“A friend you’re holding like that?!”
Julia shot Ellie a venomous look. “So, how does it feel sleeping with a married man?”
“Married?” Ellie was stunned. “Mike never said anything about a family.”
“And you were happy not to ask, I’m sure. You tramp! Get out of here, now!”
Julia grabbed Ellie’s arm and shoved her out the gate. Michael didn’t even try to defend her. Ellie walked to the train station, caught the last commuter train back to the city, and cried the whole way. So that was the real man she had fallen for.
Michael was married to the daughter of a prominent real estate developer. He had no intention of divorcing his wife for a fling with a naive college girl. He was a philanderer; it was in his blood. Julia knew this and had chased off other girls from the lake house before. But Ellie hadn’t known. She thought she had found true love.
He never called again. And Ellie, too proud to confront him and tell him what a coward he was, didn’t call either. But a month later, she realized she would have to. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to achieve. Deep down, a small part of her still hoped he loved her, that it was all a stupid mistake she could forgive. She imagined he would divorce his wife and marry her. A foolish, eighteen-year-old girl’s dream.
“Pregnant?!” Michael exclaimed when she finally told him. “What does that have to do with me? Get an abortion. And don’t ever call me again.”
He hung up. Ellie, who had spent a day rehearsing words of reconciliation, froze. Just like that. So much for love. *Get an abortion.* She cried all night.
Her best friend, Susan, was out of town visiting relatives. Ellie had no other family. Her father had died in a construction accident when she was little, and her mother had passed away two years ago from a heart condition, not even forty yet.
Alone. Completely alone. What was she going to do with a baby? After crying herself out, she fell asleep and had a strange dream. She was running through a field of daisies under a bright sun, a green forest nearby. It was beautiful. Then, a little boy walked out of the woods.
“Mommy!” he shouted, laughing and waving to her.
She laughed back, running toward her baby, her arms outstretched. Suddenly, the ground split open, creating a chasm between them. The boy started to cry in fear. Ellie paced frantically along the edge of the abyss. Dark clouds covered the sun. A cold wind howled. The forest loomed, threatening to swallow her son. She leaped, trying to cross the gap, and fell into emptiness.
Ellie woke up terrified. “What could that dream mean? Nothing. It means nothing.”
“Shh, little one, it’s okay,” she whispered then. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. We’re going to be okay.”
Ellie didn’t finish her second semester. Alex was born a little premature and was a fussy baby. Ellie, who had thought she could switch to online classes, realized her education would have to wait. The young mother spent her days and nights by his crib. It was hard. Thank goodness for Susan, who would sometimes come over to watch Alex so Ellie could run to the grocery store, the pharmacy, or get a haircut.
One day, she came back in tears.
“What happened?” Susan asked, alarmed, rocking a half-asleep Alex. “Did you lose your wallet?”
“Worse than that,” Ellie sobbed, trying to keep her voice down so she wouldn’t scare her son. “I saw him.”
“Who?”
“Mike. He was with his wife. They were holding a baby. Susan, his wife had a son, too.”
“To hell with them,” Susan muttered.
She put Alex in his crib, and the two friends sat in the kitchen, crying together for the next hour—Susan out of sympathy for her friend. It was just so unfair how things had turned out for her.
“You know, Sue, after Alex was born, I hoped he’d want to see his son, that he’d be happy,” Ellie confessed through her tears.
“Did you call him?” her friend asked, surprised.
Ellie nodded silently. Yes, she had swallowed her pride. A child needed a father, after all. But Michael had just laughed and said he had nothing to do with her son. And today, she had seen him, looking happy with his wife and their baby. She and her son were just loose ends he had cut off.
Ten years passed. Ellie never called Michael again, and he never made any attempt to meet his son. She never finished her degree. Alex needed to be raised, and she had no help. She learned to knit, and her sweaters and scarves sold well on Etsy. In the evenings, she cleaned offices in a nearby building. When Alex was older, she got a job as a cashier at a grocery store. And so it went for years. Days at the register, evenings with a mop, and nights with needles and yarn.
She was exhausted. At first, Ellie blamed her constant fatigue and shortness of breath on a lack of sleep. But one day, she fainted right at her register. The ambulance, for some reason, took her to the hospital’s cardiac unit.
“But my heart doesn’t hurt,” she tried to tell the paramedics on the way, having regained consciousness. “I’m just sleep-deprived.”
“Your EKG doesn’t look good,” the gray-haired paramedic said with a sigh. “We suspect a heart attack.”
“A heart attack?” Ellie doubted, then stopped.
She remembered her late mother. She’d had a bad heart. The hospital ruled out a heart attack, but they found something else—a congenital heart defect.
“But I never had any problems before,” the young woman said, surprised.
“It was there,” the doctor explained, shaking his head. “Some defects are asymptomatic until a certain age. I’m just surprised they didn’t catch it during your pregnancy. Well, no matter. We’ll treat it now.”
“How?”
“You’ll need surgery.”
“Doctor, is it expensive?”
“Yes, it’s a costly procedure. But we can try to get you on a waiting list for state assistance. The important thing is not to stress. Get more rest.”
Ellie just gave a weak smile. When was she supposed to rest? And who would earn the money to provide a decent life for her son? She didn’t pay much attention to the doctor’s advice. After leaving the hospital, she went back to her routine: the store, the evening cleaning job, the late-night knitting. She didn’t tell anyone about her illness, hoping the approval for the surgery would come through in a month or two. But six months passed, then a year, and the waiting list barely moved. Ellie’s health declined sharply.
She finally confided in Susan.
“Sue, I have a bad feeling about this,” she told her friend. “I need you to promise me you’ll look after Alex if anything happens.”
“Don’t you dare talk like that!” Susan said angrily. “You’re going to get better. You have to. Don’t even think about anything else.”
But on that November morning, after the door closed behind Alex, Ellie’s tired heart stopped. Alex was walking home from school, happy because the math test had been postponed. The last two periods were basically free time in the gym because the English and literature teachers were at a district meeting. The gym teacher just tossed them a basketball and told them to practice their shots before disappearing into his office. The kids could see him through the keyhole playing chess with the shop teacher. Everyone was happy.
As he approached his apartment building, Alex saw an ambulance. “Probably Mrs. Gable from the fifth floor again,” he thought. The old woman was frail, and paramedics were there almost every day. In the lobby, he passed the medics.
“There was nothing we could do,” one of them was saying into his phone. “I’ve already called the coroner and the precinct.”
“Mrs. Gable must have passed away,” Alex thought and headed up the stairs, not noticing the paramedics turn to look at him with concern as they descended.
“Hey, kid, where are you going?”
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