The Waiting Room

by Emily Bleeker

  ALSO BY EMILY BLEEKER

  Wreckage

  When I’m Gone

  Working Fire

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Emily Bleeker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503900882 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1503900886 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781503901421 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1503901424 (paperback)

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  First edition

  To my parents—One day I hope

  my children will know that I love them

  as unconditionally as you love me.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  “Nick, the baby is crying again.” Veronica half turned over in her bed and slapped to the left, trying to wake her husband. “Nick,” she called again, this time a little louder.

  The room was dark, and colder than usual for November in North Carolina. Half-awake, she sat up and checked the alarm clock on her side of the bed, her e-book reader falling to the floor with a thump. 12:23 a.m. Her eyes burned, and the invisible arms of sleep pulled her back toward the bed. She patted his spot just in case her eyes deceived her. The bed was cold and empty. Where the hell was he?

  Veronica closed her eyes tightly and then opened them again, one, two times, trying to clear the cloud of sleepiness, feeling as if she were on sleeping pills. Even though they had an agreement that Nick would take the night shift and Veronica the day shift, she wasn’t just going to sit there while Sophie screamed her head off.

  But wait. The baby wasn’t crying anymore.

  The haze finally clear, Veronica hefted the covers off her legs. The floor was uncarpeted and cool against her bare feet, and goose bumps ran up her exposed arms. Nick must’ve fallen asleep on the couch, watching TV. She’d gone to bed early, right after they had put Sophie down with a fresh diaper, a tight swaddle, and a pink Binky. As Veronica had changed into her pajamas, Nick had pulled on a sweatshirt and said he’d run to the store for some milk and gas drops for the baby and then join her in bed. Maybe he’d decided to watch the end of the baseball game.

  “Nick,” she whispered, this time trying to sound like a loving wife rather than the annoyed one who had been calling him with a nagging edge to her voice just moments before. She was lucky to have such a hands-on husband. Nick did it all—nighttime diaper changes, runs to the store for supplies, endless rocking when Sophie couldn’t calm herself. She and Sophie were two lucky ladies, and Veronica knew it.

  “Babe, you okay? I was getting worried.” Veronica padded silently down the hall, wrapping her arms around her midsection to retain some heat. She passed the open door to her art studio and the nearly closed door to the hall bathroom. Sophie’s door was open. Veronica peeked in. The rocking chair where Nick usually comforted Baby Sophie or fed her a bottle of expressed milk was empty. Shuffling her feet so she didn’t wake the baby, Veronica crept up to the edge of the white crib and peered inside, hoping to get a glimpse of the sleeping infant. She was so beautiful when she slept—Cupid’s bow lips, delicate eyelashes against her cheeks, the light dusting of blond hair always slightly out of place on the top of her head, as if she’d had a hard day at the office. The child was perfect, absolutely perfect. But tonight, Veronica didn’t get to bask in the beauty of the tiny human she and Nick had created together, because the crib was empty.

  An unfamiliar panic dropped into Veronica’s stomach, heavy, as if she’d swallowed lead. With trembling fingers, she ran her hand over the mattress and soft, pink fitted sheet. It was cold, just like Nick’s spot a few moments earlier. It should have been warm. She’d just heard her crying, right? The video monitor—did she even look at the monitor?

  She’d envisioned becoming a mother as this instinctual nirvana where her hormones would whisper the answer to every parenting secret into her ear. It took one diaper change and trying to nurse without a lactation consultant nearby to prove that fantasy wrong. Mostly, being a new mother was filled with moments of confusion followed very quickly by moments of panic when, instead of whispering helpful hints, her hormones told her what a failure she was.

  Veronica struggled to get her sleep-soaked brain to function at a normal speed, trying to stave off panic with reason. God, she thought, maybe Sophie wasn’t in her bed when she was crying. Maybe Nick took her downstairs so I could sleep. Or she wasn’t crying at all, and it was all a dream. Maybe . . .

  “Nick, this isn’t funny. Where are you?”

  By now she’d forgotten about the goose bumps on her arms and nearly ran down the stairs into the family room, where a microfiber sectional faced a dark TV. She flicked on one of the switches at the bottom of the stairs, and the room was filled with light. But the illumination did little to calm the terror building inside Veronica—because just like her bed and the crib, the room was empty.

  “Nick!” she yelled. “I’m not kidding. If you’re here, you’d better tell me—now.” Still no answer. The brown-and-pink diaper bag sat by the door to the garage, and a rack of sterilized bottles lined the side of the stainless-steel sink. It was all as she’d left it, just with no husband and no daughter in sight. No note on the counter or fridge. No sign of any life but her own heartbeat pounding loudly in her ears.

  The car. The thought came to her as if it had been pinged into her brain with an antenna. He’d taken the baby on a drive in the car. That had to be it. Her pulse slowed as she noticed that Nick’s shoes were missing from the rack by the door to the garage, where the mat was slightly askew.

