Outside the Lines (21 page)

“Climb on up.” She motioned for me to get on the exam table. I dropped my bag down and did as she asked. “You know what, Eden? I forgot I need to make a quick phone call. Can you excuse me a minute? I’ll be right back.”

I nodded. “Okay.” She left the room and was gone just a couple of minutes. Was she calling my mom? Was I going to get in trouble?

When she came back, she shut the door behind her, smiled, and stood right next to me. If she had called my mom, wouldn’t she have said so? Instead, she put her hand on the top of my thigh and something about the tenderness in her touch made me want to cry.

“So, tell me what’s been going on with you, Eden.”

“I have stomachaches.” I hoped the tremor in my voice made the lie sound more convincing.

“I see. When do you get them?”

“All day. All the time. But after I eat, especially.” I tried to think of all the times in my life I’d suffered from stomach pains and what had caused them.

“After you eat anything in particular?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”

“Do you vomit?”

I made a face. “No.”

“Diarrhea?”

I nodded. “Yes. Lots.” I figured lots of diarrhea was a significant enough symptom to convince her I had something wrong with me. “And gas,” I added helpfully.

“Okay, well, let’s take your temperature and blood pressure, and Dr. Vick will be in to talk with you.” She set the glass thermometer underneath my tongue and wrapped the blood pressure sleeve around my arm. I swung my legs back and forth, as though I were on a swing, anxious for this part to be over with so I could talk with the doctor about my dad.

“All done!” the nurse announced. “I’ll go check to see if your mom has made it yet, and Dr. Vick will be right in, okay, sweetie?”

“Okay. Thank you.” She closed the door behind her and I let my eyes wander over the tiny room. There were posters on the wall instructing you on how to cover your mouth with the inside of your elbow when you coughed instead of with your hand. I thought about how many sick people might have been in this room that day, so I hopped off the exam table and went to the sink and rubbed my fingers over the faucet, then licked them again. The sooner I got sick, the sooner my dad would come home.

There was a sharp rap on the door and the doctor entered. I tucked my hands into the front pockets of my jeans and ducked my head down. Dr. Vick was a heavy man with wide-set brown eyes and enormous black eyebrows. His scalp shone beneath the fluorescent lights.

“Eden?” he inquired.

I nodded and hopped back onto the exam table. The white paper crinkled beneath my butt. He sat down on a cushioned stool with wheels and pushed himself over next to me. It felt strange to be looking down on a grown-up. And a doctor, to boot.

“I’m Dr. Vick,” he said. “I know you usually see Dr. Adams, but he isn’t working today.” He smiled. “I hear you’re having stomachaches.”

“And diarrhea.”

He nodded, a serious expression on his face. “Why don’t you lie down and I’ll see if I can find out what’s going on?”

I complied and found myself staring up at a poster on the ceiling with a picture of a kitten hanging precariously from a branch with the words
hang in there, baby
! emblazoned across the bottom. I wondered if the photographer had pushed the kitten off the branch in order to snap the picture. How else would he have captured that moment, unless he was the one who made it happen?

Dr. Vick pushed himself up off the stool and stood next to the exam table. “Can you take a deep breath for me?” he asked. “And hold it for a minute?”

I inhaled and my stomach rose up like a balloon was trapped inside it. Dr. Vick pressed gently with his fingers, wiggling and moving them around my abdomen. I convulsed and blew the air out when he pushed a particularly sensitive spot next to my ribs.

“Uh-oh,” he said, pulling his hands back. “Did that hurt?”

“No. It tickled.”

He smiled. “Oops. Sorry. You can sit up now.”

I did, and he sat back down on his stool. He made a few notes in his chart before speaking again. “So, I don’t feel anything wrong right off the bat,” he said. “Is there a time of day that it gets worse?”

I hesitated a minute, unsure how much longer I should be pretending I had something wrong with me when I was really here to talk about what Dr. Vick might be able to do to help my dad. I needed to get home before my mom got off work and I was wasting valuable time.

“It sometimes gets bad at night. But I think that might just be because I miss my dad.”

