Run Away(77)

“Your wife is out of surgery. She’s stabilized.”

“Is she still in a coma?”

“I’m afraid she is, but we alleviated the immediate problem.”

Dr. Grewe began to explain in some detail, but it was hard for Simon to focus on the medical minutiae. The big picture—the words in caps, if you will—seemed to be the same: NO CHANGE.

After Dr. Grewe finished, Simon thanked her and asked, “Can I see my wife?”

“Yes, of course.”

She led him down to the recovery area. He had no idea how a body in a coma could appear more exhausted, but Ingrid’s ferocious battle with whatever had dragged her back into surgery had clearly left her drained. She lay completely still, like before, but now the stillness seemed somehow worse, more sunken, fragile. He was almost afraid to take her hand, as though it might somehow break off in his.

But he did take the hand.

He tried to picture Ingrid upright and healthy and beautiful and vibrant. He tried to flashback to other times in this hospital, happier times, Ingrid holding one of her newborn children, but the vision would not hold. All he could see right now was this Ingrid, weak, pale, drawn, more gone than here. He stared at her and thought about what Yvonne had told him about the past and secrets.

“I don’t care.”

He said the words out loud to his comatose wife.

Whatever she had done in the past—he tried to imagine the worst: crime, drugs, prostitution, even murder—he’d forgive. Didn’t matter what. No questions asked.

He stood and put his lips to his wife’s ear.

“I just need you back, babe.”

It was the truth. But it also wasn’t. He didn’t care about her past. But there were some questions that still needed to be asked. At six a.m., he checked in with the duty nurse, made sure they had his mobile phone number, and headed out of the cloying hospital air and into the city street. Normally he’d take the subway to his apartment, but he wanted to be above ground in case a call came in. At this hour, the ride from the hospital to his place on the Upper West Side should be fifteen minutes tops. As long as he had his phone with him, he could come back immediately if there were any changes.

He didn’t want to leave her, but there was something he needed to do.

Simon called a ride share with his app and had the driver stop in front of a twenty-four-hour Duane Reade pharmacy on Columbus Avenue near Seventy-Fifth Street. He ran in, bought a six-pack of toothbrushes, hopped back into the car. When he got home—man, how long had it been since he’d been in his own home?—the apartment was silent. He tiptoed down the corridor and looked into the bedroom on the right.

Sam was asleep on his side, fetal position, legs pulled up tight. That was how his son always slept. Simon didn’t want to wake Sam yet. He headed into the kitchen and opened the drawer with the Ziploc plastic bags. He grabbed some out and quietly made his way to what they’d dubbed “the girls’ bathroom,” the one Paige had shared with her little sister Anya.

It had become something of a running joke in the house that the kids never changed their toothbrushes until the bristles were not only frayed but pretty much nonexistent—so years ago, Simon took it upon himself to buy a package of new toothbrushes every two months and switch them out on his own. He was going to do that today too, so no one would notice what he was up to, even though, well, who really would?

Paige’s toothbrush was still here from her last visit…sheesh, how long ago?

He took her toothbrush carefully by the handle and placed it in the plastic bag. He hoped that there would be enough DNA on it to get a sample. He started to leave the bathroom but pulled up short.

He trusted Ingrid. He really did.

But working under a better-safe-than-sorry personal philosophy, Simon put Anya’s toothbrush in a second Ziploc bag. He moved to the other bathroom and put Sam’s in one too.

It all felt like a sick, terrible betrayal.

When he was done, Simon headed into his own room and packed the plastic bags in his work backpack. He checked his phone. Nothing. It was still early, but he texted Suzy Fiske anyway:

Hey I’m home for a bit. If you’re awake, can you wake up Anya and send her home for breakfast?



He wasn’t sure how long he’d have to wait for a response, but right away he saw the flashing dots indicating Suzy was typing him back:

I’ll wake her up now. Anything new on Ingrid?

He told Suzy no, nothing new, and thanked her profusely for looking after Anya. She typed back that Anya was a pleasure, that having Anya around actually made it easier, and while Simon knew that she was being nice, he also knew that there was truth there. Suzy had two daughters and like most sisters that age, they fought. If you add a third element into a mix like that, it changes the chemical makeup just enough to make everything a tad more pleasant.

Simon texted back: Still I’m super grateful.

He moved back into the kitchen. All of his male New York City friends suddenly liked to cook. Or claimed they did. They waxed eloquent about some complicated risotto dish they recently made or a recipe from the New York Times weekly email or some such thing. When, he wondered, did cooking become the new poser claim, replacing all the amateur sommeliers? Wasn’t cooking, for the most part, a chore? When you read history books or heck, watch old movies, wasn’t being a person’s cook one of the worst jobs in the house? What would be the next chore turned into great art? Vacuuming maybe? Would his friends start debating the wonders of Dyson over Hoover?