Balm
Chapter 11
"It was Adam."
Victoria's heart pounded in her ears. From the half-sprint back to his room. From anticipating those three words before they left his lips. From fear of what would follow.
The last few minutes were only accessible to her as slow, measured flashes. They echoed like footsteps down an empty hallway. She'd been with Billy. They'd teetered on a familiar, longing ledge, poised to fall again if she didn't jump first. She'd escaped to the hallway, where her tazed heart fought her forward progress until Chelsea physically did. That same flinty, aggravated voice from yesterday had levied more blame at Victoria's feet, demanded again that Billy fix it all. The realization that Adam had left Genoa City without a word to her had come as a flash too, just as Chelsea's expression froze in stoic surprise. Billy was there, disappearing behind the slow close of mechanical doors, his bruised face looking straight ahead, but not seeing them. He knew. She had seen in his eyes that he remembered.
She'd thrown her body in front of Chelsea's attempt at the closing ICU doors. Then Jack was there, out of nowhere to save them all. "Go," he had told her. "Go to Billy." He would take care of Chelsea. He said it over and over again as Chelsea squirmed like a bug pinned to a wall. His words finally registered, and she took off. Through the doors. Down the hall. To his room, where he was already back in bed, Johnny's dinosaur retrieved from the floor and stationed in his lap. She stood just over the threshold, her hand on the open door, still undecided if she would stay or flee. But Billy was calm, his eyes focused clearly on her, void of any of the anger she had expected.
"It was Adam," he repeated, and this time she heard him above the pounding of her heart. "Adam's alive."
She let go of the door. It sighed and clicked closed, her decision made, though she moved no farther into the room. "You remember."
"Yeah, I remember," he answered, though it hadn't been a question. "I remember."
His confirmation made her head swim. The days of wondering about what had happened to him, the desperation to know every detail, they were over with a handful of words, and yet somehow she was more terrified now than when she first saw him in that bed, fighting for his life. She was terrified of the truth, terrified of the aftermath, terrified that he had come back to them physically, just to lose him to something greater and more agonizing than death. But the fear didn't stop her from needing to know.
"Wh-what do you remember?"
"You," he said, surprising her with a tender smile. "I remember you. And the kids. Valentine's Day. I remember Delia. And I remember how far, how goddamn far off course I let myself get." They weren't the cold, violent facts she expected to hear. He could tell by the way she stopped breathing with a quiet gasp and how she wrapped her arms around herself as she steadied her body against the closed door. He could also tell she wasn't interested in hearing apologies or regrets right now, no self-deprecating monologues. She needed to know he remembered what happened to him. So, he cleared his throat and started over, gripping Johnny's dinosaur in both hands for strength.
"I remember going to the penthouse," he said. "To get my stuff. I was going to leave, go back to Jack's. That place, it wasn't where I belonged. !, uh, I realized that that day. Anyway, the door was open when I got there. He was in there. Adam. Gabe. Whoever. He was talking to Chelsea. She was crying, and she said his name. She said "I can't believe it's you, Adam. I can't believe it's you." And as crazy as it sounded, it …it made sense, you know. I couldn't move, so I ust stood there and listen—"
"Stop," Victoria said suddenly. "Just stop." She wiped at her cheek and catapulted from the door. He watched with confusion as she dug in her purse and pulled her cell phone free.
"What are you doing?" She was just close enough that he could grab her shaky hands with his good one.
"I'm calling the police. We have to do this right."
"Hold on. No. Stop. I don't –I don't want to do that." He tried to pull the phone from her hands, but she was stronger right now, stronger and upright.
"You don't have a choice, Billy. You have to give a statement."
"Why? He's been caught, hasn't he? That's why Chelsea was here. That's why she was so upset. That's what you been keeping from me, isn't it?"
"Adam's gone, Billy," she yelled. Anger burned inside her and flared in her eyes, fanned by his callous, flippant attitude. "He got away. Yeah. He got away again. And now you have to tell the police what he did to you. You have to because of something you kept from me, Billy. Another thing you kept from me. You shot him. Do you remember that? Last year, when you came crawling back to our house, to me and Johnny. You shot him. But don't worry. I've already added it to the list of things you kept from me."
"It wasn't like that, Vick. It…." His voice was soft and apologetic, but stopped altogether with the look she shot him, a bullet of hate and betrayal. This wasn't what he wanted, not now, not with her. "It was an accident. We fought over the gun….the car swerved…it just went off…I didn't know…"
"I don't want to hear it. I really don't. We're over. We're done. And this isn't about me. It's about our children, and they deserve to have their father in their lives."
