Just the Nicest Couple(19)

“Though I don’t know that I’d call taking care of my mother a burden,” I say as he pulls open the door and I make myself as small as possible to squeeze past. “I’m happy to do this for her, but it is hard. It’s time-consuming and emotionally draining. I just worry about her so much, all the time. Thank you,” I say, about him holding the door open for me, as a call comes through on my phone. The sound of my phone ringing sets me off again. My heart starts beating faster, and I think again that it could be Jake, that Jake has finally come to his senses and is ready to talk, to forgive me. I drop back. Ryan keeps going, bringing Pam’s coffee to her in the office so that he doesn’t see at first that I’ve fallen behind. I reach into my bag for my phone. Ryan turns and notices he’s alone and he tries waiting up for me, so we can finish our conversation. “Go on without me,” I call out. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

I find my phone. I look at the display and deflate. It’s not Jake. It’s not anyone I know. The air collapses out of my lungs like from a balloon.

Before I even answer the call though, I have a foreboding feeling, a sense of doom. Something bad is about to happen but I don’t know what. It’s not seven in the morning. It’s far too early for someone to be calling with anything other than bad news. Even robocalls and telemarketers don’t call this early. I step back outside the building for privacy, scooting past kids in the door, going the opposite way of traffic like fish swimming upstream. I clear my throat and answer the call.

A woman’s voice comes at me through the speaker. “Hello,” she says. “Can I speak to Mrs. Hayes please?”

“This is she.”

“Mrs. Hayes,” she says. She says that she is the chief surgeon at the hospital where Jake works, and my heart accelerates quickly. Why is the chief surgeon at Jake’s hospital calling? “Dr. Hayes has you listed as an emergency contact,” she says, and with that, my whole body goes numb. I lose feeling in my legs and hands.

Emergency contact.

Oh my God, he’s dead, is all I can think. Jake is dead.

I lean against the exterior brick of the building, letting it support me. A bus pulls up to the curb. Its engine is loud. I have to press a finger into my ear to hear this woman’s voice over the noise. I watch as kids climb out of the bus, down the steps. Half-asleep students walk like zombies past me and into the building.

“Are you there, Mrs. Hayes?” the woman asks.

“Yes,” I say, my voice weak.

“Mrs. Hayes, we’re concerned about Dr. Hayes. He hasn’t shown up for his surgeries in a couple days, and his office staff reported that he didn’t make it into the office for his afternoon appointments on Monday. His staff has tried to contact him, but hasn’t been successful. Is everything alright at home?” she asks and, for the first time I realize that not only has Jake not been coming home to me at night, but he hasn’t been going into work. He hasn’t returned my calls, but he hasn’t returned the hospital’s calls either.

Jake hasn’t just left me.

Something has happened to Jake.

“Jake hasn’t been coming home either. I thought...” I say, but then I let my voice drift off because I don’t want to say more than I need to say. This woman is a colleague of Jake’s, but she’s a stranger to me. I recognize her name, Dr. Morris. I recognize the names of most of the people Jake works with because he talks about them at home, but that doesn’t mean I know them. She doesn’t need to know about the fight I had with Jake. “Jake is missing,” I breathe, and as I say it, it has such a different implication than that Jake left me or that Jake didn’t come home.

Jake is missing.

Oh my God. Jake is missing.

As soon as I hang up with the chief surgeon, I go straight toward my car in the parking lot. I don’t go back into the building. I call the school office from my car and, when Pam answers, I tell her an emergency has cropped up and that I’ll be late.

“Is everything okay, Nina?” she asks, and I say only that I don’t know.

I slip the car into Reverse. I pull out of the parking spot and onto the street. Traffic is getting even heavier on the roads. It’s starting to build, not just school traffic but morning rush hour, which backs up at intersections. Even worse, the police station is located on the other side of the Metra station from here. The commuter train, during rush hour, comes by with some frequency. I have to wait for not one train, but two trains to pass. I get upset at a car in front of me that doesn’t immediately go as the gate lifts. The driver is on her phone. If she waits too long, another train will come and we’ll be forced to wait even longer. I honk my horn and the car goes.

The police station is a squat brick building. I’ve driven by it a thousand times, but I’ve never been inside because I’ve never had a reason to be. The building is unremarkable and dated, reminding me of an old elementary school.

My hands are shaking as I pull into a parking spot. I put the car into Park and step from the vehicle. I try closing the door but my seat belt gets in the way, and I have to open the door and push it back in.

“I need to report a missing person,” I say with a shaking voice to the front desk officer once inside. The lobby is practically empty. Other than the front desk officer and me, there is only one other person here, a man who sits in a chair facing the windows, looking out.