Chapter 30
FRASER
There is a frightening crossroads, a few months in, where I realise Parker is the only thing keeping me alive.
I don’t know how safety is measured. How close to the edge I need to be standing, technically, before the risk is sufficiently elevated for everyone to panic. Isn’t it normal, when the love of your life leaves, to imagine being dead, too? Who wouldn’t want an easy end to this?
Parker, though, stops me. She doesn’t know the responsibility she’s carrying.
The way my mind is using her, forcing an imaginary version of her to collapse in despair and struggle to exist without me.
Convincing me to stay, because she needs me.
How could I even think of doing this? It’s that thought that drags me back, every time.
There’s a knock at my office door, and when I look up, I’m surprised to see Maggie, who hasn’t visited my workplace in years. Even when we were married, we rarely encroached on each other’s professional turf. So of course, I immediately panic that something has happened to our daughter.
‘It’s you I’m worried about,’ she explains, glancing fruitlessly for somewhere to sit down.
The room is bursting with books and journals and piles of essays and manuscripts.
I’ve got lists of things I haven’t done.
Lecture notes I need to file. Book chapters I need to write.
Conference papers to edit. Reference reports for former students’ jobs or current students’ scholarship applications.
Reports for the university administration. Two years’ worth of taxes …
Something about Maggie standing here in the eye of the physical manifestation of my inner turmoil—her perfect hair and makeup, her pressed suit, her patent leather heels, and the shocked expression on her face—makes it clear how far I’ve slipped.
No longer able to hide that sinking grief has met rising depression and I’m barely clinging on.
‘I’m a bit behind,’ I admit. On everything.
She balances her Oroton bag on a pile of books I keep meaning to donate and steps over sixty essays I’ve printed, despite the significant guilt I felt for wasting paper.
I can’t seem to focus while reading on a screen the way my Gen Z colleagues do.
Then, in the midst of this mess, she walks up to me with no ceremony whatsoever and puts her arms around me.
‘You are not safe, Fraser.’ This time it is not a question. It’s an educated observation. And I am far too exhausted to keep up the pretences. It’s easier just to admit it, because she didn’t ask; she just told me how it is, and she is right. Am I meant to ask her for help now?
‘Here’s what we’re going to do …’ she says, before I can.
An hour later, we’re in the waiting room at the doctor’s. The receptionist, who’s known us since before Parker was born, seems enthralled by our presence. Probably wondering why the two of us are here as a team, without our child, knowing as she does that our accounts are now separate.
‘Fraser. Maggie.’ Dr Kumar welcomes us into the room we’ve sat in together ever since we first found double lines on that pregnancy test. We’ve been here with baby Parker on our laps, checking for ear infections or getting needles or asking if it was normal that she hadn’t rolled over yet or that she hated tummy time. ‘How can I help?’
Maggie lets me do the talking. A rarity for us in this setting. But she is a solid presence beside me, and I’ve never, even throughout our marriage, felt like the two of us were more united.
‘There are a number of ways we can tackle this,’ Dr Kumar explains, once I’ve outlined the sleepless nights, the overwhelm at work, the thoughts.
‘I’m going to increase your dosage of sertraline and add another medication to help you sleep at night.
I’m recommending some leave from work. Just a few weeks to help you catch your breath.
And here’s a referral to a new psychologist who’s just moved to the area.
These are just first steps. There’s much more we can do.
It’s not unusual for the lines to blur between grief and depression.
How you’re feeling and what you’re tackling is very much to be expected with trauma like yours. ’
Trauma like mine? It hadn’t occurred to me that our family deserved that label, but Dr Kumar is right. Of course that’s what we’ve been through. A violent, accidental, sudden loss. What else would you call it?
Maggie’s hand takes mine, just briefly, and squeezes it.
A tacit You are not alone and a reminder that, despite all the time I spend questioning what went wrong and grappling to understand her point of view, there was a lot that was always right.
She is a good person. She has a kind heart.
We have a long history and an even longer future together, and even if our shared parenting wasn’t a factor in our continued presence in each other’s lives, at times like this, I realise I’d hope we could be friends.