Save Me (9 page)

A
week after Bridget’s accident, I am sitting at the kitchen table on a Friday night, sipping a glass of white wine and nibbling on a takeout panini, when I break down and text Owen, asking simply, “How are you?” I’d checked Bridget’s progress earlier, in my office during my lunch break. She is doing better. Her breathing has improved and she’s been extubated, so she can probably even talk a little bit now. I bet her voice is hoarse. I picture him helping her, holding a cup of water to her chapped lips.

He calls almost immediately after I’ve hit the send button. I sit there, stunned, watching the phone buzzing on my table like a belly-up beetle. I can’t answer it. I know, now that he’s reaching out, that there isn’t anything he can say to take the pain away. Speaking with him, at least for the time being, might even make it worse. The phone stops after just a few rings—he hasn’t bothered to let it go long enough to leave a voicemail.

When I go to sleep later that night, I dream about our baby. It isn’t the first dream I’ve had about our child, but it’s the first since everything happened. I want to blame the vividness of this particular episode on one of the over-the-counter sleeping pills that I finally broke down and bought, but I know that’s not it. When I wake up on Saturday morning—I never knew, by the way, that a person can wake up sobbing—I stay under the covers for a long time, my arms crossed over my waist, thinking about the squishy, delicious, sweater-suited infant that I’d dreamed was crawling across our kitchen floor. I was unable to see its face, or tell whether it was a boy or a girl, as it was crawling away from me (a detail that must be significant) toward one of those old-f
ashioned
wooden pull-trains on wheels. It was a dream baby like in a diaper commercial: big, round bottom, chirpy gurgly mumbles, biscuit-dough thighs.

I turn over in bed, thinking about the child that may now never be. Our mothers had rhapsodized about their future grandchildren for years. I remember the two of them joking together at the brunch on the morning after our wedding, about how they’d be battling it out for babysitting shifts. It made them both crazy that we’d decided to wait to try until Owen’s training was behind us and then, once that happened, that we wanted to pay down the med school loans just a bit more before we started. That was more him than me—I can admit that now. I would have started three years ago when he finished training and got his job, but he was worried about money, which is a trait of his that I both valued (better to have a thrifty husband than the type who spends your life savings on a sports car) and blamed on his father, who can’t go five minutes without complaining about someone ripping him off. I told myself that kids were a foregone conclusion—it would happen, that was the important thing.

A year after Owen started working, we got Blue. I called Mom afterward, saying “Mom, guess what?” and she squealed, “
You’re pregnant!
” the words finally unleashing themselves. They’d been on the tip of her tongue for years.

“A
dog
?” she gasped, a sort of whinny escaping from her mouth. “A
dog
?” She kept repeating it, as if she needed to talk herself down from the disappointment. Now she sends Blue birthday gifts and fills her stocking at Christmas—bones, rawhide chews, canisters of tennis balls, a canine backpack for hiking.

I somehow let myself believe that the dog and, later, the house meant that we were on track, that each benchmark for our family would lead to the next logical step. I had no reason to believe otherwise. Until the more recent fights, whenever I talked about a baby, daydreaming about what would it feel like to be big and pregnant, whether it would be a boy or a girl, Owen indulged me, even chiming in with his own fantasies about coaching Little League and teaching our child to ride a bike. Our timetables might have been off, but I never doubted that he wanted a child. I remember a rare lazy Sunday morning a couple of years ago, when we were sipping coffee and passing the real estate section of the paper back and forth. He put down his mug and said, out of nowhere, “You know what will be fun? When our kids are old enough for us to send them to camp.” He wanted it. I know he did.

Over the past year, and especially since we moved, I grew more impatient. It became the thing I talked about. I brought it up over dinner, during the morning rush before work, on the weekends, in emails.
I’m almost thirty-seven, Owen. We can’t wait much longer, Owen. If you’re so worried about money, just imagine what IVF will cost us.
I can hardly bring myself to think about the fact that this coincided with the beginning of his relationship with B
ridget
. While I was cruising pregnancy websites and walking around in an anxious haze each month, talking,
talking
, he was…
I can’t even think about it
. The images of her that have played in my head, in something lacy, beribboned, seducing my husband, the two of them discovering each other—it makes me sick. And it shames me. Sex for us had become so rudimentary; I knew the
series of things that we did
so well that I could do it in my sleep and, sometimes, pretty much did. Had I become a nagging wife (is that something I even believe in?) when he had decided that what he really wanted was a girlfriend?

