Damage Undone

Chapter 9. Dancing Around Reality





Susan was sharing a box of donuts with Jerry at the admin desk when Mark tapped her shoulder.

“Susan,” he said in a low voice. “Michael Shapiro is in there asking for you.”

“Coming,” she said after a deep breath.

Just before she started to follow Mark back to curtain two, Jerry exclaimed, “Don’t throw that away!”

Susan laughed and handed over the half-eaten donut she’d been about to discard. “Go ahead, cholesterolize away.”

“Look who’s talking,” Jerry snarked back through a mouthful of chocolate-frosted.

Her smile faded as she approached the room where she’d left her and Mark’s end-stage AIDS patient waiting for an ICU bed to free up.

“Hi,” he croaked when he saw her, an almost-smile flitting across his face, as Malik got him ready for transport.

“Hey, Michael,” she said, approaching him. “You comfortable?”

“It’s like ... sitting at home… by the fire,” he joked laboriously.

She smiled and indicated the scratch marks on her arms from a feisty five-year-old. “Nice to have a patient with a sharper tongue than fingernails.”

When he didn’t answer, Susan said, “Are you sure you don’t want me to call your wife?” She’d already asked this – and Michael had said it was his fault she was infected, that he wouldn’t make demands on her after doing what he’d done.

But he looked so lonely.

“No – no.” He was hardly able to form a sentence. “She – was right to – kick me out.”

“Your son?”

“No.” Vehement.

She could see Mark shaking his head in deterrence from just out of Michael’s viewpoint. Right. Right – this was about what Michael wanted.

Susan felt her throat blocking. Ridiculous, she thought, it’s only a patient. She’d always been impatient with this kind of sentimentality, the selfishness of taking a patient’s story and turning it into the doctor’s. Yet this lonely death was more than she could watch with equanimity.

But she did, because she had to. She and Mark, since their shifts were almost over, waited in the room till someone came to get Michael.

When he had been taken up to the ICU, she and Mark stood alone in the room, Susan staring blankly at the spot where the gurney had been.

After a long time Mark said, “Nice note to end a shift on.”

“Ha, ha,” she retorted drearily.

“When Susan Lewis needs cheering up there’s definitely something wrong with the world,” he said, stepping cautiously closer.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m Little Miss Sunshine,” she said. Querulous – that was the word for her tone of voice, she thought savagely. She was pitying herself, when it should be all about the patient, or Mark.

“This one got to you?” he said.

She nodded mutely.

“I always wish I could make it less lonely for them,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“But it’s their choice.”

“That’s the worst part. They were only a phone call away.”

Mark blinked, considering his next words. “It’s harder than that.”

“I know. I meant – the idea that he didn’t think they would come, even for this. …I don’t know.” She realized belatedly that she wasn’t good at this, that she and Mark used to be able to talk, but somewhere along the line joking had become easier for her than telling the truth.

“So he should’ve been forgiven just because he was dying?”

“He shouldn’t be dying alone.”

Mark sighed. “No other way to go about it, I’m afraid. No matter how many people are sitting by your bedside.”

Susan choked on whatever she’d been about to say.

Still cautious, he reached out, as if to invite her into a hug. Willingly she leaned her forehead against his chest as his arms closed gently over her shoulders. As she breathed in deeply to quell the shakiness, she thought she felt him drop a light kiss on her hair, but couldn’t be sure.

“It’s okay,” she heard him murmur lamely.

The moment of vulnerability passed quickly, and she withdrew, saying ruefully, “Don’t make me cry.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “I wish I could make you smile.”

Silence. She was battling the impulse to hug him again, just for that comment.

“But let me try to cheer you up,” he said after a moment. “You’ve been taking care of me so much.”

“Well, you needed it. I’m just being ridiculous, to feel like this.”

He pouted. “I feel undervalued now.”

She swatted his shoulder, or the air near his shoulder, afraid to hurt him. “Self-centered, aren’t we?”

He ducked, grinning. Then returned to friendliness, to mildly anxious kindness. “You’re off now, aren’t you?” he said. “Don’t go home alone.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Well, if you put it like that…”

Mark smiled, nodding his head towards the door. “It finally feels like spring out there,” he said. “What say you and I take advantage of the temperature and have a little stroll?”

Susan acquiesced without a fuss – God, she thought, I’ve gotten easy in my old age.

As they went out the door, his hand brushed hers in a gentle signal. She wondered what could possibly have possessed Elizabeth to leave him.