  The door opened with a loud squeak that Nick had been promising to fix for months, and the cool air from the fall night pinched at her cheeks. She didn’t even need to turn on the light—Nick’s car was gone. Relief replaced panic and annoyance replaced fear. They were on a steep learning curve with this parenting thing. No way Nick could’ve predicted how much taking the baby out for a midnight drive would freak out Veronica. He’d never known “Mom Veronica” before. They’d only been living as “Mom” and “Dad” for two weeks and four days.

  Two weeks and four days since Veronica had found out that there really was no limit to the amount you can love a person. Two weeks and four days since she’d learned that Sophie’s face was the most beautiful thing o
n the planet. Two weeks and four days since she’d known her life would never be the same again—and loved it.

  Her phone dinged in the kitchen—Nick, finally.

  Veronica swooped up the phone off the granite counter in one smooth movement and then held it up in front of her, already thinking of some way to tease him about his impromptu drive. Would she pretend to be angry or clueless? Would she act confused or frantic? What would make him laugh but also help him understand how scared she was?

  She glanced at the message on the screen but had to look again. The text was from Nick, but it wasn’t an “FYI, went for a drive with Sophie. Be back soon.” It wasn’t even a picture of a sleeping baby with a thumbs-up emoji under it. No. It was one phrase, two words: I’m sorry.

  The fear that had just lifted settled back on her shoulders again as if it were seeking familiar company. She pressed her thumb against the home button, and the screen opened to the texting app. Gray bubbles bounced up and down on the screen. Nick was writing something.

  “I’m sorry” what? Did he forget the gas drops? Did he spill the breast milk in the car? Did Sophie scream in her seat rather than fall asleep as planned?

  The bubbles went away, and a soft whoosh left one more sentence, far shorter than she had expected after the protracted delivery.

  It was my fault.

  She dialed his number frantically.

  “I’m sorry, but the person you’ve called has a voice mailbox that has not been set up yet. Please call back . . .”

  What in the world? Why wasn’t his usual message on the other end of that phone number? She hung up and touched his name on the screen again, waiting for a ring. Still nothing but an automatic click to the generic message.

  She stared at the text screen. Left with few options, she typed in a few panicked messages.

  What the HELL does “I’m sorry” mean?

  Call me—now!

  Where are you?

  Why are you doing this?

  Where. Is. Sophie????

  No response. No more bouncing gray bubbles. No more pictures or emojis or texts. Nothing but those six words. “I’m sorry. It was my fault.”

  She’d get in the car and drive until she found Sophie and Nick and uncover what in the world was going on. But even as she threw on a cardigan, not even bothering to put on her nursing bra or pull back her disheveled hair or put on shoes other than the dingy slippers she kept in the side hall for winter, Veronica understood something she’d been trying to avoid. It was a creeping, disgusting feeling that she should’ve known as soon as she found the bed empty and cold, found Sophie gone, found the garage only half-full. As she dialed her mother’s number and jumped into the front seat of her Prius, Veronica finally understood that feeling she’d been fighting.

  Today was one of “those” days. Just like the day Sophie was born or the day Veronica’s dad died or the day she signed her first contract as a professional artist. Today was another day that would change her life forever.

  CHAPTER 2

  Six months later

  The hallway was blah. That was the only way Veronica could describe it—blah. Even with four years in art school and ten as an illustrator, she didn’t know of a technical term that could explain it better. White ceiling, off-colored waxed tiles, scuffed-up beige wallpaper—if the hallway were a person, it’d be plain Jane or someone trying to hide out in the witness protection program. The only things breaking up the monotony of the infuriatingly boring hall were wooden doors with forest-green placards to the left with numbers, odd on the left, even on the right.

  Veronica’s destination was all the way down by the fire escape.

  Of course, she thought, bristling. She didn’t want to be there, but she had to go to the top floor and trudge to the last door in this palace of beige and blah.

  Okay, fine, maybe she did have a “bad attitude,” as her mom liked to call it. But when Barbra DeCarlo picked up where she’d left off her last lecture on the varied yet very detailed list of her daughter’s shortcomings, it was hard to just sit there and take it. Veronica could only bear it so long before she’d yell back, “I’m a grown-ass woman, for heaven’s sake! I have a kid of my own. Stop treating me like a baby.”

  Even that made her feel like a petulant teen. However, this wasn’t her first attempt to “fix” her mom’s diagnosis of an “attitude problem.” She’d worked on the issue on her own for six months, moving to a new town and throwing herself into her studio work. The stress of a move and the isolation of work only seemed to drag her down further.

  But it didn’t matter what her mother called it; Veronica knew none of her crazy compulsions or the dark days in bed were part of an attitude problem. No, she was seeing Ms. Lisa Masters, MA, LCPC, about the crippling postpartum depression that had ruled her life like a tyrant every day for the past six and a half months.