After I get out of bed, I have a cup of coffee and go outside to throw a tennis ball to Blue in the backyard. I’m halfway out the door when the house phone rings. I consider letting it go to voicemail—Owen and I used to joke that the only reason we have a landline is so that telemarketers and our mothers can reach us—but then I picture Mom at home, calling from the kitchen phone, her anxiety growing with each unanswered ring, and I race across the kitchen to pick up the cordless phone off the counter.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Daphne!” A lump instantly forms in my throat. It’s Joanne, Owen’s mother. I’ve been wondering when I’d finally hear from her. “Daphne, how are you?”

“O-oh!” I stammer, startled by the direct route she’s chosen to take the conversation. I’m frankly hurt that it’s taken her this long to call—and to tell me that she’s on my side, if I’m being honest about it. I’m tempted to say as much. “Well, I’ve been better,” I say.

“Oh, no, Daphne, what’s wrong?” she asks, and then it hits me:
She doesn’t know.
I can’t believe he hasn’t told her. I wonder if I should.

“Honey, are you there? What’s wrong? You’re worrying me.”

Owen and his mother’s close relationship was something that the three of us sometimes joked about, with Joanne’s standard line being that until I came along, Owen would call her to let her know when he sneezed. I can’t believe she doesn’t know, and it occurs to me, given their relationship, that maybe the fact that he hasn’t told her means he actually hasn’t worked out what he wants to do. If he hasn’t told his mother, maybe his intentions regarding
Bridget
aren’t what I thought. Is it possible that I misread what I saw that day in the ICU?

I clear my throat. “Oh, Joanne, it’s nothing—just a really long week at work. Did you call for anything in particular?”

“Oh, no, dear. Just thought I might catch you two before you run off to whatever it is you have planned this weekend. Is Owen there or is he working?”

Should I?
A part of me wants to tell her. I can see her calling Owen, screaming at him, horrified by what he’s done to me, but then I think of how devastated she’ll be and I don’t want to be the one responsible for revealing the news. She’s not the person I want to suffer for this.

“He’s at work, Joanne.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll try him there. You have a good Saturday, dear.”

We hang up and I take the dog outside. I toss the ball across the yard and feel, with each passing minute, that I need to find something to do that doesn’t involve being at the house, which has become such a minefield for me, with every corner revealing another painful memory.

After I shower and dress, I drive downtown, taking the long way through Duke’s campus, and feel the gloom lift, just a bit, as I notice what a beautiful spring morning it is. The azaleas are already beginning to bloom, and the sky, as they like to say a few miles down the road in Chapel Hill, is a perfect, cloudless Carolina blue. I decide to drive to Stone Brothers, my favorite garden shop, to seek out inspiration for the yard, but first I pass over the railroad tracks toward the old tobacco and textile warehouses that now house restaurants, bars, and boutiques, and pull in at my favorite breakfast spot, Parker and Otis. I choose a table that’s partially hidden behind a counter piled high with cookbooks and cast-iron bakeware, on the off chance that Owen might stop in for breakfast. The hospital isn’t very far and Durham isn’t a very big place—we’re destined to run into each other eventually.

Minutes later, I am savoring the cheddar biscuit that came with my bacon and eggs when I feel a tap on my shoulder.

“Jack!” I say, greeting Annie’s husband as I wipe the crumbs from my lips and stand to hug him.

He laughs. “Sorry to interrupt.” He points at my plate.

I narrow my eyes at him. “Very funny. Is Annie with you?”

“Nope,” he says. “Just meeting a friend for breakfast.” Jack grew up in Durham, and like most of the people I’ve met who were raised here, he appears to know everyone in town. Rarely have I been out with him when he hasn’t run into his old babysitter, or his first boss, or the neighborhood kid whose house he
toile
t-p
apere
d.