"That's all I want." It was mostly the truth.
"Then give the statement. For them."
"Look, I just –I don't want to talk about it anymore. I don't want to keep rehashing it over and over again. And not because I'm angry or holding grudges or, or plotting revenge. I'm not, Victoria. It's over. It was over in that basement. I promise…" He realized as he said them how little those words would mean to her, how they would only dig deeper at an unhealed or reopened wound. His chest was tight, in need of air. He took a few steady breaths and leveled his eyes with hers, making himself as open and vulnerable as he was capable of. "I just want to move on, okay, Vick? Adam's gone? Fine. He won't come back. He's too much of a coward."
"You really do think it's that easy, don't you?" She was quiet too, scary quiet. Her anger rested deep inside her now, where she buried every strong, unmanageable emotion. A sad, unloving smile took its place. "A lot of people put their reputations and their careers on the line for you. Jack. And Kevin. And Michael. Detective Harding. Me."
That last trembling syllable hurt the most, and he didn't try to hide it, not that he could. He reached for her, tried to recapture that last intimate moment they had shared. She pulled away, out of reach, a dance they were used to, experts at. "No," she said and shook her head. "I'm done. I'm done with all of it."
"Vick," he warned desperately as she cleared all evidence of her visit from the floor, her purse, a gift bag full of carefully folded tissue paper. "Victoria!"
She ignored him and made a beeline for the door. She would have been gone, free, if not for Dr. Walker. She tornadoed right into him, her force no match for his strong white-coated torso or the arms that awkwardly circled around her to keep her from falling as she stumbled backwards.
"Victoria," Billy called out again when he saw he had one last chance. Out of the corner of her eyes, the ones avoiding the doctor's concerned gaze, she saw a green dinosaur extended in her direction. Johnny. Johnny would force her to go back. She placed an empty palm against Dr. Walker, against his name tag, a pocket that held a shiny silver pen, and pushed herself away. She grabbed the dinosaur by its head without looking at Billy, without looking at anyone and marched through the open door, her back straight as a soldier's.
Both men watched her leave, but it was Billy who looked away first. Dr. Walker had seen the upset in both patient and visitor when he happened through the door. But it was the woman on two feet, no visible wounds, that his eyes stayed on and not the man in the hospital bed. He followed her angry exit down the hall, stayed where she had been long after she was gone. His patient finally coughed, once and then a string of unrelenting ones, reminding him he was a physician first. The doctor moved quickly, placing an oxygen mask over his patient's mouth and nose and, when the coughing subsided, the cold end of a stethoscope inside the hospital gown. Billy knew the drill. Deep breath. Hold it. Wince. Let it go. He did this three times, once with every move of the stethoscope.
"Lungs sound good," the doctor said. "Coughing is good, too. Helps prevent pneumonia. But try not to overdo it."
"Sorry about…all that," Billy said as he pulled the plastic mask from his face and gestured towards the door. His ribs ached, and the dust of their argument was still heavy in the air. A cough wouldn't clear it. "She just…she hates me."
The doctor made eye contact with him, brief, but pointed, and Billy couldn't tell if he was searching for the truth or deciding what to say next. It was uncomfortable, the way he looked at him, as if he knew more than the injuries to his body. In the end, Dr. Walker simply looked away as if nothing had been said and buried his gaze in the scribbled notes of Billy's medical chart.
"Looks like you've had an eventful day. You, um, you walked down the hall?"
"Yeah," Billy grimaced and rubbed at his sore ribs. "Til I had to be wheeled back."
"Pain sneaks up on us sometimes. Reminds us we're not healed yet. But, it's still a victory. More than most can do. You're making the right improvements, Billy, miraculous considering where you were a few days ago. Now it's time to start the next phase."
"No offense, Doc, but that mean I get to leave?"
"No, but it does mean getting out of the ICU. Based on today and your steady progress, I'd say that could be as early as Friday."
"I guess that's good," Billy shrugged. His heart and thoughts were still chasing a woman down a hallway he couldn't even walk down. Hearing anything other than her voice was not a victory in his mind.
"I'd also like to start you on physical therapy then, too. Get your muscles re-trained, build your strength."
