by Carla Damron
Lena wondered about this friend. Abby had been married twice, neither union surviving a year. On her last visit, her companion had been a younger Peruvian man with beautiful bronze skin. Alejandro. Abby described him as a “good friend” though Alejandro told Mitch she was his common-law wife. In subsequent letters, there was no mention of Alejandro.
“How’s New York treating you, Ell?”
“It’s okay. My band keeps busy. There’s a lot of competition.” Elliott refilled his glass.
“I bet none of the competition comes close to you, Ell. You—you have talent.” Abby lifted her wine in a toast.
Lena wished Abby would forego the nicknames. Becca Bec. Le-Le. Ell. Like Abby had the right to swoop into town once a decade and rename them.
“Do you have your guitar here? I’d love to hear you play. I mean, if you’re up to it,” Abby said.
“I keep an old one in my room.” He glanced at Lena, as if he wanted permission to bring music into the house.
“God, Elliott. You know there’s nothing I love more than listening to you,” she said.
He trotted up the stairs and returned, guitar in hand. He didn’t bother tuning, which meant he’d done that earlier, but she didn’t remember hearing him. Of course he had, though. For Elliott, music was breathing.
He strummed some minor chords and picked a scale up and down three octaves until he settled into a familiar melody: “Autumn in New York.” A gentle tune, not too sad, a little sentimental. Becca sat with her knees collected against her chest, staring into the flames. Abby leaned back in the chair, her eyes closed. A roadmap of wrinkles on that so-familiar face. She looked worn, ridden hard by her exotic life.
“Ell?” Abby said. Lena had thought her sister had gone to sleep. “When do you head back to New York?”
“The end of the week.”
“You said you were leaving tomorrow,” Becca said.
“I changed my flight.” Elliott’s stare at his sister conveyed something more than his words. Becca responded with a flippant shrug.
“I’m glad you did. I haven’t seen you in so long. I want every second I can with all of you. You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.” Abby sighed into the word “missed.”
Elliott’s fingers danced along the neck of the guitar. Gershwin’s “Summertime” glided into Brubeck’s “Take Five,” notes floating out like bubbles. His eyes squeezed shut like they always did when he concentrated, and Lena pictured a curly-headed five-year-old struggling to spell “dog.” Her baby son. She was glad he’d decided to stay longer, though it would make watching him leave more painful.
Abby reached for the wine. Her knuckles were reddened and raw, as if she’d punched someone. She held up the bottle to Lena, who declined. She could already feel the alcohol limbering up her insides. Maybe she’d get some sleep tonight, after all.
CHAPTER 14
Sandy’s shift seemed to stretch on for days. All her patients stable, no griping families, two empty beds on the floor with no new admissions in the pipeline. The docs finished their rounds on schedule, leaving nothing for ward staff to complain about. Boring. She wandered back to the staff lounge and went to her locker where she kept the NA meeting schedule. She was already three meetings behind and Marie could check her sign-in journal any time. Even if she didn’t think they helped her one iota, she’d better get her butt to twelve sessions. Her job depended on it.
There were two meetings that evening: one a few miles away in Shandon, the other out by the mall. The AME church didn’t have another till Saturday. She could hit the one in Shandon, which started a half-hour after her shift, then grab take-out Chinese on her way home.
She latched her locker as Pete Borden dragged in. An L-shaped brown spot covered the left pocket of his scrubs, a coffee mishap. A day-old growth of whiskers dusted his chin—brown sprinkled with white like powdered sugar. His eyes, always droopy on the edges, wore a heavier layer of fatigue.
He plopped onto the metal bench. “Had to pull a double.”
“Double eight? Or twelve?”
“Did a twelve the other day. Two eights today.” Pete patted his pocket where a square outline bulged, something he often did. Smoking wasn’t allowed on the hospital campus but he kept the pack there like Linus’s blanket.
Sandy sat beside him. “Are you doing that to yourself on purpose? Or is Marie mad at you?”
