The Choice(24)
Author: Nicholas Sparks

And soon, he had to make his choice as to whether he would.

The fluorescent lights and white tile underscored the sterility of the hospital. Travis moved slowly down the corridor, certain that even though he’d spotted Gabby earlier, she hadn’t seen him. He hesitated, steeling himself to head over and talk to her. It was the reason he’d come, after all, but the vivid parade of memories earlier had drained him. He stopped, knowing a few more minutes to collect his thoughts wouldn’t make any difference.

He ducked into a small reception room and took a seat. Watching the steady, rhythmic movement in the corridor, he realized that despite the never-ending emergencies, the staff had a routine here, much as he had his own routines at home. It was inevitable for people to try to create a sense of normalcy in a place where nothing was normal. It helped one get through the day, to add predictability to a life that was inherently unpredictable. His mornings were a case in point, for every one was the same. Six-fifteen alarm; a minute to get out of bed and nine minutes in the shower, another four minutes to shave and brush his teeth, and seven minutes to get dressed. A stranger could set a watch by following his shadowed movements through his windows. After that, he’d hurry downstairs to pour cereal; he’d check backpacks for homework and make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for lunches while his sleepy daughters ate their breakfast. At exactly quarter past seven, they’d troop out the door and he’d wait with them at the end of the driveway for the school bus to arrive, driven by a man whose Scottish accent reminded him of Shrek. After his daughters got on and settled into their seats, he’d smile and wave, just as he was supposed to. Lisa and Christine were six and eight, a bit young for first and third grade, and as he watched them venture out to start another day, he often felt his heart clench with worry. Perhaps that was common—people always said that parenting and worrying were synonymous—but recently his worries had grown more pronounced. He dwelled on things he never had before. Little things. Ridiculous things. Was Lisa laughing at cartoons as much as she used to? Was Christine more subdued than normal? Sometimes, as the bus would pull away, he would find himself replaying the morning over and over, searching for clues to their well-being. Yesterday he had spent half the day wondering whether Lisa had been testing him by making him tie her shoes or whether she had just been feeling lazy. Even though he knew he was bordering on obsession, when he’d crept to their rooms last night to adjust their strewn-about blankets, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering whether the nighttime restlessness was new or something he’d just never noticed before.

It shouldn’t have been like this. Gabby should have been with him; Gabby should have been the one tying shoes and adjusting the blankets. She was good at things like that, as he’d known she would be from the very beginning. He remembered that in the days that followed their first weekend together, he would find himself studying Gabby, knowing on some deep level that even if he spent the rest of his life looking, he’d never find a better mother or more perfect complement to him. The realization often hit in the strangest of places—while pushing the cart in the fruit aisle of the grocery store or standing in line to buy movie tickets—but whenever it happened, it made something as simple as taking her hand an exquisite pleasure, something both momentous and gratifying.

Their courtship hadn’t been quite as uncomplicated for her. She was the one torn between two men vying for her love. “A minor inconvenience,” was the way he described it at parties, but he often wondered when exactly her feelings for him finally overwhelmed those she’d had for Kevin. Was it when they sat beside each other, gazing at the nighttime sky, and she quietly began naming the constellations she recognized? Or was it the following day, when she held him tight as they rode on the motorcycle before their picnic? Or was it later that evening, when he took her in his arms?

He wasn’t sure; capturing a specific instant like that was no more possible than locating a specific drop of water in the ocean. But the fact remained that it left Gabby to explain the situation to Kevin. Travis could remember her pained expression on the morning she knew Kevin would be arriving back in town. Gone was the certainty that had guided them the previous days; in its place was the reality of what lay ahead for her. She barely touched her breakfast; when he kissed her good-bye, she responded with only the flicker of a smile. The hours had crawled by without word, and Travis busied himself at work and made calls to find homes for the puppies, knowing it was important to her. Eventually, after work, Travis went to check on Molly. As if sensing she’d be needed later, she didn’t return to the garage after he let her out. Instead, she lay in the tall marsh grass that fronted Gabby’s property, staring toward the street as the sun sank lower in the sky.

It was well after dark when Gabby turned in the drive. He remembered the steady way she looked at him as she stepped out of the car. Without a word, she took a seat beside him on the steps. Molly wandered up and began to nuzzle her. Gabby ran her hand rhythmically through her fur.

“Hey,” he said, breaking the silence.

“Hey.” Her voice sounded drained of emotion.

“I think I found homes for all of the puppies,” he offered.

“Yeah?”

He nodded, and the two of them sat together without speaking, like two people who’d run out of things to talk about.

“I’m always going to love you,” he said, searching and failing to find adequate words to comfort her.

“I believe you,” she whispered. She looped her arm through his and leaned her head against his shoulder. “That’s why I’m here.”

Travis had never liked hospitals. Unlike the veterinary clinic, which closed its doors around dinnertime, Carteret General Hospital struck him as the endless turning of a Ferris wheel, with patients and employees hopping on and off every minute of every day. From where he was sitting, he could see nurses bustling in and out of rooms or clustering around the station at the end of the hall. Some were frazzled while others seemed bored; the doctors were no different. On other floors, Travis knew that mothers were giving birth and the elderly were passing away, a microcosm of the world. As oppressive as he found it, Gabby had thrived working here, energized by the steady buzz of activity.

There’d been a letter in the mailbox months earlier, something from the administrator’s office announcing that the hospital planned to honor Gabby’s tenth year working at the hospital. The letter didn’t allude to anything specific that Gabby had accomplished; it was nothing more than a form letter, something no doubt sent out to a dozen other people who’d started working around the same time she had. A small plaque, the letter promised, would be hung in Gabby’s honor in one of the corridors, along with other recipients’, though as yet it hadn’t happened.

