His Other Wife (14 page)

I
t had started to rain, one of those early-summer thunderstorms that took everyone by surprise. The Cubbies game in Wrigley
Field would be rained out this afternoon. The high-school football stadium was a huge smudge on the horizon, a watercolor
painting. Tires threw up rooster tails of spray as Hilary crossed an overpass. Lightning scribbled its name across the sky.

Hilary didn’t know where she was headed. She hadn’t thought anything through. She only knew she had to find a place to breathe,
a place where she wasn’t awash in other people’s voices.

Landmarks passed without notice. The city streets gave way to mix-and-match blocks of suburbia, the chain stores and restaurants
and movie complexes interchangeable with those of any other suburb in the country. She drove past the exit to the senior-party
campground. She surprised herself when she didn’t take the exit and turn into the park entry.

How hard would it be to disappear? She could buy L’Oréal Natural Black at a Wal-Mart and run her hair under a truck-stop faucet.
She could abandon the car in a place it would never be found. She could start over as someone who’d never been Eric’s wife,
who’d never been called to the emergency room to be told an ambulance was coming in, that her son had gotten drunk and jeopardized
a girl’s life.

After Hilary had lost her father she’d awakened often in the night, her heart pounding, thinking it had been a lie. Her father
wasn’t gone at all. Hadn’t she just seen him in a dream? And when she’d realize again that he had died, she’d weep again,
awash in an ocean of pure pain, healing pain, pain that was sweet because she’d been entitled to it.

But this was a different sort of grief. It didn’t help, wasn’t working toward cleansing. She woke in the night and knew that
she mustn’t let anyone hear her sobs. It was a selfish sort of pain, because her son needed her to be strong.

Hilary knew where she would go, not to run from what frightened her most but to plunge to its very depths. She steered the
car off at the next exit and turned toward the very place she probably shouldn’t go. She headed toward the hospital.

She’d never actually signed out from her late-night shift. When Gina had told her about Seth, she’d grabbed her purse and
her keys and had flown. Now the automatic doors slid soundlessly open so she could enter. The central waiting room bustled
with activity. Families waited in petal-shaped chairs with their heads together, talking in low voices. A poster for cancer
patients suggested:
FIND A POSITIVE MEANING AND INVEST IN HOPE
.
LIVE IN THE PRESENT
.
CELEBRATE MILESTONES AND SPECIAL OCCASIONS
.
SUPPORT YOUR SUPPORT SYSTEM
. Fish slipped silently past in the glass aquarium.

Hilary stopped at the entrance to the PCU hallway and took a deep breath, steeling herself before she headed to the nurses’
station. She closed her eyes, lifted her chin, and, when she opened her eyes again, found herself staring into the hospital
chapel. It wasn’t much bigger than the nurses’ break room. For the size of this hospital, it ought to have been much larger.
It was rosewood paneled and rich, with an ornate brass cross on the altar and walls lined with velvet curtains. Candles burned
beside a bank of fresh flowers. A chalice sat to one side, gleaming in the candlelight, in case a priest or a pastor needed
to make use of it.

Hilary couldn’t keep from going in; the gentle atmosphere beckoned her. She stood staring at the cross as if she’d never
seen it before, at the white dove and the likeness of Jesus etched in the blue and ruby glass window, and thought how just
one week ago she, too, had been a normal churchgoer, one who always sidled ten minutes late into the seat that the usher knew
was her favorite. Being a Christian had been more of a habit than a relationship. When her nursing schedule allowed, she attended
a small women’s group because she didn’t want to lose touch with the latest Bible studies. During these last difficult days,
she’d been quick to throw out a prayer for God to help, then just as quick to hurry forward with her own plans without expecting
any answer.

Hilary knew from her years on staff here that this chapel had been a different sort of place. It had been a haven for those
who had never trusted God before to utter their first desperate cries. It had been a place for those whose loved ones fell
ill or who knew that their days were numbered or who had found out that they had lost a child. Between these walls had drifted
accusations at God and gratitude for miracles and all the unanswerable faith questions that came when miracles didn’t happen.

