The other massive difference between then and now was the amount of stuff students owned and kept in their apartments. Pinterest created a dorm-room monster when it came on the scene, and twenty-first-century parents helped their children create a plush paradise with flat-screen televisions and full decor. When I left the apartment that day, I was able to move out with no help, shoving everything I owned in my orange Chevy Citation with the bike on the inside. I tossed my secondhand twin mattress to the curb, folded up my card table desk, and went to my occupational therapy internship at the same place where I’d completed my clinical hours. Holly could leave like a ghost in the night because she had packed her car the morning before graduation, and off she went to law school.

As I sat next to Katie in the hospital, everything felt both the same and different. Like we had jumped a time-and-space chasm. The three of us were together, and then, boom, Holly was gone.

Once Holly left the hospital room, all the noisy tension and static in the room left with her. The view out Katie’s window was of an asphalt roof and a slice of blue sky. Sterile, ugly, institutional beige paint surrounded the small space. There was a large whiteboard on the wall with the information Today is Tuesday, Your Nurse is Cheryl written in blue ink.

As an occupational therapist, I was at home in hospital rooms. I could get people in and out of their beds for therapy, maneuver around the cramped spaces, get people ready for discharge. Being with Katie when she was sick made me see the place from a patient’s point of view, and the familiar dread crept in.

I repositioned myself on Katie’s bed and said, “Well, I guess I’m going on a trip with Holly.”

Katie let out a nervous laugh. “Was that miserable for you?”

I rubbed Katie’s legs under the hospital sheet. “No, sweetie. I mean, all things considered, it wasn’t the worst reunion in the world.”

Katie’s shoulders dropped. “Oh, good. I’m sorry to spring her on you.”

“Look, if you need to bring in the pope without consulting me, have at it. You never have to consult me.”

“The pope would be a weird choice, but okay. I might call him.”

“Be honest, Katie. Has she ever said anything to you?”

She knew exactly what I was asking. “She always says the same thing. She couldn’t bear to say goodbye and had to start the long drive to Texas. Holly once said she isn’t good at letters or maintaining long-distance friendships. I guess I believed her after she left.”

“But that doesn’t explain how she can be friends with you but is openly hostile to me.”

“Something must have happened that you don’t remember. That is all I can think of.”

I looked closely at Katie’s open face. She didn’t seem to be holding anything back. We’d gone over this a thousand times. I didn’t remember. The alcohol and the years. I remember taking care of her. It was all so unfair.

“Do you think it was because you didn’t invite her to your wedding?” Katie asked.

“We hadn’t spoken for years by then.” I recalled the small guest list made for economic reasons. “I thought about inviting her, but if she didn’t show? I would have been analyzing her absence as I walked down the aisle. That’s just too much for one day. I’d have fallen asleep in the cake during the reception.” Then I asked the question I’d already asked a thousand times, “You told her it was a small wedding, right?”

“Of course I told her.”

We sat quietly with our own memories and theories, the constant symphony of beeping that makes up the background of a hospital. “She looks the same,” I said. “Leaner.”

“Meaner,” Katie said, and we laughed.

“I know you see her, but this was very weird for me.”

“You’d like Rosie. She’s good for Holly. She wants a family in all the ways a family can exist, in and out of bloodlines. Rosie’s sister goes with Holly for all their birthing classes.”

“How’s Holly with that?”

“Good for the most part, but only because it’s Rosie’s family. Holly wants a fortress with like two people in it surrounded by a big fence.”

“She wasn’t always like that. Maybe that’s what being a lawyer does to you. Makes you feel exposed to elements beyond your control.”

Katie yawned and said, “I’m going to close my eyes for a second.”

“I’ll go! I shouldn’t have stayed so long.”

“Please stay, if you can. Just lie down with me for a few minutes. I don’t want to be alone.”

I knew exactly how to do this. She lay under the thin hospital bedspread, me on top next to her. I expertly hit the bed controls, and the motor buzzed, positioning us so I was comfortable on my side while Katie lay on her back. She sighed.

I slipped my arm between us, sure I’d get pins and needles but knowing how to slide my arm out and shake it without waking her. Her breathing changed when she dropped off; her mouth popped open as she moved into another sleep stage. There was a small commotion of voices in the hall.

I knew how to do all this because before solid, kind, predictable Katie had gotten sick, there had been the three of us in college, which had introduced me to the devotion and family of friendship. To the fact that you could mold your body around someone else without getting both a cuddle and a swat, like with my own family and Jeff, for that matter.

The acoustic tile ceiling held my interest, the sprinkler system, the can lights. I felt my breathing regulate. I often listened to a podcast where therapists talked about therapy things. I guess it was my way of acknowledging that I could use some help without committing to any self-disclosure. One of the therapists had gone on a long jag about what you should expect from a primary relationship: spouse, partner, friend:

“At the very least, there should be a semblance of respect and predictability. You should know that you will be treated well, that you will get the same person every day with regard to personality, and for the most part mood, and you should never agree to walking on eggshells.” That was Holly and then Katie for me.

That had not been my father; nor had it been Jeff. I glanced at the IV line, the steady blinking of the green light, and made a quick fist to make sure blood flowed into my fingers. Once a social worker who specialized in working with the grief stricken had said that I’d chosen Jeff because he was unpredictable like my father. Of course, this was only after I’d confessed that I was in therapy because I wasn’t feeling enough grief after Jeff died. That I was overwhelmed by my pregnancy and a terrible kind of relief that I couldn’t pinpoint the source of.

My father and Jeff had both had erratic moods that appeared at random times. One day Jeff would laugh and brush a wisp of hair away from my face, slide his hand to cup my jaw. The next he’d snap, “Jesus Christ, can you just stop talking for five minutes.” My father would call up Judas Priest, a softer cuss, unaware that he was conjuring a rock band, and that knowledge, as a child, softened the fall on my ears.

Before we’d married, I’d seen Jeff’s moods as deep sensitivity. He hadn’t yet learned that he could direct his melancholy at me and feel better. Or maybe he knew enough to wait. After we were married, his angst leaked, then streamed, then shot out of him, as I was sure he saw there was no boundary for it. He started by shushing me, which turned to demanding Quiet! which became Shut up! if I was laughing on the phone with Katie in another room.

Katie twitched in her sleep as if she were saying, I remember. Go on.

I had turned into a divining rod for moods, quivering at the slightest change, shrinking from anything that wasn’t steady. Anything, even joy, had signaled something that could turn to discord. I later learned that Jeff’s moods, unlike my father’s, vacillated depending on his gambling wins and losses, which I’d known nothing about. He’d left us almost bankrupt, and throughout the funeral, I’d thought, I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. Only thinking of the loss of funds and not the loss of Jeff.

There had been times at the post office or gas station, months after Jeff’s death, when someone would come up to me and say, “I’m so sorry to hear of your loss,” and I’d think, Oh yeah. The money. Then I’d have to remind myself, No, she means Jeff. Jeff is dead. I’d feel an extremely intricate crisscross of emotions. Charismatic, sensitive, mean Jeff, who knew I wasn’t going anywhere, because you couldn’t leave your marriage with a baby without the kind of agency your parents should have taught you.

I repositioned a bit in the bed, watched Katie breathe. Her eyelids fluttered, and I remembered her asking me, after she’d heard Jeff shouting at me through the phone when I was pregnant, “Was he always like this, and you didn’t tell me?”

And I’d said, “No.” But maybe he was, and it was just beneath the surface, something my subconscious detected as familiar and attached to Jeff while my conscious mind focused on his lips and his sense of humor.