"Bring it on," he said absently. His eyes still clung hopefully to the door, so he didn't see Dr. Walker roll the stool next to his bed, or sit, or fold his hands over the medical chart in his lap, or hesitate ever so slightly.
"I've also set you up with therapy sessions."
Billy's head snapped to attention. "You mean a shrink? Nah, I don't-"
"It's standard for head injuries," Dr. Walker continued, unfazed. "And you've had a couple. Not to mention…everything else."
The two men sized each other up. It was the longest conversation they had ever had, certainly the longest one alone. And Billy could see then that he did know more than his physical injuries and that maybe the jealous sting from seeing Victoria against him earlier was justified. It had only been an awkward collision on the surface, but each second she lingered, each moment the good doctor watched her leave, was a second more for suspicion to grow.
"Nah," Billy said coldly. "I tried that already. After my daughter died. Didn't work for me."
Dr. Walker almost laughed. They were nearly the exact words Victoria had used last night. But in the space between thinking about laughing and actually doing it, he saw Billy's left thumb involuntarily, and subtly slip between his third and forth fingers, twisting an imaginary wedding band. It was reflex or the power of suggestion that made Dr. Walker do the same thing to the pale ring of skin that circled his own finger.
"Has anything worked for you, Billy?"
The question was biting, sarcastic. For the first time Billy noticed the tanless reminder on his doctor's left hand, a more prominent twin to his own scar. They were patrons of a similar tragedy, members of the same sad club. He wasn't a doctor anymore, and as if reading Billy's mind, he deposited the forgotten chart on the hospital bed and took off the white cloak of his profession.
"I'm not suggesting therapy just as your doctor. I've been there. Tried to forget. Tried to drown myself in work, drinking. But there is no kind nepenthe, Billy. Not that lasts."
"No what?"
The doctor chuckled and rubbed his tired face. "You read any Poe?"
You look like something out of a Dickens novel- make that Edgar Allan Poe.
He nodded to shake the memory form his skull. "Yeah, probably in high school. College maybe."
"'Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore! Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore,'" he recited. "It's a drug, a potion. Makes you forget grief. IT was first used in the Odyssey. Given to Helen of Troy to make her forget her home."
"It isn't real," Billy murmured and once again, spun his scar of a ring.
"Look, the sessions aren't up for debate. Not as long as you're in here. After that, it's up to you. But I speak from experience. It helps. Helps you cope, not forget." He was a doctor again, and he gathered the chart and his white coat, folded them both across his arm as he rose and staggered like a memory across the tile floor.
"Hey," Billy called, and Dr. Walker stopped where Victoria had flown into him earlier. "What's your story? Your wife?"
That simple question made him a man again and not a doctor. He sighed and looked to the ceiling. Billy watched a lifetime pass across his eyes, birthdays and anniversaries spent together, good days and sad ones, fights and making love, vacations on the beach, nights at home on the couch. "Does it matter?" he finally shrugged. "They all end the same. I lost her."
Billy accepted it. It was true, the simplest truth there was. But the doctor surprised, hand on door handle, his voice echoing off the solid wooden surface. "She died of Uteran Cancer five years ago. Three months after she was diagnosed. Two weeks before our divorce would have been final. I took my ring off the night you came in."
He tried to control it, but Billy heard the drowning emotion fight to the death in his throat and saw the quivering of his jaw in profile. And then he stilled and turned before Billy could utter a useless "I'm sorry."
"She doesn't hate you," he said. "No one spends night after terrible night in a hospital chair for someone they don't love. Someone they don't want another chance with. If I had..if…if my wife walked through that door, there isn't one thing I wouldn't do to have another chance. Not one thing."
Billy sank against his flattened pillow, turned his eyes from the door his doctor disappeared through as his family, his sisters and his mother, chuckled their way inside. He was happy to see them. He couldn't be alone right now, with his demons and his doctor's. He couldn't be alone at all.
It had taken three days, but Billy finally found something that countered the drowsy strength of the pain meds. Unrest. Deep, unsettling unrest.
She hadn't come back. There was no aroma of coconut lingering in the stagnant hospital air. His skin didn't tingle from her touch. He was crazy for thinking she would. Crazy or desperate.
Ashley was his designated babysitter tonight. She was already asleep on the sofa turned bed, unaided by painkillers, unbothered by the beeping or wrestling thoughts and memories. Moonlight filtered through the blinds and broke up the darkness. It was a clear night. The snow had moved on, and Billy could feel the chill of the night just from looking at a sliver of sky. It conjured the basement, the cold he couldn't escape, the fate he'd been dealt, the truth he couldn't hide from anymore.
