Emergency Contact(53)

That was the first time he’d heard of it. Penny was a trove of oddities and inexplicable phenomena. Cotard’s syndrome, or Cotard’s delusion, was a rare mental illness where the afflicted person was convinced they were dead. French neurologist Jules Cotard had first described it as the delirium of negation. (Sam pictured someone in a monocle saying no, no, no, no while cackling hysterically.) In an early case, a woman had believed that as a corpse she no longer needed food. Unsurprisingly, she died of starvation.

Sam wiped his wet face with both hands.

He rewound the tape to before he saw Lorraine. Penny’s face when she’d come in with her mom. There. Stop.

Sam had been happy then. He hadn’t been thinking about Lorraine at all. He hadn’t been worried or angry. His brain wasn’t gnawing on his one thousand failings or the people in his life he’d disappointed most. He was simply enjoying how the person he liked best—the one who usually lived inside his phone—walked over to ask for almond milk.

And then Lorraine swooped in, scrambling his receptors. Right before his shift ended. Again ruining a rare moment he was completely in repose. As she left she told him to keep her computer. Or to “donate it to charity.” As if he would ever be in the position to give away something so valuable. Sam was gutted.

Everything was falling apart again. Hands numb and head throbbing, Sam closed up shop, pulled himself an espresso and then another. He sat on the porch swing with his sneakered feet dragging on the boards, heart thundering in time to his thoughts. What was this feeling? This loss? He felt hollow and bruised, scraped out from the inside. Sam moved to the steps, hitched his elbows on his knees, and let his head hang.

You do not get to have a panic attack because you’re not having a baby, he’d told himself. Still, he was wrecked. The irrational hope died, the baseless idea that a baby would have somehow helped. That its appearance would mend at least part of what was damaged about his life. He’d get a do-over. The next chapter could begin. It would be new. Not perfect but different.

In his daze, he’d heard Fin say good night and felt a familiar tightness at his shoulders.

Sam was alone. Horribly, undeniably alone.

He reached for the phone to text Penny—no to call, as he’d said he would—and faltered. What could she possibly say to make this better? He was setting her up to fail. There wasn’t a sane person in the universe who would say this wasn’t great news, but Sam couldn’t bear to hear it. He was grieving. Could he grieve things that weren’t real in the first place?

The unease at his shoulders merged in his throat. He was thirsty. He needed a drink. He began planning where he would get one. Not one. Twenty. By himself.

Sam came up from the water for air.

Sifting through the wreckage of the last six months, he tried to be methodical about assigning the right feelings to the appropriate experience. Without Penny to play emotional Sherpa, he’d have to concentrate. Rage was easy to identify. The anger was quick and bright.

But as fast as the fury came, it dissipated rapidly too. Lorraine wasn’t the villain, as convenient as that would have been.

Mostly he felt stupid.

He remembered back to when he’d first realized he was in love with her. They’d been dating for two months. She’d picked him up, and they were driving around wasting gas and making out. When an old country song came on the radio station, instead of clowning how cloying it was, she surprised him by turning it up and knowing every word. Crooning in a hammy manner about rivers, old men, and changing the “hers” to “hims” and talking about the light in his eyes, he realized that Lorraine under the rancor, the eyeliner, and the hair was his person. She also happened to be a person who was meanest when she believed she was under attack, which for Lorraine was all the time.

And this Lorraine—every Lorraine—didn’t need Sam anymore. She simply didn’t want him.

The tub was cold, so Sam got out.

It wasn’t like Sam knew how to be a dad. He had zero worthy role models, and he was arguably a shitty uncle to Jude. It’s that Sam, for whatever reason, had been looking forward to figuring it out—reprioritizing. He’d promised himself and his new family that he’d finish things he started. As dumb and stereotypical as it sounded, he wanted a chance to man up—a shot at a sense of purpose.

He padded back into his room and lay down on his side by his phone. No new messages. He checked his outgoing calls. Yep, there it was. Call to Liar 2:17 a.m. She hadn’t picked up. Thank God.

His alarm chimed, reminding Sam of how different his life had been when he’d set it. He dried off slowly and threw on a black T-shirt that only vaguely smelled bad. Then he deposited himself into his jeans, grabbed his smokes and sunglasses, shuffled on his sneakers, and stepped outside.





PENNY.


Three days. Three days since she’d seen him. Three days since he’d called and said he might call again and didn’t. Penny should have texted him the first day. Now the window was closed and things were beyond screwed up.

At 11:59 p.m. on the first day, Penny composed a list of why there was nullus possibilitus of something romantic happening with Sam. It was very constructive.

Reasons why there is nullus possibilitus of something romantic happening with Sam House:

1. Two wackjobs with mom issues don’t make a right.

2. Sam was Jude’s sort of uncle, and that was gnarly for everyone.