Save Me (11 page)

“I don’t know, Annie.” My birthday’s in just a few weeks.

“Well, we don’t need to have a party
for you
, but we have been wanting to do a cookout now that the weather’s getting nicer, something low key. We could invite Andrew, Jack’s cute friend.”

“You could,” I say, smirking. I stand and go around to her side of her desk and lean down to give her a quick hug. “I love you,” I say. “Thank you.”

“I love you, too.”

I go back to my office and plunk down at my desk and massage my temples with my fingers. I decide to check my email quickly before I walk down the hall to see Denise, Mary Elizabeth’s therapist, and fill her in on what happened this morning. I feel a sharp, stabbing pain in my chest as soon as I click on my inbox and scan the new messages. There’s Owen’s name. The subject:
Please read.

I
try to concentrate on the words on the screen but they jump around like they’re alive. I read it five, ten times, but I can’t seem to ground myself in what it says. I feel like I’ve been handed a loaded gun. I take a deep breath and start again.

I don’t know what to think.
He can’t stop thinking about me? He constantly reminisces about the past? He wants to make it better?
Impossibly, my heart seems to race faster every time I read it. I don’t know if I believe him—more than that, I don’t know if I should.

The more I consider the words he’s chosen, the more bewildered I am about the reasons he’s outlined for why he cheated. So he was essentially bored. A “rut” is the thing that made him decide to pull my heart from my chest and wring it like a dishrag. That day at the house right after he confessed to me—a day that I know will leave a permanent scar—he said that we had changed. Things felt different to him. I didn’t totally believe him about this being the sole reason why he did what he did. I thought there had to be something more to it. And after seeing him at the ICU that day, I knew that I was right. It was beyond whatever was happening with us. He wasn’t just bored.

Dammit, though, it’s not that I don’t agree with him, I think, chewing on my thumbnail as I go over and over the lines. We
were
absolutely in a rut. We were definitely sometimes like roommates. But the solution, to me,
never
would have been to look elsewhere. I thought this dip was normal. Doesn’t everyone go through it? Wouldn’t any married person who took the time out of their day to scrutinize their relationship see the same dents and dings? Isn’t that why most people
don’t
scrutinize? Did he expect too much? And if so, can I ever be enough? I didn’t give the state of our marriage too much thought because it honestly didn’t worry me. Maybe that’s the biggest problem of all.

And then
, I think, my hands shaking as I bring them to my face to wipe my eyes,
what does it say about him that he decides to send this when the woman whom he cheated with is lying in a hospital bed? How can he be so callous?
The Owen I married doesn’t hurt people like this. The only thing I can think is that he must feel such a sense of urgency to confess these things to me that he can’t help himself. It’s not like him to do the things he’s done, I rationalize, but it
is
like him to try to right his wrongs.

I remember that drive back from Asheville with our new puppy curled in my lap, too. I remember sharing the six-pack in the tree house tucked into the oaks in his backyard. I remember the feel of the cool water as I dragged my fingers through the water in the lake at camp, laughing together at the bar as the sun set, all of it. And what makes me angriest of all, the thing that is most infuriating, is that they’re still good memories. I can close my eyes and take myself back and still feel the way that we loved each other. Despite all of the ways he’s hurt me, there is a pearl of truth lodged deep in my chest that I can’t ignore. I still love him. I still want him. Despite everything, I don’t know if I can let him go.

When I get home at the end of the day, I go for a run to try to clear my head. It’s an ugly thirty minutes, huffing and wheezing as I try to convince myself that this is, in fact, a better option than taking a plastic cup of wine into the backyard to allegedly pull weeds but mostly to think about the email and stare into space.

By the time I turn the corner back toward the house and slow to a walk, I don’t have any new insights. I’m tired and frustrated and mentally spent. I tear my earbuds out of my ears, collect the mail from the mailbox, and sift through it on the long walk up the gravel driveway—electric bill in his name, calendar for the Durham Performing Arts Center in mine, the latest issue of
Glow
, a subscription to which was this year’s unsubtle Christmas gift from Lucy.
Could things be normal again?
I think.
Could we put it back
together? Could I come home from a run, get the mail, go inside, and kiss Owen hello? Could this be our home still?

