#widows

Brody was saving whatever money he could right now. He wanted to get a new truck he could rely on. His father’s old one was too run-down to trust it to make it to Denny’s school. He should have enough soon to get something that will get him up there for long weekends. In a college town where people didn’t care if he and Denny held hands or cooked dinner together. Far away enough where their families would never find out.

Maybe he could start an apprenticeship when Denny had his big boy job. He was good with his hands. He could be a mechanic or an electrician. He’d never been good at essays or tests like his boyfriend, but he was no dummy either.

He’d always known these thoughts to be dangerous. It was the path they were warned about as children. Turning your back on your family, moving to a big city, and giving in to temptation. These were things that would get you struck down. Maybe that’s why he didn’t notice the new mother. Maybe that’s why he didn’t notice the week-old calf he was now standing in front of. His mind had been clouded by his sins. His fantasy of a life in a faraway place with the man he loved more than God. Love didn’t feel like a big enough word. Lust was a laughable simplification. Idolatry was much closer to what he felt.

No one was around. Brody could risk telling him how crazy he was about him. He abandoned his spot by the fence and walked, eyes transfixed on his first and only love.

The mother ran over. Cows are faster than you think, especially when mad. She knocked him over with her big head and his body went under her hooves. Dennis dismounted and ran over; his hat flew off his head with his sudden movement.

Dying wasn’t like in the westerns. You don’t get last words with punctured lungs and a shattered skull. You get a blood-stained smile and the strongest man you’ve ever known going limp. He feels colder before his brothers can make their way over after an unintelligible phone call. The ambulance takes an hour to get there. Dennis puts a bullet between the hefer's ears before the sun is up. Same with her calf. They had a captive bolt pistol they usually used, but Dennis wanted blood and brains. His family processed the meat. Dennis picked out Brody’s favorite shirt and boots to get buried in. He snuck his high school ring in the pocket. High school sweethearts is all they would ever be. It was a closed casket.

Dennis woke up before the eulogy he never gave. It wouldn’t have made sense to anyone else for him to give it. They were only close friends. They were only the owner's son and a ranch hand. They only secretly talked about slipping off to Illinois to get married. They were only each other’s everything.

His shifts were early, but he woke up earlier. Trinity made jokes about him being on farm time still. That sounded better than trauma-induced nightmares. He let her live in the world where his body accepted small-town life. Internalized it naturally. He doesn’t ruin the illusion. He doesn’t say it took everything away from him only a couple of years before he could get out.

Dennis still said a prayer when he got out of bed every day. It wasn’t to God anymore. It was to Brody.

He made a full breakfast for two. Trinity wandered out to the smell of bacon and eggs. She didn’t know of a single other coworker who had a real homemade breakfast before each shift. Dennis said he needed a full meal to get through the day.

A firefighter EMT came in. He was all big smiles and blue eyes. It made Dennis feel sick.

He got in Dennis’s way when he was walking and asked, “When are you gonna let me take you out? I see you lookin’.”

Dennis didn’t know how to explain that he was looking, but he wasn’t interested. More like stuck on the way the dimples were the same. Stuck on the way his neck had to angle itself in a familiar way just to look up and talk. His mind was always stuck.

Dennis smiled a little sadly. He wanted to tell him he had a boyfriend. That he’d had a boyfriend for almost a decade at this point. He denied himself the bittersweet pleasure. “I’m not really dating right now. I’ve gotta get through my internship.” Trinity was watching along with some of the nurses. They seemed to get a thrill out of seeing the resident shut this guy down. He wanted to yell at them that he wasn’t playing hard to get. He had already been gotten.

The EMT kept that easy grin. Like it was all a game he would eventually win. Dennis wanted to carve out the dimples so he wouldn’t have to see them again. “I can wait.”

