Almost everyone had forgotten.
Sixty-Three
When he’s finished, Alex removes the speculum with a swift pull, hurting me intentionally, leaving me open and slick with lubricant. I don’t have words for what I feel like.
“Get her cleaned up and get her out of here,” he says to the nurse. And then he leaves, not looking back at the broken woman on the table. He’s gotten in and gotten out, and the worst part is that this perfunctory business is his job.
Nurse Mender turns his attention to me. “All done, dear,” he says, wiping me clean with a gentle hand. He’s the good cop in this moment, tidying up the mess made by his bad-cop colleague.
While I lie here with chemicals inside me, already working to reform my insides, Nurse Mender tells me what I can expect over the next few hours, days, weeks. My right hand clicks the pen twice.
“You may experience some cramps. Hopefully, it won’t be much worse than typical menstrual cramping. If it becomes debilitating, take one of these. Motrin.” He takes two prewritten prescriptions from his pocket and places the first on the table next to me while continuing with his list of side effects.
“Loss of appetite is normal.”
“I’ll live,” I say.
“This is important, though.” His eyes are calm and serious. “If you experience fever or elevated heartbeat at any time—even if it seems normal to you—you must seek immediate medical attention. Understand? The risk is low, but the sooner you report to an urgent care facility, the better.”
One word plays on my lips, and I find myself saying it out loud. “Sepsis.”
Mender sighs. “Like I said, the risk is infinitesimally low. But it isn’t zero.” I’d like to tell him what Alex said. He might rework his risk calculations. “That’s what this one is for.” He taps the other slip of paper, already typed out and signed. “You can have it filled when you get home and start the course tonight.”
“What is it?”
“Just Augmentin. High dose, strong antibiotic. Should zap anything.”
Doctors and nurses are not politicians. They don’t have time to watch their words. As Mender tidies up the remnants of my treatment, disposing of the speculum and insertion device in a lined container marked Biohazard, he talks. I suppose he thinks he’s being soothing.
“You won’t be alone, dear,” he says, patting my hand. “A lot of women will be making the same choice as you before long.”
“Doing what?”
He shrugs. “Going in for an appointment at WomanHealth. If the trials work and the risk assessment is as low as we think it will be, hell, my wife’ll be thirty-five in December. Christmas baby, actually. She’ll go to her local clinic and take care of things. All for the good, if you ask me. I mean, the prevention’s easier than the cure, right?”
“So it’s on a volunteer basis, then?”
Mender continues. I hope to hell this contraption of Lissa’s has storage capacity larger than it looks like it does.
“Oh, I think so. In most cases. Everyone wants to keep the breeding with the young and fit. Thirty-five’s too old, they say. Too many things can go wrong.”
In most cases. “What about the other cases?”
He clears the rest of the debris from the stainless steel countertop and washes up. “Don’t you worry about that, dear. There’ll be plenty of incentives.”
I really hope Lissa’s pen is getting all of this.
Because as soon as I get back to Washington, I’m going to make sure it’s blasted over the airwaves so loud they’ll hear it on the fucking moon.
Sixty-Four
I sleep through most of the three-hour flight from Kansas City to Washington. When I’m not sleeping, I’m pretending to, so I don’t have to look at Alex. We step off the plane near the general aviation building into a field of tarmac and concrete. I wrap my coat around me, tight against the windchill, as Malcolm emerges from one of the doors and begins a slow walk toward us. I don’t remember DC ever being so cold in early November.
Inside the building, Malcolm and Alex leave me for a moment. I can’t hear them, but I watch my phone exchange hands. I’d forgotten about it, sitting in that little storage room next to Martha Underwood’s office, keeping company with others of its kind. There’s a bit of backslapping and laughter before they part.
Malcolm’s mood matches the weather when he takes me by the arm and leads me out to the hourly parking lot. Without a word of greeting, he opens the passenger-side door and watches me climb in before rounding the front of the BMW and taking his own seat. When he starts the engine, I’ve got so many words I want to scream at him I don’t know where to start.