I sit on the porch and stretch my legs and watch Blue sniff around the flower beds. It feels like it’s about to rain. Normally, I find the sound of the wind through the trees on our property soothing, but today it is sharp and grating, like an impatient rustling of paper. I’m so confused, and I don’t do indecision well. When I was growing up and got nervous about something—a test, a swim meet—my dad would always tell me, in his matter-of-fact, don’t-sweat-it way, that the anxiety you feel leading up to something is always worse than the actual thing itself. I’m not so sure anymore.

I shift in my spot on the front porch and watch as the petals from four newly bloomed Bradford pear trees whirl through the sky without any discernible pattern. It reminds me of an undergraduate physics class and learning about chaos theory: how, from a scientific point of view, so many things that seem random actually have a sequence, an order that happens for a reason. It should bring me comfort, I think, but it doesn’t.

I
stand behind Annie in my office as her eyes scan my computer screen, and when she finally finishes reading Owen’s email—I know because her head starts to shake slowly back and forth—I swear that steam’s about to come out of her ears. This is exactly why I decided not to show it to her when I received it yesterday.

“The nerve that he has to do this to you—it’s
unreal
. Who does he think he is?” She spins around. “It shows such an absolute and utter lack of compassion,” she says, her hands punctuating each syllable. “He’s a total narcissist, Daphne, just like my mother. The similarities are actually kind of unbelievable.”

I knew she’d be unhappy about Owen’s sudden declaration—she’s been my biggest cheerleader over the past few weeks, the head majorette in the
Let’s Get Daphne a New Lease on Life
parade. In some ways, her reaction is validating. And somehow, it also makes me feel worse.

She shakes her head at me, her eyebrows stretched up toward her hairline.
What do I say?
I’m still angry—of course I am—but I don’t believe he’s a monster. Not one bit. And maybe it’s just the shock wearing off, but the more I read the letter last night, the better I felt about it. This, in particular:
I am drowning in regret over the decision I made.
How many times have I read that particular line? The words have burned themselves into my brain tissue.

I am drowning in regret over the decision I made.

I can’t think of anything else.

“Annie, come on. Read it again,” I say, gesturing toward my computer. “Read it again and try to remember that this is Owen, the same person who has sat at your dinner table dozens of times over the years.” I turn the chair back toward the screen.

She makes a sound that’s half grunt, half laugh. Whatever it is, it reeks of disdain. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I mean, he says it right here,” she says, pointing to the screen. “‘It’s about me,’” she reads. “Damn right it is, Owen.
All about you.
Do you believe this? What he’s written?”

“Well, yeah, I do,” I say, defensive. “I do know a thing or two about him. He
is
my husband.”

She moans. It’s a
disappointed
sound, a lamenting
you should know better
. “I’m sorry,” she says. She turns to me and grabs my hands. Her eyes are the exact shade of blue gray as the cedar-shingled houses that my family used to rent on Cape Cod, and there’s probably a deep-down subconscious part of me that finds some comforting affinity in her because of that. “I don’t mean to upset you,” she says. Her voice is like melted butter, like a mother’s. “It just frustrates me so much that he’s hurt you like this and now…” She motions to the computer. “It seems like he’s stringing you along, Daphne. It’s like he thinks he gets both of you.”

“But I honestly think he’s really confused,” I say. “That’s what I want to explain to you. I truly think he’s remorseful.”

“And?” She raises her chin toward me, waiting for me to give her the answer she wants to hear.

“I mean, yes, Annie, I hate this,” I point to the computer like a TV trial lawyer pointing at a piece of evidence. “I actually do. I was starting to feel better—or, well, at least get used to my new reality. But I’ve also loved him for a long, long time and I can tell when he’s being sincere. He was my best friend. For many years. Imagine if something happened between you and me. And imagine that I wrote a letter like this to you. An apology.”

She stares back at me, biting her lip, and I know that she’s not buying it.
Some friend,
she’s thinking. She fiddles with the tiny charms on her necklace—L, S, M, Luke, Samantha, and Molly’s first initials—stamped in sterling silver.

“That said,” I continue, “I can’t gloss over what’s happened. I know better. The past few weeks have left me bitter and angry and raw. I don’t know whether it’s right to trust him the way that my instincts are telling me to, and I don’t know how to defuse the incredible amount of resentment I feel toward him. I’m furious, I really am, but this apology…” I stop and close my eyes. “I don’t know how to deal with it. I feel like I’m being pulled in two directions.”

“Well, you know what I’m going to say,” she says, looking into my eyes.

