Anne, Raney’s usual nurse, was away and everything took more time, more explanation. Diana, the kind, methodical, and very inexperienced nurse who was on duty, seemed increasingly nervous around Charlotte as the morning progressed. When it was time for Diana’s break, she was out of the room so fast Charlotte knew she’d done a poor job camouflaging her impatience.
She checked Raney’s lines, her medication infusion rates, her urine, her color, her lungs, her heart—the usual daily routine. But the doctor in her couldn’t shake off the discordant images of Eric with this woman, as a boy, as an adolescent, as an infatuated young man, as a lover. She glanced at the automated blood pressure reading, then turned Raney’s wrist over and placed the first two fingers of her left hand over Raney’s radial artery, preferring to diagnose by touch than by machine. They might have taken too much fluid from her in dialysis this morning; her pulse was weak—the slightest compression and it disappeared. Charlotte had touched her often in the course of care, usually with gloves on, always with some clinical purpose. Get in, make a plan, get out. Solve all problems and keep the spark of life going another month, another day, another hour, because without that bridge the rest of a lifetime would never happen. It was not her job to judge where the road led beyond that.
A bottle of lotion stood on the nightstand and Charlotte poured some into her palms, smoothed it over Raney’s arm where the flesh was still pink and perfused above the necrotic fingertips. Her arm was a stick of wood, a heavy inanimate weight. Charlotte let the hand fall back onto the air mattress. Damn you, Raney. Tell me if you’re in there. Tell me what you would want
.
The room was empty but for the two of them. She sat down in the reclining armchair provided for family members. She’d never sat in one before, never known any friend or relative who’d been in intensive care. A thousand days—more—she’d paced these rooms and studied the monitors for a numerical history of her patients’ courses, always in too big a rush to sit and watch. Just watch. The way husbands and children and sometimes even parents watched and prayed. She tried, for a moment, to clear her mind of medicine; to stop the calculations of perfusion and oxygenation, to sit here like any un-savvy fellow human and pretend that this woman would wake up one day and tell Charlotte her story: how she’d gotten here, where she was right now, one foot in this world and one in, well, who could know? She’d never found an answer to that one in medical school.
One of the monitors alarmed—an IV bag was nearly empty. Charlotte got up and switched it. The fluorescent light above Raney’s bed made her face look ghostly, a death mask. Now that the swelling was gone, her chin, her brow, and cheeks were distinctly sculpted. How did family members stand it? Being able to see and touch the one they loved, able to stroke their arm, whisper in their ear and get nothing in return? No confirmation that the touch, the words, a kiss had passed through the shell to the soul inside. Someone had combed her hair, as if a visitor might finally come, or Raney herself might suddenly wake and run her hand over her hair as women do to assure themselves they are presentable. Charlotte swept an errant strand off Raney’s forehead and then tucked her own hands into her pockets, thinking. She leaned closer to the bed, close enough to smell the oils in Raney’s hair, the scent of her skin. “I’m jealous,” she whispered to the comatose woman, and then laughed at hearing this pitiful truth audibly escape. “I’m jealous that you had him when there was still time.”
—
When she got home from work, she washed her hair, poured a large glass of wine, and sat on her deck watching the Friday evening bridge traffic on 520 back up to a near standstill. When the glass was empty she opened her laptop and Googled commercial paternity-testing labs. She wrote three numbers on a sticky note, which she stuck to the side of her wineglass. After the sun had set and the evening began to cool, she carried the glass and her computer inside, shredded the sticky note into confetti, soaked it thoroughly in the soapy glass, and flushed it down the disposal. Then she called Eric. “It’s me. I need pizza,” she said.
“Margherita?”
“Meat for me. Greasy meat.”
They had not gone this long without seeing each other since Eric flew to New York six months ago. When the doorbell rang, she let him in, then opened her bathrobe and wrapped it around them both. In the morning she woke to find him lying on his back staring at the ceiling. They hadn’t talked about any of it the night before, and now Charlotte was almost afraid to, as if any rift caused by Jake’s paternity might cleave right through the heart of everything they were to each other, even if she didn’t understand how those issues were connected yet. He must have felt her eyes, even her thoughts. He didn’t look at her and said, “He isn’t safe there.”
