She had kept her emotions in check until she was out of the hospital and
almost alone on the el platform. Suddenly she felt a knot of sobs
gathering at the back of her throat, choking her and clapped a hand to her
mouth to hold in the cry that was pushing against her teeth. Her back
against the station wall, Elizabeth willing herself to just try to keep it
all in until she reached home, paid Kris, and shut the door behind her.
Then she could cry all she wanted, head buried in the sofa cushion to
muffle the noise so as not to wake her daughter.
When she got to the house, though, Kris's Toyota wasn't there, and a little red sportscar was parked in the drive. Elizabeth tensed as she put her key in the lock, unsure of what to expect. "Kris?" she called softly as she stepped inside. "Disappointed?" responded a low voice, and Edward appeared from around the corner. Elizabeth froze in shock and then in a fast, fluid movement she was in his arms, pushing him toward the living room couch, breathlessly kissing him, pawing at his clothes. It took literally less than a minute for them to be standing next to the sofa naked and staring at each other, panting from the speed with which they had performed the necessary operations of unbuttoning buttons and unbuckling belts. Dorsett caught his breath and smiled at her cockily, "After last night, I wasn't so sure about us." "But now," he continued," taking a step toward her, "I'll allow you to reassure me."
**
Robert woke up slowly, groggy from the sedatives. His eyes adjusted to the dim light in his room, and he looked around slowly, hoping against hope that she hadn't really left, but realizing it was too quiet, he knew she had. He swallowed hard and blinked rapidly then pressed the lever to move the bed so that he could sit upright. Taking a few deep breaths, he turned his gaze left and down, and then reached over with his right hand to pull the hospital gown off of his shoulder. What he saw did not even seem a part of himself but rather of some other poor slob, some patient that he had just patched up, someone who should consider themselves lucky to be alive. He touched his own left shoulder, then pressed his fingernails deep into what was left of his bicep. A strange vibration radiated down the limb that was no longer there. Feeling a little sick to his stomach from the experiment, he turned his head away, only to see the door begin to open and an orderly enter with a tray. He hastily hunched his shoulder to slip it back into the gown, as if he could somehow hide the reality of what had happened to him from others. Maybe if he didn't have to see the horror and pity on their faces, he wouldn't have to face how he now felt about himself.
**
Elizabeth opened her eyes slightly to see him hunch into his shirt and then pull on his pants before picking up his belt and shoes to put on in the hallway. Edward never kissed her goodbye when he left, and she knew she didn't want him to. He just showed up, ripped her clothes off, and did what he wanted to do. Sometimes he'd announce that he was on his way into work and only had ten minutes. On those days, they'd keep their clothes on, and just move things aside where needed. They had a routine now. Each week they glanced at each other's schedules, and Elizabeth knew when he'd come by the house. Their relationship progressed without explanations or analyses and was so casual that coworkers had forgotten about it. It helped that he was still chasing and catching other women, but there was something about what he had with Elizabeth that he wasn't ready to give up. She was a woman with no demands, emotional or physical, and he liked that.
At home and at work, Elizabeth felt comfortably numb. Days blurred together, except when a technically challenging procedure in the OR woke her from her stupor and summoned all of her skills. At these rare moments she'd feel more alive than usual and become more aware that the dull ache of loneliness could quickly turn to a sharp pang.
Today, though, was a mindless day of paperwork. Reading through old morbidity and mortality transcripts and signing off on them. Most of the files had already been summarized by Kerry's secretary and signed by Dr. Weaver, Chief of Staff. Elizabeth only had to glance over a few pages of each to see that she hadn't been misquoted in her testimony and then she could initial them and send them back upstairs. One of the older ones seemed to be missing the summary, though, and Elizabeth looked at it more closely. Instead of the neatly typed-up report from Kerry's office, there was a scrawled note paperclipped to the last page. "OD not pill but shot. Syph? Ask Lizzie." She stiffened. It was Robert's writing.
