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“What are you doing here?” Gerri asks. It’s all she can summon. She’s exhausted, hungry, not to mention fucking terrified.
Enter Roman Roy, with his usual perfect timing.
“What am I doing here?” His face curdles. “Wow. Fuck you too.”
It’s the first time she’s seen him in six months. He looks like he fell out of bed and into this hospital.
“My daughters don’t even know this is happening. Sorry I didn’t send you a formal invite.”
“Seriously? You didn’t tell them?”
“I’ll tell them later.”
“Later, when you’re dead?”
She gives him a cold, flat smile. “Thanks.”
Roman recoils. “I didn’t–”
“No, really. Your positivity means a lot.”
“You’re not gonna die. You can’t. That would require that you be made of organic matter, instead of fucking … corporate Terminator metal.”
Gerri crosses her arms. The judgmental posture makes her feel a little more confident in her hospital gown. “Are you going to explain what you’re doing here?”
“Tom let it slip to Shiv,” Roman says, “who told me, and – I don’t know, all of a sudden I was here.”
Fuck. Even Tom wasn’t supposed to know. Gerri had kept it from him, making it sound like something minor, cosmetic even, until he’d overheard her on the phone to her doctor and had a minor panic attack. She was the one who wound up having to console him over her impending life-threatening surgery. (“I just don’t know,” he’d kept saying. “I just don’t know if we can swing it around here without you, Gerri. Things might … things might get dark.” As if they weren’t already.)
Now, another adult man to add to the consolation list.
At least she likes this one.
To help her ignore the thought, she asks, “Why did they let you back here?”
“The security in this place is really shitty.”
She keeps staring at him, willing the true answer out.
“I might have told them I was your husband, or your nephew, or – both, whatever. What was I supposed to do, Gerri? Just not come?”
“It’s just a little heart thing.”
“Most people don’t call a triple bypass a little heart thing.”
“Well, that’s what I’m calling it.”
“Fuck this. You should have left when we did. Seriously? Killing yourself with the job? For my dad – sure, valid. But Tom? Tom and fucking Lukas?”
“I’m getting older, Roman. It happens to everyone.”
“But not to you, though.” His voice is very small.
“To me too,” she says. She doesn’t mean for the words to be as gentle as they are.
“Well,” he says, his eyes welling up, “shit.” He turns around, overcome, and starts pacing, a hand over his face.
Her betrayer of a heart does it again.
“Thank you for coming,” she says. And then, only because she might die today, she allows herself: “It’s good to see you.”
“You too,” he says, and lets out a watery, awkward laugh, the sort that Logan would’ve had a field day with.
She just stares at him for a moment. It’s nice to have gotten one more chance.
Then he moves forward in a coltish lurch, leaning in to kiss her cheek. She closes her eyes, wishing it could last longer. She’d forgotten just what it’s like to have him close. Everything tense in her settles.
It’s going to be okay, something deep in her body says.
It’s stupid. She can’t predict the future. And yet.
“I’ll, uh.” Roman rubs a hand over his face again, still vaguely leaky. “I’ll see you when you’re done, okay?”
“You don’t have to wait,” she protests.
He looks at her like she’s offended him.
“Yes I do,” he says.
***
Roman’s there when she wakes up.
Not, like, right there. He gets it. It was weird of him to show up. He should have called first, or something. He should have never stopped talking to her in the first place. He should have told his dad to fuck off on the phone in the car and asked her to dance at Con's wedding.
But he didn't, so this is what he's got. He’s hovering around in her recovery room, hanging back behind the two people who definitely should’ve always been here.
Things are good. The doctor swung by and said that it all went well, that it couldn’t have been better. Roman thinks that maybe that was to do with him somehow. He was making some major bargains with the universe while he waited. He was ready to burn it all down if she went.
There’s something worse, he realized today, than a world without his dad in it.
“Where’s …” Gerri’s faint voice fills the air. Roman’s heart leaps.
“Mom, it’s us,” Peti says, all soft and reassuring.
“Hey, Mom!” says Catherine. Roman can hear the tears in her voice. “You did so good! You secretive fucking asshole. There’s something seriously wrong with you, by the way.”
“Thanks, honey,” murmurs Gerri. “That’s sweet.”
“Can you take it down a notch, weirdo?” Peti demands of her sister.
“No,” sobs Catherine.
“But where’s–” Gerri pauses, like she can’t quite find the words. Roman’s chest aches with affection. “Where’s my–”
“We’re here, Mom–”
“Where’s my Roman?”
Roman blinks.
“Uh,” says Peti.
“Your what now?” says Catherine, mid-weep.
It’s not like Roman has to be told twice.
“Here, here.” He sprints forward, leaving behind his life of shadowy lurking and bursting into the spotlight. “I’m right here. Hi.”
Gerri’s face lights up in a bright, fuzzy smile. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Roman repeats, since she seemed to like it the first time.
“Roman’s here,” she explains to her daughters.
“Yeah, I know.” Peti looks at Roman like he just revealed a room full of Gerri-themed murder boards instead of flying her across the country to her mom’s secret bypass with like five minutes’ notice. “What … is this?”
Gerri keeps on smiling. “He’s my nephew-husband.”
“Yikes,” sobs Catherine.
“Oh, Mom, you didn’t give your DNA to 23AndMe, did you?”
“He’s my nephew-husband,” Gerri insists, louder, the way she used to talk over Roman sometimes when he was being especially annoying in her office, “and he’s not going anywhere.” She eyes him. He thinks she might be nervous underneath the many layers of drugs. “Right?”
Jesus, he hates himself.
But he doesn’t have time to hate himself right now. Gerri needs him.
“Right,” he says. “Please. Are you kidding me? You’re stuck with me.”
“Oh, good.” To her daughters, Gerri asks, “Can I tell you a secret?”
“No thanks!” they yelp in unison.
“I like being stuck with him. Always have.”
“Oh, boy,” says Peti.
Catherine starts crying again. Motivation inconclusive.
Roman ignores all that. He only has eyes for Gerri. His Gerri, as some might say. He thinks he might be floating above the floor, swept up in the giddy drug haze with her, where nothing hurts and everything that matters is theirs. “So, uh, what else do you like about me?”
Gerri smiles again and closes her eyes. Sleepily, she says, “Don’t push your luck.”
Roman’s never been happier to obey her, and that's saying something.