There had been a wedding here once. A pretty young bride, a leukemia patient, who’d been almost as pale and fragile as the
lace on her dress. The nurses had watched from the doorway, wearing scrubs of every color and tissues poking out of their
pockets along with their stethoscopes.
Well, what would
you
do if you didn’t know whether you were going to make it to next week?
Hilary had overheard someone say.
The days you
don’t
have can’t subtract from the days you
do
have, can they?

The last Hilary had heard, the woman had entered a clinical trial and gone into remission. Ten years had passed and she and
the other members of the trial still stopped by on the anniversary to take their doctor out for dinner. The woman was still
happily married and had a kid. Not bad. You never knew.

Hilary stepped forward and gripped the pew. How she longed to have the sort of faith that made her expect something beautiful
to come from broken places. But she didn’t think that could happen anymore. “What am I supposed to do?” she whispered to no
one as she hung on to the pew the way that, when she’d been a girl, she’d hung on to a window ledge at a candy store, looking
in. “Who am I supposed to be for all of them?”

She lost track of how long she waited there. Candle flames danced inside the glass. The roses in the arrangement shone dark
as blood. As the sun moved over the sky, maybe it was only the moving shadow, but Hilary thought she could almost see the
flowers opening. “Are you here, Lord?” she whispered. “Why won’t you ever answer?”

There had been the patients she’d run out on this morning, the young woman learning to breast-feed, the girl struggling with
asthma and a bad case of the flu, the man who’d gotten tangled between his dog and his bike who needed surgery for a tear
in his ACL. As quiet as the pulse she might find in the crook of an arm, as urgent as breath, the message came.
DON’T ASK ME WHO YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE, BELOVED.
Words intermingling with the very beat of Hilary’s heart.
ASK ME WHO
I
AM.

But Hilary didn’t hear the words, not this time. She was on her way to check patients’ charts. She’d already left the chapel
behind.

She told herself she’d returned because she hadn’t finished the end-of-shift reports. But the minute she stepped into the
elevator, Hilary understood something she hadn’t admitted to herself. She’d come for a different reason. She wanted to keep
vigil, too.

The Intensive Care Unit waiting room had a different feel from the gathering space downstairs. This room wasn’t nearly so
broad and welcoming. The patients weren’t allowed visits from anyone except immediate family. The chairs sat like clenched
fists facing one another. Everywhere you looked were boxes of tissue.

Usually somber and silent, today this room was a circus. The senior class of Jefferson High had started arriving not long
after the ambulance had careened into the bay. As Hilary edged toward the desk, she saw knots of sobbing girls hugging one
another. Emily’s mother stood with her arm roped around her daughter. In spite of signs with red circles and slashes over
drawings of phones, kids babbled on their cells anyway.

The bank of gifts had grown to monstrous proportions. It must have started on a table beneath the television and grown toward
the west wall. Balloons bobbed from their strings, their glinting Mylar belying the gravity of Laura’s condition:
GET WELL SOON
and
THINKING OF YOU
. Someone had brought in candles although hospital rules forbade them to be lit on an oxygen floor. The stuffed animals came
in all shapes and sizes, some of them new, with tags, others dilapidated. Single-stem flowers had already started to wilt
in their paper skins. Makeshift posters, in all different styles and colors, proclaimed:
LAURA, WE LOVE YOU
!!!!!

The boys had bunched around each other, their knees locked, their jaws squared, an army of grim-faced soldiers. Against the
back wall, Hilary saw Remy wipe his face with the hem of his T-shirt. T.J. slid down the wall until he landed on his rump,
his eyes never leaving his iPod screen. Ian stared at the fluorescents overhead. Chase and Michael stood quietly talking,
their fists shoved inside the pockets of their baggy jeans.

Don’t forget Seth
, Hilary wanted to say to them.
There’s someone else who’s dying here, too. You have another friend who needs you
. But even as she thought it, Hilary knew she was wrong. She would do what she could to support her son, but she couldn’t
save him. Seth had taken it out of her hands.

