Rejoice (15 page)

She stared at him, speechless. Her emotions ran wild and she considered slapping him, screaming at him, throwing something at him.
Fight,
Peter,
she wanted to yell.
Fight for what we used to have; fight for the sake of our girls, for Hayley.
But he’d surrendered their marriage before the battle had even begun.

And despite her strong desire to pound her fists on his chest and rail at him for leaving her alone since Hayley’s accident, she also wanted to fall to her knees, crawl to him and wrap her arms around his waist. Let her head fall on his lap and weep for how much she’d missed him, how she still longed for the way they used to be.

No words came, but a memory formed in her head, a picture of the two of them the year he graduated from med school. They’d snuck up to the school fountain with a box of detergent and a bottle of dishwashing liquid. Together they sprinkled the soap around the watery perimeter. Then they tossed the empty box and bottle in a trash can, grabbed hands, and ran for the bushes. There they giggled and held each other, laughing about their “clean” getaway and how the professors would react the next day when soapsuds poured from the fountain down into the courtyard.

But laughter had turned to passion that night, and most of the next hour they stayed in the bushes, kissing and whispering about the future.

“Know when I first fell in love with you, Peter?”

He’d kissed her lips, her jaw, the arch in her neck. “When you spotted me in chemistry?”

She giggled and shook her head. “No, when you handed me that dead frog. Remember? We were in biology class and you passed me the frog I was supposed to dissect that day. You told me, ‘Don’t worry; he didn’t feel anything.’ ” She drew back and grinned at him. “After that I knew you were the most caring, compassionate man. A guy just like my father. And just like him, I knew you’d make the best doctor in our class. I couldn’t be more sure.”

They’d kissed again, and by the time they snuck out of the bushes that night, soapsuds had formed a knee-high wall of bubbles around the fountain.

They’d grabbed hands, and this time they ran as fast as they could back to the dorms. Peter bid her a breathless good night with a promise. “I’ll never love anyone like I love you, Brooke. No matter where life takes us, no matter what happens, we’re supposed to be together; I know it more than I know anything else.”

Brooke blinked and the memory was gone. Peter had proposed to her the next year, and as she’d stood before her family and friends pledging to love Peter forever, she believed with all her heart that he was right. They belonged together.

Never would she have guessed they would wind up like this.

“You need to say something.” Peter spread his fingers across the legs of his work pants, and again his hands were shaking. This time he crossed his arms. He looked at her, but not with passion or remorse.

And in that instant, what remained of Brooke’s feelings for him lifted and took flight. Who was she kidding? The two of them had been finished for a long time. In his absence she’d felt happier than before, more free. That had to mean something. “Okay.” Her eyes locked on his. “You’re right. We’ve both seen it coming.”

Peter nodded. “Let’s make it easy on each other. The divorce-attorney thing.” He stood and slipped his hands into his pockets. “I’ll give you whatever you want, Brooke. But it’ll be better for Maddie and—” he looked at their younger daughter— “Hayley . . . if we handle it in a friendly way.”

A friendly way? Breaking a commitment to love and honor for a lifetime? How could that be even somewhat friendly? She dismissed the thoughts and forced herself to look at him. “Will . . . will you file soon?”

“I already have.” His shoulders slumped some and he shifted his feet, anxious to leave. “I’m sorry, Brooke. I . . . I didn’t see any other way.”

“Well, then . . .” She stood also, but instead of going to him, she went to Hayley’s bedside and took their daughter’s fingers in hers. The shock was wearing off. In its place the sarcasm was back. “I guess it’s all neat and tidy.”

Peter’s knees were trembling now, and Brooke wanted to ask if he was okay. But the answer didn’t really matter. They moved in separate worlds now, and whether either of them would ever be okay again didn’t seem to matter.

Hayley began to stir and her sad, slow cry filled the room. Peter took a few steps toward her, gave her toes a single light squeeze, and then looked one last time at Brooke. “I guess we’ll be in touch.”

“I guess.”