Dr. Vick tilted his head and gave a little frown. “And where is your dad?”

“Well, he got in trouble. And so now he’s in jail.” I didn’t like the look on Dr. Vick’s face so I rushed to explain. “But it’s only for a month and it isn’t his fault. He has something wrong in his brain that makes him do wrong things sometimes. He doesn’t mean it.”

The doctor looked concerned. “What kind of wrong things are we talking about, Eden? Does he hurt you?”

“No!” I didn’t like where this conversation was going, so I tried to start it over. “My dad is wonderful. He’s an artist and just feels things a lot more deeply than most people. At least, that’s what my mom says. He just gets either really good or really bad moods.”

Dr. Vick nodded. “I see. Does he go to the doctor for this issue? Does he have medicine?”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, that’s why I’m here, actually.”

Understanding blossomed on the doctor’s face. “You aren’t having stomachaches?”

I dropped my eyes to the floor and shook my head. “No. I’m sorry. I just needed to talk to a doctor who can help my dad get better. If you could just give him a medicine that doesn’t make him feel so awful and change his personality like the one he usually takes, he would take it and everything would be okay.” I paused and looked back up at Dr. Vick. “Do you have that kind of medicine?”

He sighed, a quiet sound. “I’m not a psychiatrist, Eden. And even if I were, I couldn’t give you medicine to give to your dad. You should know your mother will be here any minute.”

“What?” I asked, a panicky feeling in my stomach.

“Yes.” He stood up. “The nurse called her when you first got here. She asked that we keep you occupied until she arrived.”

“No, please!” I jumped down and grabbed his arm. “I just want you to tell me what I can do to help my dad get better. When he gets home. Please? I need you to help me.”

Dr. Vick reached over with his free hand and placed it on top of mine. His eyes were kind. “Eden, I understand how hard it must be to have your dad struggle with his moods like this. But there’s nothing you can do to fix him. Sometimes people get sick and there’s nothing anyone can do to make them get well.”

“I don’t believe you.” My bottom lip trembled. “You’re a doctor. It’s your job to make people get better.”

“That is my job. But I can’t fix what’s wrong with your dad. I don’t know if anyone can.”

“Please help me,” I said, the tears rolling down my cheeks. “I don’t know what else to do. If he doesn’t get well, my mom might make him go away.”

Dr. Vick carefully extricated himself from my grasp and handed me a few tissues from the box on the counter. I took them and blew my nose hard, probably sending all the germs I’d worked so hard to ingest right back out of my body. I’d never get sick now. My daddy wouldn’t come home.

“You can stay in here for a few minutes,” he said.

I didn’t answer him, instead kept my eyes to the floor. This was pointless.
Doctors are supposed to help people and all he’s going to do is get me in trouble.
The nurse came in a moment later with a glass of water I didn’t want to drink.

“Your mom is on her way,” she said. She put her arm around my shoulders. “Let’s have you sit in the waiting room until she gets here, okay?”

I shrugged. I didn’t care. I let her lead me wherever she wanted me to go.

My mom showed up in less than fifteen minutes, rushing into the waiting room like she was being chased. She threw her eyes around the room until she found me. “Eden! What were you thinking?”

I didn’t answer. I stood up and grabbed my backpack. “Can we just go home?”

She sighed and hugged me. I stood straight and motionless in her arms. She kissed the top of my head. “You can’t save him, honey. You know that, right? There’s nothing either one of us can do.”

I looked up at her. “You’re giving up.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But only because he gave up first.”

In the end, David pled guilty for the DUI and assaulting the officer, but since they were his first criminal offenses, his attorney was able to file a plea with the court to have the charges reduced. He was released after only a month in jail. He would have to pay a fine for the assault against the police officer and be on probation for driving under the influence, but considering the circumstances, things could have been much worse.

After he melted down in his cell with Rico, David was transferred to the jail’s mental ward, where the doctors loaded him up on meds and David nursed the shoulder he dislocated slamming it into the wall. The bruise on his forehead went away fairly quick, and now, medicated, the turmoil brewing inside him settled into a low simmer. The dosage they gave him wasn’t a high one, but it was enough to take the edge off, enough for David to try to figure out his next move.