  PPD was like one of those gargoyles at Notre Dame that creeped her out and fascinated her back when she’d studied abroad in Paris, grotesque and frightening figures jutting out of the towering beauty of the cathedral. The stone monstrosities seemed to be standing guard, threatening to descend, and her mind came up with a million reasons why the architects would introduce such fearsome creatures. While fellow art students gasped at the stained glass or the beautifully carved masonry, Veronica couldn’t stop studying the gargoyles and their deeper purpose. To her great disappointment, they turned out to be functional rain gutters that saved the breathtaking cathedral masonry from water damage.

  And here she was again—unable to see beyond the gargoyles. PPD possessed her like one of those hauntingly dark creatures, diverting any joy or hope or clarity, distracting Veronica from enjoying the beauty of her daughter and her life.

  Today was a good day. Today she could get out of bed. Today she pumped milk without lingering on her failure when the bottles filled less and less each session. Today she sang to Baby Sophie from the threshold of her bedroom when she cried, instead of begging her mom to take her and then going for a run to escape Sophie’s suffocating cries. Today she didn’t feel like dying.

  But not every day was like today, and it wasn’t because of a bad attitude. The only thing that seemed to help these overwhelming feelings of failure that came along with her PPD was pouring herself into making sure everything was perfect for Sophie. That meant her nursery was beautifully decorated, she had the safest car seat, her clothes were washed in the gentlest baby detergent, and only cloth diapers touched her bottom.

  Everything was “the best” for Sophie, all the way down to the homemade nontoxic diaper-rash cream for the occasional breakouts. For some reason, when Veronica could point to all the improvements she’d made in Sophie’s life, they became a way to measure and then prove what a good mother she was, almost like a grade. Soon, she was counting everything—the number of ounces of breast milk she pumped at each session, the number of cloth diapers used every day, the number of hours Sophie slept, ate, and played.

  Somewhere deep inside, Veronica could acknowledge that these feelings weren’t even about her being a subpar mother. It was depression, chemical, hormonal, situational . . . all of the above. So when her mother threatened to move out and leave Veronica to be a single mother to Baby Sophie without any support if she didn’t finally get help from a mental health professional, Veronica agreed to go to Lisa.

  Veronica’s hand rested on the cold nickel handle, and she took a deep breath, hoping she looked confident, dressed in her nearly fancy black slacks and casual-but-expensive-looking flowy silk blouse. She didn’t mind telling a perfect stranger about the dark places her mind sometimes went when the crying wouldn’t stop or when her breasts ached after a less-than-successful pumping session. But she did mind sounding like a failure while looking like one too.

  The door was heavier than she’d expected, and it took an extra shove to force it open. She stumbled over the carpet, not ready for the transition from beige land to a room of warm colors and soft fabrics. It was as though she’d
wandered into her auntie Ruth’s sitting room, except instead of rock-hard butterscotch candies on the table, there were a variety of popular magazines, and instead of her now-dead aunt Ruth with her long gray hair and hippie shirt, there was a tallish, dark-haired man with his face buried deep in a magazine, safely hidden off in the back corner of the waiting room, and a heavyset woman with short brown hair, crying and sitting against the wall by the inner-office door. She reminded Veronica of the lunch lady who used to scold her for grabbing the brown chocolate-milk carton instead of the red whole-milk one.

  Seeing the woman’s tears was enough to make Veronica want to bolt out the door, but a young woman behind the divider waved her forward. The glass swooshed as it opened.

  “I have an appointment at ten with Ms. Masters. My name is Veronica . . . ,” Veronica whispered across the counter, but the receptionist stopped her.

  “I’ve got you right here.” She pointed at the flat screen in front of her; a placard on her desk read, “Carly Simpson.” “Looks like you filled out all the paperwork online. Good for you.” Carly beamed at her. Her straight white teeth and perfectly styled blond hair reminded Veronica of a younger version of herself. Before Nick. Before Sophie. Before this monster called depression took over her life. How she wished for the naïveté of that version of herself.

  Veronica’s phone buzzed against her thigh as a text came through. She forced a smile at the bubbly girl and maybe mumbled a brief thank-you before turning and searching for a seat. The crying woman was still sitting on a bench against the far wall, lost in her tears, and the politely anonymous man was still occupying the only semiprivate area in the room, but the couch was open. She took an incredibly indirect route to the empty seat while glancing at her phone to avoid eye contact with either of the waiting-room inhabitants.

  Another text from her mother. Shocker.

  PLEASE try to keep an open mind. And for heaven’s sake, tell her about Nick.

  Veronica somehow held back from rolling her eyes. Like she wouldn’t mention the father of her child when talking to a therapist about her postpartum depression. Veronica already knew one of the first questions would be, “Where is Sophie’s father?” It was one of the moments she dreaded most about this whole fiasco—telling a stranger about what happened to Nick. Veronica shoved the phone back into her pocket and stood behind the table filled with magazines.