Her Name Was Anna

“Did you ever love anyone before you met Mom?” My daughter asked.

I thought about it for a moment. I could lie and say no. I could tell the truth but deflect and say there is no other woman alive that I love more than your mother, with the exception of you. Or I could tell the story that deserved to be told about Anna, the one I kept to myself until now. The one that only my sister Jess knew. It was too hard to talk about. My wife didn’t need to know. It made me look unprofessional and foolish. I wasn’t supposed to feel like that about someone I took care of. I resisted. I had tried to swallow those feelings, and after it was all over, I kept it to myself. Still, late at night and on my daily walks, I wondered what my life would be like if I could have saved her.

“I… I did love a woman once before I met your mother.” I searched her face as I said this. I didn’t want to disappoint her. “I’m not sure you really want to hear about her. Do you?”

“I do if you want to talk about it. You’re just a person, Dad; you’re allowed to have a past.”

“And you’re allowed not to want to hear about it.”

“I’m not going to be weird about it. Tell me.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you. Her name was Anna.”

Our relationship didn’t last long. She was one of my patients when I worked in oncology, and I should have known better than to get attached. I had realized that I loved her but hadn’t acted on it. We had met a few times away from the cancer center, but I had only extended friendship during the duration of her care. I had been her nurse since the beginning. Most afternoons when she came in for treatment, I spent the time I should have been doing paperwork talking to her instead.

She had such a pretty smile. I spent a lot of time trying to make her laugh. It wasn’t hard, but I couldn’t get enough of it. She was beautiful too, and even when the chemo ravaged her and her long dark hair came out in handfuls, she never became less beautiful to me. We could talk for hours about books, philosophy, and history. She taught English at the community college.

I had the secret dream of being a writer, one I shared with her. She smiled when I told her that it was far-fetched and that I hadn’t studied literature. She was one of the first people who hadn’t laughed off my secret dream.

“You don’t need a degree to write. You just need a story to tell and a want to tell it. Read often. Write often, and you’ll be a writer. Besides, some of the best writers had a day job.” She patted my hand as she spoke.

I changed the subject.

“If you could be anywhere or go anywhere, where would you be right now?”

“Hmm,” she said as she looked into the distance. She used to do this thing where she wrinkled her nose when she was thinking. She finally spoke. “I think I would be in Greece. I’ve never been. I want to see all of the ruins and soak up the architecture, maybe lie out on a Mediterranean beach with a good book.”

“Good choice,” I said. I imagined us there together, and I knew I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

“What about you, Dante?” she asked.

“Eh, I don’t know. Some beach somewhere sounds nice.” What I really wanted to say was that I wanted to be anywhere she was.

She never talked about her cancer, and it took a long time for the treatments to get to her. She always seemed so positive even though she was recently divorced on top of everything else. When the going got tough, he left her. One day, as I walked her to the door, she handed me a pair of clippers.

“Can you help me, Dante? It’s just gotten so thin I can’t handle it anymore.”

I took the clippers and looked at them.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer a female nurse for something like this?”

“No, I prefer you. So can you help me please?”

“I can. Let’s go to that bathroom over there.”

The bathroom in the lobby was clean and had the smell of disinfectant. It was a single-person bathroom with a little metal door for urine specimens.

“We should probably cut the length off first. I have my scissors.”

She handed me a hair tie, and I pulled her hair back into a low ponytail. Her hair smelled good, and even over the chemical smell her medications often produced, I could smell a sweet floral scent of perfume. I used my medical scissors to cut it off, and I handed it to her. She took it, and for a moment she laughed, but that laughter turned into quiet crying.

“Come here,” I said.

She turned toward me, and I tentatively hugged her.

“I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help it. It’s like another piece of me is gone. Every day another piece is just… I just don’t know how much longer I can do this,” she said in a small voice. She had finally let the positive mask slip, but all it did was make me love her more.

At first I didn’t say anything. I took a tissue from the vanity and dabbed at her tears. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what I could say. I only knew that her face was wet and I could fix that problem. She backed away and looked up at me. She handed me back the ponytail.

