“They have special cleaners who come,” Joe had answered, nodding solemnly.
Laura ran the vacuum, trying to find some spark of satisfaction in leaving clean lines on the carpet where animal cracker crumbs had been trampled in. Her back ached and her head throbbed. She’d kill for a moment to sit down and drink a cup of decent coffee.
But whenever she stopped moving or doing, her mind shifted back to that hotel room and what might need to be cleaned up. The parts of Dermot that might still be there, soaked into the sheets or the carpet. Were his fingerprints in dusty black flurries along the edges of a similar TV stand or the headboard of the bed? Had they brought in a black light to see if there was blood or other pieces of him cleaned up, but left behind?
Laura closed the door to the room. She was on the third floor, shuttling her cart between the few occupied rooms. Tuesdays weren’t as busy as Mondays, with their turnover from banquets and parties held on the weekends. People didn’t really travel to Summitville for the town itself. It was always for someone. Weddings, funerals. Family reunions and anniversary parties.
When Dermot called her Sunday morning to ask if she could slip him the key card for a room at the Marriott, Laura had thought that everything she’d wished for was about to come true. Of course she’d agreed, even though she’d never done it before. Cleaning staff didn’t go behind the front desk normally, but there were plenty of opportunities to slip behind and snag a card when whoever was on the desk was hiding out in the back, watching funny videos on YouTube or trolling their ex on Instagram.
Laura met Dermot at the diner—their diner—slipping him the key card in a white envelope like they were on some TV show starring Jennifer Garner in disguises. He’d ordered a salad, already dressed up for the wedding. He’d told her it was a work colleague’s friend who was trying to flesh out their side of the church, and Dermot had accepted the invite because he knew what it was like to not have family when you needed it. Laura was still in her work uniform, and as she sipped her chocolate milkshake she wished she’d thought ahead enough to bring a change of clothes.
“So why the room?” She’d leaned forward but avoided looking Dermot in the eye.
“I have some special plans for tonight,” Dermot said, giving her a wide smile and taking a big bite of his Cobb salad.
“Oh,” was all she’d replied.
God, did she regret that “Oh.” Maybe things could have been different if she’d said something besides “Oh” when Dermot mentioned the room. Maybe they would have talked more about it, and she wouldn’t have shown up that night in her best dress and the six-inch heels she’d borrowed from Rosie, only to see him with that other woman, devouring each other with sloppy mouths and hands as they headed into the room.
Maybe she wouldn’t have made a second copy of the key card for herself.
Laura closed the door to the room she’d just cleaned. She pushed her cart forward, passing another woman whose name she didn’t know working the other side. Tinny music played from a radio attached to the woman’s cart, but the melody was lost on Laura.
She opened the door to the next room, ready to clean up another person’s mistakes.
CHAPTER ELEVEN SIMON
The couple sitting in front of him were not in a good place. After years of observation, Simon was skilled at reading the signs from his well-appointed office at the hospital. One member of the couple, usually the healthy one, would stare at the books lining the floor-to-ceiling shelves and make a comment on one or another title, usually saying they hadn’t liked the book as much as the general public had. The other would hold their breath, trying to hide their irritation at their better half’s pedantry. It was partly why Simon filled some of his shelves with popular novels and nonfiction, rather than just the standard medical references. At this point in his career, he rarely needed to use them anyway, and it was far more enjoyable for him to sit during his lunch break and page through Ann Patchett’s latest contribution rather than review yet another poorly translated and proofread manuscript submitted to a top-tier medical journal hoping to slip through the editorial cracks.
It was an operable tumor, Simon told this couple. Just below the left breast, seated on top of her liver. Followed by chemotherapy, he anticipated she’d do incredibly well and would be back to her normal self in less than a year.
“A year?” her husband said. He was the one who had made the crack about the well-worn David Foster Wallace sitting on Simon’s bookshelf. “Are you sure?”
