Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
MELISSA
Luke doesn’t text until just before six P.M., and when he does, it’s to say he’s running late. He says to go ahead and eat without him.
As I scoop spaghetti onto plates for myself and the kids, I wonder if it’s too soon to tell Luke he’s working too hard. Even though we just got back together, our relationship feels settled enough for me to nag him about looking after himself.
And when he finally arrives, well after the kids are in bed, I’m fully prepared to nag. But when I see the look in his eyes, I realize this wasn’t just a long day at work. Something is very wrong.
I lead him through to the kitchen and put a plate of spaghetti in the microwave. “Pepsi or beer?”
“Pepsi,” he says quickly, and I pull a can from the fridge.
“Another bad day?” I ask sympathetically.
“You can’t imagine,” he mutters.
“I’m sorry.” I set the spaghetti in front of him and let him eat in silence for a few minutes.
“More?” I ask when he’s cleaned the plate. “Or some apple crisp?”
He shakes his head distractedly. “No, thanks.”
“What’s wrong, Luke?”
“I probably shouldn’t talk about it.” Luke runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “But what the hell. Ethan Atwell was operating drunk last night.”
“Shit, Luke.” I remember Dr. Atwell as he was when Claire had her anaphylactic reaction, and he’d seemed so capable then. Confident. Trustworthy. I can’t imagine him operating drunk.
Luke nods. “Yeah. Shit. That’s why I had to go in. One of the residents called, asked me to help.”
“Did the surgery go okay?”
“Yeah. It was a tough case, but the guy should be fine.”
“That’s something, at least.”
“Yeah,” Luke says wearily. “But I have to report Ethan, Milly. He could’ve killed someone last night.”
“Did you know he had a drinking problem?”
“Yeah,” Luke admits. “He’s being sued, and it’s driven him off the rails. You remember that night we were on the phone, and I had to go because Ethan showed up?”
I nod. I’m unlikely to forget that night; I’d heard his neighbor’s voice at the door and thought she was a booty call.
“He’d been drinking then,” Luke explains. “I tried to talk to him about it, but . . . I don’t know.” He runs a hand through his hair again, leaving a tuft sticking up in the back. “I should have tried harder. Made him get help.”
“Hey, slow down.” I pull my chair closer to his and put a hand on his arm. “You can’t make someone get help.”
Luke shrugs. “Maybe not, but I should have done more. His family’s in Montreal, and I was probably his best friend in Somerset.”
“Was?”
“I’m not sure we’ll be friends after this.”
“It’s not your fault, Luke.”
His phone pings, and he pulls it from his pocket with a grimace. “Ethan. He’s been texting me all day, begging me not to report him.”
“You haven’t yet?”
He shakes his head. “I was going to talk to Drew Malone, who’s the chief of surgery, but it turns out he’s at a conference in Boston until Saturday. I could tell him by phone, or talk to the chief of staff, who’s technically Drew’s boss. But . . .”
“But . . .” I say gently.
“I’d rather deal with Drew, and in person. Ethan’s not scheduled to operate again until Monday, so there’s no reason I can’t wait until Drew’s back.”
“That makes sense.”
“Not really,” Luke says, with a bitter laugh. “I’m just looking for reasons not to report him. He swears last night was a wake-up call, and that he’s given up drinking.” Luke glances at his phone. “His last text was to tell me he’d been to an AA meeting, which he wasn’t willing to do before.”
“So maybe he’ll stop.”
Luke nods. “Hopefully, yeah. But if I don’t report it, and Ethan keeps drinking, and someone gets hurt . . .”
“You’ll feel responsible.”
He nods bleakly. “Yeah.”
There’s no easy answer here, but I think there’s only one right one, and Luke knows it. “So you have to talk to Drew.”
“Yeah. But there’s something else, Milly. ” Luke hesitates for a beat before continuing. “Ethan threatened to tell Drew about my relationship with you, and report it to the Medical Board. They might think it’s inappropriate, so soon after I treated Claire.”