The morning he left the jail, David stood on the front steps of the courthouse, unsure whether he should call Lydia to come pick him up. She hadn’t taken any of his calls during the month he was incarcerated and never came to visit, so he could only assume she was still royally pissed about what he’d done. After fuming with self-justification, he became plagued by the familiar stench of regret. He knew the only way to be washed clean of it would be for Lydia and Eden to welcome him home. It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go.

The money he had taken from Lydia’s secret stash was returned to him when he left the jail, so he thought about taking a taxi home but then realized it might look indulgent to his wife. He wanted to impress upon her that he knew he’d made a grievous error but he had changed. For the most part, he was in control of his thoughts and his behavior, and when they threatened to spin off, he steeled his resolve against it. He chanted “I will get well” over and over in his head, and for some reason that seemed to help. Maybe it was the medication, or maybe it was because he hadn’t had a drink in thirty days. Now all he had to do was go home and convince Lydia to listen to him.

The officer who had released him gave him a bus schedule, so he consulted it to find one that would drop him near his house. It was midday and both Lydia and Eden would be gone. He thought he might surprise them by being there when they got home. He tried not to think about how poorly that might go over, but he knew they’d always found a way to forgive him before so he had little reason to doubt they would do it again.

It took two bus transfers to travel from downtown to their North Seattle neighborhood. David felt strange being out in the world again, as he did when he was released from a hospital stay. He felt vulnerable and raw, terrified others would point their finger at the crazy man who had shamed his family.
Well, that’s going to change now,
David thought.
I’ll do whatever it takes.

When he got home, he noticed Mrs. Worthington, the woman Eden sometimes pulled weeds for, peeking out her living room window from across the street. He waved and gave her a big smile. Let her think he was returning from a vacation or a business trip. He knew Lydia didn’t advertise his illness or his resulting escapades. She was too embarrassed by them. He pulled out his keys and hoped Lydia hadn’t changed the locks. With her emergency stash of money gone, he doubted she could have afforded it. The key slid in and the tumbler turned effortlessly. David stepped inside and this house he had picked out with Lydia looked foreign to him. The walls seemed closer together. Could they have shrunk? He locked the door behind him and immediately set out to the garage in search of a painting he could sell. Money wouldn’t solve all of his problems with Lydia, but he knew it couldn’t hurt.

Like the swirling beginnings of a sandstorm in the desert, panicky thoughts rose in his brain. What if Lydia didn’t forgive him? What if no matter what he did or said she still wanted him gone? Where would he go? What would he do? Would he ever see Eden again? He needed to tell his daughter he understood why she had asked that waitress to call her mother. He needed to take away the hurt he had caused.

David began to breathe heavily and the sight of the empty vodka bottles on the garage floor roused a craving in him so strong it felt like it might carry him away.
I will get well, I will get well,
he chanted inside his head. It was the barest form of white-knuckled resistance against a growing tide of compulsion. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep it up.

“Please,” he whispered, not knowing exactly whom he was speaking to. He’d long ago given up any hope there was a God. If there was, He obviously wanted nothing to do with David. When he prayed, he did so to the unseen force that controlled his moods. “Please don’t let me spiral down again.”

Quickly, as a distraction, David dug through the stack of paintings he hadn’t taken with him the night he left with Eden. There was a trio-study of his daughter sleeping that might sell for a decent amount. The perfect bow of her lips, the careless fling of her arm above her head, a pale blanket rumpled all around her in the late afternoon light. He took the paintings inside and picked up the phone to call the Wild Orchid Gallery. They had loved his work there, once. He could make them love it again.

“Yes,” he said when the receptionist answered. “Is Cerina in today?”

“She is. May I tell her who’s calling?”

“David West.” He listened to the soothing piano music while he sat on hold, drumming his fingers on the kitchen counter. It only took a minute for Cerina to get on the line. He pictured her, lithe as a panther, dressed head to toe in black. He’d slept with her a few times, a year ago. He wondered if that was the only reason she offered to show his work.