“Everything’s okay, honey. Let’s go. I need to be with Xavi.”
Whitney takes a step back from Rebecca, but she does not look at her husband. Her eyes beg Rebecca instead. Jacob puts his hands on Whitney’s shoulders, and then she finally turns and leans into him. He rubs her arms briskly, like he’s trying to warm the life back into her.
Rebecca steadies herself on the back of a chair, the pain taking over again. She feels her phone vibrate in her pocket and knows it’s Ben.
“Whit,” Jacob says. “You go ahead. I want to ask Rebecca about the surgery, and I know you don’t want to hear this stuff.”
Whitney and Rebecca look at each other. The fear grows in Whitney’s eyes, but she must tread carefully. So she nods and walks slowly out of the room. Jacob watches to make sure she’s out of earshot.
“I know you’re in a compromised position and you’ve got ethical duties as a doctor. I’m just asking that you let us know if anything else comes up around what happened. Okay? Just a heads-up, that’s all I’m asking for. Like I said before, she wouldn’t have done anything wrong that night, I can assure you.” He pauses. He swallows. He seems more desperate for her to believe him than he did yesterday.
“So what do you think happened then, Jacob? It was late. He should have been asleep.” He looks stunned that she’s questioning him. She sees his jaws clench. “I see your light on at three in the morning all the time. She’s an insomniac, isn’t she? Does she take anything for that? Pop a few pills while she’s drinking every night? That combination can really fuck with someone’s state of mind. And their judgment. Do the police know she was into a bottle of wine Wednesday night? She left her empty glass right in your backyard. It’s still there.” She can barely recognize herself. But she keeps going, her voice sharpening. “You know how lucky you are to be white and have a bit of money, right? That even these trained social workers are going easy on you? Negligence doesn’t even hit their subconscious when they look at you two.”
Jacob stares straight at her. “Why are you doing this?”
But then Whitney is back in the doorway. Rebecca stays silent.
“Jacob, what’s taking so long? You should come,” Whitney says, her voice cracking. “Please.”
Rebecca watches them leave. And then she crouches to the ground to collect herself. She has to think. Her phone vibrates again. And then again.
Her uterus tightens as she walks the opposite way from Jacob and Whitney, down the hall to the nursing station. The pain wraps around to her back and she tries not to grimace. She begs for the blood not to soak through her pants. For nobody to notice the dampness of her hairline.
She could find the social worker right now, admit she has concerns about Xavier’s mother, previous behaviors she’s aware of. She could have things escalated very quickly.
But they’ll ask why Rebecca didn’t speak up sooner.
She sees Leo rolling a blood pressure machine a few feet ahead of her.
And then she thinks of what Dr. Menlo told her outside the elevators when she arrived. Xavier’s sedation is wearing off, and they’ve decided not to give him more. They want to see how he does without it. Dr. Menlo hasn’t told the parents yet. She doesn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up—things could go either way. But she has reason to believe there’s a chance.
That he might wake up, Rebecca had clarified, gripping the hallway railing. She knows Dr. Menlo can’t share anything specific.
Well, let’s keep fingers crossed, Dr. Menlo had said. I have some cases to get to upstairs, but I’ll be back in an hour. We’ll see what happens.
The moment Whitney has been waiting at his side for. A moment that would kill her to miss.
She checks the time now on her watch.
She pulls Leo aside. She asks him if he’ll do her a favor.
“I need you to give a message to Xavier’s parents. Right now. They’re back in his room.”
He looks at the floor while Rebecca speaks, ready to focus on her instructions.
In a voice that echoes in her ears, she tells him Dr. Menlo insists they take a break while they bring Xavier down for another scan. They should go home, they should shower and regroup before the surgery tomorrow, see the twins for a bit. Dr. Menlo will call with anything urgent. And then she tells Leo to escort them to the elevators. To make sure they really leave. That it’s very important he does this.
“But . . .” Leo looks confused. “I think anesthesiology is holding back the sedation, and wouldn’t they want to be here for that?”
Rebecca’s heart races. She tries to keep her expression neutral through the pain as she shakes her head. “It’s fine.” It’s all she says. She waits for Leo to question her. But he only nods.
And then she asks, like it’s an afterthought, that Leo not mention she was the messenger. She doesn’t want them to be offended that she hasn’t come to see them; she’s only at the hospital for a quick meeting, and she’s already late. She puts her hand on her watch.
She’s never given him a reason to question her integrity. But just in case he does, she walks away before he has a chance to speak. She steadies herself with the railing along the way. Her eyebrows furrow, her forehead wrinkles. She can’t keep it together anymore.
Ben is calling her again.
She finds a bathroom and rips off the pad that is now the weight of a football. She is hot and clammy and starting to shake. She sits on the toilet and opens a photograph on her phone. It is of Whitney. She had taken it when she first brought Whitney to see Xavier, when she had sat across from her on the other side of his bed and felt, somehow, that there was a connection being drawn between them. It’s why she told her about her pregnancies. Why she’d gone to the backyard last night. A part of her had known there was something more.
She wipes the smear of blood from her inner thighs and replaces the pad in her underwear. She will take herself to the hospital across the street. She will answer their questions. Five pregnancies. No children. She will write her mother’s number as her emergency contact. She will stare at the clock on the wall until they call her name, she will lie down on a gurney behind a thin blue curtain, she will pull her knees into her chest and rock through the pain, and she will not hope, and she will not pray, she will do the only thing she can. She will wait.
59
Blair
Aiden and Chloe are playing hangman again at the kitchen table. The spaghetti sauce is simmering on the stove. Blair is sitting across from them with her laptop open, searching again. Causes of suicide in children. Suicides misreported as accidents. News stories of elementary kids bullied to death.
She has another swell of fear.
Chloe squeals, victorious. Aiden rubs his knuckles on her head. He came home early from work to be with them. One more game, she begs, and he agrees. She draws the gallows.
Aiden and Blair look at each other, and he holds her there in his gaze. She can feel herself softening toward him in the wake of everything that’s happened. She has to. He’s starting to feel, for once, like the only safe thing in her life. She doesn’t want to treat him like the problem anymore. She needs to heal from the animosity she’s become addicted to.
Later tonight, she will roll toward him, and she will say that she is sorry. That she shouldn’t have believed he would have an affair, and she will mean this. That she wants them to be in a better place. She’ll hold him under the covers, wait for him to grow hard in her hand.
He will tease her, he will let it go like he can so easily let go of everything else, and then he will pull her into him, and he will nip at her bottom lip that will still have the taste of toothpaste on it, and he will kiss her shoulder, and then the breasts she will want to cover, and they will have sex for the first time in a long time. She will tell him to put his mouth on her. She will feel the relief of never having to let another man touch her in the places that he does.
Blair hears car doors. She closes the laptop and walks to the front window. Jacob is holding Whitney, taking her slowly to the front door. Blair feels a pang of missing her already; her heart hasn’t caught up to her conscious brain, and maybe it never will. But nothing will ever be the same between them. She steels herself with a sharp breath. She’d texted Rebecca that afternoon for an update on Xavier, but hasn’t heard anything yet, which is unusual. She watches Whitney stand back to let Jacob unlock the door before he puts his hand out for her again. They stand like this, still, before he leads her in.
Blair thinks of the betrayal that smolders below this tenderness. The admirable marriage that Whitney threatened so stupidly. And for what? Yet more attention? Someone to fuck her better? She should have known Whitney was dangerous. This makes Blair, too, feel the betrayal again. For being lied to so effortlessly. For envying that love so deeply.