The Year We Turned Forty (7 page)

“Jessie?”

Jessie heard her name but it sounded muffled and distant.

“Jessie?” the soft voice asked again.

Jessie's head was pounding, like someone was drilling a jackhammer into her skull. She reached up to touch her temples, but her arms were like two deadweights at her sides. She must have had too much to drink last night. Blair Wainright's dark eyes suddenly materialized in her mind and she forced the image away. Had he drugged them? Maybe he'd given them roofies, or what was that other one? Special K? Where were Gabriela and Claire? Were they okay?

“Can you hear me?” The voice seemed closer now and was more persistent, firmer.

Jessie nodded, or at least she
thought
she was moving her head up and down. Then there was the weight of a hand on her wrist and something cold against her chest. And her eyelids were being pried open, a searing yellow light blinding her. “What are you doing?” Jessie's voice was hoarse and her mouth incredibly dry.

“I'm checking your vitals,” a blurry figure responded.

“Gabriela? Claire?” Jessie asked the out-of-focus shape.

“No, my name is Cindy. I'm on the third rotation—morning shift. We met yesterday, but I don't expect you to remember. You were pretty out of it.”

Jessie thought hard. Yesterday? Yesterday she'd been flying to Vegas to meet her friends. They'd had champagne, a lot of it. Then they'd been at the Blair Wainright show. And then after, they were . . . “Was I drugged?”

“Well, yes, that's what you said you wanted?” The voice responded as if it was the most normal thing in the world to request.

I asked Blair Wainright to drug me?
Jessie tried to remember what happened after they'd all squeezed hands, but she couldn't.

“Where are Gabriela and Claire?”

“Oh, your friends? They were here last night, but they left,” Cindy said, and as Jessie squinted at her, the lines of her face becoming more clear—it was heartshaped and her cheeks were covered with freckles. Who was this woman?

“Can you sit up?”

“Left? Where did they go?” Jessie tried to force her body into an upright position, but her muscles felt atrophied. How long had she been out? She closed her eyes then opened them again.

“I have no idea. Home maybe?”

Why would Gabriela and Claire leave her in Vegas? Jessie heard the sound of a motor and her bed began to move as items in the room started to take shape. She saw a poster with the numbers one to ten and a pain scale, then a dry erase board with several names listed—then balloons, and flowers, lots of flowers. She felt a pinch as she moved and saw a bag with fluid
and followed it to an IV taped to the back of her hand. “I'm in the hospital?” Jessie's voice was shaking.

“I'm going to call the doctor,” Cindy, presumably a nurse, said as she pressed a button. Her hair was pulled back with a clip and part of her bleached blond hair was sprouting out of the top of it. She was wearing light blue scrubs with tiny pink and yellow flowers on them that made Jessie feel dizzy if she stared at them too closely.

“I'm sorry, I don't understand why I'm here.” Jessie felt her adrenaline start pumping. Blair Wainright had drugged them and then, had he . . . “Did something bad happen to me?” Jessie stammered.

Cindy poured water into a small plastic cup and held it out to Jessie, eyeing her skeptically. “You really don't know why you're here?” she asked as she pressed two pills into Jessie's palm. “Take these.”

“What are they?”

“Just some Tylenol. We don't want your fever to return,” Cindy said, frowning at her. “Jenny, the nurse who was with you on the night shift, said it spiked at one hundred and three, but”—Cindy flipped through some papers on a clipboard—“according to your chart, it seemed to break a few hours ago, thank goodness!” She laughed nervously.

“I don't remember that,” Jessie said softly as a tear began to fall out of the corner of her eye, unable to mask the panicked feeling that was quickly consuming her. Why couldn't she remember anything and why had Gabriela and Claire left her? “I need my iPhone please—it has a polka-dot case and a screensaver of my twin daughters in the stands at a UCLA football game. And where is my purse? It had my wallet and my iPad in it.”

Cindy gave her a quizzical look. “I'm not sure what you mean by an eye phone, but if you want to make a call, there's a phone right next to you on the table. And as for eye pads, I can get you a cloth to remove your mascara.”