His feet moved faster than before as he headed for the doorway. If he’d looked, he would’ve seen fresh tears in Brooke’s eyes, tears of futility and failure, tears for an uncertain future. He did stop just before leaving, but he didn’t turn around. Instead, in a voice free from undue emotion, he said only two words.

“Good-bye, Brooke.”

And with that, the man she’d married, the man she’d given her heart to, walked out of her life forever.

Chapter Fifteen

Peter slipped into the first rest room he could find. His hands were shaking hard, and he’d been frantic to get out of there. She’d looked at his fingers, his knees. No way she could’ve missed the way he was losing it, but at least she hadn’t asked any questions.

He’d told her the truth. The divorce had been coming long before Hayley’s accident. It had nothing to do with his guilt, with the way he still wanted to rewrite the ending to that awful afternoon. And it certainly had nothing to do with his current love affair.

The one he was having with the painkillers.

He didn’t use the bottles anymore. Too risky. He kept them in a plastic sandwich bag. That way he could reach them easier, and no one would know what they were or whom they belonged to if somehow he lost track of them at work. Or worse, if someone besides his nurse, Betty, saw him taking one or two.

Usually two, if he was honest with himself.

The thing was, they continued to work, continued to take away the biting, driving pain in his head, the constant wondering about what he could have done differently. A few pills and there it was, like magic. Peace and normalcy. The ability to see patients and function like a human being.

The ability to live as if his marriage weren’t falling apart and he weren’t moving into an apartment this weekend. As if Hayley weren’t fighting back from brain damage because he’d lost track of her at a friend’s party.

Yes, the pain pills were a great equalizer, the doorway back to the living.

He pulled the plastic bag from his pants pocket, fumbled with the opening, and whisked two pills straight to his mouth. Again he had no cup, so he turned the sink water on, bent over, and sucked in a quick swig. The pills would be working their wonder on his system in ten minutes.

He’d researched the medication a few times in the past weeks, and what he found told him he wasn’t addicted. Not the way some people got addicted. Case studies told him of high-ranking businesspeople taking four and five pills every hour and still functioning.

Some days Peter took two pills an hour to get the same relief he used to get from one. But four or five? Peter laughed at the idea. No way he’d ever need that kind of medication, not when two were doing the job quite nicely. By the time he got to the car, he was feeling like himself again. He even hummed something by Kenny Chesney while he drove by the postal station and purchased a dozen packing boxes.

Not much in the house was exclusively his.

At home that evening he started in his office and packed his old medical books and two years’ worth of
Sports Illustrated
magazines. He was halfway through the second bookcase when he had the first thought of Brooke since leaving the hospital. Years ago he’d written her letters and they were in a box somewhere in the office, weren’t they? Letters he’d written to her the year they married.

Suddenly, strangely, as if his life depended on it, he stood up and glanced around the office. He had to find the letters, had to know how he’d felt about his wife back before everything changed. His eyes fell on the closet and he remembered. He’d put them in a box on the top shelf when they moved into this house.

What had he said to Brooke that day? “Some rainy Sunday afternoon let’s take them down and read them together, okay?”

She’d slipped her arm around his waist and smiled. “I’d like that, Peter.”

They’d had many rainy Sunday afternoons in the past years, but the box had stayed on the office-closet shelf, untouched. Was there a reason they hadn’t made time for celebrating their love? Or had they gotten too caught up in their careers to care anymore?

Peter froze for a moment and studied his hands. He wasn’t shaking—not yet. But the numb feeling around his heart and soul was wearing off. Otherwise he wouldn’t have thought of the letters in the first place. He straightened his shoulders and ordered himself to be calm.

Twenty minutes until the next pills. He wouldn’t take them sooner, wouldn’t fall victim to addiction the way others had.

He wove his way around the half-filled boxes, opened the closet door, and peered at the top shelf. At the back on the right side was a simple gray box. He reached up, pulled it down, and stared at it, mesmerized as he crossed the room again and did a slow drop into his office chair.

