“Can I get a glass of water?” Laura wanted to focus on Bechdel’s face, but things blurred in front of her.
“Sure, no problem.” Something silent passed between Kirkpatrick and Bechdel, and he eventually got up and left the room. There was a couch over in the corner.
“Can I lie down?” she asked, already moving towards the soft cushions. If she could just lie down, maybe all of this would be over. She’d wake up, and everyone would be alive again.
Dermot. Terry.
Her parents.
“Tell me more about Dermot,” Bechdel said, helping to pick Laura’s feet up and resting them on the other end of the sofa.
And so Laura did, until she drifted off, dark and dreamless.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE JOYCE
Joyce had spent too much time in hospitals over the last twenty years. Surgeon’s wife. Fundraising guru. More recently she’d been the supportive spouse to a broken man, and potential criminal, while Simon sat covered in blood that wasn’t his own, not a scratch on him. And now, victim’s spouse, but with the same touchstone of a stranger’s blood marking her husband’s features.
Simon called her from the back of the ambulance. He’d sounded fractured, like he was drunk but without the ease that smoothed his edges when he drank. He explained there had been a crime, and a killing. He’d been taken hostage. A man, almost a boy, Simon said, had died.
The words tumbled into Joyce’s ear, and she couldn’t stop the first response that came out of her mouth. “Did you do it again?”
She always knew there was a vile streak in her, but she was usually so good at hiding it from the important people in her life. Especially her husband. But this was too much. It felt as though they’d just finished hobbling through the past year. And just when she thought she’d ensured Trina would finally be out of their life, here came another disaster Simon was in the center of, one that Joyce needed to clean up—literally and figuratively.
Perhaps she should have left him, back when he was in medical school and he had his breakdown. She knew he was weak, but she stayed with him anyway. Because the poor, bald fact was that she loved her husband, however pitiable and problematic joining her life to his might have been.
She dabbed a damp piece of gauze on Simon’s forehead now, wiping away the other man’s blood. Simon stared off, seemingly focused on a yellowed stain in the middle of the linoleum floor. Nurses and doctors in their various scrubs passed by the window of their room, but for now Joyce and Simon were alone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, moving the cloth down to his temple and wiping as gently as possible. She reached to grip Simon’s hands, which sat in his lap, but he held them firmly together and wouldn’t let her pull one of them free. Always his hands, she thought. They could bring her back to him or push her away. Or kill them both.
Joyce went back to cleaning up his face, moving gradually down his neck. She’d thought to bring a clean shirt for him from home, and like a mother caring for a young child she undid the buttons of his shirt and helped him slip off the bloody one, wiping away at any gore that made it through the fabric of his shirt, and then eased his arms through each of the shirtsleeves. She felt the tremor in Simon’s hand as she helped him dress, and wondered if he was going to cry, or apologize for not letting her touch him a moment ago.
Joyce could always count on Simon to do the right thing, in the end, and she preferred to think of that as his ultimate strength. In their marriage, she was the one who brought the other forms of strength to their life together. She took care of the problems Simon couldn’t.
“I wasn’t going to let it happen again,” Simon said. He wouldn’t look at Joyce. She sat on the hospital bed next to him and wordlessly pulled his left and then his right wrist into her lap, buttoning his cuffs. He didn’t resist, and when she was finished he leaned into her just the slightest bit, and Joyce felt a rush of compassion for Simon that threatened to overwhelm her.
Where would he be without her? She didn’t dare to consider.
“Will the police be interviewing you again?” Joyce asked. Joyce had a full morning to coordinate tomorrow. She’d texted earlier to confirm plans, but hadn’t yet received a reply. She had to consider whether spending the morning at the police station would be helpful or a hindrance.
“I don’t know. Everything at the store was a jumble. I talked to a few officers, but I don’t know if anything official happened.” Simon leaned into her further, and she put an arm around his waist. “I couldn’t do it.”
“Couldn’t do what?” she asked, although she already knew the answer.
“I couldn’t help him. The man—the boy who was shot.”
“The man who held you at knifepoint, you mean?” There was no sarcasm in her voice. She stated the facts. Simon had a tendency to get lost in the emotion of situations, and Joyce often brought him back to the realness of the circumstances they found themselves in.
Simon was silent again for a beat, and then, “Yes.”
“Why should you have helped him?”
“Because I’m a doctor, that’s what I was sworn to do.”
“You were in shock. You’d been held at knifepoint and seen a man shot. Nobody expected you to leap up and start performing surgery on the man.”
“His face was so young.” Simon’s voice hovered soft and quiet. “Just a kid, really. But hardened, somehow. He stunk, while he held me close to him. And that’s all I could focus on. That he smelled terrible.”
“That’s only human,” Joyce assured him. She squeezed her arm around him.
Joyce continued. “I’m glad you didn’t help him.”
Simon shifted away from her slightly. “Why?”
“Because he didn’t deserve your kindness.”
“But you didn’t know him. You didn’t know his story, or why he was in the store today. You don’t know why he needed the money.”
Joyce stood up quickly. Simon lost his balance as she moved away and threw a hand onto the bed to brace himself.
“That’s true.” She peered out the window into the hallway. People rushed around, faces focused or worried or blissfully unaware. “But there are lots of people who need things, and only a small portion of them will actually go to the point of killing another person to get them.”
Simon and Joyce looked at each other, and it was as though they were seeing each other—really seeing the other person—for the first time in years. Not just the hard or soft shell that formed when you lived with someone, day in and day out. But underneath, into the core that pulsed out their decisions, that determined their perception of the world.
They held each other’s gaze, neither willing to let go just yet.
Until there was a knock on the door, and Joyce turned to see who the next intruder into her marriage would be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO ADDY