He seems to read my mind. “Just don’t say a word, Elena. Not a goddamned word.”
I turn up the heat on my side and stay quiet, counting the cars we pass as he navigates us out of the airport and onto the parkway, thinking about what I’ll say to Anne when we get home. Really I’m thinking about what she’ll say to me, if she says anything at all.
Malcolm cracks the driver’s window; I turn up the heat to eighty. He lowers the window a further two inches; I twist the dial again until the digital readout glows eighty-five. We argue in this way for the half-hour drive to the house, a wordless battle of wills, and the cold air curling around the back of the car and hitting my right side tells me I’m losing.
“Can you please shut that window?” I say.
He responds by pressing a button to his left, and the window slides all the way open.
Our house—I suppose it’s Malcolm’s house now, or soon will be—is as cold and dark as the night. Not even the back porch light is on. At after midnight on a Friday, Anne might still be up, if not studying then watching a movie. But if Malcolm’s told her I’m arriving, maybe she decided to stay in her room. Still, the house seems wrong.
I unbuckle my seat belt and think of running. Up the street to Sarah Green’s house. In the opposite direction toward the Delacroix’s or the Morrises’ or the Callahans’. Through the empty playground. Hiding inside my Acura that’s parked in its usual space in the driveway. Anywhere, really. Anywhere that isn’t this dark house with only my husband for company.
Malcolm kills the engine and comes around to my side, opening the door for me and taking my arm, squeezing it. He holds me like this until we reach the back door. His key slides into the lock, the door swings open, and I’m pushed inside.
“Go to bed, Elena,” he says.
“There are some prescriptions I need to fill.” I take the slips from my pocket, feeling Lissa’s pen nestled in the folds of material, and Malcolm takes the papers from me.
“I told you to go to bed.” Then, only slightly more civilly, “I’ll take care of it in the morning.”
“I need them now. There’s an all-night pharmacy down by—”
“Elena, I said Go. To. Bed.”
I expect Anne to poke her head into the hall at the sound of his voice, but there’s no opening of a door or feet running down a hall. We’re alone in this darkened house, with the shades pulled and the lights on their dimmest setting.
“Where’s Anne?” I say.
“Staying with some friends.”
“Which friends? When is she coming home?” I don’t know why I ask this; the answer seems pretty clear to me.
“Soon.”
What follows is five full minutes of a standoff until I finally leave him and go toward the hall to my room. A part of me expects him to stop me, to tell me I’m no longer welcome in his bed, to sleep in Freddie’s. But he doesn’t say a word.
My finger finds the wall switch and flicks it to the up position. This room is mine, and it isn’t. The dresser has been wiped clean, bare wood where photos of my family once sat in their frames, where a round silver tray used to hold my perfumes. I open the bottom drawer, where I keep pajamas and nightgowns. It’s empty. Every single one of my dresser drawers is empty, only the floral shelf paper liners covering the bottoms. One hand automatically goes to my mo
uth and stifles a scream.
Breathe, El. Just breathe. But I can’t.
In the mirror’s reflection, my walk-in closet beckons me to open it, to check inside, to see that all of my stuff is hanging on rods or folded on wire organizer shelves and that shoes are lined up in neat rows the way they always have been. I answer the door’s call, crossing the room, one hand still over my mouth, the other reaching out for the door lever. A hideous Let’s Make a Deal scenario plays through my mind: What’s behind Door Number One, Elena? Want to take a guess and win the big prize?
No. No, I don’t.
I do.
The white wire frames are there, in the same place they’ve been since I paid some consultant from a bed and bath store to design and install them. They line the side and back walls of the closet, virgin territory waiting to be piled with wool and denim and cotton. The carpeting is freshly vacuumed, stripes of beige pile shimmering under the light.
It’s like I’ve disappeared.