She read the report over carefully, pulling out a pad to make her own notes. Robert was right. The allergic reaction was not consistent with oral penicil but with a high dose injection. And the photo from the autopsy showed faint traces of healed lesions on the patient's skin, something that she hadn't seen when she was opening his chest. Why had the young man told the nurse that he'd borrowed a friend's prescription for his strep throat? Was he that embarrassed to admit what was wrong? But he must have admitted it to someone since he'd have to have gotten the shot at a clinic. This was something that Kerry should see. But Kerry had seen it, Elizabeth now remembered. She had been observing the emergency surgery as if her own life depended on it. Elizabeth slipped the report into her bag to take home and think about later.
After putting Ella to bed, Elizabeth pulled the file out of her bag. Instead of reaching for her own notes and questions, she picked out Robert's three-line memo, fingering the wrinkes in the paper thoughtfully. Looking at the date on the file, she realized that this must have been the last one in his stack of reports before he lost his position as chief of staff. Would he even care now if his questions about the case were answered? But Elizabeth knew that he would and that she was the person he would have been asking. Not just because she'd been the operating surgeon but because despite what he said, her opinion mattered to him.
She missed their conversations even though they often sounded more like quarrels. She missed feeling that what she said mattered. And she missed their ability to communicate without words, just through long, slow looks. She shook her head at the thought of the last examples of their strange telepathy, those moments when his eyes were so deep and sad. His look had said, "I need you. Please stay." But he had told her to go, so she had listened and left.
In the end, she convinced herself that staying away from Robert was the best thing she could do for him. Of course he would not want her to see him weak. Of course it was kinder to let other hands treat him so that their clinical touch could not be confused with something like caring. It would be unfair to let him get the wrong idea about her, to promise him any possibility of a personal relationship only to retract the imagined offer once he had started to feel strong again.
When people would ask her if she'd heard from him, they were surprised when she said no, as if she and he had ever been close friends. When Susan talked about sending him cards or flowers Elizabeth just ignored her, strictly adhering to her policy of non-interference. When Kerry implied that someone should go to his house and just check that he was still alive, Elizabeth snorted. Kerry was the last person to really care about Robert, after all. Maybe Kerry just wanted to make sure he was out of the way so that she could remain unrivaled in her current position of power.
But this young man's death bothered Elizabeth as did the idea that Robert had left his work unfinished, something for Kerry to criticize and Donald to use against him. So despite her best judgment, Elizabeth began to look for his home phone number in the drawer of her desk. Going through old agendas, she came up with nothing. She had strictly avoided entering his home number into her private phone book, although she did have his pager number burned into her brain. She rifled through the white pages where he wasn't listed, but just as she was about to give up she saw a long blue envelope with his writing on it sticking out from a pile of cards. What's this? she thought. She opened it up and found a form letter that began: "A contribution has been made in your names." In the blank provided Robert had written "Mark, Elizabeth, Rachel and Ella." The form letter continued with something about the American Cancer Foundation, and at the very bottom Robert had simply added, "I'm so sorry." There was no signature, but on the envelope there was a return address label.
**
The next afternoon, upon arriving home, Elizabeth asked Kris to stay for another hour so that she could do a few errands. As she drove to Robert's house, she felt strangely nervous about seeing him. After six months in England she had sought him out in the hospital without hesitation. Now after six weeks without seeing him, she wasn't sure what she would say. No apologies or excuses, she resolved. Just the matter at hand, the case to be discussed, and then the professional parting. Nothing personal.
When she parked and walked to the front door, she noticed the eastern red bud trees in flower. Had he chosen these? she wondered. She knocked on the imposing front door with the brass knocker and then stopped to listen for footsteps. She hadn't imagined that he would be out, but then again it wasn't like he'd lost both legs. Still, he wouldn't be driving, so he couldn't be far. Unless he'd left town, she thought, suddenly feeling a bit strange. Without saying goodbye? As she had when she'd gone to London. Then she heard something from behind the house. Music. She let out a breath of relief. Solo piano, a classical CD. Robert, she thought.
She tiptoed around the side of the house, not wanting to startle him or rather not wanting him to see her before she saw him first. She just wanted to know how he was, to see how she should handle him, to reserve the right to leave before he knew she had come.
