His Other Wife

by Deborah Bradford

  “You see I was right about the party,” Pam commented with false lightness. “You could have stopped this from happening. But you didn’t.”

  Hilary sliced her finger. Blood oozed from the cut, mixed with the tomato.

  “Seth is a part of our family, too,” Pam said, and Hilary felt like the knife that had just cut her finger had also twisted in her heart.

  Pam’s accusations hit far too close to her own deep fear. I was supposed to protect him. He was never supposed to know how it felt for his world to collapse. Hilary stared at her gushing finger, her voice skating on the edge of panic. “You don’t think this could have anything to do with you, too? You don’t think this could have something to do with all of us?”

  Eric wandered through the side door, herding the children. Pam snagged his attention. “Can you get them to wash their hands? It’s time to eat.” Eric tapped them on the bottom and they bounded away.

  Hilary had no idea if Seth could overhear this conversation and, honestly, she didn’t care. “I met Seth’s English teacher at the florist shop the other day. Seth was supposed to write an essay about graduation and how his family was going to celebrate it.”

  “So,” Pam asked, “did he write about the party that you told him he could go to?”

  Eric was turning toward Pam, but Hilary made him stop. “No, Eric,” she said. “You need to hear this, too.”

  “Did he write about us coming to visit?” Eric asked.

  Hilary spared no details as she recounted the story of running into Seth’s teacher at the flower shop. Seth’s wishful thinking, unspoken. And even though she had never read the essay, she knew her son well enough! She knew how Seth would have described it. Eric and Hilary beneath sun so clear and sparkling that it burned through their resolve. A family float trip as if the divorce had never happened, the rapids boiling, the raft angling over river-slick boulders, fishermen’s lines arcing in the breeze. “He’s eighteen years old. And he made up a story that was pure fiction.”

  “Well,” Eric said. “As long as he told them he’d made it up.”

  “He didn’t, Eric. His teacher spoke to me after she’d read it. She complimented us for sacrificing for Seth’s sake, for how well we parent together.”

  This made the second time I didn’t know how to protect Seth from getting ripped to pieces.

  “Seth doesn’t like me,” Pam started up again. “You should have seen his face when he walked in and saw me here.”

  To Eric’s credit, he didn’t tell her she was wrong. “Do you blame him? He can’t help what he’s feeling, Pam. Give him some time.”

  “He’s had five years.”

  “And he’s just made one of the worst mistakes he’ll ever make in his life.” Hilary recognized Eric’s tone of voice, the same combination of anger and withdrawal that had made their divorce so difficult. He’d reached maximum input. In man terms, the War General had just sounded a massive retreat. “This isn’t the time or place. I want you to just drop it.”

  At that Hilary expected Pam to explode. Only she didn’t get the chance because Ben came out of the bathroom. “Mom, why won’t Seth play with me today?” Then, “Mom? What’s wrong?”

  “Go find your sister,” Pam said.

  Eric and Pam went for a walk by the lakeshore that afternoon. They left their shoes on the boardwalk before they got to the sand. Ben and Lily skipped along in front of them. Lily was carefully picking up stones. Ben was being all boy, finding ropes of kelp that had washed ashore, saying it was a slimy green monster, and chasing Lily around with it.

  “Ben!” Pam called to him. “Stop torturing your sister.”

  Pam and Eric watched for a while as the children ran zigzags in the sand, racing on sandpiper legs. Eric touched Pam’s arm. “I have an important question to ask you.”

  “What?”

  “Do you mind if I change my plane ticket and stay a little longer? I think it’s important that I spend time with my son.”

  Pam strolled at his side, her toes digging in the sand. “I think we need to do whatever is right for him.”

  “You could take the kids back.” Eric bent to pick up a flat stone. He sidearmed it and it skipped twice before sinking into the water. “Get them home and get them into their normal routine again.”

  Pam froze where she stood, her eyes troubled. “You don’t want us to stay with you, Eric?”

  He stopped, too. “You? Stay? Even the kids?”

  “Yes.”