Gina had just signed off doctors’ orders and was entering them into the computer. She squinted from screen to paperwork to
screen, her fingers sailing over the keys.

“It’s a madhouse up here.” Hilary found the color-coded file and opened it.

“Tell me about it.” Gina didn’t miss a beat. “Seven of my own patients to see, two admits, three moving downstairs, and the
phone keeps ringing. I haven’t gotten away from this desk for an hour.”

Hilary kept her voice light. “I ran out of here so fast, I didn’t get my reports done.”

“That isn’t surprising. Hilary, it’s okay.”

“I couldn’t finish my charting.”

Although Gina’s gaze never left the screen, her lifted eyebrows indicated the milling throng of kids. “You know we’re bending
every rule in the book to let them stay.”

“I know.” Hilary had helped herself to a pen from a can beside the telephone. All three lights were blinking. Gina had everyone
on hold.

“They needed a place. They needed to be together.”

Hilary ran the pen down the column of I & O numbers, working the math in her head. She got to the bottom, scribbled a figure,
and initialed the form. There she froze, unable to go further. If her eyes could have burned a hole in the page, they would
have. She wasn’t fooling anyone.

Wordlessly Gina slid a Kardex out that had been resting near the bottom of the pile. She moved it in Hilary’s direction in
one economic motion. Her eyes never left the computer screen.

“This is what you came for even though you won’t admit it. This is what you wanted to see, isn’t it?”

“No, Gina. I —” But even though she protested, Hilary couldn’t keep from being drawn to the printed grid, the doctor’s almost
illegible assessment: “Patient: Moore, Laura. Age: 17.”

Here were the vital signs taken during the past hours, the crushed parts of her they’d tried to repair, the punctured lung,
the bleeding on the brain, the low blood pressure, the drug-induced coma. The evaluations made no sense on the page. When
someone hissed Seth’s name, Hilary didn’t notice. When she glanced up and found eyes on her, it didn’t register that she’d
been recognized. Only this one thought clanged in her ears louder than if someone shouted it: The girl was fighting for her
life. She’d be lucky to make it through the day.

T
he shower was still running behind the bathroom door when Hilary went to check on Seth. She knocked tentatively, hoping Seth
would hear her. When he didn’t respond within a half minute or so, she opened the door a crack. She asked in her cheeriest
voice, “Hey? You there?”

Seth stood in the shower, the water pouring over his head. He didn’t move. He didn’t turn off the shower. Hilary could tell,
by the lack of steam in the room, that the water wasn’t hot anymore.

“Seth,” Hilary said through the door. “Do you think you could eat anything?”

For a long time, he didn’t answer.

“Seth,” Hilary said. “I love you.”

His voice, when he spoke, was ragged and angry. “Mom. Don’t.”

“Honey.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t have to do this by yourself. We’re here for you.”

But here came a lightning burst of grief again, Seth’s voice that sounded like it was suffocating in air, like a fish gasping
after it had been yanked up on land. “Please. Go. Leave me alone.”

Two days after Laura Moore had been admitted to the hospital, the eighteen-year-olds who had been caught at the senior-class
party were brought back to the courthouse for an en masse arraignment hearing. All had been charged with willful trespassing,
for violating an Illinois state statute for being in a state park after sundown without a camping permit. Those who had been
caught drinking, whose field sobriety tests had come back positive and could be proven admissible in court, had also been
charged with Consumption of Alcohol by a Minor.

Hilary had left the hospital halfway through a shift. Seth had driven over with his father. George and Ruth Wynn met them
inside the front foyer. Hilary’s hands shook as she tugged off her bracelet and stepped out of her shoes. She watched her
purse as it jostled along the conveyor at the security checkpoint. Behind her, Seth and Eric unfastened their belts and emptied
their pockets.

When they made it through security, John Mulligan was waiting for them at the courtroom door. Other lawyers for some of the
other kids were waiting for their clients, too. It had been a characteristically hectic weekend for the precinct police, John
told Hilary, and the judge was moving cases through at about the same speed an agent runs kids through a Disney audition.
It was almost Seth’s turn.

