I stand back from the large canvas and squint, taking in the painting as a whole, and then start contouring the edge of a Tilt-A-Whirl, trying to get the proper angle of it in midtwirl. I take it slow, really settling into the process and getting lost in my work in a way it doesn’t feel like I’ve done since college.
I’m so absorbed that I don’t even think about time, until a glance at my phone informs me it’s 1:45. Shit. I’m going to be late to my appointment.
It’s 2:13 when I fly into the waiting room of Dr. Hobbes’s office in my paint-splattered T-shirt, my hands still covered in the colors of the amusement park. My eyes dart around the room, frantically searching for Harrison, an apology already formed in my mouth, ready to escape. But he’s not there. I check in at the front desk and ask if my husband has come in—maybe he’s in the bathroom. But a woman with braids and gold hoop earrings tells me she doesn’t think she’s seen him. I sit down and wait, thinking he must have gotten held up at work and will rush through the door any second.
But he doesn’t. And halfway through the appointment—when my legs are up in stirrups and the nurse is firing a million questions at me about my lifestyle, family medical history, menstrual cycle—I realize he’s not going to.
* * *
The downside of being a surgeon’s wife isn’t just the long hours, but that strangers’ misfortunes can impact you so greatly. It’s one of the things Vivian warned me about when I told her Harrison and I were getting married (well, right after she ribbed me for the many years I said I was never getting married). “It’s a tough life, Mia. You have to accept that you are always going to come second.” It’s not that she didn’t adore Harrison, it was just her pragmatic, big-sister way of making sure I had thought everything through.
“Of course I know that,” I said, slightly annoyed. After all, I was the one who had been living with it already, through his first year of residency. What I didn’t know was how the resentment would build up over time, along with the surprising added emotion of self-loathing. Because what kind of terrible person gets angry at her husband for missing a birthday party, an anniversary dinner—or a reproductive endocrinologist appointment—when he is literally saving someone else’s life.
I’m folding laundry when Harrison walks in the front door, throwing his keys on the upturned cardboard box in the foyer, taking a deep breath as he slowly crosses the threshold into the den. “I’m sorry about the appointment,” he says. I got his text when I was in the car on the way home, that a Mack truck had T-boned a church bus full of kids twenty miles north of Fordham and he had been pulled in to the ER to help with the influx of patients. I knew he couldn’t help it—that this was his job—but that knowledge didn’t keep me from pounding the steering wheel with the heel of my palm and primal grunting through my teeth in frustration.
“How did it go?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say, picking up a pair of his boxer shorts and snapping them with my wrists to straighten them out. “I filled out a lot of forms, answered a bunch of questions. They took some blood. Should get the results back soon.
“What happened with the accident? Was everyone OK?”
“No,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. “Three fatalities. All at the scene, though. None at the hospital. So far.” He knocks his knuckles gently on the back of the couch. “Craziest thing—these twin sisters, thirteen-year-olds, were sitting next to each other on the bus right in the middle of it where the truck rammed them. The one closest to the window had a punctured lung, diaphragmatic rupture, possible spinal injury, bleeding all over; I mean the works. But her sister was perfectly fine. Not a scratch on her. I checked her out myself.”
It’s something I’ve heard Harrison marvel at before—the mind-boggling randomness of life. Of death. But I don’t feel like getting deep into some existential discussion right now.
“That is crazy.” I feel another ping of guilt that here I was annoyed at Harrison missing a doctor appointment, while some parent was about to be dealt the worst news of their life. “Will the sister be OK? The one that got injured.”
“I think so,” he says. “They got her into surgery in time.”
He walks around the couch and tugs at the sock that’s currently in my hand. He lays it down on the cushion. Then he puts his hands on my shoulders and waits until I look at him. “Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say.
“I’m sorry about the appointment.”
The way he’s standing there, it’s like he’s holding me together, and forgiveness really does begin to pulse through my veins, melting the tension out of my muscles. “I know.” I lean into him, laying my head on his chest. After a minute of listening to my husband’s heart thud in my ear, I feel even better. “Good news is, the nurse said you can go by anytime this week to drop your sample. Dr. Hobbes says your swimmers are probably fine, since I keep getting pregnant, but it’s protocol.”
“Drop my sample? Doesn’t that sound like fun,” he deadpans.
“Could be,” I say, lifting my head. “They might even give you a fresh magazine, if you ask nicely. Ooh! Or maybe a picture of Whoopi Goldberg.” A few vodkas into a late night early in our relationship, Harrison confessed he had a high school fantasy involving her in the movie Sister Act.
He dips his chin and sighs a dramatic, tortured sigh. “For the thousandth time, it was the whole nun thing. Not her, specifically. And I’m never telling you anything ever again.” Then he palms my face between his hands and kisses the top of my nose, like he’s done a thousand times, mostly in the early mornings, when he has to get out of bed and he thinks I’m still asleep.
“Come on,” he says, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “I’ll scrounge us up something to eat.”
Later, as I’m sitting on the lone barstool and he’s standing across from me spearing a carrot from the chicken stir-fry with his fork, he says: “Two things.”
I stuff a piece of soy-drenched broccoli in my mouth and watch his face, waiting.
“Foster mentioned something about one of those continuing education art classes his wife attends at the community college needing a teacher starting in August, I think. Current teacher is moving or retiring or something.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“I know, I know. You think teaching is like giving up, but still, thought I’d pass it along.”
“OK, thanks,” I say. “Second thing?”
He grabs a glass from the cabinet and fills it with water at the sink. Takes a sip. “Caroline came in today for her follow-up.”
I still. “Yeah? How is she?”