Thursday Afternoons

by Tracey Richardson

  “Do you have a bicycle?” Ellis asks Mia while hauling yet another box upstairs. She wants them officially moved in over the next week. The movers will come in a few days; it’s the smaller stuff she figures they can do themselves.

  “Yes. But it’s dorky.”

  “Dorky or not, we’re bringing it with you. It’s how you’re going to get around when I’m working.”

  Mia makes a face. “It’s not like there’s anywhere to go in this town. It’s so frigging small. There’s, like, one grocery store? How pathetic.”

  “There’s two actually, and it might be good for you here. The judge seems to think so, and I can’t disagree.” Fewer ways for Mia to get in trouble, she hopes.

  At the mention of the judge, Mia casts her eyes down. Good, Ellis thinks. At least she seems to have some remorse. “Do you know how to cook?”

  “You mean I have to cook?” Mia replies in a voice that sounds like she’s being made an indentured servant.

  “There will be some evenings when I’ll be busy with work, so yes, you might have to cook for yourself once in a while. Your grandmother mentioned that you can cook. I’ll make sure the fridge and pantry are stocked.”

  Mia grumbles, moves with the exaggerated, staccato gestures of someone who’s angry or resentful. Ellis can’t take it anymore. She sets the box in her arms down and motions for Mia toward one of the chairs at the dining room table—the only pieces of furniture in the place. Mia slumps down.

  “Look,” Ellis says, keeping her voice calm. “I know you don’t like the idea of living here. With me.” I’m not thrilled about it either, she wants to say, but she’s the adult here. “It’s the way it is, and we need to make the best of it.”

  Mia rolls her eyes but doesn’t say anything.

  “And that means house rules. We talked about that, remember?”

  Another eye-roll, which Ellis ignores, because she knows it’s for show. Mia has no choice, except maybe going back to the judge, which, clearly, the kid doesn’t want to do. Ellis isn’t her mother, isn’t anybody’s mother, but she knows how to take control, how to run people and budgets and corporations. How to get things done. A defiant teenager doesn’t stand a chance against her.

  “I will have a list of chores for you each day, which must be completed by the end of that day. You will let me know where you are when you’re out. If you make new friends, I must meet them. No guests in the house without me having met them first, nor without my permission. You will do your own laundry and keep your room tidy. On weeknights you’re to be home by nine o’clock in the evening and in bed by ten. You—”

  “Ten! Are you serious?”

  “Deadly. Weekends, you can have an extra half hour. You will not smoke pot, ever, while you’re living with me, and you will not drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. And in two weeks’ time I want a list from you of places where you might do some community service. Understood?”

  “But…but, this is like fucking jail!”

  “And you will not, ever, swear like that again in my presence.”

  Mia visibly recoils. And why wouldn’t she? Ellis has seen grown men and women sweat and shake, even cry, in her presence.

  “I’m not,” Ellis says with a huff of breath, “trying to be mean. I want this to work. For both our sakes. But it’s going to take work and commitment to make that happen, and we’re going to start with talking and acting respectfully toward one another. Because without respect, we’re doomed to being miserable and doomed to this whole thing failing.”

  “What about you?” Mia challenges. “Am I the only one who has to have rules?”

  Ellis thinks for a moment instead of lashing out, because Mia has a point. “Tell you what. I’ll make sure to keep work at a minimum on weekends. And I’ll cook a nice meal for us every Sunday, okay? And if at any time I’m going to be out past seven or eight at night, I’ll let you know. Now, is there anything you want to ask me? Because I will always be honest with you, Mia. And I will always answer your questions.”

  Mia tilts her chin defiantly. She’s clearly not ready to make peace yet. “Fine. Why did you even bother coming to Mom’s funeral?”

  It takes Ellis a moment to recover from the shock of the question. “I…I loved your mom once. She was a good woman. A good mother. I wanted to pay my respects, to remember her.”

  “Yeah, right. If you loved her, then why did you leave her?”

