Now That You Mention It: A Novel

by Kristan Higgins

  The imposter feeling faded. Nora the Troll, Nora whose father had left without even saying goodbye, the ugly sister, the boring sister, the girl who stole Luke Fletcher’s scholarship and put his twin in the hospital... She was a creature of the past. Now I woke up every day in my adorable apartment and couldn’t wait to get to work, figure out what was ailing my patients, do rounds in the hospital. I was a good doctor, if still new, and the partners in the practice liked me. I got great patient reviews. Some of my Tufts classmates were at Boston City as well, and we’d go out for dinner or drinks, to parties, to the Common or Back Bay.

  I dated, went away for weekends with my girlfriends, spent the occasional weekend happily alone, reading, cooking, going for a run, ambling through Boston. I was so happy.

  Enter Bobby Byrne.

  I’d seen him—he was hard to miss. In the immortal words of Derek Zoolander, he was really, really, really ridiculously good-looking. Six-two; muscular build; thick, curly dark hair; aquamarine eyes that are usually only seen after Photoshopping. He was the best-looking guy I’d seen in real life. More beautiful than Luke Fletcher, even.

  Once, he would’ve been so ridiculously out of my league, I would’ve lowered my eyes to the ground as he passed. Not anymore. Now we were equals. I was thirty-two, secure with my abilities, comfortable in my own skin, someone who enjoyed her own company and loved her friends, too.

  Bobby was the head of the ER, a young person’s job fit for adrenaline junkies and doctors who didn’t love patient interaction. Fix ’Em Up and Ship ’Em Out was the ER’s motto, and no one embraced it more than Bobby. Once in a while, I’d be called to the ER for a rectal bleed (usually just hemorrhoids, but everyone always thought they were dying, so it was kind of nice to be able to reassure them). I’d see Bobby, he’d smile at me.

  There was a group of us at the hospital who were unmarried; we called ourselves Doctors Without Spouses, and we’d go to Fenway once in a while, or to Durgin Park to get Indian pudding. For the first six months we knew each other, Bobby was dating Mia, a social worker at the hospital. She was quite pretty, if way too thin, and perpetually unhappy. Once in a while, she’d come out with Doctors Without Spouses. Our group clearly irritated her; she wasn’t a doctor, kind of missing the joke—the group wasn’t just doctors, but somehow, Mia had never heard of Doctors Without Borders, and every time she came, the name of our group had to be explained to her. But more, she was irritated because she clearly would’ve loved to be Bobby’s spouse.

  She was whiny, constantly drawing attention to herself by being visibly wretched. She didn’t like the rest of us, answered questions with one word, sat with a puss on her face. Every time she came with us, she’d have a whisper fight with Bobby and, most of the time, leave, not very surreptitiously wiping away tears. It was all very drama queeny, and I hated it for him...and for me.

  She never ate, and being a GI doc, I would wince as she asked for water with a slice of lemon, no food. Her fingers were swollen (laxative abuse), her arms dangling like sticks from her shoulders. Because of the habitual vomiting I suspected, her cheeks were puffy, her lips cracked and chapped, and her teeth looked translucent from enamel loss.

  I wanted to help her—and like her—but it was hard. She was obviously troubled and wanted everyone to know it.

  One day, I saw her in the hallway, looking harried and on the verge of tears, which was her resting expression. “Mia, got a second?” I asked. We went into an empty waiting room.

  “What do you want?” she asked. Not terribly polite.

  “Well, to be honest, I’m a little worried about you.”

  “Why?” she snapped. “Because you want to date my boyfriend?”

  I let that sit a beat. “You’re very thin, Mia.”

  “I’m naturally slender.” She looked at my size 10 body with clear disdain.

  “You have all the signs of an eating disorder. I’m a GI doc. I can tell.”

  She rolled her eyes in disgust. “I’m fine.”

  “If you want help, I’m here, okay? I can recommend a bunch of programs and—”

  “It’s none of your business, Nora.” She stomped out, the wounded doe on her toothpick legs. Anorexia was such a horror, the warped sense of self, the bizarre pleasure the person got from self-damage. If she didn’t change her ways, she’d face a lifetime of poor health. A short lifetime. I asked Roseline about her, and my friend said everyone had reached out to her, and that she was Bobby’s current damsel in distress.

