Save Me (8 page)

W
hat I discover when I arrive home crystallizes, in the most painful way, just how much he’s deceived me. When I go upstairs, Blue trailing behind me, I find Owen’s suitcase open on our bedroom floor. He was not packing for just a few days—pairs of his socks are jammed into the spaces on the sides and shirts and sweaters are piled so high that he might need to sit on it to close it.

I thought that he was going to swing by to get the dog and pick up a few things—a couple of shirts for the weekend, maybe his cycling gear in case he wanted to go for a ride. It’s obvious now—though he didn’t bother to make it clear to me—that he was actually going to move out. This “break” was about much more than needing time to figure out
what
he wanted—it seems that it was about deciding
whom
he wanted, too.

I feel dizzy, like my legs might give out at any moment. I sit down next to the suitcase. I know all of his things as if they were my own: the gray sweatshirt that he liked to wear on the weekends, the cache of blue checked button-downs that I teased were his work uniform, the jeans with the holes that have been in his life longer than I have. I start to push the suitcase into the closet, where I won’t have to see it, but stop halfway and pull out a shirt. It is green and plain and soft and I hold it to my face and breathe in the sweet-spicy smell of him, one last time, before I make myself get up to see what else he was planning to take.

I walk down the hall to the office, where I discover a box on the floor, half filled with his books. This might be worse than the suitcase. It’s one thing to see his clothes piled up, when I can pretend that he is just packing for a trip. Our office, a place that we worked hard to make comfortable for the two of us, is home to an L-shaped desk made by a woodworker in Hillsborough, all of our diplomas, and a needlepoint of his grandparents’ farm. There’s no denying it, I think, running my fingers over the stitches: He is leaving. I shove my books together on the bookcase, closing the gaps where his books were. This should make me feel better, I think, but it doesn’t. Extricating him is not my choice. This is
our
house.

How did it work, exactly?
I wonder. Was this all planned? Did they decide together that he was going to move out and that they’d move forward together, or is what he told me on our back porch true—that he’s honestly confused and remorseful about what he’s done, and needs time to sort it out? Either way, he’s lied to me about the nature of their relationship. It almost doesn’t matter whether it’s past or present—it happened.

I go downstairs. He left a half-full glass of water on the kitchen counter. I dump it and put the glass in the dishwasher, shoving the door closed with my foot. His pile of journals remains in the corner of the living room, and I scoop them up and deposit them in the recycling bin. I pull a garbage bag from the box under the sink and shake it open. There are pictures everywhere. The vacation photos—at a blues club in Memphis with Annie and Jack, wine tasting with my med school friends in California, skiing in Vermont, it all goes in. I hardly let myself look. And then in the hallway by the stairs—the photo of me with his mother, standing beside the first Thanksgiving turkey we ever attempted together, another of Owen walking with Blue down a leaf-strewn path just after we got her.
Don’t cry
, I say to myself, shoving them in.

The house is quiet, which feels appropriate. This awful extermination (that’s what this is, isn’t it?) deserves a reverent silence. I know that he is still littered everywhere, in the boxes of childhood memorabilia in the attic, in the formal clothes that still hang in the back of our closet, but this is a start.
This is for the best
, I tell myself, not believing a word.

My phone rings. I rush into the family room, digging it out of my purse, which I’d thrown on the sofa on my way in.

“Hi, Mom,” I say after glancing at the caller ID.

“Daphne, honey, I’ve been so worried.”

I’d forgotten to call her when I arrived, as I always do when I leave my parents’ house, to let her know that I’ve made it home safely. “Mom, I’m sorry, I got wrapped up with everything here. I’m home now.” I pull out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and sit down.

“How is Owen? How is the girl?”

“Oh,” I say, pausing to decide whether I should flood her with the entire story. “The accident was pretty serious.”

“Oh, no!” she says. “That’s horrible.”

“Yes, Owen was pretty distraught. More than I realized he would be.”

“So it’s really bad.”

“Yes, but I was still surprised by how he reacted, given that he had given me the impression that their relationship wasn’t serious.”

“What do you mean? Is it serious?”

“Seems that way.” I sniff.

“Oh, honey,” she moans. “Is she still in the ICU?”

“She is,” I say, forcing myself to answer her questions. I’m ashamed to admit it but I’m suddenly angry—perhaps it’s irrational on my part, but why is her first instinct to worry over Bridget? I need to get off of the phone. I can’t do this right now.