Jessie laughed. “Okay, is this some kind of joke? I said iPad not eye pads? You know, the tablet? Apple?”

Cindy bit her lower lip and thought for a moment. “Why don't you wait for the doctor and we'll get this all sorted out,” she offered, and watched Jessie finally swallow the pills. She would have done anything to make the pounding behind her temples stop. “I want him to take a quick look at you.”

“Jess? I didn't realize you were awake,” Grant said as he walked into the room, placing a soft kiss on her lips. “Did I hear you talking about Steve Jobs?”

“What are
you
doing here?” Jessie asked, ignoring his question. “Oh God, you're still on my emergency contact list . . .” Jessie trailed off as another tear escaped from her eye, rolling over the side of her nose. Mortified that her ex-husband had to come bail her out, she wanted to crawl under the covers and disappear, suddenly sickened by her inability to move forward, at her naïveté last night. Tomorrow she was going to start therapy. Claire had a psychologist she swore by—she'd get her number. She was going to get over Grant
finally
.

“You doing okay?” Grant perched on the edge of the bed as he widened his eyes at the nurse and Jessie felt something familiar about the moment, as if she were experiencing déjà vu. “The girls want to see you, but I told them to wait with my mom.”

“They didn't need to come home from college for this!”

Grant squinted at her as if he didn't understand what she'd just said.

“I've called the doctor,” Cindy interrupted. “Your wife seems surprised she's in the hospital. Keeps asking for her friends, Claire and—” The nurse stopped as if she was searching for the name.

“Gabriela,” Jessie and Grant said together.

“She's asked for some things too. Tablets and eye pads?” Cindy continued as if Jessie wasn't in the room.

“Ex-wife,” Jessie said, embarrassed by the nurse's mistake. It had been a decade. And now he was marrying someone else. Janet would claim that title now. For years, it had been Jessie and Grant, Grant and Jessie. Now it would be Grant and Janet. She knew those words would never slip off her tongue easily, no matter how many therapy sessions she endured. The worst part? Jessie had a feeling Janet would never make the same mistakes she did—that she'd hold on to him tightly. If Grant didn't want to have sex with her, she'd sit him down and work it out, not let it fester like a tumor.

“I'm sorry, did you divorce me in your sleep or something?” Grant pressed his lips together, unsure whether to smile or frown. And as Jessie stared at him, she realized he had his hair—
all of it
. It was dark brown and full and slightly long around the ears,
not gone
. He wasn't bald. And he was also softer around the middle—the way he
used
to be. As she eyed the fabric of his golf shirt stretching over his belly, it triggered a memory—she remembered the way it felt to wrap her arms around Grant's doughy stomach, the way it cushioned her own imperfections. She had friends who complained about their husbands' bodies—why couldn't they go to the gym or play basketball? Jessie would always stay silent, bobbing her head up and down to support them, not ever revealing that she secretly loved Grant's imperfect physique.

As Jessie watched Grant, his khaki slacks wrinkled as if he'd slept in them, her hand flew to her mouth in realization. She lifted up the bedsheet and felt her belly, slightly deflated, but not as hard, just as another nurse pushed a bassinet into the room with a baby in it. It was wearing a little white long-sleeve T-shirt and diaper and had a blue-and-pink-striped hat on its head. On the side of the glass, a sticker read
Hi, my name is Baby Lucas
:
8 pounds, 10 ounces. Born 6-02-05.
“Oh my God!” Jessie marveled at the sight of her one-day-old son.

“Jess?”

“I'm okay, just obviously a little out of it . . .”

“You started running a fever as soon as we got you into the room after the delivery. You were talking in your sleep the whole time.”

“What was I saying?” Jessie eyed Lucas as the nurse picked him up, aching to hold him.

“Oh, mostly gibberish, but you did keep calling out for someone named Blair?” Grant let out a strange laugh and she couldn't tell if he thought it was funny or not. “You're not cheating on me, are you?” he added, his smile still resting on his lips.