How do you explain that time is too precious to waste on someone who will never get over someone else? “Don’t hold your breath.” He didn’t mean for it to sound as cruel as it did, but finally those dimples were gone. It made something in him resolve. A trigger pulled or a safety turned on, he couldn’t decide.

The EMT’s partner patted his back on the way out when he saw the dejected face.

Later, when they were turning into the Taco Bell drive-thru, Trinity brought it up. “Why did you turn that guy down? He was totally cute and into you.” There were a couple of cars ahead of them so they could be there a while.

“You know I don’t date,” Dennis said.

She relaxed the crown of her head against the headrest, “But why, though? And don’t say you’re too busy. I’ve seen you on your days off.” She’s right. Dennis sits on the couch, cleans, and makes a roast. Not exactly a wild night befitting a twenty-seven-year-old.

The car at the speaker moved up and Trinity let the car idle forward. Dennis swallowed; his throat felt dry. Dating was a tough topic for him, and he kept being confronted with it. “I don’t really want to date. Like ever.”

Trinity turned her neck to face him. “Are you like ace or something?” Dennis shook his head a little. “It would be fine if you were! I’d get people to stop bothering you about it.”

“No, I’m not. I had a boyfriend…” Had. He still has one, as far as he was concerned. They never broke up, they never drifted apart, they never ended it. It would never end.

Trinity’s face was sympathetic. “Was he a dick?”

Dennis tried not to feel offended. He knew she wasn’t calling Brody anything. How could he expect her to be sensitive to something he never told her about? Dennis just felt protective of his legacy. After a couple long seconds, he replied, “He was great, actually.” The corners of his mouth turned up a little despite his overwhelming sadness. The act of remembering him was painful, but the feeling of giddiness at the thought of him never went away.

This confused Trinity more, “What happened then? Was the distance too much?” She turned back to idle forward more as the next car pulled up.

Dennis couldn’t respond for a moment. He’d never talked about this with someone. Everyone who knew about Brody couldn’t know about the way they loved each other. And everyone who could know the way they loved each other could never know Brody. Dennis felt like it was easier that way most days. The separation felt sanctimonious until times like this.

All Dennis could say was, “He died.”

Trinity’s eyes bugged out of her head a little. Dennis’s teared up and looked away to the tiny trees in the parking lot. They must not have had what the person in front of them wanted because they peeled out of line swiftly. Trinity rolled to the speaker. She ordered for both of them. She put her window up, and the silence lingered a little.

Trinity took a sip out of her water bottle and threw it in the back seat to make room for her Baja Blast Freeze. “Jesus, your life is fucking tragic.” Dennis laughed a little. Her brashness was sometimes the best part about her. It felt good to have someone else think that. His life sucked.

“Yeah. It is.”

She looked over at him again. “What was his name?”

Something about that question stopped his heart. He didn’t get to talk about him anymore. His family had moved on from the accident and Dennis had no way to justify mourning him so intensely. He could excuse the crying over the body as the trauma of being a witness to a death. He could excuse not eating in the week after as being sick over the blood of a friend. He could excuse switching his major and moving far away as needing a change. He could tell them he lost his class ring somewhere.

“Brody.” It felt like a sigh coming out of him. Like wind sweeping down the plain.

She grabbed her wallet from the console.“That’s a nice name.”

“He was nice.” Was.

Dennis had killed the vibe for the whole night. They drove home quietly. Trinity turned up the radio to fill the space. Dennis was lost in memories at the mention of his name.

He ate his dinner. He knew he couldn’t waste away like he did when it first happened. Brody wouldn’t like it. They would go out to eat at Red Lobster a couple of towns away and he would always count the number of biscuits he could put away. Dennis hadn’t been to one in damn near ten years.

Trinity turned off her phone when she was most of the way through her quesadilla. She took a sip of her green slushy before she asked, “How long ago was it?”

Dennis inhaled his food and he was already done. His trash was still on the coffee table. “I was nineteen.”

“You haven’t dated anyone in eight years?” It wasn’t even judgmental sounding, just sad.