“I asked for extra duty after my ex took me back to court. Child support went up to almost eight hundred a month.”
Sandy remembered tales of a nasty divorce, the wife hiring a private investigator who caught Pete snuggled up with a respiratory therapist, Pete going after custody when the ex got a DUI.
“How are your kids doing?” she asked.
“Kevin’s great. Big-time into soccer. Madison’s my younger one. She’s having trouble with school. My ex says she has a learning disability. I think she has a mom who doesn’t take the time to help with her homework.”
“That’s gotta be frustrating.”
“You have no idea.” He hung on to the word “no.” “You got an ex?”
“Yep.”
“Ever hear from him?”
“He calls sometimes.” Sandy never answered when he did.
“Y’all still fighting?”
“We never fought. Just drifted in different directions. Landed on different planets.” She wasn’t even sure why Donald kept calling. Maybe he’d heard about her drug problems, and she didn’t want his condemnation—or worse, his sympathy. Or maybe he’d rub it in how he’d moved on with his life.
“You’re lucky. When my ex calls, I reach for the Rolaids. Or a six-pack if I don’t have to work.” Again, Pete patted the square in his pocket.
She should call Donald back. Avoidance didn’t accomplish anything. Maybe it was the what-if’s that made it hard. If she’d been able to have the baby they’d fought so hard for, would she and Donald be together? Not that their marriage had ever been perfect. Donald, like every other doctor Sandy knew, required a lot of accommodation. His words in a room had to be listened to, spoons lowered, books closed, tasks interrupted so that he got the attention he expected. If he was late to a planned dinner with friends, a tossed off “had a problem with a patient” was an accepted excuse. The narcissism in Donald grew like a stubborn oak tree; his time became too important for mundane domestic tasks like lawn mowing or taking out the garbage. If Sandy needed to be picked up after taking the car to the shop, she should get a cab. If she asked him to stop at the store to pick up dog food, Donald sighed his consent as though he’d been asked to move a skyscraper.
The miracle of her pregnancy healed them though. Donald was eager to come home to her, happy to shop for cribs and onesies. Something opened deep inside Donald, something warm and pink, like a delicate blossom.
“I get the kids today,” Pete said. “Every Wednesday, I pick them up from school and keep them overnight.”
She swallowed. “Are you doing something fun?”
“I always try to come up with something. But usually it’s me, the kids, and a bunch of other visitation-day fathers at Chucky Cheese’s or Cici’s Pizza. We look at each other with a sort of shared, ‘this sucks’ misery.”
“Ouch.”
“You never had kids?” Pete asked.
She looked at him, her breath quickening. She thought about the lie that she told everyone. Instead, she said, “Almost did. After trying to get pregnant for three and half years I did, then miscarried in the seventh month.”
Pete stared at her, mouth agape.
“Yeah.” She squirmed under his scrutiny. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
“No, no. Of course not. I’m . . . I’m sorry though.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. A tiny fleck of dandruff drifted down, landing on his knee. “Is that why you left North Carolina?”
So much for not talking about it. “That’s part of it. My marriage fell apart. Then I sort of did.”
“Came here for a fresh star
t?” he asked.
She wondered if she should tell him the rest, if saying it out loud would help. “I had to leave my job at Presbyterian after I screwed up with a patient.”
Pete’s head shot up, his red-rimmed eyes widening.
“I was working neonatal ICU. Had a preemie with hyperkalemia. I hadn’t been sleeping well. Couldn’t get my act together.” Donald couldn’t come to grips with her grief. They should get pregnant right away, he insisted. Idiot. She moved to the guest room. He moved on. “Donald had a new girlfriend and . . .” she paused, drawing in a shaky breath.
“Whoa.”
You have no idea, she almost said. She’d come home after a twelve hour shift to be greeted by Donald in the kitchen and his “We have to talk.” He’d been seeing her for a few months, he claimed, but he couldn’t get her out of his head. “I’ve never felt like this before,” Donald added, as if it justified the betrayal. He moved out the next day.