I spin away from the closet, reaching the window on Malcolm’s side of the bed in three steps, pushing the curtains aside and rolling up the roman blind, hearing it snap and spin. The shade pull taps a monotonous rhythm against the glass, then loses momentum and goes silent. I don’t bother sliding the latches and lifting the window before letting the curtains fall back into place. The lock on the casement, and the keyhole on that lock, tell me not to bother.
I am a prisoner in my own house.
It’s impossible to know how long I’ve been standing here with my hand to my lips, how long I’ve been staring at the geometric print of the comforter and the blue of my pajamas neatly folded on my pillow. Minutes? Hours? Somewhere in between? And I don’t know how long Malcolm has been standing in the doorway, leaning casually against the frame, watching my desperation.
“The windows and doors are alarmed, Elena,” he says. “And the glass. You should go to bed now.”
“You fucking monster,” I say.
“Well, you should know, I guess. See you in the morning.” He turns and closes the door, and the key in the lock clicks.
Sixty-Five
I was on fire when I woke up a few moments ago. Now a wintery chill runs through my bones, and I roll to one side, burying my head under the comforter to block out the sun. Someone opened the curtains. Malcolm, I suppose.
Malcolm.
My hand reaches over to his side of the bed. It’s cold and dry, and any fantasies about the past few days being no more than a nightmare fade away. I think they do. I’m not sure. The same invisible hands that drew the curtains and rolled up the shades may have been at work filling my head with cotton while I slept. Every part of my body tells me to stay here under the covers. Except one part—one part tells me I need a bathroom and I need it now.
Afterward, I collapse on the floor with the bath mat my only barrier between skin and cold tile. The room spins around me, beige and blue and white forming whorled patterns like an Escher drawing of an impossible staircase. I can no longer make sense of up and down, or of cold and hot.
I sleep.
When I wake, my pajamas are stuck to me, translucent in places where I’ve sweat the most, and damp curls cling to my face. It’s all I can do to pull my weight up, and then I fall to my elbows on the sink’s edge after catching a glimpse of my reflection. The woman in the mirror did not look like me.
One by one, I fling drawers open in the vanity. There are pills somewhere. Aspirin, Tylenol, leftover prescriptions from bouts with strep throat and muscle aches. Or there were. Now there are empty drawers, cleaned-out medicine cabinets. Only a toothbrush and a new tube of Crest are on the little shelf next to the sink. Even my makeup is gone. All of it.
“Malcolm!” I cry weakly. “Malcolm!” And then, “Anne!”
The only response is utter silence.
I shouldn’t think the worst, but it’s all I can think about. That one word, the bane of humans for thousands of years. A word that doesn’t matter in the twenty-first century.
Infection.
And then all the words that go with it: Untreated. Bacterial. Toxic.
I scream Malcolm’s name once more with all the force I have left and stagger back to bed, sick and defeated. So this is what the end of hope sounds like.
There’s no knock to announce him, only the clean click of a key in a lock.
“You don’t look well, Elena.”
No shit.
He tidies up the room, tucking in bedclothes and fluffing pillowcases, making this prison with its thousand-count sheets and Persian carpets comfortable. “Here’s something to eat,” he says. On the tray are two slices of toast, scrambled eggs, and a glass of juice, none of which I want. Right now, my body wants antibiotics. All of the antibiotics there are in the world.
“What about my prescriptions?” I say. “I don’t care about the Motrin, but I need the other stuff.”
“Yeah. Sure. I’ll get them when I go out.”
Liar. Malcolm has no intention of getting the meds for me.
He holds up his phone. “There’s an app on here, Elena. It’s connected to the house security system. I’ll likely be around most of the time, but I might go out.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. For groceries. Whatever. Maybe I’ll be gone an hour; maybe ten minutes. Maybe I’ll park down the street and get some paperwork done. I’m going to stay close to you. Just in case you need me.”
In other words, I shouldn’t try anything. Like the windows.
