The Nurse's Not-So-Secret Scandal

by Wendy S. Marcus

  He walked to the kitchen, looking tired and perturbed. “I can make my own breakfast,” he grumbled.

  “Then what’s the sense of having me here?”

  He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down heavily. “Exactly.”

  What? “You don’t want me here?”

  He rubbed his hand over his face. “I can’t do this. You insisted on staying last night. But I’m feeling much better this morning.”

  He didn’t look much better. She wiped her hand on a towel. “I thought…” That he liked having her around. That he’d invited her to stay until they were done cleaning out the house. That last night he was just being a difficult patient. “I didn’t realize…” That he’d intended for her to stay for only one night. That once they’d had sex he was done with her. Like all the rest of them. “I’ll get my things.”

  “Roxie. Wait.”

  Absolutely not. She wouldn’t stay where she wasn’t wanted. But she’d taken responsibility for his care. “Let me see your right hand.”

  He held it out to her.

  “Mild swelling. To be expected. Make sure you keep it elevated.” She pinched his nail beds. “Good capillary refill. Move your fingers.” He did. “Good range of motion.” She turned to the bedroom. Would not get sappy. “Your home exercise plan is on the kitchen counter. Your prescription bottles are by the toaster. Don’t forget to call Dr. Rosen’s office to schedule your post-op visit.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  And Roxie snapped. “Do you have any idea how many times you’ve apologized to me in the last forty-eight hours?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Way more than someone who wants to be my friend should have to. But you’re not interested in being friends, are you? No. You got what you wanted and now I’m being sent on my way.”

  “Sorry,” a different male voice said.

  Kyle stood at the front door, his key still in the lock, starring at Fig’s shirtless torso. “You showed her your tattoos?”

  “Don’t you knock?” Fig asked.

  “I came to check on you. I didn’t think you’d let Roxie…” Kyle stopped.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Roxie said to Kyle. “I have just been informed I’ve overstayed my welcome. I’ll be gone in a few minutes.”

  “It’s not like that,” Fig said, his voice now an annoying buzzing in her ears.

  “Where will you go?” Kyle asked.

  At least one of them cared enough to ask. “I’ve got plenty of options,” Roxie said. Although she didn’t want to bother anyone, so probably a motel. Something cheap, since there was a good chance she would soon be unemployed.

  “Since we expect your mom will be moving into the downstairs bedroom this afternoon, you can have Victoria’s couch.” He looked semihopeful.

  Roxie smiled. “She didn’t agree to let you share the master bedroom, after all.”

  Kyle shook his head. “Not unless Jake has a sleepover. But if you were to need the couch…”

  “She’ll probably send you here to sleep with Fig,” Roxie said. “Victoria’s mind is set. She doesn’t want Jake to see his parents sleeping in the same bed until after you’re married. There’s no getting around it.”

  Roxie’s mind was set, too. “I need to get my things.” She turned and pounded down the hall to the bedroom. How could she have misread Fig? She picked up her bag from the floor and dropped it onto the bed. How could she have gotten so caught up in playing pretend girlfriend? Which, for a very short, very emotional twenty-four hours, had started to feel all too real. She put on a pair of denim capri pants, tied the T-shirt she’d worn to bed at her low back and slipped into her flip-flops.

  She grabbed her watch from the table beside the bed and her lip gloss from the dresser beneath the mirror, and she was ready to go.

  “You’re being an idiot,” Kyle yelled at Fig. “Roxie is my friend, and she deserves an explanation. Tell her. Or I will.”

  “Tell me what?” Roxie entered the open kitchen.

  “Nothing,” Fig said to Roxie. Then he stood and faced Kyle. “Don’t do this.”

  “You care about her,” Kyle said to Fig.

  Seems he’d misread Fig, too.

  “I can see this is ripping you apart,” Kyle said.

  That’s when Roxie noticed how tormented and sad and downright distraught Fig looked. But he was the one who’d told her to go.

  “Don’t let her leave,” Kyle went on. “Take a chance. Talk to her. Let her make her own choice.”

  Kyle walked to Roxie and eased the strap of her bag off of her shoulder. “Hear him out, Roxie. You will never find a better, more loyal and supportive man.” He hugged her and whispered in her ear, “The good outweighs the inconvenient. I promise you.”

  His words made no sense.

  Kyle walked to the door and set Roxie’s bag beside it. “I’m leaving now. But I’ll be waiting in the parking lot.” He looked at Fig. “If Roxie leaves this apartment in less than fifteen minutes I am going to come back up here and beat you senseless.”

  “Oh, you think so?” Fig asked in honest challenge. “Even one-handed I can take you.”

  “So you’d rather fight than take a few minutes to tell me what’s going on?” Roxie asked quietly.

  Kyle escaped through the door and clicked it closed behind him.

  “I’m a kook,” Fig said. “A nut job.”

  “If you’re trying to scare me into leaving, you’ll have to do better than that.” Roxie leaned a shoulder against the wall and crossed her arms at her waist, not knowing what else to do with them.

  “You’ve got so much going on in your life right now. You deserve an easy man, not someone like me.”

