Never mind, she thought, and got herself off the couch and up the stairs, smiling, knowing she’d need to hurry if she wanted dinner to be ready by the time he arrived that night.
DIANA
She’d been with Doug for more than four months when she’d finally taken him to her house on that rainy October night. Doug’s mother had reclaimed her car, Diana was worried that they’d been spotted together once too often for anywhere in the hospital to be safe, and the Society Hill Sheraton, preferred hotel of all Philadelphia adulterers east of Broad Street, was vexingly completely occupied. He’d offered his apartment but she felt weird about going back there, where his roommates could see her and talk.
“Close your eyes,” she’d whispered, looking up and down the street before pulling him through her front door.
“Why?” he’d asked. “Is it messy?”
It wasn’t. During the length of their affair Diana had become a more obsessive housekeeper and a more devoted runner who’d shaved a minute and a half off her previous 10K personal best. She was even, she thought, taking better care of Milo, and Gary, too, now that she had a secret life, a secret self to nurture, which somehow gave her more energy to tend to her son and her husband. She didn’t need Doug to shut his eyes because her house wasn’t clean. She needed him to close them because she didn’t want him to see the picture propped on the mantel that she’d taken the previous Christmas, of her and her husband and the son she’d never told him about, the three of them smiling for the camera and looking as if everything was fine.
When Lizzie had shown up and found them in bed, Diana had been convinced that it was the beginning of the end. What was it Benjamin Franklin had said? Three can keep a secret if two are dead? “Don’t worry,” said Doug, whose relationship with his own little sister was, it seemed, very different from Diana’s with Lizzie. “What’s she got to gain by ratting you out?”
Diana turned her face away. She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t tell him that she’d always been the family’s straight arrow, the superstar, the senator’s presentable daughter; that Lizzie had always been the failure and the fuck-up, and that the chance to reverse those roles, even temporarily, would be too much for her sister to resist. Diana had spent the next twenty-four hours in an agony of dread, convinced that Lizzie, either accidentally or on purpose, would say something to their parents. Either that or she’d go straight to Gary, and her world would come crashing down.
A week went by, then another, and Diana didn’t hear from her sister. Not a phone call, not an e-mail … and, of course, she was too scared to try to contact Lizzie herself. She ducked her mother’s calls and felt too guilty to exchange more than ninety seconds’ worth of pleasantries with her dad, who, she knew, missed her. She was in no position to console him or censure him. All she could do, she thought unhappily, was compare notes. Did you and Joelle ever do it in a parking garage? How’d you keep it a secret from Mom?
She told herself that maybe it would be all right, that she and Doug could continue indefinitely, aided by her husband’s extreme cluelessness. As long as they were careful, as long as Lizzie kept her mouth shut, maybe they’d be okay.
What finally happened wasn’t Lizzie tattling, or anyone else from the hospital catching them together. What happened was, one perfectly autumnal Sunday morning, she and Gary and Milo went out to brunch.
They had decided on a place called Green Eggs in the Italian Market neighborhood. Milo had chosen it because he’d liked the name and Diana had agreed because they had quinoa porridge on the menu, and Gary had shrugged and said, “Sure, fine.” They’d just rounded the corner onto Dickinson Street when Diana spotted Doug and two of his roommates walking toward them. The guys were dressed in jeans and sweatshirts and running shoes—play clothes for a day off. Doug carried a football, and one of the roommates had a white paper sack of bagels in his arm. Time seemed to slow down. Diana’s legs trembled beneath her, and she felt her face turn red. It was as if a spotlight was aimed at her, as if the word GUILTY had appeared on her forehead, written in indelible red ink for everyone to see.
Would he speak to her? He wouldn’t, she thought, as they approached each other. If he said hello she’d be forced to introduce him to Gary and Milo, to say, “This is Doug. He’s an intern at the hospital.” He wouldn’t want that. He wouldn’t do that to her.
Doug walked past her without a word, seemingly without a glance. Diana exhaled in a shaky rush. Milo looked at her strangely, and Diana forced herself to smile as she took his hand and tweaked the bill of his baseball cap. They walked the few remaining blocks to the restaurant and took their place in line. “Are you all right?” asked Gary, sounding somewhere between concerned and annoyed, when he noticed the beads of sweat on her face.
