Fleishman Is in Trouble

by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

  “My stomach hurts again,” Solly said.

  “It’s going to be a long day,” Toby told Hannah. “If you don’t go to the Y you have to sit in my conference room and not complain.”

  “Yes!” they both shouted.

  At the hospital, he deposited them in what he now thought of as their conference room and made his rounds with his fellows. He saw three patients, and with each one he thought, This person is lucky that I am his doctor. Competence! Expertise! This was your Toby. This was your Dr. Fucking Fleishman.

  He was updating a chart at the nurses’ station computer when his phone went off. This was it. He told his fellows to take a break and headed to Bartuck’s office.

  “Have you checked on your patient?” Bartuck asked, and flicked his chin in indication for Toby to sit down.

  “David Cooper is still hoping for a miracle.”

  “She’s brain dead. The miracle already didn’t happen.”

  “Yes, sir. We thought we’d give him one more day to come to terms before talking about it again.”

  “Hospital experience is reported worse in families whose loved ones are left to linger. Remember that.” Bartuck had his hands folded on his desk. He squinted. “I’m going to just say it because there’s no easy way to do it.”

  “No, I spoke to him. I think Marco already told him. They just need some time.”

  “No, not that. It’s about your position.” The moment stretched out while Toby blinked out of sequence. He suddenly felt cold. He heard Bartuck’s words, but not in order. “Someone job for hired else we the.”

  Toby watched as the thing that was in front of him became real. His mouth was open.

  “Sorry, Toby I’m.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Outside hired someone from here they wanted we new blood some in.”

  “You’re hiring someone from outside to be my boss?”

  “Be the to yes subdivision head.”

  Toby looked out Bartuck’s window. You could see the park and all the way over to the East Side from here. He had forgotten to call the super again about the ceiling stain. He shook his head. “I thought it was decided.”

  “Nobody doubts your skill,” Bartuck was saying. “But they felt like you were unwilling to give the time.”

  “Time? I’ve been here every day and every night on the Cooper case. How much more time could I give?”

  “You’ve taken how many personal days in the last three weeks?”

  “So that’s it? I’m just never going to get ahead here? I’ve been here for fourteen years. I’ve had a bad couple of weeks.”

  “You’re an excellent doctor,” Bartuck said. “Everyone agrees. But there were some concerns that you don’t show any interest in research, that your grant didn’t exactly work out, that you were a clock watcher….” The rest didn’t really matter. Phillipa had objections to Toby’s appointment. Phillipa, who only watched clocks to ensure she was working as performatively long as possible! “I didn’t say never. If you start putting in the face time, you never know what could happen.”

  “Phillipa’s had this position for nine years, sir. I can’t wait another nine years for a promotion.”

  Bartuck stood up and walked around to sit on his desk. “I’m sure you’ll understand that we expect you to come to drinks tonight to celebrate Dr. Schwartz.”

  Toby shook his head. “Of course, sir.” He had a feeling that if he were the type of guy to storm out of here, he would have been the type of guy to get the job. “Schwartz?”

  “Aaron Schwartz.”

  Aaron fucking Schwartz. Now his boss. “We were in med school together.”

  “Well, that’s good for him to have someone here who knows the ropes.”

  Toby nodded and stood up and left.

  * * *

  —

  TOBY STAYED IN a bathroom stall with his head between his legs for twenty-five long minutes and listened to a make-out session and one slurpy bout of oral sex between two residents and one very unfortunate gastrointestinal incident from an orderly.

  He had fucked up his life. He had done all of it wrong. He left the stall and went to wash his hands. The electric hand dryer had instructions on it that said FEEL THE POWER with an arrow for where you were supposed to put your hands. He looked in the mirror. He was a tiny piece-of-shit motherfucker. Feel the power. What power? Rachel had been right. Fuck, Rachel had been right. Toby thought he would collapse from the sadness and injustice he felt—he wouldn’t be able to handle one more second of it. He would be found by poor Clay, who was trying to take a nap for the first time in his twenty-four-hour shift. Clay would call in the nurses to suture his bleeding, here and there, holes in his heart and his lungs and his tear ducts.

  But they wouldn’t be able to save him. One day, this would be just another thing in the block universe, which already contained such a load of shit, what did one more thing matter?

  He wasn’t in his office for more than a minute before Joanie popped her head in. Joanie. Joanie. “They just sent a man to CT from the ER. They want you to consult in about twenty minutes down there.”

  “Got it. Come on in.”

  She sat down across from his desk.

  “How are things going for you, Joanie?”

  “You mean, like, here?”

  “Yeah, in general.”

  “Fine. I’ve learned a lot. I can’t believe I saw a case of Wilson’s. It’s sad that she’s going to die.”

  “Yeah.” He stood up and walked around the desk and sat down on it. “You know, I think you’re really talented.”

  She smiled nervously. “Are you about to give me bad news?”

  She was so kind and special. She liked him—just for him. She appreciated and respected him. This was what he wanted. He wanted what Seth had. He wanted what I had. No, he wanted something even better than what we had, and something more specific. Yes, he was finally able to narrow in on the exact kind of person he wanted: a plain, nonspectacular person to love him back. He wanted someone to root for him. He wanted to be the star in the relationship, just this once.

