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It takes effort to leave the stairwell. I have to talk myself into it, to getting up, walking down the stairs and going back to the unit to finish what I need to do.
The medical examiner comes for the body. From a distance I see it get wheeled away, using the staff elevator, because not everyone needs to know that not all patients leave through the front door. Mr. and Mrs. Beckett follow, their hands clasped, their faces tired and grave, and I shrink back at seeing them, into a shallow recess in the wall, hiding because I can’t see them now. I can’t speak to them. I don’t know what I would say if I did. Still, I watch them, my eyes following for as long as they can. Mrs. Beckett’s tears are subdued and I wonder for a minute if she’s sad, or if I’ve done her a favor and instead of grief there is relief.
When I finally leave the building, I walk slowly home. My guilt starts to get the better of me, my conscience screaming. I feel transparent, like anyone could look at me and know what I’ve done.
The night is cold. Way off in the distance, a siren screams, drawing near. I’ve lived in Chicago for almost half of my life and this is nothing different, nothing new, and yet it takes almost nothing to convince me that this siren is coming for me, that, after I left work, someone at the hospital figured out what really happened, what I did, that it was intentional. They called the police, and now the police are looking into it. They’re investigating Caitlin’s suspicious death.
The siren’s wail gets closer. It moves in, approaching until it’s there, just over my left shoulder, and I don’t know what’s louder: the siren’s blare or the pounding of my own heart. I’m too afraid to look back and so I duck into an alley, pressing my back flush against a brick wall, beside an acrid Dumpster with a colony of feral cats living under it, watching the police cruiser soar past, and it’s only then, when it’s gone—the siren quieting from the distance—that I slip cautiously back out.
I stop at the liquor store on the corner because we have only wine at home and tonight I need something stronger than wine.
It’s practically nine by the time I finally get home. It’s pitch-black outside, the moon a waning crescent, and I’m not scared, I’m not even thinking anymore about the man who has been attacking women in the city. I’m only thinking of Caitlin.
She was not a good person, I remind myself every time the guilt creeps in.
I did everyone a favor. I did what I had to do.
I slip the key in and let myself into the building. I start making my way up the stairs, my steps plodding, my legs heavy as if weighed down by bricks. The plastic bag brushes against my leg, the vodka inside wrapped in a brown paper sack that rustles with every step.
I reach the third floor of the building. When I come to the landing, my back is to the door and my focus is on my keys, on singling out the key to the apartment so I can let myself in and close and lock the door behind me.
It’s as I’m rounding the top of the stairs that I see movement in my peripheral vision. I startle, my head jerking suddenly up to find a dark form crouched beside the door. I scream, falling back, and it takes a moment to gain clarity, for the image before me to become crisp: the man sitting on the floor beside my door, on the threadbare maroon carpeting, his long face, the square jaw with its sharp angles and corners, the narrow eyes and his hair, brown but growing gray near the roots with a prominent widow’s peak.
“Fuck. Damn it, Ben,” I cry out, throwing my hand to my heart as my ex-husband, Ben, rises up from the ground, carrying his coat over an arm. “What are you doing here?” I ask, one hand to my heart, breathing hard.
“Sorry,” he says, keeping his distance, looking sheepish. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
My heart is wild inside of me. My words are brusque as I step past him so I can let myself into the apartment, close the door and lock him out, so I can be alone. “Sienna isn’t here,” I grumble. “Check your calendar. It’s not your weekend with her.”
“I know,” Ben says, and I feel the weight of his hand on my arm as I step past. His grip is firm, physically stopping me. “Sienna texted,” he says, his voice soft and civil, unlike mine. “She said she was worried about you, Meghan. That you were acting strangely. I told her I would check on you and make sure everything is okay.”
I hesitate. I’m reluctant at first, but then I turn slightly, gazing up to meet Ben’s eye. “I’m fine. I’m just not feeling well,” I tell him. “Stomach flu maybe. If you don’t mind,” I say as I pull my arm away, “I just need to go inside and go to bed.”
I take a step toward the door, but this time Ben helps himself to my bag, slotting a finger into the visible brown paper sack to reveal the bottle to Smirnoff inside. He gazes up, his eyes reading my face. “I didn’t know vodka was the standard remedy for the stomach flu.”
I pull the bag abruptly back, out of his reach.
“Hey,” he says, his voice soft, sweet, practically cooing now. He cocks his head, his eyes going back and forth between mine, and he’s not patronizing, I don’t think, but genuinely worried. “Why are you so jumpy? Is everything okay?”
I fold my arms across myself, the bag of vodka hanging by the bag’s handles from around my wrist. I feel myself tighten up and get defensive. My words are hostile. “Let me guess,” I say roughly. “You’re going to tell the judge about this?”
But Ben only flinches, looking physically pained. “No, Meghan,” he says, shaking his head, the lighting in the hallway throwing shadows on his face. “I wouldn’t do that, and even if I wanted to, there’s nothing to say. You’re an adult. There isn’t anything in the custody agreement that says you can’t have a drink after work.” He takes a step forward, and this time, his hands come down on my shoulders and they’re warm, firm, buoying. He bends at the knees, lowering himself so that we’re practically at eye level now. “I’m not worried about that. I’m just worried about you.”
I try to be strong, stoic, but exhaustion and emotion overwhelm me and tears come. I don’t mean for them to, but they come anyway, and Ben’s face changes, softening. I’m not one to cry. I never have been. I’m the type to keep my feelings inside and so this is something different for him, something new and unexpected, a side of me he’s rarely seen.
Ben hesitates at first—not sure, I think, what to do—but then his knees straighten. He rises back up to full height, folding me into his arms, and I feel myself surrender, the dam breaking, water rushing through. I’m reluctant at first but then I lean my head against his chest, grateful for its strength, for the substantiality of it, for the rhythmic beating of his heart, which calms and steadies me. Ben runs a hand along my hair, and for a minute I feel safe. “What’s going on, Meghan?” he asks, breathing the words into my ear. “You can talk to me,” he says, and I give in, because Ben, despite our differences, despite what’s happened to us over the last few years, knows me better than almost anyone, even sometimes better than I know myself. He’s seen me at my best. He’s seen me at my worst.
I pull slowly back, wiping at my face with the back of a sleeve. “It was a bad day,” I say. “I lost a patient.” I shake my head. “I... I didn’t want Sienna to see me like this. I just wanted to be alone.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and it feels like he is. It feels like he’s being genuine. “I know how hard you always take it when a patient dies. It’s what makes you such a good nurse, Meghan, how you never get used to it. You never get complacent.”
I almost say how it was different this time, how I fucked up, how it’s my fault she’s dead, but I stop myself, letting Ben still believe for a while that I’m a good nurse and that what happened was beyond my control. For a minute, we stand there in the hall, not speaking, until he says, “Well,” as he stretches an arm into the sleeve of his coat. “I just wanted to check on you, but I know you want to be alone and I don’t want to impose,” he decides, and suddenly I don’t want him to go. I’m afraid to be alone with my thoughts.
“Do you have to?” I ask, my hand, by instinct, reaching for his. Before me, Ben is visibly taken aback. Seconds pass before he responds, and in that time, I’m sure I’ve made a mistake, that I’ve misread the situation, that I only imagined a moment between us.
But then he says, “No,” easing his arm back out of the sleeve and folding his coat over an arm. “I don’t have to go. I can stay if you want me to.”