“I think…I think he was it for me.” Trinity put down the last quarter of her quesadilla. Dennis drank a little more Sierra Mist. “We were going to move to a city when I finished undergrad. Get married. He wanted kids and I wanted to have them with him. I can’t imagine doing all that with someone else, so I think I’m done.” He stood up to throw the trash away.

“Have you tried at all?” Trinity was so motivated by finding love. She dressed up to go to CVS on the off chance of running into The One in the candy aisle. She couldn’t imagine just calling all that off.

Dennis chuckled a little at that idea. Like it was preposterous that a man in his twenties would seek companionship after spending the better part of a decade alone. “I’m not sitting through terrible Tindr dates just to fuck around with people. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to them. I’ll always love him.”

Trinity felt that empty feeling in her chest. She knew hearts didn’t break, but it sure felt like it. “Moving on doesn’t mean you have to stop loving him.”

“Nobody deserves to be second in their own relationship. And he’ll always be my first in every single way.”

Trinity dropped it for the rest of the night. Maybe she would drop it forever. Dennis seemed adamant that he would never find something like that twice. She didn’t know if she could tell him he would, not when she’d never found it once.

She ate her quesadilla and went to bed.

After that night, she noticed things about her roommate. How he would stare off sometimes, how he looked away at couples holding hands, how he would stand beside people losing their partners and say just the right things.

She didn’t know if it was right for him to deny himself the opportunity to find that joy again. She didn’t know if it was right for him to subject someone else to that grief. She didn’t know what was right in this situation at all. She was usually steadfast, always having something to say, an opinion quickly decided on. There was nothing to say to this.

At the end of their shift, a man named Brody came in with crush injuries and a head wound. It was a three-car collision. He was 31. They stabilized him the best they could through a pneumothorax and sent him to the OR. Dennis waited to fall apart till after. He could keep it in.

Robby had shown him the way to the roof one night. It wasn’t even after a particularly bad shift. Dennis liked the view. He needed to see the horizon now, even if it was too hilly and covered in bridges and bricks.

He was crying before he finished the last flight of stairs. He didn’t cry like this often. It hurt his throat and left him with headaches. However, some days he couldn’t stop it.

“Why did he fucking make it? Why did you not take him?” He put his forehead on the railing. He was an asshole for thinking that. “I’m sorry for saying that. Please forgive me.” He could tell he wasn’t by the way his body stayed tense. His breathing wouldn’t be like this if he were absolved. How could a benevolent God squeeze the life out of him so many times? Dennis didn’t notice the door to the roof opening.

Jack wasn’t expecting anyone up here. Robby was still running point and he was a little early anyway. He was going to collect his thoughts while looking at the city. Now he was looking at an R1 losing their shit. He had an obligation to step in. Gloria would probably find a way to make him liable if something happened and he didn’t. She never liked him very much.

He made his footsteps heavy, not that he had any trouble doing that, but the kid didn’t turn around. He kept leaning on the railing, taking shuddering breaths that were forced out of him a second later. Jack decided to announce himself. “Uhhh. You doin’ Ok?” Real comforting, Jack, He thought. There was a reason he didn’t go into psych.

The blond man turned around and kept one hand on the railing. He was obviously trying to take deep breaths, but he couldn’t. Jack knew what to do about that. Walking over to him, he said, “Hey, hey. Listen to me. Deep breaths for four seconds, try to hold for four, and then breathe out for four.  I’ll do it too.” They tried a couple of those until Jack grabbed the other man’s hand and put it on his diaphragm. The contact seemed to distract him enough to start actually doing the exercise.

They did that for a while. Just looking at each other’s faces while they breathed in the same pattern. They did it for long enough for Dennis to become aware he was touching an attending’s stomach. Long enough for him to get embarrassed by someone walking in on his breakdown.