I pick up my coffee mug from my desk and take a sip. “Yeah,” I say. “I can’t respond to him—not yet. This letter obviously clouds things, but no matter what happens between Owen and me, I have to put this—him—aside for a while. I need to think this through.”

She nods at me.

“He did an awful, awful thing,” I say. “I can’t excuse it because of the things he’s written in this letter.” I look at her. “Right?”

“Exactly,” she says.

I nod back at her, hoping that I look more certain than I feel.

Later that afternoon, I am in an exam room, entering notes into my laptop after a patient visit, when Carol pops her head in. “Dr. Billings wants to see you.”

“Now?” I say, slamming the laptop shut. “Don’t we have another patient waiting?”

She checks her watch. “You have ten minutes.”

I hurry down to my boss’s office. His door’s open but he is on the phone, most likely with his wife, Valerie, because I hear him mentioning Dover, the King Charles spaniel that she drives around town in the front seat of her Jaguar sedan like it’s the queen. I wait in the hallway, ignoring Carol when she walks by and gives me a look like I’m standing outside of the principal’s office.

“Dr. Mitchell?” he finally says. In the five years I’ve worked for him, Dr. Billings has never called me Daphne and never asked me anything about my personal life, not even a simple “How was your weekend?” It’s not so much that he’s cold but that he is formal and brilliant and old-money wealthy, and the combination, along with his wire-rimmed glasses and ubiquitous bow ties, denotes the sort of eccentricity that makes it acceptable for him to forgo the usual social graces. Outside of work, at the annual summer barbecue that he and Valerie hold at their house overlooking the golf course at Hope Valley, or on the handful of occasions when I’ve run into him around town—at Witherspoon Rose once, both of us browsing the delicate hybrid tea roses—he is more relaxed but still plenty intense.

“How was the AMA?”

“Excuse me?”

“The American Medical Association conference. Philadelphia?”

“Oh!” I put my palm to my head. That conference seems like a lifetime ago. It
was
a lifetime ago. “It was good. I was on a panel. ‘Is Concierge Care the Future of Medicine?’” I say, reciting the name of the talk.

He shakes his head and sighs. “Concierge Care” is a label we all despise. It sounds so pretentious, as if we’re doling out diamond necklaces along with our diagnoses.

I rest my hands on the chair in front of me. He hasn’t invited me to sit. The office is dark save for the small brass table lamp on the corner of his hulking mahogany desk. If I didn’t know him, I would assume that he is playing up the gloomy intensity for effect. There are piles of papers strewn everywhere, crooked fading photos that suggest they were hung on the walls decades ago, a tower of files threatening to topple in the corner.

“So,” he says, looking over his glasses at the computer screen as he does it.

His middle finger caresses his computer mouse as he scrolls. “I wanted to talk to you about one of your patients.” He turns ninety degrees to face me and his small, sharp eyes land on me, like a mosquito ready to bite. I suddenly feel my skin start to prickle, goose bumps forming on my arms.

“Which patient?” I ask.

“Mary Elizabeth Foster.” He laces his elegant fingers together and rests his chin on his hands. He is thin and fine featured, as my mother would say.
Like a hawk
, I think.

“Mary Elizabeth?” We’ve spoken about her before, nearly a year ago, in a meeting with the other providers in the office who treat her.

He nods. “She was in the office last…?”

“A week or so ago,” I finish for him.

“I’m friendly with her parents,” he says.

“Oh.”

“They are worried about her care.”

I frown.
This is puzzling.
“About
her
or about
her care
?”

“About her
care
, Dr. Mitchell.” His eyes bore into mine and I force myself to hold his gaze. “When she was here last, did you give her a breathalyzer?”

“No.” I shake my head. I can’t imagine the impetus for this—I picture Dr. Billings and Valerie with Mary Elizabeth’s parents, shaking the ice in their highball glasses at the country club bar while they discuss her in between conversations about their golf handicaps and their designer dogs.

“Are you sure?” He points his forehead at me.

“I’m positive,” I say. “Because she wouldn’t let me.” He might be my boss and I’m aware that I’m capable of making mistakes, but I know that Mary Elizabeth has received nothing but the best treatment from me. She is my special case. Of all of the spinning tops I treat, she is the one who worries me most, the one most likely to fall first. “I could smell the alcohol on her the minute I walked into the exam room. She was behaving erratically and I wanted to test her. I called Carol into the room with me, and I thought about getting additional assistance.”

