Oxygen

by Carol Wiley Cassella

  He offers to take me to lunch but I’ve no appetite. He escorts me to the door just as Jean opens it to tell him his next client is waiting, a pallid-faced man seated across the foyer. Charlie swings the door closed again and says, “Look, Marie, you’ve gotten hard news today. I wish I could tell you that all we had to do was expose Joe and everything would be settled. But unless he’s intending to turn himself over to the state and admit his actions harmed Jolene, we still have a lot of work ahead of us.”

  I want to answer him with affirming self-assurance. I want to square my shoulders and tell him how much confidence I have in the judicial system and the overbearing weight of truth. He waits for my response, looking directly into my eyes.

  “Do you believe me?” I ask.

  He holds my gaze, equal and unflinching, and nods. “I believe you.”

  I can see my hands clenched around the steering wheel. The skin is blanched across my knuckles but I don’t feel them gripping anything at all. My car seems to be following a line of traffic on its own; pedestrians walk in front of me through crosswalks and somehow the car stops and then goes again. At the top of a hill an ambulance screams through the intersection and I realize I am at First Lutheran. And then I am in the elevator. I squeeze around two orderlies maneuvering a patient’s bed; the brass valve on the oxygen tank must have scraped against my arm—there is a pencil-thin scratch of bright red blood. Every button between one and nine is lit, so at the second floor I get out and take the stairs. By the time I reach Phil Scoble’s office I’m sweating and out of breath.

  Pamela is startled when the door opens. She jumps up from her chair, knocking a wooden box of pens onto the floor. “Dr. Heaton! Dr. Scoble’s in a meeting right now.”

  “I thought he was out of town.”

  “Well, his schedule is so full. I can ask him to call you later today.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “There’s no point, really. The executive board is meeting until two, and after that…”

  “I’ll find him.” I walk past her to the door that leads to the executive offices and meeting rooms. Pamela picks up the phone and pushes a buzzer as the door slams after me. I hear their voices rolling down the corridor through the closed doors, unchallengeable opinions vaulted back and forth interrupted by spurts of cozy insider chuckles. Phil’s voice cuts through a round of muted laughter, bringing business back to order. When I push the door open the conversation stops so abruptly it sounds like a crack. Every face in the room turns to look at me. Every mouth closes and every voice stops. This is not the silence of surprise; this is the stony silence of exclusive secrets.

  Frank Hopper is here, and Don Stevenson as head of surgery—all the department chiefs. Phil stands at one end of the conference table in front of the whiteboard. He must have been making some point with his hand. He lets it drop to the table like he’s forgotten it’s part of himself. Hopper’s secretary, Erin, is taking minutes and her pen is poised, immobilized, above the notepad. Hopper is so red he looks like he’s choking on his sandwich.

  Phil initiates a polite smile. Then he cocks his head to one side and a frown cleaves his eyebrows. “Marie?” he asks, as if he wonders if he’s seeing me for real, as if my audacity at showing up here affronts his leadership. Four or five other men and two women surround the table and they all look up at me, then at Phil, then over at Hopper, then back to me. A tennis match of confused and embarrassed glances is traded between those who clearly belong here, trying to figure out how the one who clearly doesn’t got in the door.

  Phil says again, “Marie,” with no question mark now. “We’re in a meeting here. Could you wait for me in my office?” Any tone of former friendship is smothered beneath assured superiority. “Are you all right?”

  “I thought you were out of town. Pamela told me you were out of town. What’s going on, Phil? I just got back from a meeting with Charlie Marsallis. My lawyer.” My voice keeps getting louder, quavering. Now Phil has that slightly panicked look men get when they think a woman is about to cry.

  Hopper stands up. “Dr. Heaton, why don’t you have a seat. Would you like some water? Can we get her a glass of water, Erin?” he asks, turning to his secretary.

  “I don’t want to sit down. I don’t want any water. I want to know what’s going on. Marsallis just told me, Phil.”

  “Told you what?” Hopper asks, looking at Phil.

  Phil breaks in. “Does Mr. Marsallis know you’re here?”

  “No.”