  “You would do that?”

  “Of course I would. You know I care about Seth. He’s your son. That makes him important to me, too.”

  “Pam, I know your heart. I know what you’re thinking. But maybe it isn’t the best idea.”

  “What do you mean, Eric? Don’t you want me here?”

  “It’s the money issue. There’s your job. And if you and the kids stay, we have to pay for the hotel another week.”

  “You could stay with your mom and dad,” she suggested. “I guess you could do that if we didn’t stay.”

  “Or I could even stay with Hilary.”

  Maybe it was the wrong thing to say. “Are you staying to help Seth through all of this, Eric? Or do you think it’s Hilary who needs support?”

  “I don’t understand what you’re so afraid of. What have I done to make you feel like this? Like you’re trying to get the upper hand in some competition that doesn’t exist?”

  Pam had no answer for him. It was almost like she didn’t hear. “What if Seth’s done this to try to get you away from me? You heard what Hilary said about the paper he wrote. What if this is some trick he’s pulling to get the two of you back together?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Anger sharpened Eric’s voice. “Why would you ask a question like that?” The waves of the lake slid up, curled onto themselves, and slipped back. “Trust me, Pam. Everything in life isn’t about you. I know my son. He wouldn’t pull something like this because of you. He wouldn’t consciously hurt anyone. Not for any reason.”

  “We’re your family,” Pam said. “We want to stay with you. If it means another week at the hotel, so be it.” But like sand that moves with the curve of the tide, something had slipped apart between them. The waves at their feet seemed to be asking questions, too.

  Chapter 14

  It had started to rain, one of those early-summer thunderstorms that took everyone by surprise. The Cubbies game in Wrigley Field would be rained out this afternoon. The high-school football stadium was a huge smudge on the horizon, a watercolor painting. Tires threw up rooster tails of spray as Hilary crossed an overpass. Lightning scribbled its name across the sky.

  Hilary didn’t know where she was headed. She hadn’t thought anything through. She only knew she had to find a place to breathe, a place where she wasn’t awash in other people’s voices.

  Landmarks passed without notice. The city streets gave way to mix-and-match blocks of suburbia, the chain stores and restaurants and movie complexes interchangeable with those of any other suburb in the country. She drove past the exit to the senior-party campground. She surprised herself when she didn’t take the exit and turn into the park entry.

  How hard would it be to disappear? She could buy L’Oréal Natural Black at a Wal-Mart and run her hair under a truck-stop faucet. She could abandon the car in a place it would never be found. She could start over as someone who’d never been Eric’s wife, who’d never been called to the emergency room to be told an ambulance was coming in, that her son had gotten drunk and jeopardized a girl’s life.

  After Hilary had lost her father she’d awakened often in the night, her heart pounding, thinking it had been a lie. Her father wasn’t gone at all. Hadn’t she just seen him in a dream? And when she’d realize again that he had died, she’d weep again, awash in an ocean of pure pain, healing pain, pain that was sweet because she’d been entitled to it.

  But this was a different sort of grief. It didn’t help, wasn’t working toward cleansing. She woke in the ni
ght and knew that she mustn’t let anyone hear her sobs. It was a selfish sort of pain, because her son needed her to be strong.

  Hilary knew where she would go, not to run from what frightened her most but to plunge to its very depths. She steered the car off at the next exit and turned toward the very place she probably shouldn’t go. She headed toward the hospital.

  She’d never actually signed out from her late-night shift. When Gina had told her about Seth, she’d grabbed her purse and her keys and had flown. Now the automatic doors slid soundlessly open so she could enter. The central waiting room bustled with activity. Families waited in petal-shaped chairs with their heads together, talking in low voices. A poster for cancer patients suggested: FIND A POSITIVE MEANING AND INVEST IN HOPE. LIVE IN THE PRESENT. CELEBRATE MILESTONES AND SPECIAL OCCASIONS. SUPPORT YOUR SUPPORT SYSTEM. Fish slipped silently past in the glass aquarium.

