How You Remind Me

5

It had been a long day. But it was my own doing.

I'd worked as long as I could, operated as much as possible, and put off going home as long as doable. But the inevitable finally came.

It wasn't going home that was bothering me. It was my voicemail inbox holding one sole message from a number I recognized, and being home meant that there was only so much I could distract myself with to keep from listening to that message.

It was a number that I knew like the back of my hand, one I could shout off in my sleep.

But a number I hadn't seen light up my phone in eight months.

Yes, it'd been that long since Derek and I first split up. Carolyn still called me every Sunday as if nothing changed. And it was nice talking to her. But we were both careful not to breech the subject matter of how are you, what's new?

Nothing much is new.

I haven't dated, not even thought about it. If you want to count me going out with Jackson and laughing my ass off as he gets drunk and try to pick up on ugly women, then yeah, ok, I've dated. But the thought of a guy touching me with his hands, who isn't Derek...well it felt like someone was literally stepping on my nerves.

For the longest time Derek was the only guy for me.

We were college sweethearts. We'd met my senior year at Brown University. He was already a second year med student, making money as a tutor and teaching assistant for Bio Chemistry. I was struggling with the class....or so I made him believe. After two sessions of flirting he finally asked me out. We were inseparable, and got married the following summer at his family's vacation home on Nantucket Island.

We'd been together for what felt like forever. So yeah, it was hard to fathom having another man all over me that wasn't my husband....ex-husband. Yes, I was still having a hard time using that term, it just felt so foreign.

I got in my car, started the engine, and gripped the steering wheel.

I stared ahead as if I were concentrating on the road ahead of me, but there was no road ahead of me. It was just a concrete wall that surrounded the hospital. And that just felt like a metaphor for my life. I heard my phone calling to me, not literally, I was fully aware that it was all in my head.

I let out a loud huff of frustration and pulled it out of my purse. I called my voicemail and entered the password quickly, before I could talk myself out of it. Then pressed the phone to my ear and listened.

"Hey Meredith...I um. I'm sorry to call you after all these months. Um, I was looking for something in the closet this weekend and I noticed a few of your things still in the back of it. So I didn't know what you wanted to do with your items. I won't be home until the middle of the night probably, so you'll have plenty of time without me around... I mean, you know, so you won't feel uncomfortable. Again, sorry it's been so long. Bye."

I let out a breath of air that I wasn't aware I'd been holding and ended the call.

I blinked as I felt an excess amount of moisture built up in my eyelids. I pulled my car out of its spot and proceeded to exit the parking lot of Mercy West.

It was a longer drive than the one I'd accustomed myself to, but it was familiar.

I turned down the gravel-dirt driveway as the sun started to set across the horizon. I got out of the car and took my time to the wraparound porch of the log cabin. I gazed out across the lake, it sparkled in the setting sun, casting a shadow of light across it and lighting up the sky in shades of pink and purple.

I took a deep breath of fresh air. I missed this place.

The door was easy to unlock, the spare key was still where it always was, on the eve of the doorway. I walked in to a quiet house full of dust mites and cobwebs. It hardly looked lived in; it was sad, lonely, and lifeless.