“You think Boughton would hurt him?”
“Physically hurt him? No. There are other ways of ruining a kid.”
“Blake Simpson, the deputy, called me,” Charlotte said.
“Did you tell him we . . . ?”
“He already knew.” She told Eric that Simpson didn’t feel any better about Boughton than they had, but no arrest or prosecution was likely to come of it.
Eric asked, “What if you told him you were worried about Jake? Couldn’t he do something about that?”
“Based on what? The fact that Boughton didn’t welcome us into his home when we rang his doorbell unannounced and accused him of abandoning the wife who had just abandoned him? Jake might not seem happy, but he didn’t look abused.” She got out of bed and pulled on her blue jeans, agitated now. Maybe she’d called Eric too soon, before she knew what she was hoping for.
“You’re still upset, aren’t you?” he asked. “Look, forget what I said about being Jake’s father. His skin color . . . we both saw the picture of Jake’s dad. The real problem is that if no one cared enough to notice Raney was missing for two weeks, who’s watching out for Jake now?” Charlotte’s face twisted into tears, a rare event in their history together. He got out of bed and tried to hold her, but she pulled away. “Charlotte . . . I’m sorry. You were right—it’s gut-wrenching to see Raney like this. To see her son growing up in that place. My imagination . . .”
Charlotte spun around and slammed both of her fists against his chest, sending him back a step with a look of shock. “That’s not it. I’m
not
right for once, even when I need to be! Damn it!” She fell against the wall and slid to the floor, wiping her eyes. “I was at her bedside yesterday, looking at her face. You can see bits of her in Jake—her chin, the shape of her eyes.” She shook her head as if that might make the truth she saw go away. “But most of him . . . it
is
your face, Eric. I can’t explain his skin color, but he’s your child. The child you won’t have with me. And I am trying not to hate you both for that.”
He looked so stunned it made her want to hit him again and then wrap herself around him, hold on and say nothing else. Ever. After a moment he said, “You’re hating us for loving each other twelve years ago. Look, you and I both want to help Jake—let’s focus on that right now. It doesn’t matter where his genes came from, does it?”
“Doesn’t it? All last night I thought about my parents, my brother. My nephews. The only people in the world who love me no matter what I do. Even when they hate me.” She saw him consider protesting this and shook her head again. “Blood is blood, Eric. Maybe old married people get there too, but if there’s any chance you’re Jake’s father you should find out.”
“Well, since that’s impossible, I’d rather worry about helping him. A gift to Raney, if nothing else.”
“How? What can you do? Send money to David Boughton and hope he starts a college fund with it? Kidnap Jake?”
“I’ve already thought of something. If the last thing Raney wanted was to get Jake to a doctor about his back, start there. Is it scoliosis? How serious is that?” Eric asked.
“I don’t know. Scoliosis can be really bad in kids. It’s out of my field, but Will or Pamela would know. They’re bringing Hugo and Charlie over later.” Charlotte had promised to watch her nephews while her brother and sister-in-law went to a party. She saw his eyes darken and said, “I won’t tell them everything, Eric. It’s your story to tell if you want.”
After a moment he asked, “Is there any change?”
She knew he was asking about Raney, if only by the hopeless note in his voice. She wished she could counter that, say something positive and still tell the truth. “I don’t think she’s going to make it.”
—
Pamela and Will came by a few hours later. The lingering pall between Eric and Charlotte was obliterated by Hugo’s and Charlie’s energy; in moments they had overtaken the house. When they could do little more than crawl, Charlotte had started a game of hiding small toys about her house, colored blocks or stuffed animals at first, then Matchbox cars and trucks, balls, Lincoln Logs. An Easter hunt at every visit. Pamela said it spoiled them, but she didn’t urge Charlotte to stop. The boys never complained or fussed when Pamela walked out the door.