  I mulled that over, let me assure you.

  I thought about Bobby too much, sitting on my tiny balcony, nursing a glass of wine and looking over at the Zakim Bridge, that architectural stunner. I liked Bobby, but I wasn’t about to flirt with a guy in a relationship.

  One night, when Doctors Without Spouses was going out (minus Mia), Bobby and I walked side by side. In a low voice, I asked him if he had any concerns about Mia’s health.

  “You mean her anorexia?” he asked.

  “Well...yes.”

  He sighed. “I’m trying to help, but she’s pretty happy being miserable.”

  “Yeah, that comes across.”

  “It would be so nice to date a normal person,” he said, cutting me a look.

  “Who you calling normal?” I asked and he laughed. My stomach tightened with the thrill of it.

  Two weeks later, Mia quit the hospital and went back to Minnesota to her parents and enrolled in a treatment program. Bobby texted me with the news. For Mia, I was relieved. For me, I was exhilarated.

  Bobby was free, and he wasn’t being subtle about his interest.

  For the next few months, we kept things at a flirty friendship level—I treated him the same way I treated Dr. Breckenridge, a seventy-something-year-old doctor who was beloved by everyone. But I didn’t have the hots for Dr. Breckenridge.

  Bobby was fantastic. Funny, smart, snarky. I almost didn’t want to start dating, our friendship was such a blast. We went running together along the Charles, saw a great blues singer in an appropriately seedy bar. We grabbed lunch at the hospital cafeteria. We walked the Freedom Trail and got Sam Adams beers afterward.

  Then one night as we were walking back from a Doctors Without Spouses pizza outing—the original Regina’s in the North End—Bobby took my hand, and it was lovely. Just held my hand, but we knew, and so did everyone else. “How long are you two gonna pretend you’re not a thing?” asked Roseline.

  “We’re not a thing,” I said. “We’re two fascinating, miraculous clusters of cells.”

  “Throbbing for each other,” added Tom from Ortho.

  “That, too,” Bobby added and everyone laughed. It was a golden moment—the beautiful spring finally here after the long winter, a group of young friends at the start of what would clearly be illustrious careers, love on the horizon. Pizza, just like I’d always imagined back in high school.

  Two days later, Bobby kissed me. “You ever gonna sleep with me?” he asked.

  “Someday, maybe,” I said. “Not today, of course.”

  I’d had boyfriends before (three...well, two and a half), but I’d never been in love. I was pretty sure that was about to change.

  Another month of flirting and kissing and holding hands before we finally went back to my place and proceeded to laugh, undress each other, laugh some more, kiss and finally get it on.

  This was it, I thought as we lay there afterward. Fabulous sex, a guy who was funny and popular and smart and me, who was finally, amazingly, all of those things, too (except for the guy part).

  For three months, I had the absolute best time of my life. Life was revving on all cylinders—career, personal, romantic, health. Bobby and I spent at least a few nights a week together, and we laughed and watched old horror movies from the ’60s and made love and ate pancakes at 2:00 a.m. and laughed some more.

  Bobby was surprisingly thou
ghtful—surprising to me, because he was brisk and efficient as a doctor, none of that hand-holding stuff I myself loved doing. He brought me bubbles one Sunday afternoon, the kind kids use with the wand, and we sat on my balcony and we watched the bubbles rise and float. When I sat up all night in the room of a critical patient who’d had massive blood loss after a GI bleed, he came up with a dish of soft-serve ice cream and got me a blanket. One night, when we were spooning in bed, he said, “If I can’t smell your hair at least once a day for the rest of my life, I might have to kill myself.”

  It sounded like a marriage proposal. “Don’t kill yourself,” I said and squeezed his hand, basking in the glow of being loved.

  At work, I had energy by the bucket load, smiles for everyone. The urge to burst into song was strong. When I wasn’t with Bobby, I was kind of in love with myself. One night, as I sat on my balcony, I tried a little mindfulness, a little look at you now. I was a successful physician who loved her job, lived in a great American city, had a fabulous apartment with a view. My friends were wonderful, funny, smart and kind.