  Hilary stopped at the entrance to the PCU hallway and took a deep breath, steeling herself before she headed to the nurses’ station. She closed her eyes, lifted her chin, and, when she opened her eyes again, found herself staring into the hospital chapel. It wasn’t much bigger than the nurses’ break room. For the size of this hospital, it ought to have been much larger. It was rosewood paneled and rich, with an ornate brass cross on the altar and walls lined with velvet curtains. Candles burned beside a bank of fresh flowers. A chalice sat to one side, gleaming in the candlelight, in case a priest or a pastor needed to make use of it.

  Hilary couldn’t keep from going in; the gentle atmosphere beckoned her. She stood staring at the cross as if she’d never seen it before, at the white dove and the likeness of Jesus etched in the blue and ruby glass window, and thought how just one week ago she, too, had been a normal churchgoer, one who always sidled ten minutes late into the seat that the usher knew was her favorite. Being a Christian had been more of a habit than a relationship. When her nursing schedule allowed, she attended a small women’s group because she didn’t want to lose touch with the latest Bible studies. During these last difficult days, she’d been quick to throw out a prayer for God to help, then just as quick to hurry forward with her own plans without expecting any answer.

  Hilary knew from her years on staff here that this chapel had been a different sort of place. It had been a haven for those who had never trusted God before to utter their first desperate cries. It had been a place for those whose loved ones fell ill or who knew that their days were numbered or who had found out that they had lost a child. Between these walls had drifted accusations at God and gratitude for miracles and all the unanswerable faith questions that came when miracles didn’t happen.

  There had been a wedding here once. A pretty young bride, a leukemia patient, who’d been almost as pale and fragile as the lace on her dress. The nurses had watched from the doorway, wearing scrubs of every color and tissues poking out of their pockets along with their stethoscopes. Well, what would you do if you didn’t know whether you were going to make it to next week? Hilary had overheard someone say. The days you don’t have can’t subtract from the days you do have, can they?

  The last Hilary had heard, the woman had entered a clinical trial and gone into remission. Ten years had passed and she and the other members of the trial still stopped by on the anniversary to take their doctor out for dinner. The woman was still happily married and had a kid. Not bad. You never knew.

  Hilary stepped forward and gripped the pew. How she longed to have the sort of faith that made her expect something beautiful to come from broken places. But she didn’t think that could happen anymore. “What am I supposed to do?” she whispered to no one as she hung on to the pew the way that, when she’d been a girl, she’d hung on to a window ledge at a candy store, looking in. “Who am I supposed to be for all of them?”

  She lost track of how long she waited there. Candle flames danced inside the glass. The roses in the arrangement shone dark as blood. As the sun moved over the sky, maybe it was only the moving shadow, but Hilary thought she could almost see the flowers opening. “Are you here, Lord?” she whispered. “Why won’t you ever answer?”

  There had been the patients she’d run out on this morning, the young woman learning to breast-feed, the girl struggling with asthma and a bad case of the flu, the man who’d gotten tangled between his dog and his bike who needed surgery for a tear in his ACL. As quiet as the pulse she might find in the crook of an arm, as urgent as breath, the message came. DON’T ASK ME WHO YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE, BELOVED. Words intermingling with the very beat of Hilary’s heart. ASK ME WHO I AM.

  But Hilary didn’t hear the words, not this time. She was on her way to check patients’ charts. She’d already left the chapel behind.

  She told herself she’d returned because she hadn’t finished the end-of-shift reports. But the minute she stepped into the elevator, Hilary understood something she hadn’t admitted to herself. She’d come for a different reason. She wanted to keep vigil, too.

  The Intensive Care Unit waiting room had a different feel from the gathering space downstairs. This room wasn’t nearly so broad and welcoming. The patients weren’t allowed visits from anyone except immediate family. The chairs sat like clenched fists facing one another. Everywhere you looked were boxes of tissue.

  Usually somber and silent, today this room was a circus. The senior class of Jefferson High had started arriving not long after the ambulance had careened into the bay. As Hilary edged toward the desk, she saw knots of sobbing girls hugging one another. Emily’s mother stood with her arm roped around her daughter. In spite of signs with red circles and slashes over drawings of phones, kids babbled on their cells anyway.