Jessie felt the color drain from her face as she searched Grant's for more information. Did he know more than he'd let on last time? Was this his way of testing the waters? Satisfying that nagging feeling he'd been having all along? Or was she simply overthinking things because she really had been unfaithful? She'd wanted to come back here so badly, but she hadn't thought through how heavy the burden of her secrets would feel again.

“I am most definitely not cheating on you with someone named Blair!” Jessie said. “I was obviously delirious from the fever,” she added before he could respond, pulling him in as
closely as her IV would allow, digging her head into the cushion of his chest that she had missed so much, wondering why she ever thought she could replace him. As the nurse placed Lucas against her breast and she buried her nose in his neck, she thought of Blair Wainright again. For whatever reason, he had given her another chance. And she was determined to get it right this time.

•  •  •

Gabriela awoke in the darkness, her head pounding. Was this what a migraine felt like? She was thankful for the thick curtains on the window of her hotel room, knowing the fiery Las Vegas sun would
not
help the ache inside her skull. What time had they gotten back to the suite the night before? As she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, Blair's claims about time travel began to flash in her head like scenes from a hazy dream. She couldn't believe she had fallen for his story.
Magical solar eclipse my ass
, Gabriela thought as she heard a phone start ringing. She scrambled to grab it, but realized it wasn't hers. It was someone's archaic BlackBerry. She hadn't seen one of these in a long time. Gabriela pushed a series of buttons, trying to remember how to answer it, and finally heard Jessie's voice.

“I'm in the hospital!”

“What?” Gabriela stood up and nearly collapsed, her legs wobbly as she tried to find a light switch. But then she remembered how the cute bellman stressed that the hotel suite was high-tech—so much so that there were no light switches. Hadn't he showed them a remote control that operated
everything
? Where the hell was it? “What happened? Why are you at the hospital?”

“I'm fine. Better than fine, I'm fabulous. Gab . . .” Jessie
paused, and Gabriela thought she heard a baby crying in the background.

“Jess . . .”

Jessie lowered her voice to a whisper. “It worked, Gabriela. We're back in the year 2005. I had Lucas yesterday. Do you hear him? God, I forgot how little his hands were. His smell is so delicious. And my girls, they're so young again!” She looked at her ten-year-old twins, sitting on the edge of her bed looking wide eyed at their baby brother, their long ash-blond hair pulled into ponytails tied with pink bands. She'd forgotten how girly they'd once been, wearing tutus or dresses no matter what the weather and never leaving the house without their hair accessories.

“But I'm still in Vegas?” Gabriela said just as she stubbed her toe against a hard object. “Fuck!”

“No, you're not. At least I don't think so. Wait. Why don't you know where you are?”

“Because it's dark as hell in my room. I'm trying to find the remote control for the lights, or even the door!” Just then her hand felt the knob and she turned it. “Okay, so you're saying—” Gabriela stopped midsentence and looked around squinting at the sunlight streaming in through a skylight in the hallway.

“Well?” Jessie asked.

“I'm at my house, well, my old place. The one we were living in before . . .”

“You made all that crazy money off your book and moved to The Strand in Manhattan Beach.”

“Yes,” Gabriela whispered, and slid to the floor, gripping the phone that she now realized was hers, her palm sweaty as her mind started computing. “You said Lucas was a day old, right? So that means I may have already told Colin I want a baby. I remember I slept in the guest room that night because I was so
mad at him. And that's where I am now.” Her voice broke. “It's too late—he's already said no.”

“Gab. You don't know that. Maybe you haven't told him yet. Maybe you aren't remembering it right.”

Gabriela knew she was remembering it exactly right. Still, to this day, she could recall every word, every look, every feeling from the moment she decided she was ready to the second he shook his head and said
I'm sorry.
“It's too late,” she repeated.

“Gabriela, don't say that. Maybe you've been given this chance so you can figure out another way to convince Colin.”

Gabriela felt a flash of hope spike in her heart. “Maybe.”

“Not maybe! Yes! I don't think we would have been chosen to come back if we didn't have the ability to change things.”

Gabriela nodded to herself. Jessie had a point—Gabriela was not going to take no for an answer this time, not when she knew what her future looked like. “So what was it like to see Grant?”