Chapter 21
CHAPTER
I haven’t slept more than three hours a night in the five days since I returned from Louisiana.
I sit in the subway seat, face dropped into my hands, and consider my options: yoga, meditation, massive amounts of wine?
None of it has worked yet. It’s like this warped reality I can’t escape.
Exhaustion, pulling at me from one moment to the next, distracting my every attempt at getting back to living my life, but as soon as I crawl beneath the covers, I’m awake.
Wide awake. Staring at the ceiling, my chest tight, breaths coming short and fast. I start to think about the chapters . . . and what comes at the end of the story. Hannah didn’t take my bait and add a friend named Lizzie, but we both know she’ll appear on the page sooner or later, don’t we?
As I raise my head, checking to see which stop we’re at, I catch a man’s gaze lingering on me.
He’s tall with a beard. He looks away, caught.
I reach for my bag, hands shaking like I’m withdrawing from something.
Withdrawing from sleep , from my body’s inability to shut off, even for a few hours.
I stand and move swiftly through the car, tucking myself into a different seat, behind a group of teenagers.
I peer around them, trying to catch sight of the man, but he’s gone.
I exhale.
Not following me, then.
I take a long look at every other person near me, but they’re all busy—staring at phones, reading books, listening to music. No one’s paying me any mind, yet I’m on high alert, and I can’t be any other way.
As soon as I reach campus—glancing behind me, watching for the man, for anyone else who seems to be trailing me—I head straight for the health clinic. Since I’m a professor, they put me ahead of the half dozen students waiting to be seen, and I’m in a room in ten minutes.
“Ms. Davis?” A young woman enters, glancing up from a clipboard. She looks like another student, but her ID badge reads Kendra Young, Nurse Practitioner.
I open my mouth—almost correct her to Professor Davis —then purse it shut.
It doesn’t matter what she calls me. What matters is that Kendra Young likes me enough to write a prescription for something that will let me sleep, let me silence these swirling thoughts, even if only briefly.
So I forget the honorific and smile back at her, summoning all my inner strength to seem normal, like a well-adjusted woman who just needs a little help during a difficult time in her life.
“Yes, that’s me,” I manage.
“How can I help you today?” Kendra pulls up a rolling stool, crosses her legs, looks at me with an open gaze, a warm smile.
My shoulders relax a little. She’s good at her job, at least the people-skills part. I think through my carefully crafted story, one that’s not too far from the truth.
“My mother. She’s . . . dying. Slowly.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Kendra leans in, a concerned look on her face.
“I’m just so . . . anxious. I’m having trouble sleeping.
She’s in Louisiana, and I was there to see her recently, but I had to come back to teach classes.
” I ramble on, talking fast, letting tears well in my eyes, tears that surprise even me.
“Anyway, I was hoping you might be able to give me something that will help me sleep. I think if I could get some rest, I could keep it together.”
“Oh, of course. Let me just give you a quick exam.” She touches a hand to my elbow, takes blood pressure, listens to my heart, my lungs, asks me some routine questions about other medications I take. When I leave, it’s to head to the nearest pharmacy to pick up some Ambien I desperately need.
The pharmacy is located next to Mr. Hank’s nursing home. As soon as I have the pills safely in my purse, I’m a lot calmer, so I go next door for a visit. New York, as big as it is, is a lot like a small town, too—everything crammed together.
Mr. Hank is like comfort food to me. Seeing him boosts my mood because it reminds me that there’s someone in my life I’ve always been able to depend on.
I find him where I usually do, in the communal TV room.
But unlike my usual visits, there’s a woman in a wheelchair sitting next to him, holding his hand.
“Hi, Mr. Hank.” I smile at him, glancing over at the woman.
“Elizabeth! When did you get here?”
“Just now. I was running an errand nearby and couldn’t pass up popping in. I hope I’m not interrupting.” I’m not sure if the woman’s another patient or a visitor, but she looks at me and narrows her eyes.
“Have you been fooling around with my Charlie?”
“No, ma’am.” I smile. “Charlie and I are old friends.” I shift my gaze to my ex-landlord. “Aren’t we, Mr. Hank?”
“Sure, sure.” He pats the woman’s hand. “Elizabeth lives here in my building, right across the hall. I keep my eye on her. Young girls in the city can never be too careful.”
