NICK
BEFORE
I get the idea at work as I’m sorting through the patient files for an afternoon appointment, one that my hygienist forgot to pull. I go into the stacks searching for the file for one William Grayson, and end up leaving a few seconds later with the file for Melinda Grey clutched in my hands, finding the two files perched side by side on the metal shelves in alphabetical order. In criminal law, it’s all about intent—mens rea, or in English: guilty mind. It’s something I don’t have. I have no intent to harm Melinda Grey. I didn’t even intend to pull her file from the stacks.
And yet here it is in my hand.
I tell Nancy to reschedule my appointment with William Grayson. I tell her I’m feeling sick.
The home is small and dated, a single-story house on the south side of town. It has big, squarish windows in the front, flanked with shutters, and a low roofline that hangs too low for my taste. The landscaping is mature but sad, the periphery of the home beleaguered by boxwood hedging. In the driveway rests a dark sedan, black or maybe blue, a forgotten sunroof left open, the interior leather absorbing the oppressive heat of the day.
I stop the car just shy of the house and put it in Park, sitting there in the front seat, trying hard to catch my breath.
As I step slowly from the car and make my way up the asphalt driveway, I have every intention of just trying to talk some sense into her, to try to get her to understand my position. To apologize, as all websites said was paramount to avoiding a malpractice suit. Maybe I should have just apologized in the first place. I never had the chance to explain.
And so that’s my intention for coming to see Melinda Grey: to explain.
Malice aforethought, in the legal world, is a conscious intent to cause somebody harm, and that’s not what I have. The thought never even crosses my mind, not until the door opens, and there she stands, Melinda Grey, glaring through the two-inch gap back at me, the weight of her body pressed behind the door in case I try to force my way in.
And then suddenly the only thing on my mind is causing this woman bodily harm, this woman who’s trying to spoil my life.
“Go away,” she snaps through the doorway. “Go away or I’ll scream,” and she’s saying it as if I’ve already hurt her, as if I’m trying to push that door open against the weight of her, though I’m not. I stand a good twelve inches away from the door frame, my hands in the pockets of my khaki pants.
“I just want to talk to you,” I say. “See if there’s any way I can make this up to you, without the need for lawyers and insurance companies and all that. Maybe we can work this out our own way,” I tell her, holding my hands up in deference and saying, “I swear.”
But Ms. Grey will not talk to me. The two-inch gap becomes one, and though I use every ounce of self-control I can possibly manage, the toe of my loafer still collides with the front door so that it can’t close. She tries to push, but still it won’t close, and before I know what’s happening, my hands are on the door, too, forcing it open, so that I see her fully, my six-foot frame overlooking her by a good foot.
“You seem like a reasonable person,” I say to her, “a good person,” but she’s backing away from me, and I find myself moving closer. There’s a cat in the backdrop, a Siamese who sits perched on the top of a TV stand, watching me. A witness. “I have more to lose than you can imagine,” I explain, telling her about my wife, my children, my practice. If I explain, then maybe she’ll understand. Maybe she’ll drop the whole suit.
But what I’m not thinking about is how much Melinda has to gain from the settlement: hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“You tried to kill me,” she says, and like that her benign eyes turn cancerous before my eyes. I see her for what she is: a liar and a con.
“You didn’t return for your follow-up appointment,” I say. “You were supposed to watch for signs of infection and call if you had any concerns. Any concerns, at all, I told you. I gave you my cell phone number,” I insist. “I told you to call anytime. You didn’t call. You didn’t call.”
A smile dances on the edges of her lips as she replies, “They told me at the hospital that I could have died. If that infection had spread to my brain, I would have died.”
And at that I feel something in me snap. It was avoidable, it was all so avoidable had she followed my explicit directions. But she didn’t follow my directions, and it was intentional, a stroke of luck when she spied that infection starting to form inside her mouth and decided to do nothing about it.