“I’m fine,” said Diana, in a voice that barely sounded like her own. “Just a little dehydrated.”
“Mom ran ten miles this morning,” Milo said. This was true. She’d run ten miles at a sub eight-minute-mile pace, and she’d finished her run on Tasker Street, breaking her own rule about Doug’s apartment, ending her workout, sweaty and glowing and breathless, tangled in Doug’s disreputable sheets, wrapped in Doug’s arms.
They gave their name to the hostess and stood in the mild sunshine, waiting for a table to open up. Milo played his Leapster. Gary shifted his weight from foot to foot and remarked to the air that there were plenty of places in their neighborhood that served brunch. Diana stood, feeling as if she’d been carved from wood, until the hostess led them inside. They’d just placed their order—pancakes for Milo, the porridge for Diana, something called the Kitchen Sink, involving fried eggs and biscuits and sausage cream gravy, for Gary—when her BlackBerry thrummed in her pocket.
“Work,” she said, and raised the screen to her eyes. It wasn’t work. It was Doug, with the text she’d been waiting for since he’d glimpsed her walking with her husband and her son: i don’t think i can do this anymore.
“Excuse me,” she said.
Gary sighed noisily. “Mommy’s got the poops again,” he said as Diana walked to the bathroom, without bothering to tell him to watch his mouth. There, trembling, crouching on top of the toilet, she punched in Doug’s number and pressed the phone to her ear.
He picked up on the third ring. “Hey, Diana.”
“Can we talk about this?” she whispered. She knew what the problem was, or she thought she did—he’d seen her with Gary and assumed that he was breaking up a happy marriage, when, in fact, her marriage was anything but happy. She needed Doug. She couldn’t imagine her life without him. He couldn’t leave her. He loved her. She knew he did.
“I don’t think there’s much to say.”
She pressed her arms tightly against her sides and jammed her quivering legs together. “Doug. Listen. I know what that looked like. But the truth is …”
“You’ve got a little boy,” he said dully. “You never told me that.”
“Look, things with us have nothing at all to do with him. I’m a good mother,” Diana said. “It’s not like I’m taking time away from Milo to see you.”
She could hear him sigh. “I can’t do this to a little kid.” His voice dropped. “I’m sorry. But we should never have started. And we’ve got to stop now, before someone really gets hurt.”
“Doug.” What about her? What about her getting hurt? Diana dropped her head between her knees, she felt dizzy, and sick, and someone was knocking on the bathroom door, knocking and calling, sweetly, “Everything all right in there?”
“Doug?” she whispered desperately into the phone. “Doug!” There was no answer. He’d hung up.
She clutched her belly and groaned, a sorrowful sound that would have sent her running to the exam room if one of her patients had made it. She sounded like she’d been mortally wounded … which, she thought, was true enough. After a minute, she made herself get to her feet. She flushed the toilet and washed her hands and went back to the table, to smile at her son and swallow a few mouthfuls of porri
dge. Her shift started at two. She texted Doug before she left—call me pls. Need 2 talk. But by the time she arrived at the hospital he hadn’t called, and she didn’t think he ever would.
At her desk, she started frantically reviewing the charts that had piled up, scribbling orders. Coumadin for the lady who’d come in with a suspected stroke, insulin for the eight-year-old with type 1 diabetes, IV antibiotics for the girl whose infected labial piercing had resulted in a nasty case of sepsis.
Lynette stuck her head into Diana’s office. “You okay?” she asked, and Diana had nodded, her mind whirling as she tried to rearrange the puzzle pieces of her life in a shape that made sense. Maybe she’d leave Gary and go to Doug a single woman. Maybe they could make it work. Maybe …
She ran through the scenarios of divorce and separation, and staggered through her day like a sleepwalker, checking on patients, taking temperatures and blood pressures, writing prescriptions, asking questions and writing down the answers without really hearing. She checked her BlackBerry every minute or two, but heard nothing from Doug. When she came back home after her shift ended at midnight, Milo was sleeping, Gary was in front of his computer, the television was blaring, and the kitchen was a mess. From the box on the counter, the grease-stained napkins and paper plates, Diana surmised that there’d been pizza for dinner, and even though she’d asked Gary to cook, and had made a point of showing him the tenderloin and the fresh zucchini she’d bought at the farmer’s market.
