Then pills started disappearing from the supply he carried in his medical bag for emergencies.Painkillers, and then sedatives.Then, the stimulants.When he realized what was going on, he’d cut off the pills and locked up his prescription pads.Then she’d given up all pretense of hiding her substance abuse, and there was booze on her breath by noon.
Oh, he sent her to rehab.To expensive places with excellent results.But for rehab to work, a person had to want to get better.
Initially Lorraine relapsed within a few months.But then her relapses came within weeks, and then days, of coming home.
He kept believing he could get out ahead of her addictions, if he just paid more attention, came home a little sooner, watched a little harder.
You were never home,she’d told him.
The cruel part,the part that still got its hooks in him at three in the morning, was that the accusation that was unfair ...and also true.In and around keeping his medical practice afloat, he’d spent every spare second at home with Lorraine and Madison.He’d gone without sleep.Worked weekends to make up for leaving work to get home in time for dinner.Stayed up until the wee hours of the morning
But it wasn’t enough.No matter how much time he carved out for Lorraine, it was never enough.Slowly, but surely, she had completely fallen apart.He didn’t know what more he could’ve done, but obviously there was something he’d missed and hadn’t done for her.He was her husband and a doctor.It was his responsibility to take care of her.To heal her.And he’d failed her.
He stood in his dining room and let the self-blame and guilt crest and roll through him.He was nearly steady again when the front door opened and the house was abruptly, completely, gloriously overrun.
“I am so sorry,” Sunny said before she was all the way through the door.“Charlotte’s twins came down with something, the play date fell through, and I just couldn’t ask Presley to watch them yet again.They’ll be quiet, they know how to be quiet boys.Boys.Inside voices.Insidebodies.”
The twin seven-year-olds did not, in any observable way, possess inside bodies.They were already moving like a pair of border collies who’d been informed there was a ball somewhere in the house.They came through the office door at a flat run, skidded on the old wool rug, and pulled up in front of his exam table with the hushed reverence of pilgrims who’d reached a shrine.
“Is that real?”one of them breathed.
Hank followed the small pointing finger to his stethoscope, coiled on the table.“Yes, it’s real.”
“Can you hear hearts with it?”the other twin asked eagerly.
“I can.”
The twins looked at each other.An entire conversation passed between them in silent shorthand.Hank and his two brothers did the same thing.A look passed between the boys that he recognized instantly.It was the exact face he and Dillon and Reno used to make right before they did something their mother would not approve of.
“Itoldthem to walk,” announced a third voice, aggrieved and belonging to a girl of about ten.She stood in the doorway with a toddler’s shoe in one hand and an air of profoundly exasperated responsibility.She took in the whole office in a single sweep, exactly the way her mother did and said in the exact tone her mother had used, “They never walk.I’m sorry.Boys, therug.”
“It’s all right,” Hank said easily.“Come here, all three of you.Go wash your hands in that sink in the corner.Doctors wash their hands before they do anything.”
They washed their hands and marched over to him at the exam table.He fit the stethoscope’s earpieces into the first boy’s ears as he asked, “Which one are you?”
“Jenson.”
“Nice to meet you, Jenson.”He settled the bell against the boy’s own chest and watched his face go round and astonished as he heard, for the first time in his short life, the engine that had been running his body the whole time.
“That’sme,” Jenson whispered in awe.“Harris.Harris, it’sme,listen.”
And then they were passing the stethoscope back and forth, listening to their hearts and then to each other’s.The older girl, Sunny had called her Presley, drifted closer and he made sure she got a turn too.
Sunny moved around behind him, unwinding a metal measuring tape from its case and jotting down measurements in a small notebook.He stood there watching the children discover their hearts, and the wave of guilt from the dining room retreated farther than it had in a long time.
Without warning, something fastened onto his leg.
He looked down.A little girl, he estimated three years old, had both arms wrapped around his knee.She climbed on his shoe and reached up for his front pants pocket.By standing tippy-toe, she was just able to snag it with one hand.He stood perfectly still and watched with interest as she tried to haul herself up his leg.She failed.
Amused, he watched her let go of his leg, step back, and frown up at him.Then she threw both arms up in the universal, non-negotiable command of small children everywhere.
“Up,” demanded the smallest Carter.
“That’s Chloe,” Sunny said from somewhere behind him in the weary tone of a woman vastly outnumbered by small tornadoes.“She climbs anything that holds still.Chloe, Baby, leave Dr.Steele alo?—”
But Hank had already bent and scooped the child up.His years of bending toward hurt and frightened beings had become a reflex somewhere below thought.He parked her on his right hip, and Chloe settled against him, taking immediate and proprietary hold of his collar.She commenced the careful, deeply skeptical inspection toddlers conduct upon new people.
She patted his cheek.She pulled his earlobe.She discovered the gray hairs at his temple, found them fascinating, and gave one a hard tug.
