The Wives(79)
In my first year as a nurse, a man came into the ER two weeks before Christmas with a crushed skull. His name was Robbie Clemmins and I swore I’d never forget his name, so tragic was his accident. A roofer who volunteered in his spare time at a nursing home, he’d been hanging Christmas lights on the outside of the building when he’d fallen two stories and landed on his back, smacking his head on the pavement. When someone found him, he was conscious, lying on his back and speaking in a calm, normal voice. He was reciting an oral report he’d given in the fifth grade about how to properly skin a squirrel. When they wheeled him into the ER he was sobbing, muttering something about his wife, though he wasn’t married. I remember seeing the concave in his head and wanting to throw up, and then later the X-rays in which his skull looked like a cracked egg. The impact had jarred his brain; chips of his skull entered the brain tissue and had to be removed during a surgery that lasted eight hours. Though we saved his life, we were unable to save who he was before the accident. I remember thinking how fragile we were as humans, souls covered in tender flesh and brittle bone; one wrong step and we became someone else entirely.
My brain is intact in the traditional way; I did not fall from a roof, though it seems I fell at some height from reality. Dr. Steinbridge has diagnosed me with a list of things I’d be embarrassed to repeat; the bottom line is that I have an unhealthy brain. I often sit in my room and picture my brain enflamed and oozing with my various diagnoses. There are days where I want to crack my own head open and remove my brain, and I find myself fantasizing about all the ways I can do it. I want to get better, but sometimes I can’t even remember what’s wrong with me. I am in my room one afternoon when I look up and see Dr. Steinbridge standing in the doorway. The serious look on his face tells me he has news.
“Regina Coele has requested a visit with you,” he tells me. “You don’t have to see her if you don’t want to.”
I’m touched; his interest in my case has become more tender than the stiff, formal way our relationship started.
“I want to talk to her,” I say. And it’s true—I’ve been waiting for this for a year, wading through the days until I could come face-to-face with the answers Seth’s first wife holds.
“I’ll put in the approval form. I think this may really help you, Thursday. To put things into perspective and to move forward.”
It’s two weeks before a nurse comes to tell me that Regina is here to see me. My heart pounds as I walk to the rec room, wearing sweats and a tank top, my hair piled on top of my head in a messy knot. When I glanced at myself in the mirror before leaving my room I looked relaxed...pretty, even.
Regina is dressed smartly in a button-down shirt and dress pants, her hair pulled away from her face in a chignon. I make my way over to where she sits, smiling at some of the nurses as I pass them.
“Hello, Thursday,” she says.
She eyes me up and down, a look of surprise on her face. She was expecting a mess. I am not a mess. I do yoga every day, and I eat my fruits and veggies—I’ve even been sleeping well. My body is healthy even if my mind is not. I slide into the seat opposite her and offer a smile. I imagine it’s a peaceful smile because I’m no longer twisting and turning with apprehension.
“Hi,” I say.
I’ve thought about Regina almost every day since coming back to Queen County. The thoughts aren’t angry or mean; it’s more of a distant curiosity. I am too medicated to be angry at this point.
Her nostrils flare as she watches me, both of us so carefully waiting for the other to speak.
“How have you been?” Icebreaker words!
I divert. “Why are you here?”
“I don’t really know,” she says. “I guess I wanted to see how you were.”
“To make yourself feel better or worse?”
Her pale skin flushes, strawberry-red patches appearing on her cheeks and chin. Regina’s game had a steep price; she may have meant to punish me, but Seth and Hannah will be paying for the rest of their lives.
“Both, I suppose. I never intended for things to go as far as they did...”
“Then why?” I ask.
“You ruined my life. I wanted you to pay for that.”
My thoughts run ahead, spiral back and then sink into a mire of remorse and guilt. I hadn’t known I was ruining her life...or had I? The reality I made up ruined everyone’s lives, but Regina wasn’t as innocent as Hannah had been. She’d used my weakness against me; she’d set me up.
“Well, you got what you wanted, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she says finally. “I suppose I did.”
I’d been so eager to blame someone for the death of my baby that I’d never questioned her story, and Regina, so eager to punish me, had never imagined the outcome it would have.
“I knew you had issues with mental health, but I had no idea the stories you made up in your own head—about the polygamy.”
I look away, ashamed. Shame is a powerful reality check. Dr. Steinbridge said that it was shame that caused me to create my alternate state of reality. I was good enough for Seth to fuck, his mistress for both of his marriages, but not good enough to love.
The doctor is teaching me to cope with my shame, to deal with it. “Make decisions you can live with...” he says to me.
“I wanted to make you look crazy. I didn’t know you were crazy.”