  “Because I don’t think he’d be very happy to know you’d come here without counsel. You’ve thought about that?”

  “I haven’t thought about much of anything since I left his office except how you could be so concerned about my mental health, so supportive of my well-being, so encouraging, while you were going to the district attorney to accuse me of…” I break off and feel the heat of everyone’s eyes on me.

  Hopper’s face looks like it’s swelling above his starched white collar and tie. He looks at Phil and says, “We can adjourn for now, Phil, if you need to meet alone with Dr. Heaton.” He raises his eyebrows at Erin and starts stuffing papers into his briefcase. With an inaudible sigh of relief the others look away from me and begin folding up sandwich bags and reaching for white coats.

  Phil puts a hand up. “Don’t adjourn. We need to finish the discussion. Give us a minute, would you, please?” He smiles at Hopper and then extends the smile around the room. Don looks like he wants to bolt. One of the women presses her lips together and stares at her plate. Some of the others relax back into their chairs, probably thanking God I’ll be leaving the room.

  “Frank, maybe you could discuss the preferred provider accounts from Blue Cross, those numbers we pulled together. I’ll be right back.”

  He opens the door with one hand and takes my elbow with his other to usher me out, supporting my arm as if he were afraid I might faint. As we walk into the corridor he squeezes my arm tighter, pinching his fingers into the flesh just above my elbow, cutting off the blood flow to my forearm until my hand begins to tingle. He pulls me down the hall and around the corner into a small coffee room and slams the door behind us. He pushes me backward until I am pressed up against the sharp edge of the counter. His lips are a thin white rim and his face is a patchwork of red blotches.

  “Have you lost your senses?” His grip almost lifts me up off my feet. “Don’t you think you’re in enough trouble as it is? What is a jury going to make out of your barging into a board meeting like some crazy…? What do you think the district attorney is going to say when he hears about it?”

  “You’re hurting my arm.” He clenches his mouth even tighter and shoves his hands into his pockets. “I know about the missing fentanyl. I talked to Matt Corchoran. I know what it looks like. But it wasn’t me.”

  “Sure it wasn’t you.”

  “It was Joe Hillary, Phil.” His face blanches and I can see him ball his fists up in his pockets as if he had to lock them there. “He gave me a break in every one of those cases. I recognized his handwriting, or at least his marks on the page. Quit staring at me like that. Listen to me.” His eyes are narrowed and distant, as if he’s already backing away from me. I stand up straighter. “Listen to me! I’ve got the records. I checked the pharmacy copies against the originals, the OR copies. They’re different. Somebody wrote in more fentanyl on the pharmacy copy than showed up on the original. They changed it after I took the papers apart, to make the amount match what was missing from my narcotics box. You’re looking at me like I’m crazy, but think about it. I wouldn’t set myself up by forging my own cases.”

  I look him straight in the eye, watching for a break in his conviction. “Phil, if you go with me, right now, over to his place, we could do an intervention. I know it’s not really set up, but if we go now, he’d almost surely test positive. Test us both! Whatever you want. Just go over there with me. I can’t go alone. Please.”

  Phil brings his fist up, stabs his index finger at my ches
t. “There is nothing in those records to suggest that anybody other than you was ever near that drug or those patients.”

  “Phil, just look at what I’ve got, look at the records. If nothing else, even if you aren’t doing it to prove me innocent, we should go there for Joe’s sake. You know what could happen to him.”

  He puts his hands up and takes a step backward, shaking his head. “Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised to hear you try to pass this off. But there’s no way I’m going to drag another doctor into this mess.”

  I scream at him now, not caring if the whole boardroom hears me. “You’ve known me for seven years. How can you accuse me of this? For God’s sake, Phil. If you really believed I was addicted to fentanyl, shouldn’t you have tried to get help for me?”

  “If you want my help, I’ll give you my advice. Get out of here before I call Security. Go talk to your attorney.”

  I bring my hands up over my eyes, starting to cry. Phil sighs and clears his throat. I hear him walk toward me and he puts his hand on my shoulder, gently this time. I flinch and he withdraws.

