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“Thank you. I’ll do that, I promise. I’m very close to him—‘boyfriend’ doesn’t quite cut it actually.” My voice shakes, but I’m being as honest as I can.
His face clears. “Good.” Then he scowls, and some of the old Neil returns. “You’re a great doctor, Kate. Don’t ever forget it. I know you were struggling when you started, but it just took you longer than most to adjust, and everyone who works here knows what a huge adjustment the ER is. Being good at this is not all about tests, and you have a great heart. I’m sure you think you didn’t help today, but the fact that you knew the patient’s history was crucial. Now get your ass out of here. You’re on an early shift tomorrow.”
19
Kate
Two weeks later and every day I seem to have a silly grin on my face. The I love yous have settled Fabian and me into a deeper place of slow hands and soft words. The heat of a hot Manhattan summer seeping into every pore and warming me from the inside out. Standing at the station on the ward, I study my phone: No proper messages from him since the day before yesterday, although I got a message saying “alive” with a winky smile this morning. I know he switches off like this; twenty-four-hour stints trying to crack something, grabbing an hour of sleep here and there. Still, a niggle works away at the back of my mind, and although his text was meant to reassure me, I’ve not seen him for two days.
I could go and surprise him. Curl around him instead of heading home. A bad traffic accident has kept us on our toes all through the Saturday nightshift, and we lost a young guy after battling to stop the bleeding and his body shutting down. We’re all a bit antsy. Neil taps my arm as he comes up beside me to study a screen.
“Go,” he says with a jerk of his head, and I look at the hard etches of his face, and I nod at him, swinging around and heading for the locker room to get out of my scrubs. Soon I’m on Henry Street, walking the blocks to Fabian’s through deserted Sunday morning streets, the late June day not yet fully dialed up to temperature. I’ve no idea whether he will be up. He might be in bed, all skin and sleepy warmth, and my lips curl up.
I slot my key into the rusty old lock on his building, and wind up three flights of stairs. Then I’m outside his door and, as I open it, it all sounds so deadly quiet that I step silently over the shoes on the mat, pushing off my sneakers as my gaze is snagged by some small red trainers. I frown at the mess of dishes piled all over the kitchen counter—Fabian’s usually pretty tidy for someone who doesn’t care about his surroundings much. As I move through the apartment, the darkness wraps around me. The blinds are drawn down over the living-room windows, a duvet on the couch, empty food containers on the coffee table … The bedroom door is a dark crack in front of me, just like before.No sound of tapping keys.
Hand on the door, I push it open and make out Fabian stretched out in a jumble of blue covers, tattoos curling down, his arm flung over a pillow. But as I step forward, I realize it isn’t a pillow at all: There’s the shape of another body in the bed, and I can’t move or drag my eyes away. As my eyes adjust to the gloom, ice drips through my veins. A woman, her black hair a tumbled mass next to his, is curled up under his outstretched arm. I step back, heart thumping so loudly I’m amazed no one can hear it, and a sharp pain pierces right through me, whipping my breath away and almost bending me double. Her thin arm is also thrown out in sleep. His arm pinning her, protective. Are theynaked? My thoughts run around my head like a rat in a maze: a friend, a hookup, a prostitute, a … a … Something has my chest in a vice, and I gasp trying to suck in air, and the woman stirs.Oh God.I have to get out of here. If they wake up … I … I … I need to go right now. I turn, padding quickly down the corridor, fumbling with my shoes at the door.Get out, Kate! Go! Go! Go!
“Who’s there?” The woman’s voice calls, soft, sleepy.
Get out!I’m scrabbling into my shoes when she appears in a T-shirt in the bedroom doorway, a frown on her face.
“Who are you?” she says, voice sharpening. “What are you doing here?”
I want to ask her the exact same questions, but my brain is leaping around in my head dumping “Flee! Flee!” endorphins into my system. I can’t suck enough air into my lungs. My sweaty hand slips over my laces, and I give up, thrusting my feet in and crushing the backs of the shoes.
As I reach for the door handle, she catches my arm.
“I said, who the fuck are you?” Her nails scratch my skin.
“Who are you?” I say.