The lid came off easily, but Peter hesitated. Why had he stopped writing letters to her? When had the business of life taken precedence over its beauty? And how come it had taken Hayley’s accident and the undoing of his marriage to even remember about the letters?

As he peered inside the box, a heaviness settled around his heart. He remembered writing letters, but this? The box held a hundred folded pieces of paper—some, delicate-colored stationery sheets; others, scrawled across legal paper. He saw one near the top of the stack, written on a pale blue sheet, and carefully separated it from the others.

His fingers began to tingle—the first real sign that the medicine was wearing off. He told himself to read the letter first; the pills would be there. He opened the letter and found the beginning.

Dear Brooke,

It’s early in the morning, too early for daylight, and I have just come off the longest hospital night shift in my life. Hour after hour I reminded myself that when my training’s done, I don’t want to work another night as long as I live. But still, the night wasn’t all bad. Because no matter how many people walked through the emergency-room doors in the past hours, I didn’t go ten minutes without thinking of you.

I don’t believe in God or a higher power, not with all my years of science and medicine. You know that. But here, as I write this, I could swear that something bigger than ourselves brought us together. How else could life have matched me up with someone like you? Maybe it’s that whole fate thing or karma or reincarnation. But I could search the world over, interview every woman I might meet along the way, and I’m convinced I would never find one like you.

Peter took a break, looked at the date at the top-right corner, and calculated how old he must have been when he wrote it. Twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight. He would have been doing his internship, serving time in the emergency room at night; and Brooke would have been finishing med school. He moved his eyes down the page and found his place again.

I love being married to you, Brooke; I love that you make me laugh and look forward to tomorrow. I love that we can play tennis and backgammon and still find time to talk medicine. My cases, your courses, and all our dreams about the future.

Isn’t it amazing, really? I’ve known you for three years, and I can’t remember what it was like to live without you. In every way imaginable, life is turning out just like I hoped it would. The way I dreamed about ever since I was thirteen.

You know about my father, how he walked out on us when I was eight years old. But I’m not sure I ever told you this: After he left I went four years believing marriage was a death trap, promising myself I’d never get married, never put my children through the pain my dad put us through.

But in my eighth-grade year, something changed.

My friend Steve had me over to his house a couple times that summer, and I saw something I’d never seen before. His parents sat together and talked together and held hands. They actually liked each other, and the feeling I had at his house was one I remember to this day. That was the year I started dreaming that maybe . . . just maybe . . . marriage could be a good thing if only it could be like it was for Steve’s parents.

And now, in some unbelievable cosmic event, I’m in a marriage just like that, convinced that no matter what, I will always love you, always like you, and never, ever leave. Not in a million years. Our children—when we have children—will never know what it feels like to wake up day after day wondering whatever happened to their daddy. Because you’re stuck with me forever, okay? Of course, I’m not worried about your leaving either, because you couldn’t find anyone who makes a meaner cup of coffee.

Hey, Brooke, have I told you lately how proud I am of you? You’re not only a brilliant med student, but one day you’re going to make a wonderful doctor because you care about the little details. That and because you really care about people; I’ve seen that in your classwork. One day when you have your own practice, I’ll be your biggest fan, honey. I can’t wait.

Well, I’m tired and I want to sleep. But I’ll leave this out so you can read it when you wake up. I love you more with every breath.

Peter

When he was finished reading the letter, his hands trembled more than before. He started at the beginning and read it again, his eyes narrowed, puzzled by the words he’d written. On the third time through, he was shaking too much to make out the writing. He set the blue pages down on the floor, pulled the plastic bag from his pants pocket, and grabbed two pills.

He popped them in his mouth in record time and watched the clock, watched the second hand march slow and steady around the circle. Four minutes . . . five. Sweat beaded across his forehead. His legs began to shake and his heartbeat doubled, pounding harder, faster, harder, faster.

Eight minutes, ten.

Peter felt his breathing quicken. Something was wrong. The pills usually worked in ten minutes, but this time . . . this time he was getting worse. Maybe he was having a heart attack or a stroke. Maybe he’d taken too many pills in too few hours, and now he was having a reaction.