  “Oh God,” he says, the anger in his voice collapsing. “This isn’t my choice. Can’t you get that? I’m sorry, Marie. I’m sorry for what’s happened in your life. I wish that were the only thing I had to worry about. But there are bigger things on the line now. This hospital is on the line. Everybody who works here and everybody we take care of. Look at what the facts point to. This isn’t just about a drug habit. If drugs are involved, this is about manslaughter. And I’m not going to watch this whole institution collapse in a media fallout. You shouldn’t be here. And I shouldn’t be here talking to you.”

  When I get home the light on my answering machine is blinking, but I’m almost afraid to play the message. If it’s Joe, would he be calling to accuse or to confess? To pass blame or plead for salvation?

  I finally press the playback button, and it’s Lori saying she hopes I’ve had a safe trip and returned to good news. The only other message is a hang-up, leaving me to speculate who might be struggling over some intended conversation with me.

  Dusk is already coming sooner, the first perceptible shift toward summer’s conclusion. I feel as afraid as a child of the night coming, afraid of spending hours alone here in the dark, tossing sleeplessly or searching for distraction in a book or a movie. I’m tempted to open a bottle of wine and drink enough to blunt my pacing mind, maybe enough to sleep.

  Instead I stand by the windows overlooking the sound and watch the ships. The mountains are sleeping giants rimmed in purple and deep blue. In the street the neon lights of bars begin flashing on and couples are claiming tables out in the cooling evening air. On the corner opposite a young woman talks with animated gestures in the telephone booth, as if her hands could add to the intimacy of her words. How many times has Joe called me from that corner, watching my windows until I appeared?

  Something rigid inside me fractures and begins to crumble, as if my bones are turning to ash even as my flesh bears on. I sink onto my knees before the glittering city, a knot in my stomach as if I had been physically struck, my cheek against the windowpane, my palms pushing hard against the vast expanse of glass that divides me from the immense, raw beauty of Puget Sound. I want to crash though the glass; I want to break it open and let wind and rain shriek through in a consuming fury. I want to hurtle down onto the million glass shards shattered over the concrete below until a crowd gathers around and someone cries for help. And in that instant the terror becomes real, the terror has a recognizable face and form. I am terrified for Joe.

  I pull the telephone off the table and dial Joe’s phone number, count the rings while I wait for his voice. He doesn’t answer. I redial the number and wait again. The streetlights are flickering on, casting an unnatural light upward through my windows; my shadow stretches gigantic across the ceiling. The rings continue on and on.

  I can’t find my car keys until I empty my purse upside down onto the floor. The elevator ride down to the garage drags endlessly and I begin playing out scenes of what Joe might have done after I left him. Joe, the stable rock, the athlete and pilot, the quick-thinking doctor who’s always walked above the petty politics of the hospital and the accepted dictums of day-to-day life. Joe, whose irascible, unflappable and impenetrable nature has rooted itself in the quick of my subconscious to become a part of me, a secret hope chest. What has he done in this crisis?

  Crossing under the viaduct, I have to slam on my brakes when a trolley clangs and shrieks to a stop a few feet from my car. I drive up to Queen Anne hardly aware of the traffic and late-summer tourist crowds, barely noticing stop signs and traffic signals.

  His windows are black and vacant. I dance impatiently at the front door until an emerging couple accepts my rushed excuse of having forgotten my key and lets me in. I pound at the elevator button with my thumb, then my whole fist, then run down the hall to the fire door and race up the stairwell two steps at a time.

  I don’t consider what right I have to be here, whether my coming alone here again is dangerous for both of us, whether it will only push him farther from help. I know there are prescribed steps for an intervention—that it should never be done alone, without a plan and without a place to go and professionals waiting to induct the cornered addict securely into confession and redemption.

  I press Joe’s doorbell. The hallway feels as still as death, frozen and waiting. I push the bell again, holding my finger there; the insistent, high-pitched tone sounds like an alarm. I pound on his door with my fists and call his name; I shout to him that it’s me, that I’ve come alone, that I have to see him. When I stop the noise vanishes in a vacant space. There are no footsteps coming to the door, no vibration of movement. I run to the fire stairwell and reach up into the crevices beneath the railing, praying that, somehow, his key has been replaced. The ledge is empty.