“So what will you do? Are you going to go back there? What do you mean about their relationship being serious?”

“Mom, to be honest, the whole day has been a bit of a shock. It’s just—at the hospital, it was very obvious that their relationship is much more than I thought it was.”

“Sweetie, no.”

“I’m sorry, Mom, but can I call you later? It’s been a long day.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine, really. Just let me call you back in a bit.”

Reluctantly, she lets me go. I put the phone on the table and pull my legs up to rest my chin on my knees. I’m realizing something: The very worst thing about Bridget’s accident, for me—and only for me—is that I no longer feel entitled to be angry about what’s happened to me. And I am
so
angry. I know that I should compartmentalize the two things—my tragedy, hers—but when I’m really honest with myself? My situation feels every bit as tragic. There, I’ve said it. I
mean
it.

Every time I think about what’s happened, the image that comes to mind is of a million tiny pieces of paper fluttering in the sky, blown to bits by some unexpected pop. My life, over in a snap, bombed away. And it’s their entire fault.

There isn’t a piece of me that wants to feel sorry for them. I don’t care how much he’s hurting. I didn’t deserve this. None of it. And had Owen been brave enough to come to me when he decided that our marriage was no longer fulfilling him, then none of this would be an issue. I would’ve fixed it. I would have done anything.

Later that night, after I’ve locked up and brushed my teeth, I stand in front of the bathroom mirror for a long, long time. I look normal. Utterly, inarguably normal. A little on the short side. Pretty, but not sexy. Owen liked this about me—my T-shirts, my ponytails. I think of Bridget. I know that I shouldn’t compare us in this way, especially not now, but I can’t help it when the woman who’s replaced me looks the way she does. My eyes scan my reflection—the freckles from teenaged summers by the pool, the scar near my collarbone from a bug bite I couldn’t stop scratching, my hands. I turn my engagement ring and my wedding ring around my finger. And then, swiftly, I yank them both off, pulling hard, willing myself not to remember that day when we stood in front of everyone we loved and made our vows, reciting the words as we looked into each other’s eyes and placed the rings on each other’s fingers.
For better or for worse. Till death do us part.
I hold the rings tightly in my hand, biting my lip to try to stop the tears rolling down my cheeks, and remember another vow we both made, at our respective medical school graduations, a doctor’s ethical promise:
Primum Non Nocere
—“first, do no harm.” He’s lied to me—about our marriage, about the man I thought he was, about everything.

I take a deep breath to try to collect myself as I walk to the bedroom, and as I’m opening the lid on my jewelry box, I stop myself. Instead, I pull open the top drawer of my dresser, and I reach to the back, past my old running socks and snagged tights, and I bury my rings down deep in the corner, where I won’t come across them, as if I might be able to forget they ever existed at all.

L
ast summer, a local magazine ran a story about our practice. There were photos of the spa-like waiting area with its pillow-soft chaises and the buffet of teas and healthy snacks. There were descriptions of the New Age music that’s pumped into each exam room and the state-of-the-art LED lighting system meant to simulate natural light and, therefore, lower blood pressure. The writer talked at length about the atrium where the daily yoga and meditation classes take place, the menu of services offering everything from biofeedback to acupuncture, the wide windows overlooking walking paths maintained by an army of volunteer master gardeners. But what the writer didn’t mention were the caregivers themselves and how despite all of the bells and whistles and the truly talented team, our practice is like most other workplaces in that it has its black sheep. Just today, as I was standing at the nurses’ station waiting to talk to Carol about our next patient, I overheard Dr. Moyer and Dr. Anderson giggle like fourteen-year-old boys over the digestive distress that Dr. Anderson’s last patient had come in complaining about. They were going on and on, and I eventually cleared my throat loudly and gave Dr. Moyer a look—I’m never in the mood to deal with him, but I’m especially not these days. He was licking the foil top that he’d just pulled off of a yogurt container (completely unaware, of course, that that’s something no one should ever do in public) and whined, “Oh, please, Mitchell, like you’ve never bitched about a patient.”

And he’s right. Guilty as charged. When a patient cops to a steady diet of fast food and then gets pissed off because you won’t diagnose her “irritable bowel syndrome,” you can’t help but vent about it. Same goes for the ones who log five hours of sleep a night but are convinced they have chronic fatigue syndrome and the ones who haven’t exercised in years but are sure there’s a thyroid problem to blame for their steady weight gain.