“How about you?” he says. He takes a deep sip from his coffee mug. “Just enjoying a leisurely Saturday morning breakfast?”

“Yup.” I shrug. “You know. I’m surprised that you found me. I was trying to hide out.”

“Sorry,” he says with a smile. “I guess I sensed your presence.

“Listen, Daphne—” Jack starts, shuffling his feet.

I put my hand on his arm and shake my head. “It’s okay, Jack. You don’t have to say anything.”

He clears his throat. “Well, I’m really sorry.” He shakes his head again.

“I know.”

He squeezes my arm. “I don’t want to disturb your quality time with your biscuit,” he jokes, winking. “But would you like to join me and my friend?”

“Oh, that’s okay,” I say. I gesture toward the local indie newspaper that I grabbed on the way in. “I’m good here. Reading.”

“Come on,” he says. “It’s just my friend Andrew. He just moved back to Durham six months ago. We played soccer together in high school.”

“Of course you did.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” He laughs, knowing the answer.

Before I can respond, the person who is presumably Andrew appears from around a rack of hand-stamped tea towels.

“Hey!” he says, pointing at me. “Bean Traders!”

“Yes!” I say.

“You guys know each other?” Jack says.

“On the same coffee schedule,” I explain.

I often stop at a local coffee shop before work, and at least once a week, I see the man whom I now know as Andrew in line. He is impossible to miss—tall, with skin the color of caramel (
Spanish?
I’ve wondered.
South American?
), but his most distinguished characteristic is that he is always impeccably dressed, especially for someone in a strip mall coffee shop in Durham, North Carolina, at seven on a weekday morning. It’s not the kind of thing that I normally go for (not that I’ve ever been the kind of woman who “goes for” a specific physical something in the opposite sex), but compared to the T-shirts and regular-guy oxfords and khakis I’m used to, it’s hard not to notice someone like him.

We’ve been at Bean Traders at the same time on enough occasions to have started smiling politely at each other, and we’ve had a handful of short, cordial, early morning exchanges as we’ve doctored up our drinks at the crowded table that holds the sugars and half-and-half. Nothing particularly memorable, just your typical earth-shattering small talk about the weather, the early hour, and our shared gratitude for caffeine.

“I’m Andrew Scott,” he says, putting out his hand.

I can’t help but laugh a little. One of my dad’s idiosyncratic rules, this one always delivered with a wink, is to
never trust a man with two first names
.

“I’m Daphne Mitchell.”

“Daphne is Annie’s best friend,” Jack says.

“Ohhhh,” Andrew says, nodding.

“Now you
have
to join us,” Jack implores, grabbing my plate. “No excuses.”

“So you just moved back here?” I ask as I settle into a seat.

“Sort of,” Andrew says, taking a careful sip of his coffee. “I live in San Francisco, but my father’s having some health problems—he’s had a series of strokes—so I’m helping my mother out for a while.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says, unfolding his napkin. “He’s actually doing great, so I’m not sure I’ll be here too much longer. It’s been kind of nice, though, being back. It had been a few years since I’d spent any significant time here.”

“Durham’s changed a lot for you, I imagine.”

He laughs. “I’ll say. When I was growing up, nobody went downtown. Now, I swear, the restaurants could give the ones in the Bay Area a run for their money.”

“It does seem like every local restaurant gets written up in national media within months of opening,” Jack says. “Annie always says that the
New York Times
must be getting kickbacks from the Durham mayor’s office.”

“It’s changed so much since
I
moved here, I can only imagine what it’s like for the two of you,” I say.

Andrew turns to me. “What brought you to Durham?”

“Residency,” I say, purposely keeping it short and sweet. “I’m an internist. How about you?”

“I work in the hotel industry.”

“He’s being modest,” Jack interrupts. “Andrew is a partner in a boutique hotel group. You’ve probably read about them—they rehab old buildings and turn them into luxury hotels that are way too hip for the likes of me. I’d be turned away at the door.”

“Not true.” Andrew smiles.

“Totally true!” Jack says. “What’s the one that just opened?”