“What was the reason for her visit?”

“Well, that’s a good question,” I say, trying not to sound defensive. I’ve never doubted his respect for me. While he’s not a man who’s generous with compliments, he frequently asks me to consult on other doctors’ cases and often, in our practice meetings, asks me to comment when we’re discussing a tricky situation. He values me. I know that.

“She had another appointment scheduled for a few weeks later—a standard blood panel. She asked for an anti-anxiety prescription—I’m sure it’s why she came to see me.” Internists are solicited for meds all the time—anti-anxiety, antipsychotics, painkillers of every variety—even in a practice like ours, where the patients are paying us to pay close attention to their behavior.

“Okay,” he says, rapping his fingers on his desk.

“I skipped the blood panel. She was in no shape for it,” I say. “And I offered to arrange a ride for her but she had a friend waiting for her in the lobby.”

“Did you walk her out? Did you see the friend?”

“I did. He was about her age. Did something happen to her?” I think of how I pleaded with her to stay.

“Fortunately not,” he says. “But she went missing for several days. Disappeared from work, didn’t call anyone.”

“Denise doesn’t know anything?”

He shakes his head.

“You were the last person who saw her before she…” He makes a
poof
motion with his hands.

And so I’m somehow to blame?
I think. “Where is she now?”

“She turned up yesterday morning. She’s been in Asheville with a
friend
.” He says the word like it’s rancid.

“And she’s okay?” I can feel the dampness on my hairline and on my upper lip, behind my neck. I can’t believe that he’d question me like this.

“She may lose her job. I hear that this isn’t the first incident.”

“Dr. Billings, I have talked to her on many occasions about entering a program and about how dangerous her behavior is, given her particular circumstances. As you know, the decision ultimately has to come from her unless there’s some sort of intervention. Is her family thinking about that? Because I talked to her mother about that once. We spoke on the phone less than a year ago. I can look it up in my records.” I leave out the part about how her assistant kept me on hold for nearly ten minutes, and how, when she finally came to the phone, she seemed highly burdened by my desire to talk about her daughter’s health, despite the fact that I was returning her call. Our conversation probably clocked in at less than 120 seconds, and she talked
at
me the entire time.

“I don’t know what her family’s intentions are, but I wanted to get your opinion. They are not…” He squirms in his seat. “They are not the type to mention these sorts of things socially, not that anyone is. I was curious about your assessment.”

“My assessment is—” I feel a buzz in my front coat pocket.
Ugh!
I’m getting a call. We both hear it. He grimaces at me.
Dammit.

“My assessment is that she needs a program,” I continue. “Denise and I have discussed it. She’s had several seizures related to her alcohol use. I prescribed—”
Buzz.
I wonder who it is? I wonder if it’s Owen.
“I prescribed Klonopin to her once,” I start again. “Under Denise’s advisement, but that was a couple of years ago and I’ve refused to since.”

“Okay. That’s helpful,” he says.

“As I mentioned, she’s due in for the routine tests,” I say. My heart is beating faster. I can practically feel it in my fingertips.
First Owen and his email, now I’m questioned about my ability to do my job…
The phone buzzes again.

“If she shows,” he says.

“True, but she’s never actually missed an appointment before. She’s always late, but she shows up. To be honest, I think we have a good connection.”

He squints at me like this is the strangest thing he’s ever heard. The phone buzzes again.

“Why don’t you go answer that?” he finally says.

I hurry out, yank my phone out of my pocket, and answer without bothering to see who’s calling. “Hello?” I bark.

“Hey, Daphne. This is Andrew, Jack’s friend?” In contrast to my own, his voice is buoyant and upbeat, like it’s following one of those animated bouncing balls that marks the words during the sing-along cartoons that Lucy and I used to watch on Saturday mornings.

“Andrew.” I swallow, using the pause to settle myself.
Jesus, this day.
“Hi! Hello.”
Jack must have given him my number.

“Listen,” he says. “I know it’s last minute and you probably have plans, but I have a couple of tickets to a concert tonight, and my friend who was joining me just bailed. I wondered if you might like to come. Grab dinner first?”

“Tonight?” I say.
Tonight.
My plan was to see what’s new on Netflix, make some progress on the book I’m reading for Annie’s book club, and maybe paint my toes if I could handle that much activity. “Um, well, I’m the doctor on call this weekend for our after-hours hotline,” I say, remembering.