The Song Remains the Same

Chapter 5

The clouds overhead were still darkening but the distant rumble of thunder was ominous. It was a rare stolen lunch break taken outside the walls of the hospital and Callie was spending it at the park with a box of takeout. And in spite of the imminent inclement weather, she was relieved to be in the fresh air. More than ever she felt like she was suffocating with Owen.

He was home for dinner, he made the kids their breakfast, but he didn't talk to her, didn't meet her eyes. She thought they'd lived without contact before but this was an entirely different realm. At least they'd been in the same bed before, even if it had been entirely sexless. Now she didn't know where her husband was sleeping but it wasn't with her. She thought he snuck out after dinner and back in before breakfast. She'd been hearing his truck leave around eleven on a nightly basis. And he was in the kitchen in the mornings when she came down for her coffee. She'd heard whispers from nurses who didn't know she was in the hall that he'd been seen at all hours going into the boiler room in the basement.

While she was languishing in the utter absence of contact, communication, or connection in the weeks since their showdown in the lounge Owen seemed to be recovering. He was calmer, getting his ER in order, spending time with the kids in the daycare in between surgeries. He wasn't talking to her, but he was talking to someone. If he wanted to move forward, get better, it didn't seem like he wanted to do it with her. The knowledge wasn't as painful as Callie had expected to be. The end of her marriage should feel like a bigger deal. Or it seemed that way, anyway. She knew that's what this was. She wanted Owen to get better, to be better, but she wasn't the person he needed. And he wasn't the person she wanted.

Finishing her lunch, Callie gathered her trash and left the park. If she caught the light at the next block she could be back in the hospital before the rain started. Of course, that wasn't her luck and it started before she'd even crossed the street, the drops falling hard and heavy. The rain came down in thick sheets, making her destination look cloudy and opaque in the distance. By the time she reached the closest entrance, the sliding glass doors of the ER, she was drenched entirely. The second year at the desk rushed forward to help her, surprised to see the Head of Cardio when Callie shook her dripping hair out of her face.

“Oh, Dr. Torres, it's you,” he said, wiping both hands on his scrub pants. He wasn't sure what to do with himself now that she wasn't a patient that needed him. “You're all wet.” Callie stopped moving to stare at him. “You don't have an umbrella?” he asked dumbly.

“Keep talking if you want to see the inside of an OR today,” she suggested, tone cool.

“Wha – Callie...” Owen's arrival was the desk jockey's signal to jump ship, fleeing to the safety of his spinning chair. “Good lunch?” her husband asked, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. Callie shot a look up at him, resuming wringing out her hair with both hands on the rubber mat just inside the doors. “Come on,” he said, expression sobering somewhat when she didn't respond to his joke. “I've got a clean towel in my gym bag.”

Following him toward the locker room, Callie's wet shoes squeaked on the linoleum. “Thanks.” His locker was across the room from hers and she toed off her shoes to shuffle across to her own. “I guess I'm in scrubs today.”

Owen leaned against his locker, his eyes on his shoes while Callie pulled her wet jacket off. “Sure. How have you been?”

Callie laughed – not bitterly, not angrily, not even sadly, but genuinely laughed – and shook her head. They didn't even interact like a married couple anymore. They barely qualified as casual work acquaintances. It was amusing, really. “I think we need to talk, Owen.”

He sighed, shifting his weight and crossing his arms. They did need to talk and he knew it. “Yeah. Tonight after dinner?”

“Okay,” agreed Callie slowly. She could only imagine what that conversation would entail. How did someone just make a plan to sit down and end a marriage like it was nothing? How had her life come to this? She could trace the sequence of events that had lead them here, but it no longer felt like her life, like her decisions. What Callie couldn't remember was the last time she'd had an actual choice about something in her life. Everyone had options, of course, but her choices had always left her between rock and a hard place.