  She knows what Mia’s really asking is why did she leave them both. But she can see that Mia is being churlish and in no mood for the truth. Her question is meant to punish Ellis. “We will discuss this one day, Mia, I promise. But not today.”

  She gets up, opens the nearest window in the faint hope there’s a cooling breeze. The loft and her bedroom have window air conditioners, but not the rest of the place. She makes a mental note to buy another air conditioner for the living room. Voices, laughter mostly, drift up from somewhere outside. She peers through the filmy glass (a team of cleaners is due tomorrow) and sees there’s a backyard party going on in the house behind theirs. Mostly women, a few men. A barbecue that’s smoking away and smelling mouth-wateringly of ribs. She peers closer at the profile of the tall woman with the short, light brown hair. She looks so familiar. Too familiar. The woman turns in Ellis’s direction. Oh, no, it can’t be. Could it? Holy shit, it is! It’s Abby, standing talking to two women, one of whom has a small child with her. What the hell is Abby doing here, an hour’s drive from the city? Does she live in this town? In the house right behind me? If that’s not the weirdest coincidence ever, Ellis doesn’t know what is.

  She feels the blood drain from her face and swears it settles in a leaden pool right in her stomach. Their life together, such as it is for two or three hours every Thursday afternoon, does not—cannot—spill over to the rest of Ellis’s life. Well, not if you count the occasional sexy dream or fantasy or that one time when they were each having dinner at that restaurant at the same time. Compartmentalizing is the way they’ve both planned it—clean, with boundaries, without any strings or expectations or the useless, doomed little what-ifs. This kind of close proximity, she thinks as she watches Abby gesticulate with her hands as she talks, is not what they signed up for. This, right here, is the little pin bursting her—their—bubble.

  Goddammit, she thinks, and turns her back to the window.

  Chapter Ten

  Amy takes her place at the table in the hospital CEO’s massive office. To her left is the chief of staff, beside him is the chief of human resources, then the chief financial officer. The heads of other departments—OB/GYN, emergency, medicine, nursing—fill the remaining chairs, with the CEO and her administrative assistant at the head of the table. The tension in the room makes Amy feel like they’ve been called to the principal’s office.

  “I’m sorry about the short notice,” says the CEO, a woman in her mid-sixties who can’t seem to entertain the idea of retiring. Janice Harrison has been at the hospital seemingly forever, back when Amy’s father had privileges here. “But I’m afraid it’s important.”

  Of course it’s important, Amy thinks impatiently. They wouldn’t all be here if it wasn’t.

  “It seems that our hospital will be undergoing a lengthy and extremely detailed review and evaluation over the coming weeks and probably months. Which means I want all of you to accumulate and have at your fingertips everything there is to know about your department—the budget line by line, numbers of procedures broken down by month and year, statistics on everything from wait times to how many boxes of Kleenex are in the storage closets, any staffing issues, anything you can think of. And commit it to memory.”

  So Kate was right. Shit. Her mind swings to her own department, because when the hospital is under siege, as it surely will be, she’s got to think about protecting her department first. Don Atkinson, now there’s a thorn in her backside. His absence from the surgery service is very poor timing indeed. What if the corporation decides it can do without another staff surgeon afte
r all? She puzzles out all the angles and scenarios that might await, the hows and whys, and as she glances around, she can see that everyone else at the table is doing the same—having a dialogue in their head with a slightly panicked, faraway look in their eyes. They’re all mentally calculating how bad things might get, how much they might lose.

  The chief financial officer, a woman about Amy’s age, pushes her glasses up her nose and tentatively raises her hand, like she’s unsure she’s allowed to ask a question.

  “Yes, Donna?”

  “Any idea what this is all about? Has it to do with next year’s funding?”

  They are only three months into the current budget year, with hospital budgets expiring on the last day of March of each year. It seems awfully early to start worrying about next year, though not, Amy supposes, if the audit is going to take months to complete.

  Janice Harrison lifts her shoulders in a tight shrug.

  Donna instantly pales. Anything to do with funding will be a massive headache for her as the overseer of the hospital’s $44-million budget. “It’s not about some sort of irregularities in this year’s budget, is it?”