“I was a wreck. Everything seemed so . . . hard,” she went on. “That morning I was preparing a calcium chloride injection for this tiny little newborn. The dosage was one hundred forty milligrams, but I had prepped one point four grams to inject in her IV. Didn’t even realize it. I had the syringe in the access port, had started the actual injection when an LPN spotted the error and grabbed my arm. I . . .” Sandy’s voice quaked. “I could have killed her. I almost did.”
“Damn, Sandy.”
She’d never forget the crushing sense of doom when she’d realized what she’d done. A struggling little life that counted on her, and she’d almost killed her. The next twenty-four hours were the hardest of Sandy’s life. The child developed an irregular heartbeat. She was already so frail, but somehow, she survived. “They could have fired me. They should have fired me. The administrator said he was sympathetic, given my problems. But I think they were more interested in protecting Donald’s reputation. They let me resign. Didn’t even report me to the licensing board.”
“Were you using then?” Pete asked.
She shook her head. “I took valium at night, but never when on duty. That little nightmare didn’t start until after.” Had it been the first, or second day with nothing to do, nowhere to go? Their medicine cabinet had been a delicatessen of pharmaceuticals, leftovers from Donald’s knee surgery. Her first venture into the Oxy haze had given her exactly what she needed: perfect, delicious escape.
Pete said, “You’re clean now though.”
She met his gaze. “I am.”
He moved over to his locker, opened it, and pulled out a tiny little bottle of some kind of energy shot, which he downed in a single swallow. He turned back to her. “You’re no different than any of us. We’ve all had our screw-ups.”
“Yeah, but how many of us almost kill a child?” She swallowed. Facing this bit of her past here in a hospital, unmedicated, was a first.
“Hey, it could happen to any of us. How many medication errors happen every single day?” He shook his head. “What I know is this: you’re one of the best nurses I’ve ever worked with.”
She stood. “Pete, nobody here knows about this.” She could imagine what would happen if Marie found out.
He gave her a wink. “And they won’t hear it from me.”
Pete trudged out the door and Sandy returned to her locker where she’d left her phone. Maybe she should call Donald back. What was the point in delaying? Besides, what could he say that would hurt more than she’d already suffered? She dialed his cell but he didn’t answer, so she left a message: “It’s me. Calling you back from whenever you called. Bye.”
She survived the last two hours and seventeen minutes of her shift, changed her clothes, and headed out to the car. Dusk cast the city in a gray, monochrome light. She gathered her jacket tighter around her, realizing with disgust that the button barely reached the hole and she’d need to shop for a larger one. New pants and tops, too, if she continued this body-mass trajectory.
Just as she slid into the driver’s seat, her cell phone rang.
“I’d given up on you calling me back.” Hearing Donald’s voice through the phone, low and confident, churned up memories like tossed dice. Flirting with him at the hospital. Laughing with him during those early dates. The quiet fights when the unspoken words cut the deepest. That last call when she told him she was moving away and he’d answered with an abrupt, “that might be best.”
“I wasn’t sure I should,” she replied, seeing no reason to dance around the truth.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“It’s been a tough few years.”
“Yeah, for me, too.”
She heard him draw in a breath and wondered if he still had sinus trouble. How many nights had she awakened to the rumble of his snoring? How many times had her elbow nudged him to turn over?
“How’s Columbia?”
“Pretty boring.” She decided he hadn’t heard about the drugs because he wouldn’t have avoided the subject. Tact was not Donald’s strong suit. “How’s Charlotte?”
“Good. I’m on faculty at UNC now, supervising residents. It’s kind of fun. Makes me feel younger.”
He got to have fun? “I’m working in cardiac ICU,” she said. “Not so much fun. I’m thinking about changing to another floor.” Or another hospital. Another life.
“Change can be good.” He didn’t say anything else, and the silence vibrated like a wire between them.
“So you called to catch up?” she asked.
“Yes, and I wanted you to know—we lost Chai.” He stumbled over the words.
