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1
AMORY
Dr. Amory Paver is off work today. It’s a rarity for her, as she is one of the many needed physicians in their busy city, but it’s not all fun and games. She is packing, preparing for a Doctors Without Borders trip to Africa. She’s never been to Africa, never even been out of the country for longer than a week, and she doubts that a week-long trip to England over a decade ago is going to prepare her for the struggles of living in Africa.
Her dining room table is filled with pamphlets and printed out articles about culture shock, information about Zambia, and Cholera. After all, she’s not going on this trip for fun; she has a job to do.
Amory is in her bedroom, an open suitcase on her bed as she looks through her closet. Button-ups still attached to the hangers are thrown in piles on the bed, and she can’t decide what to pack. There’s only limited space in her suitcase and she doesn’t know what would be best to wear.
It’s Africa so the weather will probably be stifling, especially since it’s the middle of June. But she still has to maintain an air of professionalism and, despite the temptation, she can’t wear nothing but tank tops and shorts to work for the next several months.
Her mom has been texting her, knowing how nervous she’s been. Amory’s parents split when she was a teenager, and she doesn’t talk to her father much, but her mom has always been her biggest supporter and her biggest worrier.
Mom: Remember to pack pajamas.
Amory: I know
She didn’t know. Amory had, in fact, forgotten to pack pajamas. She listens to her mom and packs some sweatpants and a couple night shirts and looks at her open suitcase in contemplation.
Mom: I love you
Amory: I love you too
Mom: Remember to text me when you get to the airport tomorrow.
Amory: I will. Promise
She has a couple of black slacks packed already, but shirts are much harder to decide on. Most of her clothes are suited to cool air and rain, not summer heat, but she’s certain that she has some short-sleeve button-ups somewhere, she just can’t find them.
Amory groans in frustration and opens her dresser drawers, all of them at the same time, which is counter productive, but she’s frustrated and doesn’t care. She decides to ignore the shirt problem for now and instead chooses to focus on packing socks and underwear, working her way through the top drawer, which holds a hoard of white panties to be worn under scrubs, funky patterned socks, and a pink rabbit vibrator.
She throws all of it in the suitcase, debating on the vibrator and the potential embarrassment that it will cause her when it goes through airport security. But, she decides, she won’t be there when they check her luggage, so she throws it in the zippered pouch on the side.
Mom: Don’t forget socks.
Amory: Just packed them.
As she clears out her underwear drawer, she feels something hard at the bottom of the drawer and furrows her eyebrows in confusion.
She reaches to the bottom of the drawer and pulls out a black box and her heart drops. She knows what this is now. It’s been years, and she almost managed to forget about it. She honestly doesn’t know how it got there. She doesn’t remember putting it in that drawer, but she supposes she tried so hard to forget Natalie that she must have forgotten everything.
Now, however, she can’t forget anything. How much she loved Natalie, the sharp feelings of pain and betrayal that she felt when she walked in on her in bed with that obnoxious Dr. Blake Gold. She starts to cry.
She wanted to marry Natalie, wanted to build a life with her. They lived together, owned a cat together, but now Amory lives alone. She didn’t even get to keep their cat, Harold.
She misses Natalie and hates her for it. She trusted her and Natalie betrayed that trust, left a chasm in her heart too deep for anyone to fill. She also hates Dr. Gold. They were never close, rivals through medical school, but she thought that they could put that away when they got into the same residency program. They didn’t, but Amory never expected Dr. Gold to cheat with Natalie. Then again, she never expected anyone to cheat with Natalie.
She thought Natalie would always be faithful. Now, she just feels stupid and betrayed. She wishes that she never trusted Natalie with her heart, that she would have seen the signs before it got to that point. But she never noticed when Natalie looked at other women, and she didn’t care when Natalie started wanting to have sex more than usual.
Tears are running down her cheeks as she remembers the fight that occurred after she left their bedroom. She had just witnessed Dr. Gold fucking her girlfriend, yet Natalie still had the audacity to beg for forgiveness, to claim that it would never happen again. As if that mattered.
She screamed and cried and kicked Natalie out of the house, listening to her beg through the locked door to be let back in. Natalie stayed there for about thirty minutes before she left. Amory still doesn’t know where she went for the night, gets angry if she thinks that she went to Dr. Gold’s house. But she came back the next day while Amory was at work and left with all of their stuff and Harold.
She left a note, still begging for forgiveness. But Amory could never forgive her. She even took their cat, for crying out loud.
She feels like she’s back there, and she wants to scream and cry again. She has barely heard from Natalie since. There have been a couple of long apology texts and unanswered phone calls, but Amory never responded. She couldn’t. She doesn’t even know what she would have said. Sometimes she wonders what would have happened if she did answer, but she knows that she could never forgive Natalie for what she did.
It’s been over five years since Natalie last texted Amory, drunk and telling her that Harold had died, and it’s been over seven years since the breakup. But she’s still not over it and she hates herself for it. She hasn’t dated anyone else, hasn’t fallen in love again. She feels like a dumb teenager and she’s thirty-five now and an accomplished surgeon, for crying out loud.