Simon leaned forward in his chair, the satisfying creak of the wood against metal cutting through the air like an accent. He templed his fingers, and for a moment thought of Joyce. She’d kissed his hands last night, palm to tip, with her soft mouth. He didn’t deserve her. He knew that, and he hoped she was still trying to convince herself that she didn’t know it, too.
“Nothing in medicine, especially with cancer, is definite.” He said the word—cancer—although many of his colleagues were superstitious in their own way, using euphemisms like “malignancy,” “sickness,” and “mutation.” “But yes,” he continued, “I’m very hopeful your wife will make a full recovery in a short period of time.”
She gave a hesitant smile, and Simon felt a flash of joy as he saw her shoulders loosen, unburdened. He would help this woman. This is why he’d begun this work in the first place.
“But a year seems such a long time,” the husband said, and then caught himself. “I mean, this is wonderful news.” He gave a pleading look to his wife. “I just mean—she’ll be needing help for most of that time, won’t she? The chemo will make her sick, right? And the recovery from the surgery. I have a golf tournament I’m competing in in March. It was a very difficult spot to get. It’s in Palm Springs. We’re playing for charity…” He trailed off pathetically.
This wasn’t the first time Simon had seen this type of reaction. “Perhaps there’s someone that could come and help you?” He looked directly at his patient, not her husband, as he said this. “A parent or sibling?”
Because it’s clear from the get-go that you’re not going to get anything from this prick you married.
“My sister could come and stay for a little while,” she offered. Her lips pressed themselves into a thin line, and the slump of her shoulders returned.
Her husband leaned away, across the armrest of his chair. His eyes scanned the titles on Simon’s shelves.
Simon considered asking him to leave, so he could have a private consult with his patient. “Leave him,” he’d say. “Tell him that I was wrong, that you know in your heart you’re dying and he deserves to live his life.”
But then he saw her reach out her thin hand and grope for her husband’s in his lap, and Simon knew it was a lost cause.
They scheduled the surgery for two weeks out. Her sister would come to stay, arriving a few days before. The husband confirmed his reservations at the golf resort, or so Simon assumed he would as soon as he arrived home. Perhaps he’d even do it on the car ride back, asking his wife to drive so he could dial the number.
This is why I drink, Simon thought as he closed his office door behind them.
Well, he corrected himself. One of the reasons.
He heard a knock, and Jackson popped his head around the door. “Your two o’clock had to reschedule. Something with a childcare issue.”
“What does the rest of my afternoon look like?” Simon asked his assistant.
“A follow-up with Mr. Morris at 3. Consult with a new patient—a Ginny Whitcomb—at 3:30. And then open until tomorrow morning. Your first surgery is scheduled for 6:30am.”
“Yes, Hazel Bloom. Pancreatic growth.” Simon nodded.
Jackson asked if he needed anything, and Simon thanked him and said he’d be looking over charts in his office until his three o’clock.
Simon scrolled through his phone once the door was closed again and clicked on Trina’s voicemail.
She needed money, which was something he could give readily. Joyce wouldn’t even know, since he kept an account separate from their joint affairs. Hearing Trina’s voice, and that she needed him, was a balm to his chafed sense of self. It had been a difficult trio of surgeries this morning, and he’d promised himself he’d only put cream in his coffee and nothing stronger beforehand. His hands were steady as he headed into the operating room, but his mind betrayed him as he slid his hands into the latex gloves.
Images of Tom, his mouth open and blood pouring down his chest, bloomed in Simon’s thoughts and he found himself stumbling towards the patient. A nurse reached out and steadied him with a careful hand, which was humiliating beyond belief. And he hadn’t even been drinking that morning.
Tom. Almost a year ago, come next week. It was hard to remember life before that afternoon. Before he’d seen Tom’s body wrangled by metal and cement, and before he’d watched Trina’s life spiral into a chasm of self-loathing.
Joyce and he couldn’t have children. They’d convinced themselves a few decades ago that they in fact preferred it that way.