“What? When?” A knot tangled her stomach.
“Six weeks ago. Cancer. The vet tried everything, but it didn’t work.”
Tears welled in her eyes, thinking of their bony beast with large, adoring eyes. She had wanted custody, but she’d known it wouldn’t be fair. No dog’s bladder could wait for twelve hour shifts to end.
“He had a good life, Sandy.”
“I know.”
“Kelly wants us to get a puppy but I’m not ready for it.”
Sandy could not care less what Donald’s new wife wanted.
“Besides, we’ve got our hands full with our son. That kid’s a pistol.”
She gripped the phone with enough force to shatter it. Donald and his fabulous new life.
“Sandy?”
“What?”
“I’d like to stay in touch. To be able to tell you what’s happening with us.”
More silence as Sandy sorted through the storm of words that Donald’s news had become in her brain. Chai was gone. Donald was happy. He had the child they’d been denied.
“I need to go,” Sandy whispered. As she hung up, the edge of anger faded, replaced by a strained hollowness. That was the worst, that black hole unfurling inside. She’d fought it for months but here it was, back again like it belonged. Christ. One thing fixed it. Always fixed it. Just head inside, take the elevator to the seventh floor, score some oxy. So damn easy.
Goodbye, Donald. Enjoy your new life.
She stayed in the car for ten minutes, one hand on the door handle, the other on the steering wheel as she weighed the decision. Her gaze fell on the bracelet: Today I won’t be a screw-up. A deep breath. Today.
She started the car and headed to the NA meeting.
Of course it had to be in a Baptist church. The classroom was furnished with a circle of metal folding chairs inserted between upholstered sofas and wing-back seats. She was one of the first to arrive and noted with some anxiety that there was only seating for fifteen. She preferred the anonymity of a larger group, like at the AME church.
She snagged a Styrofoam cup, poured weak coffee from a stainless steel urn, and sat in one of the folding chairs, the metal cool through her pants. Two men in the corner nodded at her before returning to their discussion of a recent football game. She was thankful to be ignored. Within five minutes, the chairs filled. A gray haired man stepped to the blond oak podium and led the group in reciting the twelve steps
, his voice a full baritone like a preacher at the pulpit.
The door at the back of the room squeaked open with a late arrival. Sandy recognized him: Jake, her “Vida Loca” friend. He waved at the group, smiled when he spotted Sandy, and came to sit beside her. This brought a sense of relief, like her first day in third grade when she’d been terrified until her friend Kathy plopped down beside her.
A middle-aged woman in a business suit received her thirty day chip. Sandy’s had come in rehab and it had made her as proud as getting her nursing license. Thirty days with no drugs. Thirty days in that world with other addicts, all clawing at recovery like drowning children. Holding her chip was like climbing aboard a life raft.
She glanced over at Jake and saw a splint on his right hand, scrapes on his jaw and forehead. He shrugged at her and whispered, “Fell off my bike.”
“Yikes.”
“A Fed Ex truck caught my rear tire. Guess he couldn’t tell I was turning. I’ll be glad when I get my license back so I can swap two wheels for four.”
Sandy could have had a DUI, too. How many times had she driven high? It was sheer luck that she never got caught. Luckier that she never had an accident and hurt herself or worse, someone else.
The group leader spoke. “An AA buddy told me a story that I thought I’d share with you.”
“Uh oh,” whispered Jake. “Lame parable alert.”
“There was a woman who put three pots on the stove to boil water. In one she put a carrot, in the other an egg, and in the third, she put coffee beans. After ten minutes, the carrot had changed, no longer hard and resilient but soft and pliable.”
Maybe he was a preacher, though he didn’t have her dad’s booming, “I speak God’s words” approach. This guy didn’t instill fear the way her father did.
The speaker continued: “The egg changed, too; its thin shell had not protected the liquid inside so it hardened into something else.” He scanned the room as if taking its temperature. “What happened to the pot that held the coffee beans? The beans remained intact. It was the water around them that had changed.”