She was folding the pizza box into the recycling bin when the telephone rang. Her heart leapt—maybe it was Doug, Doug calling on the home line to announce himself, to tell Gary that he didn’t deserve her and that he, Doug, was on his way over to claim Diana and Milo as his own.
“Diana?” Gary, in sweatpants, entered the kitchen. The telephone was in his hand and there was a concerned look on his face. He coughed wetly into his fist, then said, “Hank Stavers for you.”
Diana felt the blood rush out of her extremities. Hank Stavers was the chief of staff. She took the telephone in one cold hand.
“Dr. Stavers?”
“Dr. Woodruff.” His tone was clipped, his voice as cool as she’d ever heard it. “We need you back at the hospital immediately.”
She could barely find the breath to say, “Of course.”
“My office,” he said. “Frank Greenfeldt will be waiting.” Frank Greenfeldt, Diana knew, was the hospital’s attorney. She knew him by reputation, but she’d never met him, never had a reason to meet him. With shaking hands she buttoned up her coat. Had Doug told them what was going on? Had he suggested that she’d behaved improperly somehow? Did she need her own lawyer? A sob caught in her throat as she grabbed her purse and her keys. At that moment, she missed her father desperately. He’d always been great in a crisis, assured and decisive. He could have told her exactly what to do.
“Hey,” said Gary, sounding irritated. “Where are you going?”
“Emergency,” she whispered, and bolted out the door.
They were waiting for her in Hank Stavers’s immaculate mahogany-and-leather office up on the fifth floor, a world away from the blood and mess and noise of the ER. Diana bit her lip to keep it from trembling as Stavers said, “Please sit.”
Late as it was, Frank Greenfeldt was wearing a suit, navy blue, with a lavender tie. Diana wondered whether he’d gotten dressed especially for this, or been called away from something else that night. He slid a folder across Hank’s desk and tapped at a line with the tip of a silver Montblanc pen. “Read this, please.”
Diana bent and read out loud the orders she’d written that night: “Insulin, 100 milligrams.”
“Is that the correct dosage for a sixty-five-pound eight-year-old?” Greenfeldt’s tone was neutral, but his jowly face was flushed.
“No. It should have been …” Diana’s voice failed. She’d written down a dosage ten times what it should have been, and if the little girl had gotten 100 milligrams …
She looked up, her eyes wild. “Oh my God,” she blurted. “Is she …”
“The drug was never administered,” said the lawyer. “The nurse on duty, Lynette Arnold, noticed the error in time.”
“Thank God,” Diana whispered, hearing blood rush in her ears. “Oh, thank God.” She should never have been working. Distracted as she’d been, her thoughts bouncing between her boyfriend and her husband, she had no business taking care of patients. No business at all.
Somewhere, far away, the hospital’s lawyer was talking. Diana wiped her sweaty palms against her skirt and forced herself to focus. “… the seriousness of an error of this nature.”
“I’m sorry,” she blurted, her voice too loud, her face too hot, as if those words could make a difference, as if they could undo what she’d done. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t … I just can’t believe that I …”
“You’ve had a lot on your mind lately,” said Hank Stavers, speaking for the first time. Diana found herself nodding. A lot on her mind. Yes indeed. That didn’t begin to cover it. “Given your …” He paused. “Family situation?”
For a minute she thought he was talking about her and Doug. Then she realized he meant her father. She nodded again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what else to say except how very, very sorry I am.”
“We got lucky,” said the lawyer. “This time.”
“I’m going to recommend that you take a leave of absence—paid, of course. Certainly, the administrators at Philadelphia Hospital understand that there are …”—Stavers paused again—“circumstances that arise that make it difficult to perform up to the best of one’s abilities.”