*

“QAs?”

Elizabeth looked up at Robert, who had flung open the door and was crossing his arms, sharply examining the sight of her loosened hair and the weary hand propping up her chin.

“As usual. I was supposed to be off ages ago.”

“I had a call from Northwestern today,” he said.

Elizabeth noticed his odd tone and ran back over the possibilities. Was she in trouble?

“They’d chosen their finalists earlier,” he said, and Elizabeth still didn’t know what he was talking about, “but they only just now decided who they want as their new chief of staff.”

She knitted her eyebrows. “So?” But she knew what was coming.

“I just gave Anspaugh notice,” he said. “I’ll be gone in eight weeks.”

She felt her lips fall open slightly.

“Surprise,” he said.

This felt like more than surprise. She felt… what was the word…? gutted. “You’re… leaving County.”

“Correct,” he said.

“But you can’t! I mean – you’ve always been here.”

“All the better reason to make a change, my dear,” he purred sarcastically.

She tossed her hair back, collecting her wits, and straightening her face. –Must ignore that twist in my stomach, saying that working here, working with him, is all I know.

Robert’s eyes seemed to search her for wavering resoluteness, and she set her lips firmly. Then he said, “I wanted to let you know, especially.”

How to respond to that?

“—Because I’ll be pushing for you as my replacement for chief of surgery.”

“Oh—” she gasped, relieved.

“It shouldn’t be too tough a competition,” he said. “You’re already associate chief, and you’ve filled in for me on occasion, so if you’re willing to do a little ass-kissing—”

“Robert…”

“Or politicking, whichever you choose to call it, you have a good chance at the post,” he finished complacently.

“I – I – uh –” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “Thank you.”

“No problem. I’ll be highly amused to see what happens if you get this job and Kerry gets moved to chief of staff.”

“Ugh,” she said automatically.

He arched an eyebrow. “Kerry’s thoughts exactly, I’m sure.”

“You can’t possibly want Kerry as chief of staff.”

“I don’t, but Anspaugh thinks the sun shines out of her uptight little ass. Besides –” he winked – “it’s not my problem. It’s yours.”

She only smiled a moment. “So you’re really leaving County.”

“Yes, hence the whole ‘Correct’ thing earlier,” he said. “Lizzie, I think even your Mahk is quicker on the uptake than this.”

“Well, I –” She’d started to defend herself, until his dig at Mark caught up to her. “Robert!”

“Oh, don’t go sensitive on me now,” he said. “Look, speaking of Mark…”

She pushed back her chair, wary.

“The other day, when I tried to – uh – to talk to you about –”

Suddenly a desk clerk shoved in past Romano to hand Elizabeth a stack of papers. She could scarcely focus on what the woman was saying; she was too curious about Romano, whose unreadable face attracted her gaze past the slender shoulders of her interlocuter.

“Dr. Corday? Dr. Corday?”

“What?”

“Uh – these forms –”

Elizabeth missed the explanations and nodded perfunctorily. She could figure the forms out herself. What she couldn’t figure out was what he was about to tell her – why his eyes were so dark and so deliberately flat across the room.

When the desk clerk had gone, she waited for him to continue. After a long pause, Romano said, “We can’t do this inside.”

“Do what? I’m terribly busy.” Why did all her instincts say to resist him, she wondered? (Because the suggestion of a twilit stroll is so tempting, she answered herself. Because you’ll have better control over yourself here, in the office, within the bounds of the familiar.)

“The paperwork can wait, Elizabeth. This can’t.”

Without a word she left her papers disheveled on her desk – well, hell, it was her desk – and snatched her light spring coat from the hook on the door as she passed him by.

Outside, they walked quietly down the sidewalk, and to the bridge Elizabeth tried not to guess what he would say – all her predictions were suddenly outlandish, and far beyond her ability to rein in. . Tacitly, it seemed agreed that he would start talking when he thought they were far enough away from the hospital.

In the gray dusk their silence was easy and drowned out by the passing cars; his face, when she allowed her eyes to slide sideways as they were always itching to do, was tight-lipped and darkly resigned.

She shivered slightly. There was something chilling about that expression.

“Cold?” he said.

“I’m fine.” Now that he mentioned it, though, she huddled slightly into the thick wool of her sweater. It was cozy protection against a nippy but somehow inviting spring night.

“Have you noticed what’s been going on?” he said finally, as they dawdled side by side along the water.

