HIS DISCARDED WIFE

CHAPTER 2- THE CALL

Georgina's phone rings again. Second time in ten minutes.

She doesn't look at it. That's the story. Georgina looks at everything.

"You're not going to check that?"

"It's nothing." She's already sliding off the chair, already reaching for her bag.

"I should let you rest anyway."

"You just got here."

"I have a thing." She doesn't say what thing. She never used to leave a room without telling me exactly where she was going and why, down to the traffic she'd hit on the way.

Her hands are moving too fast. Bag strap, jacket, phone, bag strap again.

"Georgina."

"What?"

"Nothing. You just seem—" I don't finish it. I don't have the word yet.

"I'm fine. I'll be quick."

She's out the door before I can find one.

—

GEORGINA

The stairwell smells like bleach and old coffee. I take it two floors down before I answer, because hospital walls are thinner than people think.

"You can't keep calling during visiting hours."

"Is she asking questions?" The voice on the other end doesn't do small talk anymore. Hasn't in weeks.

"No."

"No, or you don't think so?"

"I know her better than you do." My hand tightens around the phone rail.

"She trusts me completely. That's the whole point, isn't it?"

"The point is she doesn't find out anything until it's too late to matter. Is the account still frozen?"

"As far as I know."

"Good. Keep her calm. Keep her close. And Georgina—" A pause I've learned to hate.

"Don't let your conscience cost us both."

The line goes dead before I can answer it.

I stand there a second longer than I need to, the phone still pressed into my ear like there's more to hear.

There isn't.

—

I fix my face in the elevator mirror before I go back up. Same soft eyes I've been giving her for three weeks. It's not even hard anymore. That should scare me more than it does.

"Everything okay?" Lauren asks when I walk back in.

"Fine. Work thing." I check my watch, mostly for something to do with my hands. "I actually have to run. Client at six."

"On a Tuesday?"

"Clients don't care what day it is." I kiss her forehead. She still smells like the hospital soap, like sickness trying to be clean. "I'll come tomorrow."

"You don't have to."

"I know I don't have to."

I leave before she can look at me too long.

—

LAUREN

Dr. Farrow doesn't sit. That's never good.

"Your latest blood work came back."

"And?"

"The markers are up. Significantly." He says it like he's said it a hundred times to a hundred people and it never gets easier. "I want to move to a more aggressive protocol. Starting this week."

"Then start it."

"There's a cost difference." He taps the edge of the chart twice against his palm, a habit I've never seen him do before. "And there's a balance on your account that hasn't cleared in six weeks."

"That's not possible." My voice comes out sharper than I meant it to.

"My husband handles the billing. Check again."

"I've checked twice, Mrs. Roland."

"Then check a third time."

"I don't have insight into your finances." His voice stays level, but his hand tightens on the chart. "I have insight into what this hospital requires before it authorizes further treatment. That's the extent of what I control here."

"Then what good are you telling me this?" I hear how it sounds. I don't take it back.

"Because you deserve to know before Friday, not after." A crack, finally, something almost tired underneath the calm. "I'm not the villain here."

"I didn't say you were." I did say it, a little. I hear it in my own voice and I hate it. "I'm sorry. I just — how much?"

He tells me. The number sits in the air between us like something solid.

"There has to be a mistake."

"I hope there is." He softens, just enough to make it worse. "I'd suggest calling your husband today. Not tomorrow."

"He'll answer."

"Okay."

"He will."

Dr. Farrow doesn't argue with me. That's somehow worse than if he did.

I already have my phone in my hand.

—

Busy tone.

I hang up. Dial again.

Busy.

"Jack, pick up." I say out loud, to no one, my thumb hovering over the screen like pressing harder will change something on the other end. Third call. Same flat sound.

"Come on. Come on, come on—"

I try his office line instead. His assistant picks up.

"He's in a meeting, Mrs. Roland. I can have him call you back."

"Tell him it's urgent. Tell him it's about the hospital."

"I'll pass it along."

She won't. I already know she won't, the way I know a lot of things now that I've stopped letting myself believe.

Dr. Farrow is still standing there when I lower the phone.

"I can give you until Friday," he says. "After that, I can't hold the room."

"Sorry doesn't pay a bill."

"No," he says quietly. "It doesn't."

—

The nurse doesn't say I'm being discharged. She says, "Let's get you comfortable at home," which means the same thing with better manners. My clothes go back in the bag I brought them in. My medication goes in a smaller one — three days' worth, not ten.

"Fill the rest once things are sorted," she says, taping a printout to the bag.

"Once things are sorted."

"That's what it says here." Her hands move quickly and clipped over the paperwork, the practiced efficiency of someone who does this exact conversation weekly and has learned not to let it slow her down.

I don't argue. I turn the ring on my finger instead, thin gold, looser than it used to be.

The cab is waiting outside.

"Home?" the driver asks, watching me in the mirror.

"Home," I say, and give him the address as it still means what it used to be.

He pulls out of the lot, and I let the city blur past the window the way it does when you stop trying to name what you're looking at, streetlights and storefronts and other people's ordinary evenings sliding by like none of it belongs to the same night I'm having. I watch the hospital shrink in the side mirror until it's just a smear of white.

Against the dark, and I keep my hand curled around the ring so it doesn't slip.