  “I don’t think so,” Harrison replies. “At least, there’s no indication there are concerns about the current budget.”

  “Well,” grumbles Bob Lakefield, the hospital’s chief of staff. “It can’t be good news to have the greater corporation breathing down our necks. What the hell are they looking for, Janice?”

  They’re a pretty tight group, given that their hospital is the smallest one in the region. Most of the staff have worked here for years, have many times been through the nail-biting that happens each year at budget time. But this, this is an entirely different beast, and Amy can feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. There have been rumors for as long as she’s been here, longer even, that the hospital, because of its size, is in peril. For the first time, it feels like more than a rumor, like something not quite so abstract. The boogeyman is walking up the driveway.

  “I can’t say for sure, Bob, but I know they’re looking at everything with a fine-tooth comb. The CEO of the regional corporation as well as some sort of consultant are coming here this Thursday afternoon to meet with our board, so I’m sure the plan will become more clear at that point.” She casts her eyes around the room. “I would like all of you to plan to attend the meeting so that you can hear everything straight from the horse’s mouth and be prepared to answer any questions. Meantime, get yourself up to speed on every nook and cranny with your department. I want clean closets, people, no skeletons. If any of you have outstanding parking tickets, pay them. If you have unhappy patients who could be a problem, mollify them. Unhappy staff, order them to get happy. Unhappy spouse, send them on a vacation.” She smiles at her last suggestion, but she’s the only one in the room doing so.

  Amy leans back in her chair, feels her body go a little slack as others shout out pointless questions that can’t be answered. She detests this political bullshit. It’s not why she practices medicine, yet she also hates leaving her fate in other peoples’ hands, which is why she agreed to become chief of surgery. She wants a voice at the table; she simply doesn’t want a reason to have to use it.

  Amy’s phone chimes softly with an incoming message. Discreetly, she removes it from her lab coat and checks the text. It’s Ellen (they’d traded cell numbers a couple of weeks ago, to be used only in an emergency, which they’d defined as one of them needing to cancel). Sorry, can’t make it this Thursday, says the message, accompanied by a sad face emoji. Amy exhales her disappointment. She was going to have to cancel as well, thanks to being ordered to attend this week’s board meeting, but dammit! It’s the one thing a week that’s all hers (well, Ellen’s too). It’s her only form of self-indulgence, her only escape from the frenetic pace of her life, from the adrenaline and the responsibilities, the challenges, the disappointments, even the victories, of her job. A brief respite, too, from worrying about her parents. And now it’ll be almost two weeks before she sees Ellen again.

  She fingers the keypad and types back: Turns out I can’t make it either, work issue. She adds a sad face as well. See you next week?

  Ellen’s reply is instantaneous: You bet!

  Amy slides her phone back in her pocket. Fuck me.

  * * *

  Ellis pulls into the hospital parking lot, grateful that by the weekend she’ll be living within walking distance, since this is where she’ll be spending most of her time for the foreseeable future. The hospital is a three-story brick affair, a couple of wings clearly having been added over the decades, if the mismatched brick is any indication. She imagines the hospital as tired inside, of having outlived its shelf life, and she’s not wrong. Small hospitals were and still are important community centerpieces, though their role has begun to shift in the past two decades. Where you once gave birth in the same hospital, maybe had a minor surgery or two, eventually died there, that practice has largely disappeared. Health care today means large, sleek, shiny hospitals with multi-million-dollar diagnostic machines and specialties in very specific areas of medicine. Most hospitals can no longer be everything to everyone, a one-stop zone for the sick. It’s more fiscally prudent to offer specific types of care because it’s cheaper than trying to provide the same equipment, the same training for staff, and the same level of care across the board. Plus specializing offers results with better outcomes, because staff get very good at doing the same thing over and over. You need heart bypass surgery, you go to Hospital A. You need brain surgery, you go to Hospital B. You need to give birth, you go to Hospital C. Need a colonoscopy or a minor procedure, Hospital D is your destination. Simple really, but hugely unpopular among populations that want their hospital to do everything the way they’ve always done it.