“Malcolm,” I say, pleading.
“Don’t beg, Elena. It isn’t your style.”
When he leaves, the lock clicks again, sealing me in this room. But my pillows are fluffed, so there is that.
Outside, his car starts up and the engine fades to a hum as he backs out of the driveway.
Along with my breakfast, there’s a book. It’s one of my favorites, spine broken from repeated readings, held together with a thick rubber band. Right now I have zero interest in reading tragic love stories; the title reminds me too much of Anne’s note—I guess you made your choice—and I can’t help but think Malcolm is trying to send me a message. Underneath the book is a torn-out crossword puzzle from today’s paper, as if I needed any more puzzles. Also a napkin and a bottle of sparkling water. There’s no phone because Malcolm hasn’t given my phone back yet.
And I know he isn’t going to.
Sixty-Six
I must have slept through the morning and early afternoon. When I wake, my untouched breakfast is replaced by a slice of quiche and a salad, another bottle of water, and a bottle of cranberry juice. I drink the last of these down greedily, get up, and go into the bathroom to do the necessary.
Nothing happens, even though I finished off the liter of water before I crashed, so I go back to bed, sweat-sticky and shivering. There’s also a note on the tray from Malcolm reminding me that he’s not far from home. The words disguised as reassurance are, in fact, threatening. I prop myself up in a half-sitting, half-lying position and stare at my lunch.
There are no pills. No Motrin, no Augmentin.
I can understand his wanting a divorce—I never climbed aboard his commonsense train, or if I did, I stepped off long ago, maybe before Freddie was born, maybe years before that. What I can’t understand is why my husband is going to let me die in my own bedroom.
This is when I start feeling like the worst mother in the world. I should be wondering about Freddie, asking myself if Anne is really at a friend’s house or somewhere else. I should be crying for both of them. Instead, all I can do is cry for me.
I know more about septicemia than I want to right now. Undiagnosed and untreated, it can kill inside of a week, poisoning the blood, shutting down organs, twisting the insides of its victims to the point where they want nothing more than the quiet of death. I know the only thing that will help me is massive, gargantuan doses of antibiotics, right the hell now. So I pardon myself for the self-pity. If twenty-four hours has brought me to this state, I’m not sure I want tomorrow to
come.
I’ll try the lock on the door soon. Very soon. Just after I rest for a bit.
Get the fuck up, you.
I will. In a few minutes. First, I’ll shut my eyes and will the nausea away.
Get. Up. Now.
Two sides of me are fighting, the woman and the mother, the part of me who is me, and the part of me I gave away when I delivered my daughters. I think the woman may be winning, but the mother is putting up a good fight. She doesn’t seem to want to let go.
Okay. I’ll try.
Good girl.
Malcolm cleaned out the bathroom, taking everything. But I know things most men don’t. I know that you can always find bobby pins in the corners of drawers, hiding in crevices, invisible in the shadows. I used to count them as I found them. One pin, two pin.
Red pin, blue pin.
Mine aren’t red or blue but blond, a perfect match for the light wood cabinetry in the bathroom. On my knees, I run my hands over the smooth bottoms of the drawers, searching for any irregularity. I don’t need to count the pins I find. I need one.
Keep looking.
I keep looking, but only after I throw up the thin mix of water and juice I’ve managed to keep down until now. And then I look again until I find it. The lone bobby pin is there, in the second drawer down, wedged into the joinery. I pry it out and hold it up like the goddamned Olympic torch.
Ten minutes later, I’m a sweaty mess, lying on hardwood by the door to my room with a racing heartbeat for company. I can’t breathe.
Breathe. Think of Freddie and Anne. And breathe.
I can’t. Oxygen comes to me in shallow, bird-like bursts as I hear the purr of an engine, far away, then closer, telling me Malcolm is back. In a way, I’m thankful for the excuse to crawl back into bed and hide myself in the sheets.
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