Joy I’d watch over her brother, so she could sleep and take care of her babies. I even offered to babysit them myself in the morning, but she had a reliable sitter on-call for situations just like this.
As soon as we arrived, I used my considerable influence to push my way into the back; they knew me well enough that they trusted my judgement. I shouted orders and information left and right, far more concerned and irrational than I’d ever been in an emergency before, barely willing to let John go so people could attend to him.
We got there in time. They discussed the ICU, but it wouldn’t come to that. I wouldn’t let it. As they worked on John, I stepped into the hall and texted Julian to set his mind at ease.
TOMMY: He’ll be okay. We’re at the hospital now.
BABY MOORE: I should have called you sooner! I’m so so so sorry.
TOMMY: It was perfect timing. Protocol is to wait 6 hours anyway. Don’t beat yourself up Julie.
BABY MOORE: Are you staying with him?
TOMMY: Of course. And I’ll get Frankie in the morning. I can pick up your dog and your brothers dogs too. We’ll have a big happy party.
BABY MOORE: Thank you!
BABY MOORE: I’ll put the dinosaur hat on Cassius.
BABY MOORE: And it’s cold out. Roger needs to wear her coat and snood.
BABY MOORE: Sometimes Luna gets distracted playing outside and forgets to pee.
BABY MOORE: And don’t forget their car harnesses.
TOMMY: I’ve got this. Just take care of yourself and your family.
I returned to find an administrator in John’s bay, entering his insurance information into the computer while he signed some HIPAA paperwork that gave the doctors permission to talk to me. I spent hours holding John’s hand, talking about every inconsequential thing that popped into my head — gossip he already knew, stories from my childhood, and even random trivia off my phone. Occasionally I stepped out to grab something he needed, not wanting to bother my friends. But mostly, I just watched his monitor and waited for a change, hoping that I’d see an improvement.
When John was finally stable, I helped settle him into his room and briefed his nurse thoroughly, before sitting back down beside him and watching him sleep. For the first time that night, I felt as though I could finally breathe.
Everything was going to be okay.