So I may occasionally air my frustrations about my patients, but it’s only ever to Annie, and I have
never
breached the patient/doctor code of confidentiality in any serious way. Until now.

When I go into my personal office at the end of the day, ostensibly to record notes about the day’s appointments and answer emails, I lock the door and then jiggle the doorknob to double-check it. I open my laptop and log onto the Duke Hospital system website. I almost consider using Owen’s ID and password, which I’m sure I could figure out because the password he uses for everything is his mother’s maiden name plus 45 and 9, the jersey numbers of Pedro Martinez and Ted Williams, his two favorite baseball players.

My hands shake as I type in my personal access code and then Bridget’s name and birth date, which I unburied in an unusually detailed triathlon results listing from 2009.

I remind myself that people do this all of the time. I remember how I teased Annie last year about looking up a potential nanny’s health record before she hired her, as if discovering that the woman had had a precancerous mole removed might reveal how she’d treat her kids. Still, this confidentiality breach is something that our electronic system probably can track—with malpractice risks these days, everything’s tracked—and I would have some serious explaining to do if Bridget’s doctors caught me digging through their files.

Oh, well
, I think, taking a deep breath while I wait for the system to locate her record. Like so many things lately, doing this feels like something beyond my control. I feel
awake
, hyperalert, and I know that it’s because there is enough adrenaline pumping through my body for me to run to the California coast and back.

I’m concerned about her, I tell myself. More than I would be if she was an anonymous stranger. I want Bridget to be okay. Mostly. It’s horrible that this has happened to her.

Though, earlier today, as I was doing an annual checkup for a regular patient and half listening to her tell me about her new grandson, it occurred to me that maybe this experience will make Bridget and Owen see the grave error they’ve made and set them straight. And, okay, if she has to endure a painful bit of rehab, or if the head injury leads to the kind of facial scarring that leaves Duke’s best plastic surgeon flummoxed, well…I guess it’s my first revenge fantasy. I shouldn’t be judged for it. It’s sort of all I have.

Finally, the record appears.
Shit.
I lean toward the laptop’s screen and press my fingers to my lips. It’s bad. Much, much worse than I’d realized. I read down the list:

A variety of orthopedic issues—her hip is fractured, her left knee is basically obliterated, there’s a hairline crack across her forehead.

The positives: Her emergency abdominal surgery was a success. She’s had a chest tube inserted to reinflate her left lung. But her spleen has ruptured, and there’s the blood in her left lung cavity that Owen mentioned. She’ll be in the surgical ICU for some time. I scan her physicians’ names but don’t recognize any of them. I make a mental note to look them up later.

I feel a headache coming on. I log out of the system, and then, because I’ve gone this far, I click over to Gmail and log in to Owen’s account, knowing that the password, Sullivan459, will work. There’s nothing, just a few forwarded jokes from his mother, a subscription renewal request from
Sports Illustrated
, automated bill pay messages from our bank, and, farther down, messages from me. I start clicking through them.

As was often typical, he hadn’t replied to either. I remember how I nagged him about the vet appointment and then finally just dealt with it myself because it was easier than trying to pin him down. I keep scrolling and find another—a back-and-forth between us from several weeks ago. He’s forwarded an article he read in the local paper about a new restaurant downtown.
Want to go this weekend?
he’d asked.

And my reply:
Actually, I don’t know—it’s been such a long week. I would rather stay in, I think. Rain check?
I click over to the sent folder to look at his response:

I log out and slam the laptop shut. I hardly remember reading his email. I thought everything was fine.
Wasn’t everything fine?

I pick up my phone. I want to call him, but what would I say?
How is your girlfriend doing? If I’d gone to that restaurant with you, would everything be okay? Were you really at the hospital late that Friday night, or were you with her?
No amount of explaining will make any of this better.

I dial Lucy. “I need to talk to you,” I say.

“Is everything all right?” I can hear the honking horns of the city in the background. I apologize for speeding out of Mom and Dad’s house and tell her about the accident, the encounter with Owen at the hospital, how I came home to discover that he was packing up his things, the computer sleuthing, the way that I turned down Owen’s dinner date requests, all of it.

She’s uncharacteristically quiet, muttering “uh-huhs” and “yups” as I talk, and I start to wonder whether she’s actually paying attention to a thing I’m saying.

“Lucy, are you listening to me?” I finally ask.

She sighs. “Of course I am.” She sounds rushed and weary.

