At night, I find it harder and harder to sleep, my rest obstructed by the thoughts that fill my mind, that and Clara’s body pillow that lies between us like a third spouse. I end up spending half of my nights on the living room sofa or the floor. Halcion is my only saving grace, two pills before bedtime, swallowed secretly with a swig of water from the bathroom sink, to help cross that bridge to dreamland. I take the pills from work before I leave, not bothering to make a note on the inventory log. Since I’m the only one dispensing drugs these days, no one will know that it’s missing. It’s a lifesaver for many of my phobic patients, making them oblivious to what happens in the dental chair, and yet fairly alert by the time they go home, though someone else always has to drive them there. They’re never allowed to drive home alone.
The little pills sedate me deeply but only for a short time—creating an amnesiac effect, the hours between eleven and two lost to thin air—so that when I awaken in the middle of the night to Clara’s agonizing cries about another leg cramp, I easily come around to massage the pain away. And then, when the pain passes, I watch as she settles back in for sleep, my fingers tiptoeing down her back, slinking around her swollen midriff and along her inner thigh, in the hopes that she’ll turn to me, drawing my attention away from the thoughts of delinquent payments and professional misconduct that fill my mind. “I’m so tired,” she drones, slipping away from my advance, legs woven around the pillow instead of me. “Another time, Nick,” she purrs into the pillowcase, and like that, she’s asleep, breaths flattening, a restful snore.
And I’m left alone to think, swallowing two more pills so that I stop thinking.
One morning a few days later I receive a text from Clara while I’m at the office, hands buried deep inside a patient’s mouth. 2 cm dilated, 40% effaced, she says, and only then do I remember an appointment with the obstetrician. I told her I’d try to make it, but I didn’t make it.
You’re almost there, I type into the keypad after my appointment is through. Soon I will be a dad. Again. Though I’m debilitated by a sudden pang of guilt, seeing the world into which my baby will arrive, one that is clearly not up to snuff.
I don’t have much time left to get this right.
And then later in the afternoon my cell phone rings, and I answer the call, expecting Clara, but am surprised instead by the melodious voice on the other end of the line.
“Nick,” she says, “it’s me. Kat.” My heart rises and falls all at the same time. I had hoped I’d heard the last of Kat, and have the sudden sense of swimming upstream, of digging myself into a deeper and darker hole. It isn’t about Kat, but right now I don’t need any more complications in my life.
“Hi, Kat,” I say, and it’s then that her voice catches, and she says, “I need to see you, Nick,” and I know I’m in a jam here, having seen Kat two times now without ever telling Clara. I try to put it off, to tell her I’m swamped at work, that I don’t have the time. But Kat, oddly reminiscent of eighteen-year-old Kat, begins to cry.
“Please,” she begs over the phone. “Just for a few minutes, Nick. There was something I should have said the other day,” she says, her words hard to hear through the tears.
And so I say okay. I say it so that she’ll stop crying. I tell her that I can meet for one quick drink, but then I have to split. We make plans to meet at a little bar down the block after my last patient is through, and after I apply sealants to a seven-year-old’s teeth, I make haste and leave. I don’t want Clara sitting at home, wondering where I am. From the parking lot, I send a text to Clara that I’ll be home soon. Be there in an hour, I say, and scurry in to join Kat, wishing and hoping that I could wake up from this nightmare of mine, and that it would all be a dream. A bad dream, but still a dream. I wish that I could forget somehow—the sad state of my finances, the feud with Connor, the medical malpractice suit. I wish that I could get away from it for a while, that I could take a breather. Drown my sorrows in a bottle of booze or find something else to take my mind off of this shit storm that is now my life, if only for a while.
And that’s when I spot Kat sitting all alone in a corner booth, waiting for me.
She looks stunning as always, and for one split second she takes my breath away, there in the dim bar lights, wearing this gauzy pale pink dress that, in combination with the blond hair and fair skin, makes her look angelic. A tress of hair falls across a single eye, and she leaves it there, a lock of hair that is undeniably sexy and appealing.
My knees buckle for one quick moment, and just like that we’re eighteen years old again, wild and reckless, living only for the moment, not caring what tomorrow may bring.
CLARA
At eight in the morning the doorbell rings, and of course I’m expecting flowers, the poor deliveryman waiting with his idle van parked outside, about to greet me in my pajamas for the forth time this week.
But it’s not a delivery of flowers.
Standing outside on my front porch is Emily, dressed in black running shorts and a fleece half-zip hoodie that is certainly too thick for a day like today. On her feet is a pair of pricey running shoes, and she jogs in place, warming up for a run, her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, strands escaping here and there and falling into her face. It’s only 8:00 a.m., and already the heat and humidity rush in to greet me, fusing together with the inside air, which is already hot. Maisie bounds down the stairs at the sound of knocking—a hungry Harriet hot on her heels—her sweaty hair stuck to her forehead. “Why don’t you go turn on the TV?” I tell her, and she nods her head a sleepy okay, as Emily and I step outside and I gently pull the door closed. The sun is brilliant this morning, dazzlingly bright, and I curse it for having the audacity to show its face after everything it has done. It’s the sun’s fault that Nick is dead.
Or maybe not.