“I can’t handle throwing it away. Throw it away after I leave.”

“Ok,” I said. I put it in my pocket.

“Just do it. Shave it. I’m ready.”

I turned the clippers on, and they buzzed to life. I started, and with gentle strokes I shaved the hair away. It fell to the floor in little piles. When I was done, she had quit crying. She ran her hands over the short hair.

“You know what, it feels better,” she said. She took the clippers and her hand touched mine. It lingered there for a moment. She looked like she was going to say something else, but she didn’t.

“I’ll stay in here and clean up. I’m sure your niece is probably out there by now,” I said. I didn’t want her in here cleaning up her hair. It just felt like another insult to her injury. I could save her that one small burden. “Bye, Anna. I’ll see you next week.”

“Maybe sooner,” She said. Her eyes were red and puffy, but she had what I guessed was a playful smile. It was fall, so she put a knit cap over her short hair.

It was in times like these I wondered if she liked me the way I liked her, but up until that point I had never asked. Someday, I would have to, but I was afraid. I wanted to be whatever she needed me to be. If she needed a nurse, I’d be that. If she needed a friend, I would be that too. But I was afraid that she didn’t need anything else, and that offering to be something more would remove my ability to be the other two. I was both concerned that advances would hurt her in some unintended way, but I also had selfish reasons for keeping it to myself. I couldn’t bear to push her away and lose access to what we had.

After I cleaned the bathroom, I reached into my pocket and felt the ponytail. She had instructed me to throw it away after she left. I pulled it out and looked at it. I walked to the trashcan, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw the ponytail away. It was just hair, but it was her hair. It felt like throwing a piece of her away. I felt guilty. I felt like an absolute creep, but I put it back in my pocket. I wasn’t perfect; I wasn’t good. I was just Dante, and I wanted to keep her as long as I could. When I left the bathroom, my supervisor was outside.

“You need to be careful,” She said, folding her arms. My manager at the time, Erin Krank, was thin and well-kempt but stern. She also wasn’t very fond of me. She’d noticed I was just a bit more friendly with Anna than I was with my other patients. I was warm with all of them, but I kept my clinical distance with the others.

“With what?”

“Don’t play stupid. I saw you go into the bathroom with her. I see how you look at her, and I am telling you to be careful. People are starting to notice, and I expect you to be professional with your patients.”

“I was only helping her shave her hair off. It’s called compassionate care. If you’d ever done bedside nursing, you’d recognize it.” I immediately regretted saying that.

“That sounded dangerously close to insubordination. I was trying to keep you out of trouble, but it seems like you want trouble. If you want to continue working here, I suggest you start taking your position seriously. We’ve got two waiting for a hook-up; how about you get to it.”

I nodded and got back to work. When I got home, I put the ponytail in a shoebox and hid it in the back of my closet. Over the weekend, Anna and I met up for coffee and a stroll.

“You seem off. What’s wrong?”

“I got in trouble at work.”

“Why, what happened?”

I flirted with the idea of telling the whole truth, but I went for partial truth instead.

“It’s just that I’ve been spending so much time talking to you at work, I haven’t been getting my paperwork done.”

“I’m sorry, I got you in trouble.”

“No, no. It’s me; I’m just shit at my job. It’s just... I want you to know, if I seem distant at work, it’s to get Krank off my back.”

“Well, we could always talk on the phone after. It won’t make the chemo go by any faster, but I think this has grown past a friendship of convenience.”

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

Over the next couple of months, I tried to keep my distance at work. It got Krank off my back for a while. I didn’t let her see the friendship, and I stayed busy. But there was a time when circumstance broke my careful ruse. It was the day Anna got bad news.

I already knew what Doc was going to say. The chemo wasn’t helping her, and she had a decision to make. Fight tooth and nail and likely die faster and in pain, or switch to comfort care and maybe get another functional six months. Doc said that paradoxically she would likely feel better for a while if she stopped the chemo and that she could focus on doing the things that made her happy. When she left his office, she had red eyes and a blank expression.