  And now I had a fantastic boyfriend.

  It was a long way from Scupper Island’s most hated resident. The memory of my last day of high school made me shiver, but I pushed the thought away. That was a lifetime ago.

  On the street below, a man was walking his dog, a brown-and-white mutt. The guy looked up, and I waved. He waved back. “Cute dog,” I called, the friendliest person in New England.

  “Thanks. Nice view up there?” he called.

  “The best,” I answered. Yes. Life was wonderful.

  And then it wasn’t.

  I left the office one Tuesday, swung by the hospital to check on a couple of patients, popped into the ER and was able to wrangle four minutes of hot kissing in a supply closet with Dr. Byrne. Then I took the T to my neighborhood, came aboveground and stopped at the corner market for some salad fixings, a chat with Avi and a Snickers bar. As I was leaving, a guy held the door for me.

  “Thank you!” I said, beams of sunlight practically radiating from my skin, so in love with life was I.

  “My pleasure,” he answered.

  A cloud passed over my sun.

  I knew. In that instant, I instinctively knew he wasn’t a good person. He had on a Red Sox cap, pulled low on his forehead. Wore an oversize jacket. He didn’t have any purchases with him, though he was leaving the store.

  Nice, Nora, I told myself. A man holds the door for you, and you think he’s a terrorist.

  It turned out, he was a terrorist. My own personal terrorist.

  Now, I wasn’t fresh off the ferry. Granted, I grew up on an island where we didn’t even have house keys, because locking up was for the summer people, who had something worth stealing, not for us.

  But I’d lived in Boston since I was eighteen. Not once did I have a problem with crime, but I knew how to walk tall, wear my bag diagonally across my body so it couldn’t be lifted. I didn’t get into elevators with people who gave off a bad vibe. I lived in a building with a guard, the comforting, smiling Tyrese. I always locked my doors. Even the balcony slider, and I lived on the third floor.

  I waved to Avi and walked the three blocks home, not too fast, not too slow. Twice, I glanced back, as I’d later tell the police. No one was following me, but I still felt uneasy. I called Bobby; it went to voice mail, but I made it seem as if he’d picked up. “Hey, handsome, how are you? You want to come over later?” He was working second shift, as I well knew, since I’d just been making out with him. “Okay, big guy. See you in a bit.” I’d explain later.

  I got to my building, grateful for the big and strong Tyrese. I asked about his twin daughters, admired some pictures of them on his phone. Then I got on the elevator, hit 3 and tried to relax. “Stop with your perturbation,” my mother used to say when I was nervous, in that strange mix of island dialect where she’d say ain’t and use an SAT word in the same breath.

  My mother wouldn’t be afraid. She was never afraid.

  Besides, I was home now. I was safe. Maybe the guy had been a deviant, but it didn’t matter now.

  Just in case, I took out my phone and dialed 9-1...and kept my thumb hovering over the 1.

  My door didn’t look tampered with. I unlocked it, phone still in my hand. The apartment was just as I’d left it—super neat and so pretty, a bouquet of red gerbera daisies on the coffee table, six lemons in a bowl on the counter, just because. The balcony was empty, as it should’ve been.

  It wasn’t a huge apartment. The only hiding place would be the bedroom closet or the bathtub with the curtain closed. And I never closed the curtain all the way, because I’d seen the horror movies. I knew about these things. I left it half-open every day, because I liked the pretty pattern of birds and flowers.

  I put my groceries down, went into my bedroom and, feeling a bit stupid, looked in the closet. No one. Glanced in the bathroom. No one. The shower curtain was closed halfway, just as I’d left it.

  I deleted the 9-1 and set my phone on the bureau, almost laughing at my paranoia. Lowered the shades and figured I’d get into my Gryffindor pajamas (gold-and-red-striped, silk, completely impossible to resist) and watch some TV. Bobby would call later, and we’d laugh like we always did.