“With… you?”

“With Mark.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

He sighed. “Let me preface this by saying I’m probably doing utterly the wrong thing by getting into this mess. But that’s what I’m good at, and I’m leaving and you should know the truth.”

“God, just say it,” she burst out in a flame of irritation. “Stop procrastinating, you’ve never done that before.”

Robert laughed sharply. “All right, then. A week or so ago, I was in a trauma with Mark and he couldn’t say ‘aortic dissection.’ Couldn’t even remember the diagnosis. And then he just stood there, like he was going to cry.”

When she was silent, he touched her arm and stopped them both from walking further. “Do you understand me, Elizabeth?”

She fumbled for words. God – Mark – just when she thought she might know which way she was supposed to go, this came and tumbled everything into confusion again – “You think it’s back,” she forced out.

“The…”

He stopped. —Behold the great Rocket Romano displaying a flash of tact. “The tumor,” she said bluntly.

“Yes,” he said, his voice very soft, and gentle.

She felt her face start to crumble and immediately her impulse was to hide this from Robert. Blindly turning away from him, she took three steps and felt the edge of the railing dig into the tender flesh underneath her ribs, stopping her.

There she stayed, one hand to her eyes, until a small sniff confirmed what must have been obvious anyway. Beneath the roaring in her ears and the insistent background of the gurgling water below her, she picked out his padding footsteps: only two. He was behind her.

“Elizabeth?”

Shaking her head, she tried to control her breathing, her tears.

His hand touched the back of her head, smoothing her hair with unexpected, unimaginable tenderness. She flinched away; and sensed him moving slightly to the side and leaning, like her, over the water.

“And he didn’t tell me,” she suddenly burst out.

“Maybe he was protecting you.”

Elizabeth felt a sudden burst of anger. Maybe she wanted to be protected – maybe she didn’t want to be confronted with this kind of truth, to have to understand what she was feeling and figure out how to hide it from Robert at the same time. “What did you expect me to do with this?” she demanded, her restraints consumed by irrational anger at Robert. “Run back to him? Go back home and watch him die?”

He hesitated, but his answer was firm. “Yes.”

“We’ve broken up,” she said. “I thought we’d grown apart. He’d probably rather be with Susan Lewis—”

“Stop,” he interrupted harshly.

“I don’t think I can do it again. Not this way.”

He seemed to be thinking about how to answer that. Finally, “Is he your husband?”

Elizabeth looked down at the ring, that she still hadn’t the heart to take off or renounce. “Yes.”

“Do you…” She could hear him swallow above the motion of the water, and shift his weight and shake his head to himself. “Well. Never mind. Look, I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I can’t tell you what to do in this case.”

She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes for a moment, almost enjoying the bright painful red that clouded her vision – and then, hoping the tears were disappeared and knowing they weren’t, she looked at him. “I know.”

He seemed about to say something when Elizabeth heard a very different voice behind her, calling, “Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth turned to see Mark and Susan walking towards them. (--Of course, he’s with her, she thought crossly.)

Robert had detached himself from the railing and begun walking to meet the others halfway. His hand lightly brushed her back, in support or in condescending guidance – she couldn’t tell. As usual.

They slowed to a stop, all four of them.

“Nice night to go walking,” Mark said with an attempt at savoir-faire, his voice falling flat on the silence.

Robert seemed briefly amused. “That it is.”

In the pause that followed, Elizabeth found everyone’s eyes on her as she desperately to decide on something to say, or do, to break the suffocating stillness.

Elizabeth looked at Susan, whose face was streaked like her own with tears; who shouldn’t be here, she thought vaguely, and shouldn’t be suffering from the twists and turns of someone else’s marriage. Then at Mark, whose eyes were soft and questioning; who had grasped at heroism and retrieved only a lonely death.

She was too much of a coward to look at Robert for long; she didn’t want to wonder whether his kindness just now was genuine friendship or something more generous and more staggering. But she could feel the warmth of his arm as it lightly touched her own.

The four of them had been dancing around reality, and she was beginning to wonder how much of this hallucinatory tangle of Robert and herself and Mark and Susan lay in her own mistakes.

There wasn’t much left for her to do. She stepped away from the magnetism of Robert’s body.

“Mark,” she said quietly. “Let’s go.”

Obediently Mark fell into step by her side as they began retracing her steps to the banks of the river, leaving Susan and Romano standing like question marks behind them.





Chapter 10: Like Good-Bye