“Hey, guys!” Charlotte said, lifting Charlie onto her hip and swinging him around. He was so accustomed to the greeting that as soon as she picked him up, he locked his legs around her waist and let go, dropping upside down to dangle above the floor until the centrifugal force of Charlotte’s spinning made his hair stand up. “Mind if I give them ice cream?” Charlotte asked Pamela. Pamela flapped a hand in the air—all rules were off at Aunt Charlotte’s. Charlotte poured her a cup of coffee and set it on the table with a slice of cinnamon bread.
“Will’s waiting in the car,” Pamela said, but then she looked at the gooey bread and sat down.
“I have a medical question for you. Scoliosis in a child. What’s the usual course?”
“Hmm. It depends on the degree of curvature. And the age of the child. If it’s significant it usually means surgery. Can be a big operation but without it the curve can become pretty crippling. Who has scoliosis?”
Charlotte felt Eric watching them, listening. “A friend asked me about it. I said I’d try to help.”
They heard Will in the living room. “Pamela? It’s
your
office picnic. If you want to go alone . . .” He came to the kitchen door.
Pamela said, “He’s the one to ask—the professor. Will, what do you do for scoliosis? I mean, when do you consider surgery versus bracing?”
“Depends on the degree of the curve. But first you need a differential diagnosis.” Hugo heard his father’s voice and ran into the room, slamming into Will’s leg like it was a punching bag. Will barely seemed to notice. He scratched Hugo’s scalp with his knuckles and went right on talking. “Is it congenital? Idiopathic? Part of a syndrome? A tumor? The treatment might be the same, but you need to be sure no other organs are involved.” Hugo began to bang on his leg.
“A tumor?” Charlotte said. That hadn’t crossed her mind. “Malignant?”
Will bent over Hugo. “Go find Charlie, Hugo. Or jump on your sweet Aunt Charlotte’s big, king-size bed.” He winked at Charlotte but it worked—Hugo bounded into her bedroom. “Not always malignant. Not at all. Tuberous sclerosis. Neurofibromatosis. Those can cause scoliosis.” Charlotte’s face flushed and she was careful to keep her eyes on Will, refused to look at Eric. “I’d be happy to talk to your friend if she wants,” Will continued. “Pamela? Can we go? Please?”
—
It lay between them like a loaded gun—at the zoo, at the wading pool in Green Lake, on the swings. The boys played and Eric and Charlotte took turns being three and five years old again. Being parents. Teachers. Playing any role that allowed them to be together and still avoid each other. After Pamela and Will picked up their sons and shut the door to Charlotte’s house, the gun exploded inside her. “You need to find out, Eric. You need to know.
Jake
needs to know.”
“You’re running with this, Charlotte. Okay, so neurofibromatosis is one possibility. One remote possibility. So are a dozen other causes. Jake needs to see a doctor—we can try to make that happen. What’s the point of going further?”
“It’s the right thing to do. The moral thing to do. If you are his father . . .”
Eric brought his palm down on the table with a loud slap, then looked as surprised by his reaction as Charlotte was. He took in a slow, full breath. “Jake has a father. Should I damage that relationship even more? Isn’t Jake under enough stress?”
Charlotte’s chest felt so tight she couldn’t control her voice—torn with frustration and sadness and something bigger. Something hooked deep into the muscle and bone of what she and Eric were together in love. And what they were not. “
Step
father,” she said. “Not father. You knew Jake’s mother longer than Boughton did.”
Eric looked at her for a long, quiet moment. When he spoke, he sounded both sympathetic and defeated. “Boughton is the stepfather Jake knows. And I’m a stranger. You, too, Charlotte. We both are.”
—
They stayed in their own separate homes that night. Charlotte slept badly, reworking all the conversations she and Eric had started and left unfinished over the last day and a half; each time she came closer to some accord but stumbled before she felt certain of her own mind. Half the input was missing, she thought, ready to call him. So when the phone rang at six thirty the next morning Charlotte answered, “Let’s go to Alki for breakfast.”
After a short silence she heard Blake Simpson say, “I’ve already eaten, but that’s a kind offer. Is this Dr. Reese?” He apologized for calling so early, but he thought she would want to know that Jake Flores had run away from home and was in temporary foster care.