“You bitch,” I whisper. “You stupid bitch.” And I’m moving forward, closing in on her quickly as she backs away and into the open front door. There’s nowhere for her to go. Her back is quite literally to a wall, and it’s all I can do not to press my hand to her trachea and stop the airflow. I imagine her turning blue before my eyes, arms and legs flailing for air, her eyes gaping wide with fear. I all but feel the tautness of her skin beneath my hand, all those vital arteries of her neckline, the carotid artery and the jugular vein, fully distended as she sucks in to breathe ineffectively against the weight of my hand.
And that’s when the cell phone in my pocket begins to ring.
Clara is laid out in the hospital bed when I arrive, wearing a light blue gown and socks. It’s a large room, a private room, and the doctor, Clara’s obstetrician, is attending to her as I trot in, out of breath.
“I’m not too late,” I beg, huffing the words out. “Please, tell me I’m not too late.”
“Eight centimeters,” the doctor says, pulling a hand from between Clara’s legs and draping a paper-thin blanket over them. “You’re not too late,” she assures me. “Shouldn’t be much longer now,” as she pats Clara’s knees and smiles at me. “You ready for this?” she asks, and I tell her that I am, rushing to Clara’s bedside to envelop her in a hug.
Clara looks exhausted, but ready. She is a tough woman, a resilient woman. She can handle anything, and lying there in the hospital bed waiting for the next contraction to arrive, she has her game face on. She’s ready for this. I stroke her moistened hair; she’s been sweating. There’s a washcloth set to the side of the bed, which I dampen with cool water from the bathroom sink and press to her head. I feed her ice cubes with a plastic spoon from a Styrofoam cup that sits on her table tray; the ice cubes have begun to melt and form a puddle at the bottom of the cup. The contractions are coming every few minutes, lasting thirty seconds or more, and within minutes I become a slave to the clock, knowing before Clara does when the next contraction will arrive. She grits her teeth and pushes through them while the nurse and I remind her to breathe.
“We don’t have a name,” Clara gasps between contractions. “We never gave him a name.” And there is panic in her eyes, as if without a name he might just poof! disappear before our eyes.
I have no good reason why we don’t have a name. We had nine months to decide. Maybe we just need to see him and then we’ll know, I rationalize, and suddenly I’m overwhelmed with a sense of eagerness and anticipation that soon my baby boy will arrive. I’m filled with pride. Soon I will welcome a child into the world, and I envision Clara, Maisie, my baby boy and me all curled together on Clara’s hospital bed, and in that moment everything else fades away: the practice and Connor, Kat and Melinda Grey, the malpractice suit. There are voices in the hallway, two men, a new father and a new grandfather, moseying down the hall, discussing the game. I try to turn a deaf ear to what they say, to focus on Clara and only Clara, but I catch wind of it anyway.
They’re talking about basketball. The NBA series. The Golden State Warriors have taken the lead in the series, and I feel this great relief at hearing those words, knowing that out there somewhere, in a POD account, is money. Money waiting for me.
As another contraction grips Clara, I feel the weight of the world lifted from me and, for the first time in a long time, a sense that this will be okay. That everything will be okay.
She cries out from the pain, and I hold her tightly and tell her that she can do this. “You’re the strongest woman I know,” I whisper into her ear, words that are altogether true. Clara is a fighter. If there’s anybody in the world who can do this, Clara can do this. Her body is glossy with sweat, the paper-thin blanket now kicked from her legs and to the tile floor. She breathes heavily as the contraction passes, her rib cage expanding and contracting with each gulp of air. She lays her head on my shoulder, and I stroke her hair.
“Charles,” she whispers to me, gasping for air. “Let’s name him Charles,” she says. A concession. My father’s name and my middle name. But I don’t let Clara capitulate in fear.
“No,” I tell her, kneeling down so that I can see her eye to eye, the floor digging into my knees so that they burn. Clara’s cheeks are flushed, the red spreading from her face to her chin and neck. Her eyes, always so sure, are consumed with fear and doubt and exhaustion. I hold her hand in mine, pressing it to my heart, and say to her, “We’ll know when we see him. When we see him, we’ll know,” and in my voice, there’s conviction, a guarantee, and she nods her head, believing.
“I’m sorry,” she says, meaning our fight this morning over coffee and paint. A dumb fight. An argument that means nothing. I tell her that I’m sorry, too. “It was stupid,” I say, and she agrees, “So stupid,” as our lips press together, erasing the moment from our minds for the time being.