And there he lay on a canvas deck chair, napping. He had piles of medical literature on a table nearby along with a glass of iced tea and a half eaten sandwich. There was a notepad on his chest which rose and fell with his breathing, but the pen he'd been using was on the ground, dropped from the hand that had rolled off the side of the chair when he'd dropped off to sleep. Elizabeth held her breath, wanting to look at him without waking him. She took in his bare feet, blue jeans and rumpled black button-down shirt, open at the neck. He'd let his beard grow in, reddish salted with grey. And his nose and forehead were pink from the start of a sunburn. Elizabeth let out her breath in surprise when a huge dog came bounding toward them, barking.
Robert sprung awake and the notepad slipped to the ground as he sat up. The dog ran to him, stopped, and sat, putting its over-sized head gently in its master's lap. Robert leaned down to give the dog a kiss between the ears before admonishing it with a laugh and a shake of the head, "Keep dreaming, kid. You haven't caught a squirrel in 6 years." The dog raised its head, turned and barked, and as Robert's eyes followed the animal's gaze, he recognized Elizabeth's retreating figure as she made her way quickly back to her car.
"Wait," he said just before she reached the driveway, and she paused for a moment. He said nothing else, and she could hear that he wasn't moving toward her. Elizabeth had left the file on the patio table, having decided that this gesture was sufficient. He seemed healthy enough and happy enough lying in his garden in the afternoon sun. She could just leave quietly without disturbing his life. He'd certainly be better off. They both would.
But she couldn't help herself. She turned around and met his eyes and began walking back to him. "You were sleeping," she answered. He nodded and then looked up. "I guess that's why I keep missing your visits," he added, his voice low and gravelly, and strangely lacking in irony. His words were not at all a reproach. Instead he was offering this lame excuse for her so that she wouldn't have to invent one for herself. "Oh Robert," she sighed, shaking her head. If I had only known that you wouldn't be angry, she thought, I'd have come sooner.
He turned away and into the house and Elizabeth wondered for a minute if he was paying her back, letting her know how it felt to be left standing alone. But he reemerged with a glass of iced tea, handed it to her and nodded to a chair. She sat, picked up the file, and began presenting the case.
When she got to the house, though, Kris's Toyota wasn't there, and a little red sportscar was parked in the drive. Elizabeth tensed as she put her key in the lock, unsure of what to expect. "Kris?" she called softly as she stepped inside. "Disappointed?" responded a low voice, and Edward appeared from around the corner. Elizabeth froze in shock and then in a fast, fluid movement she was in his arms, pushing him toward the living room couch, breathlessly kissing him, pawing at his clothes. It took literally less than a minute for them to be standing next to the sofa naked and staring at each other, panting from the speed with which they had performed the necessary operations of unbuttoning buttons and unbuckling belts. Dorsett caught his breath and smiled at her cockily, "After last night, I wasn't so sure about us." "But now," he continued," taking a step toward her, "I'll allow you to reassure me."
**
Robert woke up slowly, groggy from the sedatives. His eyes adjusted to the dim light in his room, and he looked around slowly, hoping against hope that she hadn't really left, but realizing it was too quiet, he knew she had. He swallowed hard and blinked rapidly then pressed the lever to move the bed so that he could sit upright. Taking a few deep breaths, he turned his gaze left and down, and then reached over with his right hand to pull the hospital gown off of his shoulder. What he saw did not even seem a part of himself but rather of some other poor slob, some patient that he had just patched up, someone who should consider themselves lucky to be alive. He touched his own left shoulder, then pressed his fingernails deep into what was left of his bicep. A strange vibration radiated down the limb that was no longer there. Feeling a little sick to his stomach from the experiment, he turned his head away, only to see the door begin to open and an orderly enter with a tray. He hastily hunched his shoulder to slip it back into the gown, as if he could somehow hide the reality of what had happened to him from others. Maybe if he didn't have to see the horror and pity on their faces, he wouldn't have to face how he now felt about himself.