  “I was wondering,” he said. “Do you want to come out to have dinner with me and the kids tonight?”

  She looked up at him, confused. “I…what? Like to babysit?”

  “No, with us. I thought maybe, since you’re not on tonight, we could all go to this Italian place we like.”

  How did this take him so long? He’d been so cynical about the Bartucks and about all the other guys who ended up with their subordinates. But honestly, what were you supposed to do? Just keep fucking random women forever? Turn down what is so obviously a beautiful opportunity and a delicate solution?

  The kids would love Joanie. She would be a calming influence on Hannah; she could undo all the poison Rachel had injected into her veins about fitting in and aspiring. She, with her weird old-man clothes and strange vintage proclivities, could show a girl what it’s like to be comfortable in her own skin. And Solly. Solly would have another person in his life who could validate his interests and let him be his own wonderful oddball self. Someone else who could talk about the universe with him—yes, someone who had also taken physics, Rachel. Someone who understood that the things that made Solly different also made him great.

  It would be strange around the office, sure, but this relationship wouldn’t exactly be like the rest of them. He would be taking as his partner someone who was his equal, just a little behind. Not a subordinate, not a nurse, not someone who would make his restaurant reservations—no, an equal. He would be doing the same thing Rachel was doing, really; he would be finding someone on his level, who appreciated him and didn’t want him to change. Things hadn’t worked out for him and Rachel. Long before she left, things weren’t working out. They had been matched fine once, but not anymore. Now they were fully formed ad
ults and that meant they knew what they wanted and what they needed. He wanted someone who found what he did to be as incredible and transcendent as it was. Joanie. Joanie! Joanie.

  Why were the walls made out of glass? He should be able to walk over to her and put her face in his hands and say, “You are who I’ve been waiting for all this time.”

  Instead, he kept his distance and said: “Joanie. You’re right that I’ve been going through something. I know you have, too. But maybe we shouldn’t spend another day…What I’m trying to say is that you’ve been right here all along, and I don’t know how I missed you.” He let himself trail off because he heard his own words and they moved him and scared him equally. Yes, he thought. This was so right.

  She looked at him for a second. “No, uh, thank you.” She stood up. “Thank you for asking, though.” She took a step back. “I’m going to check on that consult, okay?” She didn’t wait for an answer.

  Fuck.

  He looked beyond the glass of his office and saw Gilda staring at him. He wasn’t going to Aaron Schwartz’s party. It was ridiculous to expect him to. He had to get his kids home. If they were going to persecute him for being a father, then he’d be a father.

  He walked into the conference room. “Gather your stuff,” he said to the kids. “We’re going home.”

  “To celebrate?” Solly asked.

  “Celebration’s off. We’re going out for pasta.”

  * * *

  —

  “TOBY,” MARCO SAID, the next day.

  “Marco,” Toby said.

  “Did you meet the new guy?”

  “I know him from before.”

  “Seems nice enough. Not sure why they had to bring someone in from the outside.”

  Toby almost took this as a compliment, but then realized that Marco was talking about himself. Marco probably wouldn’t have gotten a lashing like Toby, but he was hard to promote, too. He was cold as his scalpel and an unrivaled sexual harasser of his fellows.

  He went to Karen Cooper’s room. His fellows were there. He kept his eyes on his patient to avoid looking at Joanie or, more specifically, seeing how she was looking at him. He didn’t know if he should apologize, or just wait for a call from HR. David Cooper was holding Karen’s hand, staring at her lifeless face. He was never going to see his wife open her eyes again. Toby watched him, unable to reconcile any of this. Was he a piece of shit or did he love his wife? Was he having an affair with her friend, who helped break up the marriage? Were we all everything?

  He took David outside the room. It was a good practice to not discuss the patient’s imminent death in front of the unconscious patient—it read as rude, somehow.

  “This is just how it goes sometimes,” Toby said.

  You could say that David Cooper was lucky. He got to say his goodbye. He got to be eased into the death. But he wouldn’t say that. He would say that what happened wasn’t fair. But what do the David Coopers of the world know about fair? As if the David Coopers of the world really wanted to be part of a system that’s fair. It didn’t matter. Because none of this was fair. His son was pissing his bed and his daughter was absent a maternal figure who could have maybe prevented her from getting publicly humiliated all because she was out on some wonderfuckfest with Sam Rothberg. Piece of shit Sam Rothberg, who wore nylon Adidas pants with stripes on the side on Sundays, and who had endless bets on endless brackets for March Madness. This was fair? That he would smile and take it up the ass during mediation so that they could present their children with a peaceful and amicable thing, and then the minute it was almost done, she would do the worst thing she could possibly do—a thing so bad that it wasn’t even close on a list of horrible things she had done prior to this? That was fair? If it were fair, and you weighed Toby’s sins against his punishments, you would find that he’d gotten some real kind of raw deal. What did he do so wrong but be devoted? What did he do so wrong but try? But love? But come home on time? But figure that his wife would be a partner to him the way he was to her? But maybe throw a few glasses and maybe say the wrong things?