The doctor returns again to check on Clara. This time, she’s nine centimeters and nearly one hundred percent effaced. “You’re in the home stretch,” she tells Clara. “We’ll begin pushing soon,” and again she leaves.
Clara is thirsty, but only ice cubes are allowed, a sorry consolation prize for someone who’s completely parched. I feed her the last from the Styrofoam cup and then tell her I’ll be right back; I’m going to get more. But Clara clings to me, begging me not to go. The kitchen is just across the hall, just a quick hop, skip and a jump away I tell her, but Clara holds tightly to my hand and begs, “Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me,” and I melt like snowdrifts on a warm spring day. I’m moonstruck. In all my life, I’ve never loved anyone as much as Clara. I fall again to my knees, swearing over and over again that I won’t leave. “I’m right here,” I say. “I’m here. I won’t go anywhere. I’ll never leave you,” I say as the nurse takes the cup from my hands. I stroke Clara’s hair as another contraction arrives, her fingernails bearing down hard on my skin, leaving their mark. But I don’t mind. What I wouldn’t give to do this for her, to birth our baby myself, to take the pain away. “If there’s anybody in the world that can do this, Clara, you can do this,” I say again into her ear as she screams through yet another contraction.
“Breathe, Clara,” I remind her. “Just breathe.”
* * *
Maisie arrives in the room with her grandfather behind her, bearing a piece of construction paper in her hand. She comes in slowly, deliberately, her eyes locked on the new addition, a puckered creature who lies on her mother’s chest in a blue blanket.
“What have you got there?” I ask Maisie as I reach out to gather her into my arms and place a kiss on her forehead.
“I drew a picture,” she says as she shows me her drawing. “Our family,” she says, and I look down to see that in her drawing, our family includes four, and Harriet of course. “Who’s that?” I ask, pointing at each figure in a row, Daddy, and then Mommy, and then me, says Maisie, but when I get to the pocketsize figure in Clara’s arms, no bigger than a mouse according to Maisie’s drawing scale, she tells me that’s Felix. A buck-naked Felix who, like a bug, has three body parts and maybe an extra few legs. The hair on his head far surpasses mine.
“Felix?” I say, as both Clara’s and my eyes rise up to meet Maisie’s at exactly the same time.
“Who’s Felix?” asks Clara.
“That’s Felix,” she says assuredly, pointing a green crayon at the baby in Clara’s arms as if all along, while Clara and I sat on the fence undecided, she knew that the baby was a Felix. “Like Felix from ballet,” she says and Clara and I release a simultaneous, Ohhhh. Felix from ballet. The sole boy in her class, with his footless tights and his white T-shirts. The love of my four-year-old’s life.
I hear Clara’s voice parrot the word. “Felix,” she says, and there’s a lilt to it, a rising action instead of what has always followed my name suggestions: a firm, deflating no. I turn to Clara to see that she’s reached a hand out to Maisie’s drawing to see if the mousy figure in the palm of her illustrated hand is indeed the same one as the baby sleeping soundlessly on her chest. Her lips display a measured smile, as I set Maisie down and she climbs clumsily onto the hospital bed to join her mother and her baby brother beneath the sheets. Clara looks to me for approval, and I shrug my shoulders and say, “Why not?” Felix. It’s the perfect blend of traditional and trendy all at the same time, and as I lean in closely to stare at the thin, gossamer eyelids of my sleeping baby boy, I see that he really is a Felix. All along he was a Felix.
“Felix Charles,” says Clara, and in that moment, it’s decided. “Welcome to the world, Felix Charles Solberg.”
I sit on the other side of Clara, and Maisie sneaks awkwardly across and climbs up on my lap. Clara lays her head on my shoulder. I set my hand on Felix’s arm, and even in sleep he kicks a firm hello. “Hello, Felix,” I say and Maisie giggles, a sound that is melodious and majestic and pure.
Our family, I think, telling myself how this is the only thing in the world that matters. The rest of it is just packing materials, the upholstery, a filler. It means nothing.
And for one single moment there is bliss.