He’d have to explain this, probably. He didn’t know what the other man had heard, but if he was there long enough, he heard the blasphemous thing he’d confessed. That he would trade about every patient, man, woman, or child, just to have that simple life with Brody. The only thing stopping him was that God could not be bargained with. The table had already been flipped.

Dennis looked out at the horizon. It was more like a skyline here. He felt the tears on his collar cooling. “Sorry you had to see that.” He couldn’t even pretend it was an occupational hazard. It was completely personal. Messy. Death was messy and it made a mess out of him. “I uhh-I don’t know how much you saw…”

“Hey, I’ve lost my shit on the roof before, so I’m not judging.” Dr. Abbot didn’t have to bend down to force eye contact like Dr. Robby did. Like Brody. There was maybe a two-inch difference. Dennis was tired of craning his neck for people. It ached. “This job is fucking hard. And you’re getting used to it.”

“It wasn’t even about the job.” Dennis paused and looked more at the sky. “I guess it kinda was, but a patient reminded me of someone I’ve lost, and it screwed me up a little.”

Abbot's face of professional concern flattened a little. Something like understanding or maybe condolence. “I get mad anytime someone beats cancer, so I get it.”

It was Dennis’s turn for his face to fall a little. That was such an irrationally cruel thing to say out loud. It made him feel seen. He’d already broken the seal with Trinity. It felt good to have her know, it brought up more fond memories. He couldn’t help himself.

He looked away from the sky and looked down at his feet. “A patient came in with the same name, around the age he would be now. A lot of the same injuries. He got stabilized. And I suck for being mad about it.”

“No, you don’t suck for that. That’s normal.” Abbot was shaking his head as he leaned on the railing. He understood not wanting to look at someone’s face during times like this.

“It’s just…” Dennis pursed his lips while deciding how honest to be. How much of his anger he could show. Abbot seemed to get it, maybe more than anybody else, for whatever reason. “It’s been almost ten years since I lost him. And all that shit about time healing isn’t real. At least not for me.”

“I still have the refrigerator magnets in the same places my wife put ‘em. I wear her perfume to bed sometimes. I’ve been waiting twelve years to be ready to sell a house I don’t fill up alone.” He didn’t know why he was saying all of this. It wasn’t just to make an intern, whom he’d spoken less than one hundred words, feel better.  There was something familiar here.

Dennis let out a shaky breath. He didn’t have mementos like that. He didn’t have a house full of love left empty. “I don’t know how to explain to people that you have all this love left over and nowhere for it to go. You can’t give it to someone else, you can’t make it leave, it’s just stuck there like tiny air bubbles in your heart.” Not wanting to be presumptuous of this man’s pain, he added, “I didn’t lose a wife, though, so it’s probably not the same.” What was he doing? Comparing his pain to a man who lost a whole life he’d built together with someone.

Abbot had an unexpected stinging in his eyes focused on the helipad. He wasn’t predicting hearing something like that verbalized. “No. I-“ He trailed off a little and sniffled. “That’s how I feel too.”

“We were going to get out of Broken Bow. Really be together. God had other plans.” He looked at the man again, finally. “My roommate’s been bothering me about dating again. I can’t really tell her I’m too fucked up to.”

“REBOA girl? She’s tenacious.” Jack's face was amused again. Still sad, but distracted.

“Yeah.”

Jack didn’t know why he was offering. Solidarity? Compassion? Loneliness? “I have a widow support group I go to. It meets on Friday nights at the community center on Kingsley. Do you wanna join me? You can tell her you’re going out and get her off your back.”

“I’m not a widow, though.” He wasn’t. He never married him. He never got down on one knee or professed in front of God and his family that he was to spend eternity with him. He’d only felt it in his heart.

Abbot scrunched his eyebrows a little. “You lost forever with someone you love. Sounds the same to me.”

And, yeah, when you put it like that.

this was cross posted to Ao3, idk if ill post every update on here unless people want me to.

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