Maybe he was dying.

“Come on . . .” He whispered the words. Relief would come; it had to. The pills guaranteed it.

But instead, sweat popped out along his arms, back, and upper chest, and at the twelve-minute mark it had soaked through his shirt. Did he need more medication? Was that the problem? Had the two-pill dose become too small or had he waited too long to take them? He felt like he was running a race, and again the floor began to move beneath him. But instead of pulling off to the side and catching his breath, he couldn’t. Nothing could ease his pounding heart or the fact that he couldn’t take a deep breath.

Maybe something was wrong with the pills; maybe they were defective, inactive for some reason. He opened the plastic bag again and fingered another two pills.
Come on, Peter, what could it hurt? Go ahead . . . take them . . . take them and you’ll feel better.

The voice in his head taunted him, the feel of it, angry and defiant. Angry enough that it scared him. He stared at the two additional pills. No, not yet. He released the hold he had on them and closed the plastic bag. He would wait; if he didn’t have relief at the twenty-minute mark he’d take them for sure.

Thirteen minutes. His heartbeat stumbled some and shot into an irregular rhythm, one that could be dangerous if it didn’t convert back to normal. He started high-chest breathing, never fully exhaling, never fully inhaling, grabbing quick mouthfuls of air and feeling like he was suffocating all at the same time.

The symptoms were familiar to him, but he’d never experienced them himself. He was short of breath, unable to find that sweetly calm pattern of breathing he’d always taken for granted. And what was his heart doing? He felt his pulse.
Thud.
Silence.
Thud, thud, thud.
Long silence.
Thud, thud, thud.
Silence.
Thud, thud.
Long silence.

Too much silence.

He held his breath and tightened his stomach, pushing against the panic, urging his heart to beat and find a way back to a steady rhythm.

Six seconds . . . seven . . . suddenly his heart gave a loud
thud
and flipped into a normal pattern. Far too fast, but regular at least. Gradually, his legs and then his arms stopped shaking and his breathing slowed.

Fourteen minutes since he’d taken the pills.

Another minute and he could feel his body stop sweating, the wetness no longer running down his arms and ribs. He studied the clock, shocked, frightened.

A little more than seventeen minutes after taking the pills, his body was finally feeling normal again. Six minutes longer than it had ever taken before. And that was a bad thing. He stuffed the plastic bag of pills back into his pants pocket and exhaled. No, it was a terrible thing.

It meant he’d have to start taking them sooner or take more of them. And that would make it hard to lie to himself about whether he did or didn’t have a problem. If he needed more than two pills every hour to feel okay, then he couldn’t lie about it another day.

He had a problem.

But if he could wait out the seventeen minutes, maybe he wouldn’t have to increase the dose. He’d survived, after all. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t go through that again if he needed to. It would be better than increasing the dose and winding up in some detox center.

The awful anxiety forgotten, Peter picked up the letter again. Key phrases jumped off the page at him, taunting him and telling him how far he’d fallen since those long-ago days.

I love being married to you, Brooke; I love that you make me laugh and look forward to tomorrow. . . . I will always love you, always like you, and never, ever leave. Not in a million years. Our children—when we have children—will never know what it feels like to wake up day after day wondering whatever happened to their daddy.

The words couldn’t have been more foreign if they were in Spanish. He went over each of those statements again and realized something sad. Not one of them was true today. Not one. He hadn’t loved being married to Brooke for a year or more, hadn’t found reasons to laugh or look forward to tomorrow when the two of them were together. She was too caught up with the kids and her career to care much for him, so he’d stopped loving her a long time ago. He was pretty sure he didn’t even like her.

Brooke was different now. When was the last time they played backgammon or talked medicine together? For that matter, when was the last time they’d laughed at the same thing? No, Brooke was too busy building her practice, making a name for herself as the latest up-and-coming pediatrician in Bloomington. Too busy giving herself to her patients to have anything left for him.