  “I’ve never had easy a day in my life. I wouldn’t know what to do with an easy man.”

  “In that case, can I make you some coffee?” Fig asked.

  “I’m still trying to decide if I should stay or if I should let you get beat up,” Roxie said, only half kidding. “So answer me this. Is Kyle right? Do you care about me? Is the thought of me walking out that door ripping you apart?”

  Fig looked down at the floor and nodded.

  Roxie’s heart felt a tiny bit hopeful. “Then I’ll make the coffee.”

  “No.” Fig lifted the kettle in his left hand and walked to the sink.

  “That’s fresh water,” Roxie said. “I filled it this morning.”

  Fig dumped it out, struggled to dry the inside with paper towels and refilled it using three containers of bottled water—that were not easy for him to open one-handed. But he didn’t ask for help and Roxie didn’t offer. He glanced at her on the way to the stove, his expression a mix of uncertainty and embarrassment.

  “Does this all have to do with your frequent hand washing/sanitizing and why you won’t kiss me?”

  He rested his hip against the counter. “Noticed that, did you?”

  “I’m a nurse. I have excellent assessment skills.” Roxie walked to the cabinet where she’d seen the coffee mugs and took two down. Then she got two spoons from the silverware drawer.

  Fig watched her every move.

  “You going to answer me?” Roxie asked.

  “It’s indirectly related.” He reached into a cabinet and took out individual-serving-size packets of instant coffee. He held them out to Roxie. “Would you…?”

  She washed her hands in the sink then ripped the tops off the coffee packets.

  “There’s milk in the…”

  Fig held out a handful of single-serving creamers.

  Roxie peeled back the lids on four of them.

  “Thank you,” Fig said.

  The coffee made, they both sat down at the table.

&
nbsp; “The no kissing on the mouth, and the hand washing—which is not a compulsion, I’d like to point out… It’s not like I scrub my hands raw, or anything. I just like them to be clean—started back when I was first diagnosed with leukemia. My mother lectured me on the risk of infection and how to protect against it. Constantly. For years. It is now hardwired into my circuitry.”

  “And you can put your tongue between my legs but not between my lips.” She hesitated, thought about what she’d said and clarified, “These lips,” while pointing to her mouth.

  “It’s a conundrum.” He smiled and shrugged. “Can’t explain it.”

  “So you’re a selective germaphobe. That’s the big secret?”

  Fig stirred his coffee. “Have you ever heard of Munchausen syndrome by proxy?”

  “Isn’t it a form of child abuse?”

  “It can affect adults, too. It occurs when an abuser, usually a mother, intentionally harms or fabricates an illness in her child that initiates a hospitalization.”

  There were some sick people in the world. “Are you trying to tell me your mother somehow convinced your doctors that you had leukemia when you didn’t? Because I’m not buyin’ it.”

  He shook his head. “No. I definitely had the leukemia. But during my remissions I suffered from debilitating headaches and forgetfulness and general malaise to the point I didn’t feel well enough to leave the house. No one could identify a reason. Mom homeschooled me. Her life revolved around me, her every waking hour dedicated to me. She carted me to doctors and specialists. I underwent countless tests. All the while she soaked in the praise for what a wonderful, attentive mother she was, giving up her life to care for her sick son.”

  He stared into his coffee as he spoke. Roxie felt sorry for little Fig, sick, so alone and subjected to a controlling mother. But Munchausen by proxy was a hefty accusation.

  “By the time I’d turned eighteen—” Fig took a sip of coffee and continued “—I was clinically depressed. Living at home. I had more bad days than good, and I couldn’t visualize my future being anything but more of the same. One night I drank more of my dad’s stash of expensive beer than usual and got totally wasted. Jacked up on liquid confidence, I stole the family Ford and, while speeding down the highway, decided to take control of my life…by ending it.”

  Roxie couldn’t believe it. This strong, confident man had attempted suicide? As bad as things had gotten in her life, she’d never once considered it. “Your accident. The one you told me about.” The one that’d left him scarred.

  “Wasn’t an accident at all.”

  “Oh, Fig. I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m not.” He stared off into the living room. “I met Kyle in rehab and he saved my life, although it took him almost losing his to do it. I remember Mom coming into our room late one night. She’d befriended the staff, bribed them with cookies and treats and wasn’t held to the same rules as other visitors. I heard her out in the hallway and pretended to be asleep—I did that a lot so she’d leave me alone. Anyway, she came in close to my bed and whispered, ‘I’m so sorry, Ryan. I never expected it to go on this long, to make you so unhappy. It was selfish. I’ll stop. I promise.’”

  “What?”

  “It didn’t make sense to me at the time, either. But after Kyle’s brush with death, when we sat down to try to make sense of what’d happened, I remembered Mom’s words and the pieces of the puzzle started to come together.”

  “What happened to Kyle?” Roxie asked.

  “Sorry,” Fig said. “I got ahead of myself. In rehab, Kyle and I hit it off right from the start. I know it sounds pathetic, but he was my first real friend.”

  Roxie reached for his unbandaged hand and squeezed. For as difficult as her childhood had been, Fig’s was worse.