  Somewhere below a door slams shut in the corridor, voices hum and dissolve. I grasp the railing to pull myself up and run down to the first-floor hallway. The door to the right of the stairs leads into the furnace room; next to it is the building superintendent’s apartment. The euphoric bantering and laughter from a television set disappears when I ring the bell. A voice calls out in Spanish and then the door swings open.

  “Mr. Iglesia.” I brush the hair back from my eyes and start to reach out for his hand but instead clench my arms across my body to stop their trembling. “Mr. Iglesia, I’m Marie Heaton. We met a few years ago—I’m a friend—a colleague of Joe Hillary. Dr. Hillary, on the fifth floor.” He looks cautious, maybe alerted by my nervousness, until he seems to recall me and his narrowed eyes relax.

  “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour,” I say. “But I need to find Dr. Hillary. Tonight. He’s…” I take a deep breath and hope I sound reasonable. “It’s urgent. We have a staffing problem at the hospital. A family emergency came up for one of the other doctors, and we have to reach Dr. Hillary to fill in. He’s not answering his telephone or his door, and we need to locate him. I thought I might see something in his apartment—an address or phone number.” I wait for his help, trying to transform the furrows in my face into a look of trustworthy concern.

  Mr. Iglesia brings his hand up to his mouth and shakes his head. “I can’t let you in without Dr. Hillary’s permission, Dr. Heaton. I’m sorry.” He looks down at the floor and then back up at me. “You don’t have a key?”

  “I do have a key, at home, but I came here straight from the hospital. We have some emergency surgeries coming in later tonight,” I say, holding my breath after each inhalation to slow my heart down, my face flushing hot with the lie.

  He rubs the side of his cheek and the hard skin of his palm scruffs across the stubble of his beard. “Well, I’ll have to go in with you. Wait just a minute.” He leaves the door standing half open and walks out of sight. The light from within is yellow and warm; the smell of frying onions and red meat seeps into the hallway. Somebody, a woman, laughs inside, and Mr. Iglesia reappears with an enormou
s ring of keys jingling like Christmas. He walks ahead of me to the elevator and presses the button. We stand awkward and silent as the creaking weight descends.

  “You work at the hospital up on the hill with Dr. Hillary? Yeah, I remember. You still drive that nice silver Audi, huh?”

  I nod.

  “I like cars. I always notice what kind of car people drive. So, looks like the fall rains are coming early this year.” I am spared having to answer because the elevator doors heave open and we step inside. He circles through the crowded key ring searching for Joe’s; the shrill clang of metal on metal is painful in this small space.

  At Joe’s door he knocks and waits for a moment, shrugging his shoulders at me as if shedding a guilty sense that this is an infraction of rules. Then he fits a key into the lock. It won’t turn. He curses softly and clatters through more keys. When he inserts another I hear the smooth unhitching of the mechanism.

  Inside it is dark and chilly, and the blinds are still drawn. As my eyes adjust to the faint blue wash of streetlights through the slits, I pick my way around the chairs, his bicycle, record albums and stereo speakers toward the bedroom.

  The door is nearly closed and I reach up to push it open, but draw my hand away, hesitating, almost wanting not to know. His apartment feels eerily lifeless, but I fold my fingers into a fist and knock on the bedroom door. No one answers. I open my palm against the wood and push it back. Behind me Mr. Iglesia pauses in the living room, as if shy about venturing farther into his tenant’s privacy. I stand just inside the bedroom, statue still, holding my breath so that I can hear if any other living being also breathes.

  I should turn on the light, but in this gloomy room I still feel able to hide from something—what, I am not sure. Do I hope that I will find him here, sleeping so softly I can’t even sense his presence? Or that a letter, perhaps addressed to me, will explain all this in some believable way that leaves hope for both of us? Or is it possible that all the tragic warnings I’ve read about the risks of suicide or overdose in the unmasked addict will include Joe? Had I thought of that when I left him here a day ago, stripped raw to speculate what I would do with my new knowledge?