  The front lobby looks like it’s seen better days—chipped tiles, faded paint. Ellis tries not to form a snap judgment on what the final pronouncement will be on this place, but she’s done these reviews enough times to make an early, educated guess. There will be big changes, of that she’s sure. And it means she’ll have to brace herself against the outcry from staff, from patients, from leaders in the community. Nobody likes having services altered or taken away, especially with something as sacred as health care.

  But Ellis hasn’t been hired to hold peoples’ hands, to make them feel warm and fuzzy. She’s been hired to dispose of the hospital’s budget deficit by offering up major cost savings, major efficiencies that will chart a sustainable future for the hospital. Politically, it’s become absolutely clear that annual funding raises for hospitals of anywhere from three to five per cent, are a thing of the past. First, though, she’ll need to work with staff to identify those areas that can be trimmed or even eliminated, and then she’ll need to make recommendations to the board.

  Ellis glances at her watch to be sure she won’t be late for the board meeting. It’s exactly the hour when she should be meeting Abby at the hotel. They should be in bed right now, staring out together at the hazy Detroit skyline across the river, aglow from sex. This, she thinks, as she presses the elevator button for the second floor where the boardroom is, is as far from a sexy afternoon as she can get.

  Her mind is still on Abby as her heels click down the hallway. She said she would have needed to cancel their rendezvous anyway because of a work issue. What work issue? What exactly does Abby do for a living, anyway? She’s imagined everything from lawyer to business owner to professor, and now, of course, there’s the added possibility that she lives right here in town, which is way too much for Ellis to consider in her crowded brain. She hasn’t seen Abby in the neighboring backyard since the other day, so maybe she was only visiting someone, because one thing Ellis is sure about is that this town is way too small for both of them. Their time at the hotel each week is a place where the outside world stops at the door. Seeing each other outside of that context would be weird…though the idea isn’t completely annoying. Could even be fun under the right circumstances
.

  She opens the door and is greeted and offered a seat between the hospital’s CEO and the CEO of the entire umbrella corporation—the Essex County Regional Hospital Services Corporation. There are more than a dozen others around the table, all engaged in quiet small talk, most of them ignoring her.

  “My apologies,” Janice Harrison, the CEO of Erie Shores Hospital, says to Ellis. “We’re still waiting on the chief of medicine and the chief of surgery. Shouldn’t be much longer.”

  The players around the table start fidgeting. Throats are cleared, fingers drum nervously on the tabletop. Finally, a beefy, ginger-haired man in a lab coat walks in, mumbling apologies. Behind him, Ellis glimpses another white-coated figure. Slim, tall, definitely a woman. The ginger takes a seat and Ellis’s eyes fall onto… Oh my God. Her mouth and jaw are suddenly as fixed as week-old cement because it’s Abby, right here in the flesh wearing a white lab coat and looking damned fine. So she’s a doctor, a surgeon. But at this hospital? Oh no.

  She wants to lay her head on the table, opt out of being a grownup, just this once. Somehow she’s going to have to forget that it’s Abby. Forget it’s the woman who has a souvenir of her underwear somewhere…maybe in the pocket of that crisp lab coat for all Ellis knows. How the hell can this be happening? And how the hell can the world be this small? She tells herself a mistake has been made, because she’s seen the list of staff names, and there was no Abby or Abigail. And yet there’s her lover’s name sewn above the breast pocket of the lab coat: Dr. Amy Spencer. Wait. Amy?

  Amy can’t speak, so deep is her shock that Ellen—no, make that Ellis Hall, according to the introductions—is sitting down the table from her. And trying really hard not to look at her. Fuck. This is the woman who has Amy’s fate and the fate of the hospital in her hands? This woman with the lush, red hair tied into a French twist down her back and wearing a cream-colored suit over a mint green shell that can’t hide her familiar curves? This woman that Amy has made love to every Thursday afternoon over the course of several weeks and who’s begun, whether Amy wants to admit it or not, a slow migration into her heart? Her brain processes the situation about as successfully as if there’s mud churning inside her skull.