  God, he was so tired of trying to figure out how it had been wrong, what the micromaneuver that set Rachel free from him was. She had abandoned him. She’d been cruel to him. She had denied him love and respect and self-esteem. She had diminished him to become someone who nearly disintegrated into suspicion and then sorrow at the mere affectionate touch of someone. She’d been cruel to their children—their children! She’d left them! She knew what it was to be without parents and still she’d left them!

  And that was when he realized it: Yes, he was angry. Holy Jesus, was he angry. All his marriage, Rachel threw around an accusation of anger that he immediately deflected, but now he couldn’t see why. What was ever the merit in pretending he wasn’t? What was wrong with being angry? Why was it not allowable as a standard of human emotions? Yes, he was so angry his knees might buckle. He was angry, and he could no longer see why the winning move was to pretend he wasn’t. He was angry and he wanted to scream it into David Cooper’s face, and then Joanie’s and Clay’s and Logan’s, and then Bartuck’s, and then mine and Seth’s, and then, with all the charge this gave him, he would find Rachel and blow his anger at her until she ceased to exist so that she would only have the brief satisfaction of being right for a few seconds, and that his rage would be the last thing she ever knew before she evaporated. It sounded in his ears like a bell—no, like a siren. He could hear it. He could really hear it. His rage had a sound and it was a siren.

  But no, the sound was coming from Karen Cooper’s room. A nurse ran inside. Toby and David rushed in after. Karen Cooper had suffered a pulmonary embolism and was flatlining. The cart came in; Logan and Clay tried their best. Within a few minutes, he gave Clay the nod to call the time of death.

  His fellows began to inch out, but he stopped them with his hand. It was important to stay for the hardest parts of this job. Toby used to wonder how he could ever be a good doctor if he couldn’t understand death, if he was still so shook by it. But sometime in the last five years, as he thought more and more about things that are alive and things that are dead, he began to think that the fact that death still made him so wobbly was exactly the key to being a great doctor. We aren’t meant to comprehend endings. We aren’t meant to understand death. Death’s whole gig is not being understood. The social worker on the floor came in and Toby followed the remaining Coopers to the bereavement room and told him how sorry he was for their loss.

  * * *

  —

  THE LAST PLACE I lived in Manhattan before I moved to New Jersey was on the Upper East Side. Adam and I had gotten married and he owned a big place on Seventy-ninth, whereas I was renting my tiny, damp, moldy, perfect studio in the Village. On Saturday mornings, Adam would go play racquetball, and I would go to a bagel place on Seventy-seventh that had good coffee and I’d order a poppy bagel with butter and sit by myself. The Sunday morning I left Toby’s apartment, I got coffee there and sat outside, eating my bagel, wearing my clothes from the night before, and smoking cigarettes. Have I ever been happier? I wondered. I wondered this despite the pit in my stomach and the tingling behind my nose that was asking me to answer the question about what the fuck I was doing in Manhattan on a Sunday morning in last night’s clothing.

  That was when I saw her.

  She was sitting at a table on the sidewalk next to me. I hadn’t seen her in years, and she looked different, but there she was, her same hair color at least, her same lithe body, eating a bagel.

  I froze but it was too late. She saw me and squinted. I half waved, unsure of what my stance here should be. What do you do when you run into a ghost who had recently been the object of your summertime obsession? It’s not a thing you can really plan for.

  “Libby?” she asked, approaching.

  “Rachel,” I said. “Hi.”

  “It’s been a really
long time,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since Hannah was born?” She appeared to be trying to solve a math equation in her head.

  Up close she looked different. Not just older than the last time I’d seen her, but also disheveled. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants that sagged at the crotch and a workout tank top that said NAH ’MA STAY IN BED.

  She wasn’t wearing makeup except for red lipstick, which only drew attention to the purple crescents beneath her eyes. Her hair was in a strange pixie cut, totally disarranged and yet, had it been brushed, matronly and unflattering. She had tried to cover the lines around her eyes and mouth with foundation, but it was caked inside them, and it hadn’t been blended, so her face was a mask of several colors.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She closed her eyes. “I’m fine.” She opened them again. “How have you been? What are you doing here?”

  “I…I stayed in the city last night. I’m about to go home.” I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Rachel, what’s going on?”

  “With what?”

  “I’m…in touch with Toby. He is worried about you. Your children.” I couldn’t finish.

  She looked confused. “You’ve seen my kids? I didn’t know you and Toby still spoke.”

  I thought of Solly calling to Toby from his bedroom. “Yeah. They’re not doing great.” She looked beyond my right shoulder. I turned around to see what she saw there. Nothing. I looked back at her. She seemed drugged. “Should I take you somewhere?”

  “I was supposed to go to SoulCycle but I went on the wrong day.”

  “Do you need some coffee?” I looked at her bagel. It was whole; she hadn’t taken a bite of it. It had nothing on it. It wasn’t even cut in half. It was just a giant bagel she was holding, with apparently no intention of eating it.

  Finally, I said, “Rachel. What happened to you? Are you okay? Can I call Toby?”