**
Elizabeth opened her eyes slightly to see him hunch into his shirt and then pull on his pants before picking up his belt and shoes to put on in the hallway. Edward never kissed her goodbye when he left, and she knew she didn't want him to. He just showed up, ripped her clothes off, and did what he wanted to do. Sometimes he'd announce that he was on his way into work and only had ten minutes. On those days, they'd keep their clothes on, and just move things aside where needed. They had a routine now. Each week they glanced at each other's schedules, and Elizabeth knew when he'd come by the house. Their relationship progressed without explanations or analyses and was so casual that coworkers had forgotten about it. It helped that he was still chasing and catching other women, but there was something about what he had with Elizabeth that he wasn't ready to give up. She was a woman with no demands, emotional or physical, and he liked that.
At home and at work, Elizabeth felt comfortably numb. Days blurred together, except when a technically challenging procedure in the OR woke her from her stupor and summoned all of her skills. At these rare moments she'd feel more alive than usual and become more aware that the dull ache of loneliness could quickly turn to a sharp pang.
Today, though, was a mindless day of paperwork. Reading through old morbidity and mortality transcripts and signing off on them. Most of the files had already been summarized by Kerry's secretary and signed by Dr. Weaver, Chief of Staff. Elizabeth only had to glance over a few pages of each to see that she hadn't been misquoted in her testimony and then she could initial them and send them back upstairs. One of the older ones seemed to be missing the summary, though, and Elizabeth looked at it more closely. Instead of the neatly typed-up report from Kerry's office, there was a scrawled note paperclipped to the last page. "OD not pill but shot. Syph? Ask Lizzie." She stiffened. It was Robert's writing.
She read the report over carefully, pulling out a pad to make her own notes. Robert was right. The allergic reaction was not consistent with oral penicil but with a high dose injection. And the photo from the autopsy showed faint traces of healed lesions on the patient's skin, something that she hadn't seen when she was opening his chest. Why had the young man told the nurse that he'd borrowed a friend's prescription for his strep throat? Was he that embarrassed to admit what was wrong? But he must have admitted it to someone since he'd have to have gotten the shot at a clinic. This was something that Kerry should see. But Kerry had seen it, Elizabeth now remembered. She had been observing the emergency surgery as if her own life depended on it. Elizabeth slipped the report into her bag to take home and think about later.
After putting Ella to bed, Elizabeth pulled the file out of her bag. Instead of reaching for her own notes and questions, she picked out Robert's three-line memo, fingering the wrinkes in the paper thoughtfully. Looking at the date on the file, she realized that this must have been the last one in his stack of reports before he lost his position as chief of staff. Would he even care now if his questions about the case were answered? But Elizabeth knew that he would and that she was the person he would have been asking. Not just because she'd been the operating surgeon but because despite what he said, her opinion mattered to him.
She missed their conversations even though they often sounded more like quarrels. She missed feeling that what she said mattered. And she missed their ability to communicate without words, just through long, slow looks. She shook her head at the thought of the last examples of their strange telepathy, those moments when his eyes were so deep and sad. His look had said, "I need you. Please stay." But he had told her to go, so she had listened and left.
In the end, she convinced herself that staying away from Robert was the best thing she could do for him. Of course he would not want her to see him weak. Of course it was kinder to let other hands treat him so that their clinical touch could not be confused with something like caring. It would be unfair to let him get the wrong idea about her, to promise him any possibility of a personal relationship only to retract the imagined offer once he had started to feel strong again.
When people would ask her if she'd heard from him, they were surprised when she said no, as if she and he had ever been close friends. When Susan talked about sending him cards or flowers Elizabeth just ignored her, strictly adhering to her policy of non-interference. When Kerry implied that someone should go to his house and just check that he was still alive, Elizabeth snorted. Kerry was the last person to really care about Robert, after all. Maybe Kerry just wanted to make sure he was out of the way so that she could remain unrivaled in her current position of power.