Mulligan greeted Eric with an extended hand and a fierce handshake. “I’ll do the best job I can for your son.”

“Thank you.”

John Mulligan shook Seth’s hand, too. He told Seth he had secured an interview booth so they could rehash the charges and
discuss Seth’s plea. “You ready to get this under way, buddy?” Mulligan slapped Seth on the back with more joviality than
any of them felt. Just before the lawyer walked away, he spoke quietly and competently: “The District Attorney knows you’re
attending the hearing with Seth. I’ve slipped him a note. With everything that could happen, we want the DA to know that your
son has plenty of support.”

“What do you mean?” Eric asked. “With everything that could happen?”

The lawyer leveled his eyes on the three of them. “If anything should happen to Laura.”

Eric’s hand rested against Hilary’s shoulder blade as he escorted her into the hall. It had never occurred to her that people
they knew would come to Seth’s hearing. At first she thought everyone was here to support individual families, individual
students. But when Hilary walked in and recognized familiar faces, her world began to shift. A couple of girls from the hospital
were there, their eyes smoldering with compassion. Ruth and George Wynn found a place to sit beside their neighbors on the
second row. Kim Draper from Spilling the Beans was down the aisle, sending her a nod that, in spite of everything, made Hilary
nod, too.

Another hearing was under way. A defendant wearing a jail uniform, what looked like wrinkled khaki scrubs, stood with his
hands shackled in front of the judge’s bench. As Hilary glanced at her friends from Spilling the Beans, she was trying to
let them see that she was grateful. Ever since they’d identified the passenger in the incoming ambulance, ever since she’d
found out Laura had been injured because of Seth’s actions, Hilary’s emotions had been locked in solitary confinement.

“I’m so sorry,” said Clyde Pope, a middle-school teacher. “I know Seth and Laura are good friends. It’s a terrible thing to
happen.”

“Oh, Hilary,” Emily’s mother said. “There aren’t words, are there? I’m so sorry for all of them. I’m praying for Laura’s recovery,
and I’m praying for your family, too.”

Every hand that landed on Hilary’s shoulder she wanted to grab hold of and never let go. As Jane was pulling away, Hilary
actually did it. “Jane, how’s Emily?”

“She’s frantic to talk to Seth, but he won’t call her.”

“Seth hasn’t been talking to anyone.”

Jane shook her head. “Emily’s doing all right. She’s a very sad girl, but she’ll work her way through it. The family is giving
everyone updates. But, well, you work in the hospital. You know if it’s ICU, they won’t let anyone in.”

“And how’s…how’s Abigail?”

This time Jane’s words didn’t come so quickly. She shook her head. She and Hilary were both perilously close to tears.

“You’ve seen her?”

Jane nodded.

“If you get the chance,” Hilary said, already realizing how inadequate her words were, “please tell her how sorry we are.”

“Oh,” Jane said much too quickly. “I’m sure she already knows.”

Julie Rogers, the younger woman whom Hilary had counseled at Spilling the Beans, was the last to approach. Hilary quietly
introduced her to Eric and squeezed her arm. “You’ll never know what it means to have you here.”

“You’ve been such a mentor to me, Hilary.” Julie hugged her. “I wanted to be here.” Then Julie told them about an impromptu
service that had taken place at their church yesterday. Hilary asked, floored, “They had a
service
?” Why hadn’t Seth known?

“A prayer service,” Julie said. “Pastor Greg invited them to the church if they needed a place to gather. So many of them
came!”

“Those poor kids,” Hilary said.

“There weren’t microphones and nobody was leading it or anything. The kids just stood up and talked about Laura and cried
together and prayed. They prayed for Abigail and Rudy and then they prayed for Seth.”

Hilary thought it might be wrong of her, but she had to force a smile. “I’m glad they prayed for my son,” she said.