“You know what?” I bark, as tears come to my eyes. “Never mind. I’m sorry to have bothered you with the inconvenience of my crumbling marriage.”

“Daphne, stop.”

“What? Stop
what
, Lucy?” I wipe my cheeks. I know I’m being sulky and petulant but I think I’m entitled.

“Daphne, I’m sorry,” she says. I hear her take a deep breath. “Listen, let me be honest with you.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” I say.

She ignores my sarcasm and continues. “I think you’re spending entirely too much time dwelling on the reasons
why
Owen cheated when you should really be focused on how you’re going to move on.”

“Move on?” I wail. “Lucy, this is my marriage!”

“Your marriage may very well be over,” she says. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, but no amount of
should haves
is going to change things. He made that call when he slept with his coworker. I assume he’s with her now? At her bedside?”

“
Lucy.
” My head is pounding. I massage small circles into my forehead with my fingertips.

“Am I wrong?”

I sigh. “But…”

“Daphne, I’m sorry,” she says. “I really don’t mean to sound insensitive, but if what you’re telling me is true—if it wasn’t just one night of straying but that he actually had a relationship with her, well, that’s much worse, and you have to move on. You realize that, right? There’s a big difference between physical and emotional infidelity.”

“Oh, is that so?” I say curtly. “That’s great input, Lucy. Thank you for pointing that out.”

“Well, it’s true!” she says. “It’s one thing to stray sexually but to have an
entire
relationship
with another person, to become emotionally attached.
Much, much worse.
I mean, hello, did you not sit in the same family room with me after school and see this over and over again on
Oprah
?”

I can feel my heart rate speeding up, like a ghastly little motor revving up against my will. “Okay, Lucy.”

“Daph—”

“No, never mind. Go back to whatever it is that I interrupted. I need to go.”

“I really didn’t mean to upset—”

I hang up on her—I don’t need to hear any more. I turn in my chair and look out my office window, where I see a longtime patient walking down a pebbled path with Dr. Billings, my boss. I wonder where Owen is, whether he is, in fact, holding her hand while she lies in her hospital bed, or whether he’s at his office, like I am, burying himself in his work. I turn and check the time. It won’t be long before I’m the only one left in the office. My stomach rumbles and I reach for the Tupperware of chocolate chip cookies that Annie brought this morning. She keeps leaving little gifts in my office—a slice of carrot cake from my favorite bakery, candy. I can’t bring myself to tell her that her gestures actually make me feel worse. They force me to acknowledge the fact that I am mourning my marriage as I knew it.

I know I should grab dinner, or at least get home to let the dog out, but home is the last place where I want to be. The last Saturday that we spent in the house together was three weeks ago. We stained the deck. Owen went to Lowe’s to buy grass seed for the lawn. In the afternoon, we both took naps—he in our bed, the newspaper splayed open next to him, and me on the couch, HGTV in the background. I woke up later and made salmon. We ate it in front of the television, where we watched a basketball game. Or Owen did. I sat next to him, browsing a stack of back issues of home and garden magazines, ripping out pages to add to the “someday files” that I kept in the office, each carefully labeled for the area of the house:
yard, bedroom, bathrooms, paint colors…

There were so many things that we talked about doing and we made a lot of good excuses—
after
residency,
after
the wedding,
after
the house is done,
after
kids. Would she have driven out to the Outer Banks to see the wild horses in Corolla, or watched the various Ken Burns documentaries—
Jazz
,
The Civil War
,
Baseball
(of course, baseball)—that I rolled my eyes at when we channel-surfed and Owen suggested them? Did he daydream about their life together, the fun they would have? We never took a blanket and a bottle of wine to the movie series on the lawn of the state art museum, we never dressed up to see the North Carolina state symphony, we never so much as drove the fifteen miles to Raleigh to go out to dinner. Hell, we rarely even had dinner together, and when we did, it was usually takeout, often in front of the television.
Had we stopped being interested in things together?
I wonder.
Is this why? Worst of all, had we stopped being interested in each other?

The bulk of our shared life was so logistical:

Have you fed the dog?

Did you pay that bill?

What time will you be home?

Did you call your mother back?

When is that thing again?

We’d settled in without an ounce of fanfare. I thought we had a normal marriage, but maybe I’d set my expectations too low. Should I have seen this coming? I reach across my desk, where a pile of medical journals, newsletters, and conference invitations has been piling up for weeks. I pull the stack toward me, telling myself I’ll stay just a bit longer. I’ll get a few things done, I think, and then go.