It takes me a minute to process what he’s saying, and when I do, my heart sinks down to my toes. “But I thought . . . you said we’d waited long enough? That the Medical Board wouldn’t care?”
“They probably won’t,” he says, trying to reassure me. “But if Ethan reports it, they’ll probably have to investigate, so they may contact you. You know, to make sure I wasn’t taking advantage.”
“Yeah,” I say quickly. “No problem. Of course I’ll talk to them.”
“I’m really sorry, Melissa,” he says. “I hate to drag you into this—”
“It’s not your fault, Luke,” I interrupt. “Do you want to stay tonight?”
He shakes his head. “I’m really tired. I’m gonna head back to my place.”
“Sure. The kids are going to Toronto again this weekend, so if you wanted to do something—”
“I’m on call this weekend,” he interrupts. “Friday to Sunday, and it’s a bit unpredictable.”
“Okay. I don’t have other plans, so if you get out at a decent hour . . .”
“Yeah. I’ll text,” Luke says distractedly. I walk him to the door, where he gives me a cursory kiss goodbye. His mind is somewhere else, and I can’t blame him.
After he leaves, I open my laptop and find the website for the provincial Medical Board.
It’s clear that doctors are forbidden from having sexual relationships with patients, but I was never Luke’s patient, so things are murky.
I’m only ‘closely associated with a patient’, so a sexual relationship might be professional misconduct.
I spend a long time staring at the computer screen, thinking about what this might mean for Luke and me.
The idea that he’s taking advantage of me is ridiculous.
Next to having my kids, Luke’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
And although I was determined not to rush into anything, I’d already started to fantasize about a shared future.
A Hallmark-worthy second chance love story.
But the Medical Board might not see things that way.
I manage to convince myself Luke won’t lose his license permanently—I’m a consenting adult, after all—but he might face discipline.
It could be permanently on his record, which could affect his position at the hospital, and make it hard for him to get a job elsewhere.
And maybe the Medical Board will want him to stop seeing me.
I close my computer and walk to the freezer, where I find an emergency carton of cookie dough ice cream. But although ice cream therapy has always worked in the past, it doesn’t help me tonight.
The next morning, I’m in no mood to tolerate snotty teenagers, but luckily no one gives me snark during my first class. Even Vanessa Abernathy behaves beautifully, and I’m foolish enough to hope she won’t rat me out for last week’s little rant.
The delusion lasts until Carole Chan appears in my classroom during the ten-minute break between classes. She waits until the last straggler leaves, then locks the classroom door so the incoming students won’t interrupt us.
“Good morning, Melissa,” she says, as she walks toward me, wearing an impeccably tailored dove gray skirt suit.
Her lips are curved into a neutral smile, but I’m not reassured; Carole’s too professional to wear her thoughts on her face.
One of the students must have complained, and she’s probably here to discipline me. Maybe even to fire me.
I stiffen my spine and meet her eye. “Hi, Carole.”
To my surprise, she takes a seat in one of the students’ chairs and gestures for me to do the same. I find it odd that she didn’t ask me to come to her office for this meeting, but maybe she didn’t want to wait.
“I wanted to talk about the video, Melissa,” Carole says.
I stare at her blankly. “Video?”
She lifts an eyebrow. “On Brookline’s Instagram?”
“I don’t have Instagram.” After Troy’s affair became public knowledge, I started getting messages of sympathy from acquaintances I barely knew. Most were just fishing for gossip, and I finally shut it down by deleting the app altogether.
Carole’s eyebrow lifts a little more, and she pulls an iPhone out of her skirt pocket. “Our student council runs an account. They mostly post about fundraisers and our sports teams, but last week someone posted a video from your class. I’m sorry, I thought you knew about it.”
She taps her screen to start the video, then hands me her phone.
And there I am, telling Kaitlin I wouldn’t have a job if I hadn’t learned calculus.
I guess I should be thankful that the filmmaker didn’t catch the beginning of the speech, when I told everyone about my ex-husband’s affair.
It’s still painful to watch, though, and I cringe when I hear myself say that maybe the point of math is just to stretch your brain.