But this young man's death bothered Elizabeth as did the idea that Robert had left his work unfinished, something for Kerry to criticize and Donald to use against him. So despite her best judgment, Elizabeth began to look for his home phone number in the drawer of her desk. Going through old agendas, she came up with nothing. She had strictly avoided entering his home number into her private phone book, although she did have his pager number burned into her brain. She rifled through the white pages where he wasn't listed, but just as she was about to give up she saw a long blue envelope with his writing on it sticking out from a pile of cards. What's this? she thought. She opened it up and found a form letter that began: "A contribution has been made in your names." In the blank provided Robert had written "Mark, Elizabeth, Rachel and Ella." The form letter continued with something about the American Cancer Foundation, and at the very bottom Robert had simply added, "I'm so sorry." There was no signature, but on the envelope there was a return address label.
**
The next afternoon, upon arriving home, Elizabeth asked Kris to stay for another hour so that she could do a few errands. As she drove to Robert's house, she felt strangely nervous about seeing him. After six months in England she had sought him out in the hospital without hesitation. Now after six weeks without seeing him, she wasn't sure what she would say. No apologies or excuses, she resolved. Just the matter at hand, the case to be discussed, and then the professional parting. Nothing personal.
When she parked and walked to the front door, she noticed the eastern red bud trees in flower. Had he chosen these? she wondered. She knocked on the imposing front door with the brass knocker and then stopped to listen for footsteps. She hadn't imagined that he would be out, but then again it wasn't like he'd lost both legs. Still, he wouldn't be driving, so he couldn't be far. Unless he'd left town, she thought, suddenly feeling a bit strange. Without saying goodbye? As she had when she'd gone to London. Then she heard something from behind the house. Music. She let out a breath of relief. Solo piano, a classical CD. Robert, she thought.
She tiptoed around the side of the house, not wanting to startle him or rather not wanting him to see her before she saw him first. She just wanted to know how he was, to see how she should handle him, to reserve the right to leave before he knew she had come.
And there he lay on a canvas deck chair, napping. He had piles of medical literature on a table nearby along with a glass of iced tea and a half eaten sandwich. There was a notepad on his chest which rose and fell with his breathing, but the pen he'd been using was on the ground, dropped from the hand that had rolled off the side of the chair when he'd dropped off to sleep. Elizabeth held her breath, wanting to look at him without waking him. She took in his bare feet, blue jeans and rumpled black button-down shirt, open at the neck. He'd let his beard grow in, reddish salted with grey. And his nose and forehead were pink from the start of a sunburn. Elizabeth let out her breath in surprise when a huge dog came bounding toward them, barking.
Robert sprung awake and the notepad slipped to the ground as he sat up. The dog ran to him, stopped, and sat, putting its over-sized head gently in its master's lap. Robert leaned down to give the dog a kiss between the ears before admonishing it with a laugh and a shake of the head, "Keep dreaming, kid. You haven't caught a squirrel in 6 years." The dog raised its head, turned and barked, and as Robert's eyes followed the animal's gaze, he recognized Elizabeth's retreating figure as she made her way quickly back to her car.
"Wait," he said just before she reached the driveway, and she paused for a moment. He said nothing else, and she could hear that he wasn't moving toward her. Elizabeth had left the file on the patio table, having decided that this gesture was sufficient. He seemed healthy enough and happy enough lying in his garden in the afternoon sun. She could just leave quietly without disturbing his life. He'd certainly be better off. They both would.
But she couldn't help herself. She turned around and met his eyes and began walking back to him. "You were sleeping," she answered. He nodded and then looked up. "I guess that's why I keep missing your visits," he added, his voice low and gravelly, and strangely lacking in irony. His words were not at all a reproach. Instead he was offering this lame excuse for her so that she wouldn't have to invent one for herself. "Oh Robert," she sighed, shaking her head. If I had only known that you wouldn't be angry, she thought, I'd have come sooner.
He turned away and into the house and Elizabeth wondered for a minute if he was paying her back, letting her know how it felt to be left standing alone. But he reemerged with a glass of iced tea, handed it to her and nodded to a chair. She sat, picked up the file, and began presenting the case.