“I’m his girlfriend,” she says, eyes narrowing. “From college, we’ve been together years.” A calm pride rings through her voice, and a knife reaches into my chest and slices into my heart.Years?My God. How can that be? All the time we’ve been together over the last month. Then I almost want to laugh at myself:A month, Kate?Seriously? My involvement with Fabian morphs before my eyes. And I said I love you after amonth.Why did I believe him? Two years of David’s warmth and I love you bullshit: This is just like finding that goddamn card in his pocket, except this timeshe’sthe one in the long-term relationship,I’mthe bit on the side.
Her thick lashes and porcelain skin are surrounded by a huge array of black corkscrew curls, but under her T-shirt, which I recognize with a horrid jolt is one of Fabian’s, she’s thin and wasted and her jaw has a bitter jut to it like she’s used to fighting. The “prostitutes from the river” comment floats into my head. Is she his drug pal? Something else? What do Ireallyunderstand about his life around his drug experiments? Who he meets? What he buys? Nothing. A secret life, I almost groan at how gullible I am. She appears as mean as hell, and I’m not that girl—by God, I amnotfighting her. I say the first thing that comes into my head.
“I’m his cleaner, but I don’t want to disturb you. I’ll come back.” A lie, like so many others.
She studies me for a while, like she’s trying to work out why I didn’t tell her straight away, but her eyes grow hazy, like she can’t quite keep a grasp on the conversation. She nods and turns to head back down the corridor.
“Sorry about the state of it.” She waves a vague arm. “He’s always been a messy fuck.” And she disappears back into the bedroom, closing the door with a soft click.
I stare at the closed door. I must be a more convincing liar than I thought. All I can see is Fabian’s body in the bed, and fire burns through my veins, sharp and hot: I want to go in and slap him, so hard.He’sthe most plausible cheat in the world. Love? What a joke. Sweat breaks out over my forehead: I’m going to be sick. I wrench open the door, thundering down the stairs and through the entrance as the contents of my stomach deposit onto the gray concrete. I lean weakly against the iron railings, wiping a shaking hand over my lips as I stare at the Brooklyn Bridge towering above me, the endless steel cables, cars zipping across the river. So much water and nothing to clean up this mess.
The bus lurches through the traffic, pulling out to a blare of horns right by my window. I close my eyes, suck a breath into tight lungs. People are resting against windows or glued to the screen on their phones. Travelling back to their homes like nothing is wrong. How many of these people are this shaky, this sick inside? I can still see her skinny legs heading away from me down the hallway, T-shirt covering her bottom, the vague and vacant look about her. I’ve come across those glazed eyes before in the ER: the Addict’s Stare. A bitter laugh erupts out of my mouth, and the man next to me shifts in his seat. Great. Now I’m the maniac on the bus.
No surprise that Fabian’s girlfriend would be into all that; of course she would appeal to him. She can’t have been with him since college, though, can she? Janus would know about her, and I’ve seen Fabian a lot, I mean not every night, but perhaps she’s some street girl he fits in between … I lean forward, pressing into my knees, and the guy beside me moves his legs into the aisle. How much do Janus and Jo really understand about his life around drugs? All the things we’ve done … how his arm was flung over her … Bile rises up my throat. To go through this again. Tosee itwith my own eyes.Stupid, stupid, Kate.I dig my fingernails into my palm, the pain blunt and raw and so satisfying.
I’ve never been so glad to arrive at the red brick of our building on 22nd Street. I head up in the lift to the fourth floor, and quiet and dark washes over me when I open the door to the apartment and step inside. I blink around the small space, at the blinds down over the living-room windows, and I don’t know what to do next, how to shut my thoughts off. The bedroom door clicks, and Liss appears, bleary-eyed.
“Just finished your shift?” she mumbles, and my eyes meet hers and I crumble, throat tightening and tears welling up. Her eyes widen as she hastens toward me, pulling me into a tight hug.
“My God, what’s happened?” she says into my hair, arms wrapping around me. “Did you lose someone?”
She’s talking about a patient of course, but I have lost somebody else.
“Fabian,” I croak, and she pulls back, hands on my shoulders. Her face crumples, eyes filling as she searches mine.
“Oh my God, Kate. Hedied?”