Up front, the judge was standing to take a break. “All rise,” the bailiff said. The spectators rose in one motion.

“God used it, Hilary. Those teenagers were
praying
for Laura. God took something awful and he’s going to make something good of it, I know.”

“That’s nice.” Hilary said the words by rote as Julie returned to her seat. It just hurt too much to go to that place in her
head. She was standing there considering the simple, easy answer, that God could use Seth’s mistake and make something good
come from it. But suddenly, out of nowhere, the anger hit her like a blow. She was so furious at Julie for oversimplifying
things, she was ready to detonate.

Or maybe she was furious at herself. Or Seth. Or God. Or at Laura for falling, for being stupid enough to do what Seth told
her in the first place. The girl could have said no. Why didn’t she?
Why didn’t she?
Why hadn’t someone seen what was happening and stopped them?

Maybe in a few hundred years Hilary would be able to look back and see something good in this. For now, Julie’s “Kids are
praying at church, so that makes it a good thing,” was too pat an answer.

Lord, why couldn’t it have been somebody else? Why did it have to be my son?

Eric and Hilary sat side by side, their elbows touching, their spines as straight as Chicago’s Sears Tower, on a wooden pew
that was hard enough to make them count every knob of their vertebrae.

The arraignment was a dry, short procedure that didn’t veer off-course. Mulligan nodded as the District Attorney read a statement
that the People of the State of Illinois intended to use to prosecute this case. He listened without reaction as the DA read
a short recitation of the events that led to the trespass and MUI charges that were being leveled against Seth.

When the judge asked, “Mr. Mulligan, how does your client plead?” the lawyer’s answer was almost cordial.

“Not guilty, Your Honor.”

The judge asked the District Attorney for a recommendation on whether Seth should be released on his own recognizance and
John Mulligan said, “I’d like a sidebar. May I approach the bench, Your Honor?”

“Certainly. Come on up, John,” the judge said. “What do you have in mind?”

After a quiet conversation, it was over. “Seth Warren Wynn released on his own recognizance.” The gavel fell. The bailiff
called the next case.

During an impromptu conference in the corner, Mulligan explained that he was working toward Seth’s participation in a diversion
program, which would include community service and counseling. If the judge agreed, it would mean that the charges would be
erased from Seth’s record.

“Looks like the entire senior class may be vying for community service projects this summer,” Mulligan said.

Hilary couldn’t get out of there fast enough. But before they could exit, they had to speak with the acquaintances who’d driven
this far to be with them, who were siphoning out the door in a stream of mumbled condolences and promises of support. Clyde
Pope introduced himself to Eric and shook his hand. Jane stood close by, watching with a sad smile the boy her daughter had
been dating. Hilary heard the woman warn Seth quietly, “People can’t help taking sides.”

As Hilary stood in the midst of the motion and the words, her own sense of nothingness made her dizzy. She watched Seth in
the crowd as he was being pulled away for another conference with Mulligan. She loved Seth so much that her body ached. She
felt like she was going to be sick, she was so scared for him, for all of them. And she couldn’t help wondering if Pam, given
the chance, would have done a better job of raising Seth. Hilary couldn’t help wondering if, had their roles been different,
Pam might have kept him out of this.

If this blew over, someday Eric might tell his son about his own brush with the law. He’d been fifteen, into Van Halen, Brooke
Shields, and being the voice of rebellion. The hockey game with Glenwood South had ended and Eric and his friends were looking
for an evening’s entertainment.

Nothing said fun like the electric security gate at the bus barn and the girls’ basketball team coming back from Monroe. The
boys had been standing around the chain-link fence, scuffing the dust with their Nikes, trying to figure out how to sneak
inside. Then, like a Houdini trick, the gate shuddered, squeaked, and started to open.

The returning basketball bus had already disgorged the girls with their pillows and duffel bags in front of the school. Now
it was rounding the corner, a lumbering beast with two wavering headlights that hadn’t quite focused in the boys’ direction
yet. “Come on!” someone shouted, and, doubled over to avoid the lights, they’d darted through.