“Where have you been?” my father would demand when I finally walked through the back door. “Your mother and I have been worried sick!”
“Sorry,” I’d mumble, shoving my fists into the pockets of my coat and dropping my gaze to the floor. I knew it was pointless to make excuses; it was better to appear penitent and promise to never let it happen again. I understood that their concern was simply a side effect of my being an only child—a child who almost didn’t survive. I came into the world nine weeks early via an emergency C-section, and the neonatal team in the delivery room had to whisk me away after I was lifted, unmoving, from my mother’s womb. I hadn’t cried the way a newborn should. I couldn’t, because I wasn’t breathing. As the doctors called out codes and pumped air into my deflated lungs, my mother lay on the operating table and sobbed, terrified of losing me, while my father squeezed her hand, telling her over and over again that everything would be okay.
“You almost died,” my mom said, the first time she told me this story. Her eyes, the same green-gold color as mine, welled with tears as she produced a picture of me inside what she said was an incubator, where I stayed for the first two months of my life. I couldn’t believe how small I was—just three and a half pounds—how the map of my veins glowed like tiny blue rivers beneath translucent, epidermal parchment. “They literally had to jump-start your heart,” she said. “It was a miracle that you lived. You’re a miracle, sweetie. Don’t ever forget that.”
I was only seven at the time, and so I nodded, wanting her to think that her words had made me feel treasured and special, but hearing that my mother thought my birth was miraculous sent an uncomfortable shiver up my spine. I imagined that I’d better do something exceptional, be someone exceptional, to live up to that birth story. They chose not to have any more children because of my perilous arrival; instead, they focused their energies, and all their hopes and dreams, on me.
I sighed as I turned off the engine of my car, landing on the only other time I’d been in a hospital, in an uncomfortable bed, hooked up to monitors, wires, and tubes—a time when a choice I’d made put both my parents’ hearts and my life at risk. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, as if that might stop me from seeing the painful reel of memories playing inside my head. I’m better now, I told myself. I’m not that person anymore.
I lifted my backpack and cell phone from the passenger seat, and peered up at the cozy, two-story Victorian-style house where I’d spent the first eighteen years of my life. Black December clouds obscured the moon, but the glow from the streetlamp was enough to illuminate the hundred-year-old structure that my parents had painstakingly updated as time and money allowed. They replaced the plumbing, the knob-and-tube wiring, and finally, after all the rooms had been fully remodeled and everything brought up to code, they sanded and lacquered the original blond maple floors. The outside was painted robin egg blue, and the wraparound porch and steep eaves were edged in white gingerbread trim, both of which were currently covered in hundreds of festive, twinkling lights. Even if the last few years I lived there hadn’t exactly been a fairy tale, it still looked like a storybook house, and it would always be a place I could call home.
Hiking my bag over my left shoulder, I opened the trunk of my car and hefted my black suitcase up and out, setting it on the ground. I was anxious to get inside, climb the stairs, and slip into my childhood bed. The entire time I’d been living in Pullman for school, my mom left the room I grew up in untouched—hopeful, I was sure, that I might return to Bellingham and move back in with them once I graduated, in six months. But the truth was, if I had had a choice in the matter, I wouldn’t even have come home for Christmas. After suffering through a brutal finals week, all I wanted was to snuggle up with Daniel and talk about our plans for moving to Seattle together next fall, where he’d be attending the University of Washington medical school and I would start studying for my official certification by the American College of Sports Medicine. Just sitting for the test required a four-year degree in nutrition and physiological science, and afterward I’d be able to start working toward my ultimate goal of working as a trainer for professional athletes, specifically for the Seahawks, the team I’d grown up rooting for with my dad. But instead of Daniel and me spending the holidays with each other, he flew home to Denver to see his family and I packed my bags to drive home and see mine. He and I had only been dating since July, when we met at the gym, but things were already feeling serious between us. Serious enough that when my parents had driven over the pass to spend Thanksgiving break with me, I introduced them to him, something I’d never done with someone I was dating before. All of my other relationships had been short-lived—lasting a few weeks, a month at the most. But Daniel and I had slept together practically every night for the last four months, either at his place or at mine, and the idea of being away from him for winter break felt like torture.
I snuck through the side door, locked it behind me, and then sent Daniel a text. “Made it,” I said. “Missing you like crazy.” I set my backpack on a kitchen chair, glancing around the dark space, listening for the telltale footsteps from the creaky floor upstairs that would mean one or both of my parents were still awake. My phone dinged, but before I could unlock the screen, a deep voice sounded from the couch in the family room, a space adjacent to the kitchen.
“Hey, Amber,” it said, and I dropped my phone. It clattered on the hardwood floor as I splayed a flat hand over my chest, feeling like my heart might pound right through it.
“Jesus!” I said. My gaze flew to the couch, where I saw the shadow of a familiar blond head. I reached over to the wall near the door and flipped on the overhead light so I could see his face. “Tyler!” I exclaimed. “You scared the shit out of me!”