The best of one’s abilities, she thought. Even an idiot, even a first-year medical student knew the difference between 10 and 100 milligrams. It was an unforgivable mistake. She sent up a quiet, fervent prayer to Lynette, who’d saved her life—hers and the little girl’s. Then she straightened in her chair, squared her shoulders, and looked at the men on the other side of the desk. “For how long,” she asked politely, for she had been raised with good manners, “would you like me to leave?”
Once the arrangements were made, the dates agreed to and the forms signed, Diana took the stairs down to the emergency room. Lynette was waiting behind the reception desk, looking haggard underneath the fluorescent lights. She got to her feet as soon as she saw Diana getting off the elevator.
“Thank you,” said Diana, before Lynette could open her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I’m so grateful to you. I can never thank you enough—”
“Diana.” Lynette cut her off. “I owe you an apology. I was going to try to, you know …” She glanced at the elevator, then lowered her voice. “Change the chart, but one of the attendings was breathing down my neck.”
“Don’t worry,” said Diana, moved almost to tears at the idea of Lynette risking her own job that way.
“Did they fire you?”
Diana shook her head. “Paid leave.”
Lynette exhaled, slumping onto the desk. “Oh, Di,” she said. “Shit, I’m sorry.”
“Oh, God. Don’t be. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. You saved that girl’s life.” Diana’s eyes and throat were burning. “I had no business being anywhere near patients today.” She took her own glance at the elevator doors. “Doug and I … I think it’s over. He saw me with Gary and Milo, and I think … I mean, he knew I was married, but I think seeing me that way made it … you know. Real to him.”
Lynette put her arm around Diana’s shoulders and squeezed. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Diana shook her head. After this long day and this terrible night, she just wanted to go home, put on her flannel pajamas, sit in the living room by herself, and cry over the mess she’d made of everything: her marriage, her job, even her friendship with Lynette. And Doug. She’d lost Doug. How could she go on without him?
In a supply closet she found a cardboard box that had once held syringes, and carried it back to her locker. There was a mug Milo had
painted (World’s Best Mom! it read), extra socks and a spare sweater, some sweaty, stale running gear, a bottle of Tylenol, the photograph of her husband and her son that she kept taped to the locker’s metal door. She filled her box, tucked it tight under her arm, and started walking.
She knew she should be feeling lucky that a child hadn’t been hurt or killed thanks to her idiocy; she’d gotten paid leave instead of a pink slip or a lawsuit. She’d dodged a marital bullet, too—instead of Lizzie’s ratting her out or Gary’s figuring it out, Doug had ended things, which left Diana free to go about the business of rebuilding her marriage, or even just pretending that none of it had happened.
The problem was, she didn’t want to rebuild … and she didn’t want to be with Gary, either. She wanted Doug … and Doug didn’t want her, wouldn’t want her even if she got a divorce, would not want a woman with a child who had cheated on that child’s father.
I want my life to change, she thought as she walked. A block later, she amended it. I want to change my life. A bracing wind blew along Market Street, and a pack of girls scurried by with their hands in their coat pockets. Diana shivered but kept walking, with the box under her arm and her head held high. This was another part of her discipline, another habit she’d cultivated as a safeguard against sloth and laziness: Diana was a great maker of lists.
So she walked through the chilly October darkness, under the star-speckled sky, legs eating up block after block of sidewalk, down to the river, where she’d run that morning, making her list in her head. She’d tell Doug that she was leaving her husband and gauge his continued interest in her, if any. But first, she would have to tell Gary, poor, sad-faced Gary, who was probably at home, snoring in their bed. She’d tell him that she’d taken a leave of absence, and then she’d tell him, as gently and as kindly as she could, that, at some point, she had fallen out of love with him, that she no longer felt toward him the way a wife should feel toward her husband. She would say that she wanted a different kind of life. She wanted to go somewhere and live simply, to find a house that wasn’t as expensive and a job that wasn’t as hard. She wanted to live in a place where Milo could play outside, where not every parent was focused on getting his or her kid into the right elementary school, which would lead to the right magnet high school, which would be a conduit to the Ivy League.
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