Rough Edge (The Edge #1)(21)

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey, you called?” Flat flat flat. Why hadn’t I seen it before? How blind had I been?

“Where are you? I was thinking of bringing you dinner.”

“Ah, that would be great, but I’m assisting in an hour and I need to scrub in.”

So that’s what you sound like when you lie?

“Oh, all right then. When do you think you’ll be home?”

“I came home today and you were in your office. I didn’t want to bother you.”

You knew I’d be in session.

“Yeah. Hey, the other line’s beeping. I have to go.”

“I love you,” he said before I cut the call.

“Thanks for the aspirin.”



* * *



Wilhelmina was at the front desk of cardiac. She confirmed Caden was scrubbing into an emergency open heart procedure. I told her I needed a key and he had it in his bag. I didn’t like lying, but I was past sense. I was cussing up a blue streak in my head and smiling on the outside as if showing up at the hospital in Keds and a long coat was the result of an annoying misplaced key.

She led me into a row of large grey lockers and left me alone.

I tipped his padlock up to see the numbered dials. It was the same lock he’d had in Iraq, and I knew the combination.

Every marriage has boundaries, and going into his locker had a thick red line around it. My thumbnail in the grooves, I clicked the number sequence, paused with the weight in my hand.

Just ask him.

The mature thing to do would be to ask. Just say flat out, you’ve been different. You’ve been unavailable. You’ve got perfume on your shirt.

Fuck that.

I snapped the padlock open and slid it out quickly, before I could change my mind.

The locker was the size of a small closet. He had a suit, shoes on the floor, bag of toiletries on the top shelf, new clothes still in tissue paper in a Barney’s bag, and a plastic bag of dirty things.

I picked up the dirties. I smelled it before I even opened the bag. Perfume.

“Fuck you, Caden.”

I threw the bag back in and slammed the door. Something clicked and fell.

If one thing is out of order…

“I don’t care.”

…he’ll know.

“I don’t.” I put the lock in the loop.

You’ll never know if he would have told you the truth.

“Fuck!”

I opened the locker and readjusted the laundry bag. I couldn’t find what had fallen. I tiptoed so I could see the top shelf. Next to the toiletry bag, a glass bottle lay on its side. I picked it up. It was from Lyric scent shop, where I got my perfume.

Before I even turned it over, I knew.

Scent #6512 - Greyson F.

Before I opened the top and waved it in front of my nose, I knew.

It was mine. I hadn’t recognized it mixed with his scent, but once I had the bottle under my nose, it was unmistakable.

When we were separated, he’d given me one of his T-shirts. His smell had comforted me. I buried my face in it when he called, wrapped it around my neck when I slept, curled around it when I brought myself to orgasm.

When had he taken my perfume? And why? Did he know he’d be gone for days?

I put the bottle back and put the padlock back in place, touching the door with my fingertips. “I’m sorry.”

Across the room, the door opened. I peeked around the lockers to find a cleaning person wheeling in a yellow bucket.

“Hello?” he called. “Anyone in here?”

“Just leaving,” I said, smiling stiffly as I walked by.



* * *



“Did you find the key?” Wilhelmina asked blithely, as if nothing was wrong. She could see into my heart and all was well there.

“I realized I had it.”

“Ah, better watch, doctor. When the mind starts going, the body’s sure to follow.”

I laughed a little, but it was more from uneasiness than humor. “Do you know where he is?”

She slid a clipboard into a cubby. “I think he’s in five.” She took a quick inventory of my posture, my hair, my coat and pajamas, the look of emotional desperation that must have been all over my face, using a skill they didn’t teach in nursing school but a large number of nurses had. “It’s a viewing theater, if you want to take a look.”

“Um, sure. Okay. Yeah. Yes, I’d like that very much.”

I didn’t know what insight I expected to get from watching him. Something was still off. My perfume didn’t change that. But Wil led me to the upper floor viewing room where med students watched the procedure. I sat away from them, letting the narration from their instructor fade into the ambient hiss of the air conditioning.

From above, I saw him and the other attending move together with an efficiency bordering on grace. They cut a woman open and spread her ribs. I flinched. It was hard to watch.

But still, my husband did his job, isolating a living, beating heart.

The lead turned away from the table and looked up at the med students. Her voice carried over speakers to the little room as she spoke a language I hadn’t been trained in med school to understand. My eyes were glued to my husband anyway. He was still working, though I couldn’t discern what he was doing. When the lead surgeon said his name, it cut through the jargon.