  But because that creeped-out feeling remained, I decided I’d stay dressed and ask Roseline to hang out. She only lived two blocks away, and I had a nice bottle of fumé blanc in the fridge.

  I went into the bathroom to wash up, bending over the sink to splash water on my face.

  Something was different.

  Run.

  It was a command that came from every cell of my body, my lizard brain, that oldest part of the human mind where instinct lives, unfettered by the limbic system of emotion or rationalization. Run, it said, telling me my life was at stake, and I obeyed before I fully processed the thought. My brain went into overdrive, the thoughts fast and clear.

  I was hyperaware of every muscle in my body—quadriceps femoris, iliopsoas, gluteus maximus pushing forward, deltoids and biceps stretching and contracting in what seemed like the slowest motion—one stride, my foot hitting the carpet, my left arm forward, right arm back, back foot coming forward, leg stretching out in a racer’s stride, setting down. I was wearing heels, but my strides were sure and strong, powered by adrenaline.

  The shower curtain had been closed all the way.

  He was in the bathroom.

  I heard the metal rings hiss as he whipped open the shower curtain.

  The second stride. I was sprinting and silent. The air seemed to have turned to thick red plasma.

  Hurry.

  His footsteps were muffled on the hall carpeting. I was in the living room, three strides from the door, and I reached out for the doorknob, hurling myself at it when he tackled me, shoved my face against the floor and sat on my back.

  “Hello,” he said, and fear unlike anything I’d ever felt flooded me in ice.

  I screamed. He punched me on my upturned left cheek, and my scream was cut off, shock and pain and a sense of the surreal blurring my thoughts. I’d never been hit before, and my face throbbed with white pain. I flailed and kicked, accomplishing nothing. Then his weight was gone, and he had me by the ankles, dragging me as I twisted and heaved. There was my shoe. Could I reach my shoe and hit him with it? I reached, but it was too far away.

  “No!” I screamed. “Let me go!”

  He dragged me down the hall. I grabbed onto the bathroom door frame, but my fingers weren’t strong enough to hang on. Down farther—the rug burning my chin—into my bedroom, my pretty bedroom with the soft gray walls, the navy comforter with the pink flowers on it, the red vase, the throw pillows.

  I heard myself screaming, again and again and again, with every breath. This was a new building, and the walls were thick so residents wouldn’t be bothered with the noise from their neighbors
. I tried to fling my body weight away from him, and he lost his grip on one ankle. My leg kicked out, but being facedown, I couldn’t see my target, and my foot just flailed in the air. He grabbed it again and twisted my legs so I was abruptly on my back.

  “Help!” I screamed, that weakest, saddest word, and he kicked me in the ribs, and Holy Mother, his shoes were still on. Pain blossomed in red, spreading through my whole torso. I couldn’t breathe—little squeaks jerked in and out of me.

  One part of my brain gave calm instructions; another whimpered in terror. You’re okay, you’re still here.

  Oh, Jesus, Jesus, help me.

  The wind is knocked out of you. You’re okay. Maybe a broken rib.

  Please, please, please. What do I—What do I do?

  You’re going into shock. Stay calm. Stay calm.

  The man looked down at me, huge as he towered over me.

  He was going to rape me. Kill me, maybe, and the terror won. My brain went white and silent. All I could see was him and how he was going to ruin me.

  He looked down at me, a face so ironically banal and forgettable. Voldemort, Harry Potter’s nemesis with his evil face and missing nose—at least you could remember that guy.

  In the past when I’d considered this situation—because every woman does, every woman sees herself both raped and murdered and also kicking the living shit out of her attacker—I imagined being that fast-thinking warrior who punched in the throat, kneed in the balls, knocked him out cold, the asshole who had dared to try to violate me, and I’d add another kick for good measure. I’d be triumphant, a hero, a role model for women everywhere.

  But now that it was happening, all I wanted was not to die.

  My mother would fight. She would win. Lily would, too. No one would dare hurt Lily.

  My lungs suddenly worked again, and I sucked in a deep breath, rolled away from him, scrambled to my feet and swung, fist clenched, as hard as I could, catching his head. My fist went instantly numb.