I open my mouth to apologize to Carole, then pause and close it again.
When it comes down to it, I’m not guilty of much.
I didn’t know someone was taking a video, and I sure as hell didn’t consent to it being posted to Instagram.
And in terms of the rant itself . . . I didn’t say anything worse than shut up.
And I remember Luke’s reply, when I was worried Vanessa would complain. If you’d said shut the fuck up, bitch, she might have a case, but . . .
In spite of everything, my lips quirk into a smile.
I’m not going to apologize, and if Carole wants to fire me, so be it.
It might not be easy, but I’ll find a new job.
Maybe I’ll freelance as a high school math tutor, or dust off my computer skills and start a website design business.
The idea doesn’t seem nearly as daunting as it did a few weeks ago.
I look up to see Carole studying me intently. “Before this video, our most popular post had a hundred and ninety-eight likes,” she remarks.
I glance back at her phone and realize that my video has more than thirty thousand likes.
There are over two thousand comments, too, and I spend a minute scrolling through them.
There are some trolls, of course, but most of the comments are positive.
A lot are from other female teachers, especially those who teach STEM subjects.
Commenters have added tags like #teacherrant, #stretchyourbrain, #womeninSTEM and, oddly enough, #hotlibrarian.
I glance back at Carole, wondering what she thinks of the hotlibrarian hashtag.
“I take it you didn’t know someone was recording,” Carole says.
“No.” I wonder who shot the video; probably not Vanessa, since I’d have noticed if she had her phone out. She’s probably responsible for posting it, though, no doubt in the hope of humiliating me.
“If you give me the password to the account, I’ll take the video down,” I offer. I’m a bit surprised that Carole hasn’t deleted it already.
“Well,” Carole says thoughtfully. “If you’d like it taken down, I can do that, of course. But I wondered what you would think about leaving it up.”
“Leaving it up?” I repeat.
The ghost of a smile crosses Carole’s lips. “I think it’s inspiring, and a lot of people seem to agree. In the past forty-eight hours, we’ve had over fifty parents inquire about enrolling their daughters for next year.”
“Wow.” I guess I’m not getting fired today. “Yeah, I’m okay if you want to leave it up.”
“Thank you,” Carole says. “We’ve also had a number of people ask for your name and contact information. Parents interested in a tutor for their kids, as well as some other private school principals. Probably looking to poach you for their schools.”
Poach me? “I don’t even have a teaching degree,” I say numbly.
Carole shrugs, as though a degree is a relatively insignificant detail. “I haven’t given out your name yet, but if you’d like me to, I will. Of course, I’m hoping you’ll stay at Brookline.”
I realize I’m gaping at her, and I make a conscious effort to shut my mouth. “But my contract was only for a year.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Carole says. “I’ve received very positive feedback about your teaching.”
My surprise must show on my face, because she smiles. “I know the senior students pretty well by now,” she explains. “There are a couple I talk to, just informally, when I want to know what’s going on. They say your lessons are clear and organized, and they like you.”
I’d thought I was doing an okay job, but this is higher praise than I expected. “Thank you.”
“The teacher you’re covering for is only coming back part time next year,” Carole continues.
“So I was planning to offer you a permanent contract. We’d want you to work toward a teaching degree, of course, but there are a number of colleges that offer it online.
You could continue to teach two classes and do it part time. ”
“Oh . . . uh . . .” I stall for time, because it’s too much to process all at once. I never thought teaching would be a long-term thing, but maybe . . . Liam will be in kindergarten full days next year, so it might be possible.
“You don’t have to decide today,” Carole tells me. “But think about it, Melissa. The work you’re doing here could probably count toward your practicum, and we’d be prepared to cover part of the tuition for Teachers’ College.”
“That’s very generous.”
“We’d like to keep you here,” she says, standing to leave. “The students are probably wondering what’s going on in here, so I should let you start your next class.”
I glance at the clock and see that the class should have started a few minutes ago. “Right. Thank you, Carole.”
And with a nod of goodbye, she leaves.