  The bank of gifts had grown to monstrous proportions. It must have started on a table beneath the television and grown toward the west wall. Balloons bobbed from their strings, their glinting Mylar belying the gravity of Laura’s condition: GET WELL SOON and THINKING OF YOU. Someone had brought in candles although hospital rules forbade them to be lit on an oxygen floor. The stuffed animals came in all shapes and sizes, some of them new, with tags, others dilapidated. Single-stem flowers had already started to wilt in their paper skins. Makeshift posters, in all different styles and colors, proclaimed: LAURA, WE LOVE YOU!!!!!

  The boys had bunched around each other, their knees locked, their jaws squared, an army of grim-faced soldiers. Against the back wall, Hilary saw Remy wipe his face with the hem of his T-shirt. T.J. slid down the wall until he landed on his rump, his eyes never leaving his iPod screen. Ian stared at the fluorescents overhead. Chase and Michael stood quietly talking, their fists shoved inside the pockets of their baggy jeans.

  Don’t forget Seth, Hilary wanted to say to them. There’s someone else who’s dying here, too. You have another friend who needs you. But even as she thought it, Hilary knew she was wrong. She would do what she could to support her son, but she couldn’t save him. Seth had taken it out of her hands.

  Gina had just signed off doctors’ orders and was entering them into the computer. She squinted from screen to paperwork to screen, her fingers sailing over the keys.

  “It’s a madhouse up here.” Hilary found the color-coded file and opened it.

  “Tell me about it.” Gina didn’t miss a beat. “Seven of my own patients to see, two admits, three moving downstairs, and the phone keeps ringing. I haven’t gotten away from this desk for an hour.”

  Hilary kept her voice light. “I ran out of here so fast, I didn’t get my reports done.”

  “That isn’t surprising. Hilary, it’s okay.”

  “I couldn’t finish my charting.”

  Although Gina’s gaze never left the screen, her lifted eyebrows indicated the milling throng of kids. “You know we’re bending every rule in the book to let them stay.”

  “I know.” Hilary had helped herself to a pen from a can beside the telephone. All three lights were blinking. Gina had everyone on hold.

  “They needed a place. They needed to be together.”

  Hilary
ran the pen down the column of I & O numbers, working the math in her head. She got to the bottom, scribbled a figure, and initialed the form. There she froze, unable to go further. If her eyes could have burned a hole in the page, they would have. She wasn’t fooling anyone.

  Wordlessly Gina slid a Kardex out that had been resting near the bottom of the pile. She moved it in Hilary’s direction in one economic motion. Her eyes never left the computer screen.

  “This is what you came for even though you won’t admit it. This is what you wanted to see, isn’t it?”

  “No, Gina. I —” But even though she protested, Hilary couldn’t keep from being drawn to the printed grid, the doctor’s almost illegible assessment: “Patient: Moore, Laura. Age: 17.”

  Here were the vital signs taken during the past hours, the crushed parts of her they’d tried to repair, the punctured lung, the bleeding on the brain, the low blood pressure, the drug-induced coma. The evaluations made no sense on the page. When someone hissed Seth’s name, Hilary didn’t notice. When she glanced up and found eyes on her, it didn’t register that she’d been recognized. Only this one thought clanged in her ears louder than if someone shouted it: The girl was fighting for her life. She’d be lucky to make it through the day.

  Chapter 15

  The shower was still running behind the bathroom door when Hilary went to check on Seth. She knocked tentatively, hoping Seth would hear her. When he didn’t respond within a half minute or so, she opened the door a crack. She asked in her cheeriest voice, “Hey? You there?”

  Seth stood in the shower, the water pouring over his head. He didn’t move. He didn’t turn off the shower. Hilary could tell, by the lack of steam in the room, that the water wasn’t hot anymore.

  “Seth,” Hilary said through the door. “Do you think you could eat anything?”