House
I had been trying to convince myself that I could handle this situation. Surely guilt was still as foreign an emotion to me now as it ever had been, and it couldn't be too hard to be a rude jackass and distance myself from my verbal sparring partner, could it?
Not for the first time in my life, I cursed my capabilities for observation, my photographic memory, and my ear for perfect pitch. Several images from throughout the day had attached themselves to me, floating around in my mind and randomly plastering themselves in front of my eyes at the most inconvenient moments. I could see Cuddy's—Lisa's-- full eyes as she was faced with confirmation of her deepest fears in the clinic exam room, and those same eyes, empty and desolate as she wandered in a daze through what should have been her home and sanctuary.
I would never forget the mask of strength she wore in front of me, or the way she had quietly accepted my attack of her CD collection; I had wanted, needed her to match my will with her own, to silently inform me that nothing had changed; but she never did. I remember her voice, calling out to me in the exam room, I ran from it then but it followed me through the hospital, assaulting me in the overpowering silence of the car ride and refusing to be drowned out by anything I did to distract my mind from it. And then her voice, insecure and pleading, reached out to me once more. My musical ears, trained from childhood to respond to the relationship between pitch and rhythm, picked up on the wealth of emotion in her tone.
"Please prove me wrong. Prove to me that you understand how serious this is."
Had she left it at that, I may have been able to retain some form of composure. I would have retreated to a catatonic state, by sheer force of will disconnecting my burdened mind from any ties to the desolate reality that I had made myself, but at least I would have avoided any outburst.
But it was her touch that was my undoing. It was the tiniest brush of fingertips against hands that for so long had been barren of physical contact. She was reaching out emotionally by way of the physical encounter of hands, to the very person who had wronged her. I felt dirty, unworthy; I was contaminating her. I wanted to run from her until my lungs tore open and my toenails fell off, but my pain reminded me of my worthless body's limitations.
Unable to run or hide any longer, I did the only thing I could do; I turned like a cornered animal to confront its attacker, which in this case took the form of an immoral cripple.
"You're not wrong." I forced myself to meet her eyes, I felt obligated to commit her look of shock and vulnerability to memory, to forever haunt me. "I don't deserve any more chances, I don't even deserve the amount of guilt you're placing on yourself. Come Friday, your job will become a lot easier."
The look of surprise on her face was now accompanied by burdened curiosity. "You can't be serious. I mean, what am I saying, of course you are but… why... that is to say, what brought this on?"
Habitually, I began to look away to escape the tension in the room, but then I forced myself to once again rest my eyes on hers; I wanted to purge her of all feelings of responsibility and of guilt. "I misdiagnosed you, this pregnancy, it's all my fault."
She smiled slightly in spite of the atmosphere of gloom that I was spreading throughout the house. "I like to think that I would know if the pregnancy had anything to do with you."
"Not that, the miscarriage. I saw the symptoms of pregnancy and misdiagnosed them. They were all there, right under my nose, but I explained away the shifting of your weight, your hormones, your breasts…" I ploughed ahead as if I hadn't heard her annoyed snort. "and then I added to the equation the symptoms of your anger and stress and came up with a nervous breakdown."
"You can hardly be expected to…"
"But I am, it's my job. You never experienced morning sickness did you?"
"Only this morning, but not all women do."
I shook my head sadly. "It was a bet with Wilson, well not really a bet, I mean… it was on my side but I don't think he knows about it…"
"You're not making any sense."
I wanted to dispel the sound of concern in her voice; she had no business worrying about me after what I had done, so I blurted out my confession in a single breath. "I wanted to prove to him that you would keep working even while sick so I spiked your calcium pills to mimic the symptoms of the flu."
"You wha—you replaced my calcium pills with what? With something…"
"Something that caused your miscarriage." I finished for her.
"Three days ago, you snuck into my office." She didn't sound like she was really asking me, but I decided to answer anyway.
"Yes, but I didn't replace them, I just added six more to the bottle, which is the reason for the time delay. I didn't realize you were pregnant, otherwise I would never…" I shut up, realizing how uncharacteristically I was rambling.
"Because of a bet… with Wilson." She said slowly, her mind gradually making unpleasant connections. She remained silent a while longer and I waited as patiently as I could for the inevitable outburst, but she was quiet, her sad, almost puzzled blue eyes focused on me.
"I should have realized." I finally said when the silence became unbearable; I wanted her to understand everything I had done and respond with anger. Anger was familiar territory for both of us; I could deal with it, but more importantly, so could she. I wanted her so angry that she would never forgive me until I was a nameless cadaver in the morgue.
But she stayed silent, her expression sorrowful and pained, and her eyes remained pointed in my general direction, even though her gaze was unfocused and vague.
"Yell at me." I finally asked—begged—of her. "Scream, call the cops, beat me over the head. Here, use this." I tried to hand her my cane but she turned her head from the offending piece of wood as if disgusted by the very sight of it.
"I think…" She began, her voice low and broken by emotion. "…that you had better leave."
I don't think I've ever liberated anyone of my presence as quickly as I did at that moment. My broken explanation, the one sided conversation, it all made the situation so much more real for me. My carelessness—no, I hadn't been careless, I had been deliberately reckless, intrusive, irresponsible—it had all resulted in the loss—the death—of the developing child of someone whom I cared about. I was through lying to myself; yes, I was concerned; yes, I cared about her; and yes, I felt guilty: damn guilty. I felt guilty because I was guilty, on two fronts; first when I had misdiagnosed her, and then when I had poisoned her.
Cause and effect; responsibility; compassion; those words, her words, were drifting through my head. She had wanted me to prove her wrong, but instead I had taken all of those words and fouled them in the worst possible manner. She would be better off without me, the hospital would be better off without me, the world would be…
My leg not so subtly brought me back to my surroundings; an intense pressure was numbing my toes and shooting stitches up my side and doing any number of immeasurable things to my absent thigh muscles. I still had a nearly full bottle of vicodin bouncing along in my pocket but I resisted the pull; I didn't deserve any relief, I wanted the pain to distract me from the sick feeling in the back of my throat. Tiny pills had been the source of my problems for so long, no, I had made them the source of my problems, and now I had unfairly made them the source of the problems of an innocent colleague.
I was only two blocks away from Cuddy's house, but already my leg was screaming out in protest, my side was seizing up, my shoulder was aching. I was still miles away from home and even farther from where my bike rested patiently in the hospital parking lot. As a rule I never carried any ID or money; I had my cell phone but the thought of conversing with another human being was disdainful, so I continued walking. I walked, I hobbled, I limped, I stumbled; I rejoiced in every painful protest my body offered against this abuse. I could deal with physical pain, I was accustomed to it; emotional pain was new, it was foreign, and it was greatly, infinitely, worse.
