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“Good morning,” he says as I slip out of the car, setting my coffee on top to reach into the back seat for my bag. I hoist my bag over my shoulder and slam the door.
“Good morning,” I reply. I grab my coffee from the top of the car and together we turn and walk toward the building. The students have begun to arrive en masse. At this time of day, it’s mostly the bus riders and the kids that get dropped off by their parents. The line of parents dropping off wraps around the building, spilling out onto the street, creating a bottleneck in traffic. I always feel badly for cars that get caught up in the traffic by mistake. It’s mayhem, though after school is even worse. “Rough night?” I ask, because of his two coffees.
“Only one is mine. The other is for Pam,” he says. Pam is the school secretary and a godsend.
“Sucking up again, I see,” I tease, but then I sober and say, “No, really. That’s sweet of you, Ryan.”
“She does so much for me, it’s the least I can do. You look tired,” he says, looking sideways at me. Ryan is tall and built like a basketball player. He coaches the boys’ basketball team and is the kind of teacher that everyone likes and yet who commands respect.
“I am. I didn’t sleep well,” I say, longing for a caffeine drip. I don’t know that this one cup of coffee is going to do the trick and am envious of the two in Ryan’s hands. “And,” I admit sheepishly, looking up at him, “I may have drunk an entire bottle of wine before bed. My head kills.”
“Ouch. Fun night?”
“I’ve had better.”
Ryan gets serious. “I’ve been meaning to ask, how has your mother been doing? I haven’t heard you mention her in a while.”
“The same. No worse but no better either. We went to the ophthalmologist the other afternoon and she has a biopsy coming up, on that mass the doctor found in her breast. She’s so worried about it,” I say, letting him think the bottle of wine was on account of my mother’s health.
“I bet. That’s understandable. You must be worried too.”
“I am. Very. But once we know what we’re dealing with, we can figure out how to treat it.”
“She’s lucky to have you,” he says. “But this is a lot for you to be dealing with on your own. You don’t have siblings? Anyone to share the burden?”
“No, it’s just me. My dad left us when I was six and my mother raised me alone. Growing up, it was only the two of us. We’re close as a result.” Ryan and I approach the building. As we do, he stacks one coffee on top of the other to reach out and pull the door open for me. It’s awkward and I’m sure the coffee will spill. “Let me—” I start to say, reaching out for the door myself, but he says, “Nope. I’ve got it.” He beats me to it.
“Though I don’t know that I’d call taking care of my mother a burden,” I say as he pulls open the door and I make myself as small as possible to squeeze past. “I’m happy to do this for her, but it is hard. It’s time-consuming and emotionally draining. I just worry about her so much, all the time. Thank you,” I say, about him holding the door open for me, as a call comes through on my phone. The sound of my phone ringing sets me off again. My heart starts beating faster, and I think again that it could be Jake, that Jake has finally come to his senses and is ready to talk, to forgive me. I drop back. Ryan keeps going, bringing Pam’s coffee to her in the office so that he doesn’t see at first that I’ve fallen behind. I reach into my bag for my phone. Ryan turns and notices he’s alone and he tries waiting up for me, so we can finish our conversation. “Go on without me,” I call out. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
I find my phone. I look at the display and deflate. It’s not Jake. It’s not anyone I know. The air collapses out of my lungs like from a balloon.
Before I even answer the call though, I have a foreboding feeling, a sense of doom. Something bad is about to happen but I don’t know what. It’s not seven in the morning. It’s far too early for someone to be calling with anything other than bad news. Even robocalls and telemarketers don’t call this early. I step back outside the building for privacy, scooting past kids in the door, going the opposite way of traffic like fish swimming upstream. I clear my throat and answer the call.
A woman’s voice comes at me through the speaker. “Hello,” she says. “Can I speak to Mrs. Hayes please?”
“This is she.”
“Mrs. Hayes,” she says. She says that she is the chief surgeon at the hospital where Jake works, and my heart accelerates quickly. Why is the chief surgeon at Jake’s hospital calling? “Dr. Hayes has you listed as an emergency contact,” she says, and with that, my whole body goes numb. I lose feeling in my legs and hands.
Emergency contact.
Oh my God, he’s dead, is all I can think. Jake is dead.
I lean against the exterior brick of the building, letting it support me. A bus pulls up to the curb. Its engine is loud. I have to press a finger into my ear to hear this woman’s voice over the noise. I watch as kids climb out of the bus, down the steps. Half-asleep students walk like zombies past me and into the building.
“Are you there, Mrs. Hayes?” the woman asks.
“Yes,” I say, my voice weak.
“Mrs. Hayes, we’re concerned about Dr. Hayes. He hasn’t shown up for his surgeries in a couple days, and his office staff reported that he didn’t make it into the office for his afternoon appointments on Monday. His staff has tried to contact him, but hasn’t been successful. Is everything alright at home?” she asks and, for the first time I realize that not only has Jake not been coming home to me at night, but he hasn’t been going into work. He hasn’t returned my calls, but he hasn’t returned the hospital’s calls either.
Jake hasn’t just left me.
Something has happened to Jake.
“Jake hasn’t been coming home either. I thought...” I say, but then I let my voice drift off because I don’t want to say more than I need to say. This woman is a colleague of Jake’s, but she’s a stranger to me. I recognize her name, Dr. Morris. I recognize the names of most of the people Jake works with because he talks about them at home, but that doesn’t mean I know them. She doesn’t need to know about the fight I had with Jake. “Jake is missing,” I breathe, and as I say it, it has such a different implication than that Jake left me or that Jake didn’t come home.
Jake is missing.
