Leave Me

“Do you have eggs?”

He nodded toward the refrigerator. It was mostly empty. But it did have half a dozen eggs, some half-and-half, and some butter.

“How about hot sauce?” she asked.

He nodded toward the pantry. She shuffled around and found several specialty bottles of CaJohn, a Trinidadian brand. She wondered if that was where Felicity was from. Or maybe they got it on holiday there. Or maybe they just liked hot sauce.

“We’re two for two,” she said. “Going for a trifecta. Bread?”

“Try the freezer.”

She found some hamburger rolls and set them out to thaw. She beat the eggs with half-and-half and salt and pepper, heated the skillet, and melted a pat of butter and poured in the eggs.

“How come my kitchen only smells good when you’re here?” Stephen asked.

“I’ll take it as a sign of progress that you think food smells good.” She popped the rolls into the toaster oven, gave the eggs a toss with the spatula, sprinkled on the hot sauce.

“Where did you learn to cook?”

“It’s only scrambled eggs, Stephen. Pretty basic.”

“But you know how to cook properly. I can tell.”

“I do. I learned from a magazine.”

“How industrious.”

“Not from reading it, from working at one. My first job was at a cooking magazine. Before that I could make macaroni and cheese from a box.”

“How’d you get a job at a cooking magazine then?”

“I faked it. The week before my interview I read cookbooks and food magazines and watched cooking shows, so that by the time I showed up, I was Julia Child.”

“How long did you work there?”

“Long enough to give me an appreciation for cooking.”

“I see that.”

“That’s what I loved about magazines. You become an expert in something for a few years. Budget travel, world affairs, celebrity lifestyles.”

“Jack of all trades.”

“Master of none.” Which was true. She was highly skilled as an editor and basically a dilettante at everything else. Except now she wasn’t even an editor anymore.

She folded the eggs onto the plate and started to douse them in more hot sauce. He raised his hand. “I think maybe that’s enough.”

“You have to trust me,” she said. “I don’t understand the scientific reasoning why spicy cures hangover, only that it does.”

“Perhaps we should author a paper on it.”

“Then we have to test it first.”

She put the plate in front of him. He made a face.

“One bite. You just said it smelled good.”

He picked up the fork, took a small bite, chewed, swallowed.

“See,” she said. “You’re not dead.”

“Give it a few minutes,” he said.

“Your sense of humor is returning. Try a second bite. Keep it small.”

“You’re an excellent doctor.” He smiled weakly. “Or maybe I should say, nurse.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Demoted after one bite?”

“Promoted,” he countered. “Nurses are the true healers.” Then as if to convince her, he added. “Felicity was a nurse.”

“Oh,” she said. “Was that how you met?”

“No, she worked in pediatric oncology.”

“Oncology.” Maribeth shook her head. “How ironic.”

Stephen took a bigger forkful of eggs. “I think this might be working,” he said. “And ironic, how?”

Maribeth wondered if the question was some sort of rejoinder, scolding her for intruding on their private affairs. But he was the one who brought her up. Maribeth stammered something about the irony of an oncology nurse dying of cancer.

Stephen’s fork clanked against his plate. “Felicity didn’t die of cancer.”

“She didn’t?”

“What gave you that idea?”

Maribeth’s face, neck, arms went hot. “I don’t know. She was just so young and pretty.” She heard how ridiculous that sounded. “And you had those pink ribbons in your office.”

He almost smiled. “Mallory works for the Breast Cancer Survivors’ Network. She’s an event planner. That’s me showing school spirit. I’m sorry. I assumed you knew. Because everyone around here knows. And because of what you said that day in the ice cream parlor.”

What had she said? Something about a deal, him not digging into her secrets, and her not digging into his.

“I didn’t know,” Maribeth stammered. “I mean, I don’t.”

“It’s no mystery. It was in the newspaper, after all. I’d have expected you to do a more thorough job of vetting me.”

She shook her head. She hadn’t googled him once. She’d decided that if he had done something terrible, she didn’t want to know about it.

“She died in a car accident. Which wasn’t noteworthy. Many people do. Except this one happened to be my fault.”

Her heart did something strange, an undulation stopped cold by a thud, which she understood had nothing to do with her coronary disease. “Your fault?”

“Perhaps not in the legal sense. But that doesn’t change anything, does it?” He made a bitter guffaw, so un-Stephen-like, Maribeth thought. It was a sound much more at home coming out of her own mouth.

“What happened?”

“Bad luck. Bad karma. Who knows?” He waved his arms, as if accusing the universe. “We’d gone to see one of her former patients play with an orchestra in Cleveland. She was always doing things like that, attending school productions or weddings or concerts of former patients, and I was dragged along. This was a point of contention. I thought our job was to treat the patients, get them well to lead their own lives, not weave them into ours. But Felicity continued to collect her survivors. Sometimes she lectured me that I would be a better doctor if I wasn’t so clinical. So removed, she said.” He barked out another bitter laugh.