  “Long story short, after rehab and some convalescence at my house, my father got us both into the same college and we moved into an apartment close to campus. Mom was not happy about me moving out and refused to allow me to live in the dorms. Too many germs, she’d said. An apartment was the compromise.”

  “Sounds like an eighteen-year-old’s dream, to be set up in an apartment with his buddy.” Roxie would have loved an opportunity like that.

  “It was. Until Mom started visiting. Daily. For hours at a time. She insisted on cleaning the apartment, doing our laundry and cooking for us. Kyle’s mom had died a few years earlier and he didn’t mind the attention as long as she was gone right after she did the dinner dishes.”

  “How long did she give you on your own before she started coming around?” Roxie asked.

  “About a month. In that time I’d started to feel better.” His face lit up at the memory. “Up until that point, it’s the happiest I’d ever been. I had friends and went on dates. Then the headaches and nausea started up again. I began missing class. Mom suggested I move home but I refused. The symptoms got worse.”

  “You didn’t relate the change in your health to your mom’s visits?”

  He looked up at her. “It was par for the course for me. I’d never gone more than a few weeks without relapsing. To be honest, I expected it.”

  “So what made you suspect your mom?”

  “One weekend Kyle was up late studying. Mom had made us each a batch of brownies. She always packaged them separately, saying mine had herbs and supplements to help me get well, and while I was used to the slight change in taste—because she’d been giving them to me for years—Kyle might find the taste off-putting. But that particular night Kyle was so munched he didn’t care. He devoured my pan of brownies. About three-quarters of the batch. In one sitting. An hour later he collapsed in my room and had a seizure.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “AY Dios mio,” Roxie said.

  Fig remembered that horrible night, the fear and desperation, waiting for the ambulance and not knowing what to do. “The emergency room doc said Kyle demonstrated signs of acute poisoning. But they couldn’t identify the source. They pumped his stomach and gave him all sorts of medication.” Fig had broken down and cried with relief when, after hours of treatment, the doctor finally told him Kyle would be okay. “When he got well he was convinced there was something wrong with the brownies.”

  “Maybe he had a bad reaction to one of the supplements your mom added.”

  Fig had suggested the same thing. But, “He didn’t exhibit signs of allergic reaction. The doctor was very clear. He suspected poisoning by an unidentified agent.”

  “But you ate the brownies. How come you weren’t affected?”

  “I’m not big on sweets. Mom knew that. I’d have one, maybe two small brownies a day. I usually wound up throwing half of them out because they got stale before I finished them.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Roxie said. “What kind of mother would poison her son’s brownies?”

  “One desperate for attention and validation. One desperate to be needed. My dad traveled a lot. Even when he was home he spent most of his time on the phone or relaxing in his den. And it wasn’t just my brownies. Looking back, I remembered the drops I’d caught her putting in my soup one time, and my water glass another. ‘Homeopathic remedies,’ she’d said.”

  “And now you won’t eat soup, and you’ll only drink bottled water.”

  If only that were the extent of it. “It goes beyond that, Roxie. My mother, the woman who was supposed to love me more than anyone, the woman I trusted to care for me, who I’d thought wanted only the best for me, poisoned my food. For years. With the intent to make me sick.”

  “How do you know for sure? Did you confront her?”

  Of course he had. “She denied it. To this day she insists she never gave me anything but what my doctors prescribed and recommended. I asked to see the bottles of the homeopathic preparations and herbs she’d added to my food. S
he came up with excuse after excuse. I searched for them, and never found one.”

  “Maybe…”

  No. There were no maybes. “Within a week or two of removing every item of food she either made for me or bought for me from our apartment, and taking control of what I ate and where it came from, I began to feel healthy and strong. I know, in here—” he raised his fist to his heart “—that she did it. You saw how she is. Conniving. Manipulative. What’s to stop her from trying again? What’s to stop someone else from slipping something in my food for any number of reasons?”

  “Do you honestly think I’m the type of person who would poison your food?”

  “I know, I sound insane, and what I have going on is not rational, but I refuse to lose one more day of my life because I feel too sick to go out and live it.”

  Roxie took a sip of coffee. “Have you talked to anyone about all this?”

  “Kyle. And now you.”

  “I mean a professional.”

  He smiled. “I know. And no, I haven’t.”

  “Maybe it’s time you did. Because your issues with food obviously bother you to the point you’re trying to hide them. In my opinion you’ve transferred control of your life from your mother to your irrational fear of being poisoned.”

  How the heck did she read people and situations so quickly and thoroughly and correctly?

  “You know, I’ve got to tell you, we all have issues, Fig. You’re really not all that special. Unless there’s something else? Something that might crop up later tonight or tomorrow and have you wanting to get rid of me again?”

  “No. And I didn’t want to get rid of you. I thought…”

  “Well, you may change your mind when you learn I don’t like anyone to touch my belly button. I avoid foods with artificial red coloring and artificial sweeteners. I am fanatic about keeping my immediate living area spotless. And I have a thing about organization—especially in my closet.”

  “I can live with that.” As long as she could put up with him. Please let her be willing to at least try.