Chapter 17
October 31, 2009 | Filed Under Lisa | Leave a Comment
Lisa’s eyes felt too heavy to open. She could hear voices.
“Shh! She’s waking up,” Dawn hissed.
“Do you think she’ll recognize us,” River whispered, worried.
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
Lisa willed her eyes to flutter open.
“Honey!” Dawn took her hand.
Lisa smiled weakly from her hospital bed. Her first thought upon realizing that she was wearing a hospital gown was how many people had seen her naked. She tried to remember what underwear she’d put on that morning.
River stroked Lisa’s hair.
“I’m so glad Dawn caught me before I got on the train! My heart almost stopped. Sweetie, have you fainted before? Did you skip breakfast?”
Lisa remembered and closed her eyes, trying to find peace. She focused on the beeping heart monitor as if it were her own personal metronome.
River turned to Dawn.
“Should we call the nurse?”
“No. She just needs a minute. I’ll explain later. Do you mind grabbing me something sweet from the vending machines? I’m feeling a little weak myself.”
River grabbed her purse. “Of course I can! Ladies, it’s the most important meal of the day.”
Dawn and Lisa watched the door slowly close behind River.
“Tell me.” Lisa’s voice was hoarse and low.
Dawn looked at her friend and although she desperately wanted to spare her the details, she began.
“It was last year. I’d just finished up a meeting with our Japanese distributor. As I was in the lobby…I turned and saw him. Thomas stepped out of the elevator with a..a…woman. He kissed her.”
Lisa looked up at invisible answers on the ceiling.
Dawn continued.
“I followed him out to the parking lot. I guess my mind wouldn’t let me believe it was really him until I saw that he was driving your car. Gracie’s carseat was in the back…Lisa I am so sorry. I would have told you…I confronted him and he fell apart, he cried. Told me about how she was a friend from work …that they’d mostly just talked…they were both lonely. You’d just had the baby. I didn’t want to upset you. I wanted to believe that he’d been scared straight.”
Lisa felt a million miles from the conversation. She tried to imagine what she could have been doing while her husband had been sharing a hotel room with another woman.
Maybe she’d been giving newborn Grace a bath. Pouring warm water over her pink Buddha belly.
Dawn squeezed Lisa’s hand harder, silently begging for forgiveness.
River burst into the room with two handfuls of packaged trail-mix.
“Under normal circumstanced I’d never let you eat this cra- .”
Feeling the thick mood River stopped talked and stared.
Suddenly the door flew open again and Thomas rushed over to Lisa’s side. He put his hand on her head.
“Geez, Lisa, what happened? I just checked my voicemail..Are you okay? ”
He cupped her face with both hands as if trying to determine what was broken.
Lisa couldn’t bring herself to speak.
Dawn turned to River.
“Let’s give them a minute.”
When they were alone, all Lisa could do was stare at her husband. He assumed her unchecked gaze was a result of an injury.
“Has the doctor been in yet? Lisa, how do you feel? What happened?”
“I fainted.” Speaking was painful, but not physically. Each word she heard herself speak made the the situation more and more real.
“What? Why? Where is the doctor?” Thomas was frantic.
“Where’s Gracie?”
“With Mrs. Michaels in 4C, she said take as long as we need…Where is the doctor?”
“Are you having an affair?”
Thomas felt the air unnaturally leave his lungs as if he’d been kicked in the stomach.
Lisa repeated her question, “Are you having an affair, Thomas?”
Thomas slowly sat down in the chair next to her bed. He folded his hands and silently begged the God of his childhood to rescue him. In the moments before he answered he pondered time travel, what his life would look like after today, and if he was about to lose everything that ever mattered to him.
Without looking her in the eye, Thomas released the truth.
“No. Yes, I did, but no, I’m not. It was a one time thing, I’m so sorry Lisa, you have to believe me. I was crazy, I’d lost my mind, I-”
“Stop talking.”
Lisa felt herself grow up. Suddenly there was no room for all of the adolescent self-loathing she so often indulged in. Puberty ended by infidelity.
“Aren’t you going to ask me how I found out?”
“I knew she’d tell you eventually.”
“Which is why you tried to ruin my relationship with my best friend by relentlessly pursuing a job you knew she’d never give you…” Lisa began to piece the picture together. “You knew she’d come off looking like Cruella De Vil.”
“I thought that I could fix things…but not if she were there to-”
“Tell me the truth.”
Thomas was breathing shallowly, afraid.
Do you want me to-”
“Leave.”
Thomas looked up at his wife, trying to guage the scope of her request.
She clarified.
“Leave the room. Leave the apartment. Leave my life.”
“Are you serious? Gracie…”
“I’ll have someone pick her up.”
Thomas wasn’t asking what would happen with his daughter that afternoon but Lisa knew that.
Although he was scared to leave the room terrified of leaving things as they were, he couldn’t stand the way she was looking at him.
He stood up and walked out of the room. Lisa stared straight ahead. Before he closed the door he turned back as if he was going to say something and then reconsidered.
When she heard the door click shut Lisa let out a deep, shuddering breath and again looked toward the ceiling, this time to begging her tears to sink back beneath her eyes.
The door opened again and she turned quickly, surprised that Thomas had come back.
Instead of her husband, a young doctor stood in front of her holding a chart.
“Good afternoon Mrs. Nichols. All of your tests came up fine, you’re just a little bit anemic. I wrote you a prescription for a some iron.”
Lisa nodded as she took the white slip of paper from the doctor’s hand.
He shook his head and smiled as he headed for the door.
“And there’s no need to worry. The baby is just fine.”