He doubted that she cared. Gabby had taken the job at the hospital not because she might one day receive a plaque, but because she’d felt she hadn’t much choice. Though she had alluded to some problems at the pediatrician’s office during their first weekend together, she hadn’t been specific. He’d let the comment pass without pressing her, but he knew even then that the problem wasn’t simply going to go away.

Eventually, she told him about it. It was the end of a long day. He’d been called out the previous night to the equestrian center, where he found an Arabian sweating and pawing the ground, its stomach tender to the touch. Classic signs of equine colic, though with a bit of luck, he didn’t think it would require surgery. Still, with the owners in their seventies, Travis wasn’t comfortable asking them to walk the horse for fifteen minutes every hour, in case the horse became more agitated or took a turn for the worse. Instead, he decided to stay with the horse himself, and though the horse gradually improved as the day rolled on into the next evening, he was exhausted by the time he left.

He arrived home, sweaty and filthy, to find Gabby crying at her kitchen table. It took a few minutes before she was able to tell him the story—how she’d had to stay late with a patient who was waiting for an ambulance for what she was fairly certain was appendicitis; by the time she was able to leave, most of the staff had gone home. The attending physician, Adrian Melton, had not. They left together, and Gabby didn’t realize that Melton was walking with her toward her car until it was too late. There, he laid a hand on her shoulder and told her that he was heading to the hospital and would update her on the patient’s condition. When she forced a smile, however, he leaned in to kiss her.

It was a clumsy effort, reminiscent of high school, and she recoiled before he could finish. He stared at her, seemingly put out. “I thought this was what you wanted,” he’d said.

At the table, Gabby shuddered. “He made it sound like it was my fault.”

“Has it happened before?”

“No, not like this. But . . .”

When she trailed off, Travis reached over and took her hand. “Come on,” he said. “It’s me. Talk to me.”

Her gaze remained focused on the surface of the table, but her voice was steady as she recounted the history of Melton’s behavior. By the time she finished, his face was tight with barely suppressed rage.

“I’ll fix this,” he said without waiting for a response.

It took two phone calls to find out where Adrian Melton lived. Within minutes, his car screeched to a stop in front of Melton’s house. His insistent finger on the doorbell brought the doctor to the front door. Melton barely registered his puzzlement before Travis’s fist crashed into his jaw. A woman Travis assumed was Melton’s wife materialized the same instant Melton hit the floor, and her screams echoed in the hallway.

When the police arrived at the house, Travis was arrested for the first and only time in his life. He was brought to the station, where most of the officers treated him with amused respect. Every one of them had brought their pets to the clinic and were clearly skeptical of Mrs. Melton’s claim that “some psycho has assaulted my husband!”

When Travis called his sister, Stephanie showed up looking less worried than amused. She found Travis sitting in a single cell, deep in discussion with the sheriff; as she approached, he realized they were talking about the sheriff’s cat, who seemed to have developed a rash of some sort and couldn’t stop scratching.

“Bummer,” she said.

“What?”

“And here I thought I was going to find you wearing an orange jumper.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Maybe there’s still time. What do you think, Sheriff?”

The sheriff didn’t know what to think, and a moment later, he left them alone.

“Thanks for that,” Travis said once the sheriff was gone. “He’s probably considering your suggestion.”

“Don’t blame me. I’m not the one attacking doctors on doorsteps.”

“He deserved it.”

“I’m sure he did.”

Travis smiled. “Thanks for coming.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it, Rocky. Or would you prefer I call you Apollo Creed?”

“How about you work on getting me out of here instead of trying to come up with nicknames?”

“Coming up with nicknames is more fun.”

“Maybe I should have called Dad.”

“But you didn’t. You got me. And trust me, you made the right choice. Now let me go talk to the sheriff, okay?”

Later, while Stephanie was talking to the sheriff, Adrian Melton visited Travis. He’d never met the local veterinarian and demanded to know the reason for Travis’s assault. Though he never told Gabby what he said, Adrian Melton promptly dropped the charges, despite protests from Mrs. Melton. Within a few days, Travis heard through the small-town grapevine that Dr. and Mrs. Melton were in counseling. Nonetheless, the workplace remained tense for Gabby, and a few weeks later, Dr. Furman called Gabby into the office and suggested that she consider trying to find another place to work.

“I know it’s not fair,” he said. “And if you stay, we’ll somehow make it work. But I’m sixty-four, and I’m planning to retire next year. Dr. Melton has agreed to buy me out, and I doubt that he’ll want to keep you on anyway, or that you’d want to work for him. I think it would be easier and better for you if you take the time to find a place where you’re comfortable and simply put this awful thing behind you.” He shrugged. “I’m not saying that his behavior wasn’t reprehensible; it was. But even if he’s a jerk, he’s the best pediatrician I interviewed and the only one who was willing to practice in a small town like this. If you leave voluntarily, I’ll write the finest recommendation you can imagine. You’ll be able to get a job anywhere. I’ll make sure of it.”

She recognized the manipulation for what it was, and while her emotions cried out for retribution on her behalf and that of sexually harassed women everywhere, her pragmatic side asserted itself. In the end, she took a job in the emergency room at the hospital.

There had been only one problem: When Gabby found out what Travis had done, she’d been furious. It was the first argument they had as a couple, and Travis could still remember her outrage when she demanded to know whether he believed she was “grown-up enough to handle her own problems” and why he acted “as if she were some silly damsel in distress.” Travis didn’t bother trying to defend himself. In his heart, he knew he’d do the same thing again in an instant, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

For all Gabby’s outrage, Travis suspected there was part of her that had admired what he’d done. The simple logic of the act—He bothered you? Let me at ’im—had appealed to her, no matter how angry she’d appeared, for later that night her lovemaking had seemed particularly passionate.