“Is what he’s saying true? I need to hear it from you,” she said.

“Yes, Anna.” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat. My eyes felt hot.

“What should I do?”

“You should get out there and start living. Do the things you love. Spend time with the people you… love,” I looked away at the last part.

“How am I supposed to live? How? I thought… I thought.” She was sputtering; tears were coming again.

“I don’t know,” I said. A single tear dripped from my right eye. I sniffed and wiped it away with my shirt collar. “I just know that you deserve to be happy.”

“I wanted to beat this. I wanted to get better and go to Greece. I wanted to keep teaching. I wanted to have… a family.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” I said. The rest I only thought. I’m sorry I failed you. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. There was nothing I could do to help her. Krank was eyeing me. I didn’t care. I followed Anna to the parking lot, and I pulled her into a hug. She was sobbing. My scrubs were wet. I kissed her on the forehead. She hugged me tighter. Her niece parked her car and came up. She had a bewildered look on her face.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” the niece asked.

Anna sniffed and wiped away the snot and tears that covered her face with her sleeve.

“I’ll tell you when we get home,” Anna said.

Her niece walked her to the car. I just kept watching. She got in and drove away. She wouldn’t be coming back. When I went back inside, Krank was waiting for me.

“My office, now.”

I walked into the office. I felt completely numb, then she tore into me.

“Absolutely unprofessional. I have to write you up.” She put a paper on the desk in front of me.

“No,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not signing it. I quit.”

Krank was slack-jawed. I left her office, cleared out my locker, and I left. On the way home, I called Jess.

“Jess, can you watch Oscar for me?” Oscar was my orange tabby cat.

“Yeah, what’s going on?”

“I’m going to do some travelling.”

“What about your job?”

“I quit.”

“Does this have something to do with that Anna girl I met at the New Year’s party?”

“It’s complicated. I just need you to watch Oscar, please. I’ll explain later.”

I was about to do something extremely foolish, but I didn’t regret a moment of it. The next morning I called Anna.

“I know you are having a hard time, but I need to see you, please.”

“Don’t you work today?”

“I’ll explain when I get there. Please, I just need to see you.”

“Ok. We can meet.”

I went to our walking path early. As I waited for her, I kept pacing back and forth. She walked up. She looked tired and sad but better than yesterday. I held out the coffee I had gotten her.

“Are you ok?” she asked.

“I need to tell you something. It might feel like bad timing. It might seem desperate, but I have to say it.”

“Ok, I’m listening.” She was looking at me, waiting. My heart was pounding inside my chest.

“I love you, Anna. I love you so fucking much I can’t stand it,” I said finally.

She didn’t say anything but started crying. She pulled me into a hug and kissed me on the lips.

“Why does it have to be like this? Why can’t we have a life together? Why can’t we have forever?”

“Nobody gets forever, but we get right now, Anna. Let’s do all the things you dreamed, every single one we can.”

“Like what?”

“Greece, let’s fly to Greece. We could leave in a few days. I’ll cash out my retirement and savings; we’ll spend every day on the beach. We could go sailing. Anything. Anything you want, Anna.”

I stopped my story for a moment. I was smiling, but I felt that any moment I could cry. Telling my daughter felt cathartic. It was like getting to see Anna again… if only for a moment. My daughter Marie put her hand on my shoulder.

“So what happened, Dad?”

“I cashed out my retirement. I broke my lease. I put my things in storage. I left Oscar with Aunt Jess. And we went to Greece, and we had a damned good time. We did everything. We squeezed every last drop out of all the nows we were given, and then one day it was over; she was gone.”

Marie hugged me.

“I don’t want you to think I don’t love your mother because I do. She gets my whole heart at fifty, but the version of me that’s twenty-eight belongs to Anna.”

Marie nodded. She’d recently experienced her own heartbreak. Her first real love hadn’t panned out.

“The main thing I want you to take away from this is that you can love again. You will love again, but that doesn’t mean what you feel right now isn’t real.”

“Thanks for telling me this story. I’m glad Anna met someone who loved her as you loved her.”