It’s so odd how he can remember my name and where my apartment was, but not realize he’s been living in this nursing home for nearly five years now. I nod and look over at the woman, wondering if she’s going to think what he just said is strange.
She’s still looking at me suspiciously but gives a stiff nod and brushes back her gray strands. A staff member approaches and bends to speak to her. “How about we go get you a muffin, Ms. Parsons? You didn’t eat breakfast this morning.”
The woman frowns and sighs, but doesn’t argue. Once she’s out of earshot, I drag a chair next to Mr. Hank. “Who was that? Do you have a new special lady friend?”
“Nah.” He grins, waves me off as if she’s nobody.
“But when a pretty girl wants to hold your hand at my age, you go along with whatever bullshit you have to.” He winks, and it makes me laugh—actually laugh—a refreshing moment after these past weeks.
It makes me happy, too, that he’s mostly lucid.
It’s a reminder that there’s been good in my life.
“So what’s going on, missy? You look tired. Are you having trouble sleeping again?”
Did I tell him that recently, or is he referring to when I first moved to New York twenty years ago?
Or maybe he thinks the trouble I had sleeping back then was last week because he’s got his years confused again.
I’m not sure, but Mr. Hank is one of the few people who knows the truth about how and where I grew up.
Well, not the full truth—not about Mr. Sawyer, but I told him about my family life at least. Alcoholism is one of the things that first bonded us.
His wife died of cirrhosis of the liver a year after I moved in.
“I was away,” I say. “I went to see my mother.”
His bushy brows shoot up. “You went to Louisiana?”
I take a deep breath in and blow it out. “I did.”
“How’d that go?”
“Not great. My mother is dying.”
He reaches over and covers my hand with his, gives it a squeeze. “The drink finally get her?”
I shake my head. “Cancer. Pancreatic.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“How long are the doctors saying?”
“Not too long. A month or two.”
He nods. “You gonna go see her again?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing. I have a few more weeks of the summer session to finish teaching.
I guess I’ll see how things are then.” I sigh and shrug, anxious to change the subject already, even though I’m the one who brought it up.
So I lean and bump shoulders with him. “But tell me about you. You’re not gonna replace me as your best girl with that Ms. Parsons, are you? ”
“Never.” He winks. “You’re stuck with me for life.”
For that , I’m truly grateful. Mr. Hank and I talk for another hour.
About nothing important—the horses that ran today, the new patient who moved into the room next to his, about how he’s hoping it doesn’t snow tomorrow.
I don’t remind him it’s the end of June and not January.
Mostly he’s with it, and I feel lucky to have had a good visit today.
Toward the end, a nurse comes by to tell him it’s almost time for lunch.
He introduces me to her, calling me Molly instead of Elizabeth. Molly was his wife’s name.
“I should get going, but I’ll come back soon. And I’ll bring donuts next time.”
He points to me. “Chocolate.”
I smile. “Anything else would be criminal.” I give him a hug goodbye.
When I pull back, he clutches my arm for a second. “She loves you, even if she doesn’t say it and isn’t good at showing it.”
“Who?”
“Your mother.”
I assume he means because all mothers are supposed to love their daughters, but then he adds, “She told me.”
“My mother told you she loves me?”
He nods. “Never mentioned it because I knew how much you struggled to move on after you left.”
I don’t usually correct him, but my response slips out. “But you’ve never spoken to my mother.”
“Except that once, when you were sick in the hospital for a few days.”
My heart deflates. For a moment there, I thought maybe he’d actually spoken to my mother.
But he’s just confused again, because I’ve never been in the hospital in New York, and my mother has never once said she loved me.
Not even to me. I try not to let it get me down, but it feels like a punch in the gut.
He cups my cheek. “I love you, Molly. Don’t be sad.”
I press a kiss to his forehead. “And I love you, too. And how can I be sad when I have you in my life?”
I’ve no sooner exited the floor and stepped back onto the elevator when my phone vibrates with a text.
Sam: Dinner tonight?
I sigh. The only plan I have for the evening is to take one of the sleeping pills in my purse and crash, forgetting the last month ever happened. My fingers hover over the keypad, about to text back, when it vibrates a second time.
Sam: I got some information on your friend Jocelyn.
My eyes go wide.
So much for sleeping tonight. I can’t type back fast enough.
Elizabeth: Dinner sounds great!