He'd had hours to think about what he remembered. And to think about what Victoria had said, the unspoken ultimatum. And then there was Dr. Walker and the wife Billy couldn't stop thinking about. What was her name? What color were her eyes? Did he see them in his sleep, his sleep that wouldn't let him forget? What did he drink on those nights the loss came knocking at his door? Why was she not given a second chance?
Billy turned from the moon and slid his hand beneath the covers. He'd hidden the phone there, though the nurses knew he had it. He found the picture again, the one of Johnny and Katherine, and a sliver of Victoria in the background, the jaw he'd caressed a million times, the shoulder he'd pressed lips to again and again. There were more, she'd promised, and Billy scrolled through them one by one, each a little piece of home.
Victoria was right, as usual. There was a series of shots of their son's toys, a block castle in varying states of construction, action figures lined across the dining room table, a dump truck full of Kibble, a patient Keely at its side. There were several of his baby sister, sleeping, smiling, swaddled in her pink car seat. And there was one at the end that took his breath away. It was Victoria, in their bedroom, the one they'd shared for so many nights. She was in a slip, ivory-colored, that clung to her body. She was sitting on the edge of their bed, legs crossed, her damp hair fanned out by the blow dryer in her right hand. She was beautiful, so damn beautiful, but it was her eyes that caught him, tightened his chest. They were cast down, to her left hand in her lap. He knew what she was looking at, though it only appeared as a shadow in the photograph until he touched the screen and closed in on her hand. He felt guilty for a minute, seeing her in such a private moment, and then he felt blessed and sad, desperate to talk to her.
There were no numbers in his gift of a phone, but there was one he knew by heart, and touched the sequence without hesitation and only a quick cautious glance at his sister.
"Hello?" Her voice was hushed, and in the seconds following he heard her tell someone everything was okay, to go back to sleep. She wasn't alone. Of course she wasn't alone. He thought about hanging up, but it was too late, and he didn't want to. "Hello? Billy? Is that you?"
"Hey. Yeah. Hi."
"Is…are you okay?"
"Yeah, sorry it's so late."
"It's okay. I was up."
A long stretch of silence followed, and in it Billy whispered a thousand apologies she would never hear. Then it came, the sigh he was waiting for, that told him she was ready to listen.
"Doc wants me to see a therapist."
"Yeah?" she said, though she didn't sound surprised. "How do you feel about that?"
Ashley stirred across the room, and he waited until she was still again to answer. "I think I'd rather drive across country with my mom and Esther. Twice." She laughed, and he smiled. "But I guess I'll do it. You think I should?"
"Yeah. I do."
His decision was made then. He would give it a try. But there was something else he had to do first. "I'll do it, Vick. I'll give my statement. On one condition."
"No conditions, Billy."
"I want you there," he blurted over her. "I'll give my statement, if you're in the room. I only want to tell the story once, and you, you need to hear it."
She didn't say anything right away, and Billy didn't push. It had taken him hours to agree. She deserved a few minutes at least. "Okay," she finally agreed, but he could hear the trepidation in her voice.
"Tomorrow?" he asked.
"Yeah, I'll call Detective Harding and arrange it."
"Okay."
"Okay."
He wasn't ready to say goodbye yet, and she didn't seem to be in a hurry either, but finding safe conversation after their argument was like crossing a mine field. "Hey, how's Johnny?"
"Sound asleep," she said and reached across the bed to smooth his hair. The dinosaur was tucked beneath him, his arms wrapped around the cherished toy. They were four in the bed, her and Johnny and the dinosaur, and Katherine at her breast. She didn't normally let them all sleep in her bed, but tonight she was lonely. Tonight they all needed to be together.
"Good," Billy said and smiled in the moonlight. "I should, uh, I should let you get some sleep then."
"Okay," she whispered. "You should, too. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," he repeated and stifled a yawn as she said goodnight and was gone. He could sleep now, and tomorrow he would see her. It would be a hard day, one he didn't look forward to, except that she would be there. She would be there as he recounted the scariest days, the says he thought second chances were for others. Dr. Walker's words echoed in time with the machines. There was nothing he wouldn't do to see her walk through those doors again. That's what he held onto as his eyes finally drifted shut.
