The Shadow Wife

“Do you have a problem patient?” Rebecca asked without taking her eyes or her hand from the chart.

“Yes,” Joelle said. “Me.”

Rebecca stopped writing. She looked at Joelle, her eyebrows raised and frank curiosity in her face. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll be done around five. Can you come to my office then?”

“Thanks,” Joelle said. “I’ll be there.” She stood up and started walking toward the cafeteria, thinking she would go to Rebecca’s office a bit after five in the hope that the doctor’s staff would have left by then. The fewer people who saw her there, the better.

She spotted Liam sitting alone at their usual table near the cafeteria window and took a seat across from him, glad he had not skipped lunch in an effort to avoid her.

“Where’s Paul?” she asked as she opened her napkin and rested it on her lap.

“He’s swamped,” Liam said. “He’ll be late.”

He’d sounded so miserable on the phone the night before, so distressed at the thought of Sam being hurt. He had to have been in a deep, dark crater to have called her. Awkward though it had been, she’d been thrilled he’d turned to her the way he used to.

“How are you?” she asked him as she raised her glass of milk to her lips.

“I’m all right.” He looked directly at her. “Sorry I bothered you last night,” he said.

“It was no bother,” she said. “Did you decide how you’re going to handle the situation with Sheila?”

“I’ve got it covered, thanks.” He tore open a packet of sugar and poured it into his coffee, a barely perceptible tremor in his hand. Like hell he had it covered, she thought.

“Oh.” She leaned toward him, wishing she could touch that trembling hand. “Let me help you. You don’t need to—”

“Hi, Paul,” Liam interrupted her, looking above her head, and she turned to see Paul about to set his tray on the table.

“Will this day never end?” Paul said as he lowered himself into the chair.

“What’s going on?” Liam asked with sudden enthusiasm, as though he wanted nothing more than to talk with Paul about his cases.

“Three new AIDS admissions, one of them a fourteen-year-old girl,” Paul said. “Two child abuse cases. One little boy about to die. You know, the usual.”

“I might be able to help you out later,” Joelle said to Paul. Her load today was comparatively light.

Liam began questioning Paul about the details of his cases, exhibiting insatiable curiosity that Joelle knew was born of his desire to avoid talking about his own problems, and she grew quiet. As soon as she had finished eating, she excused herself and went up to the general surgery floor to see if she was needed there. It was too hard to be around Liam when he was shutting her out, cutting himself off from the friendship she still longed to give him.

That afternoon, she whisked through her referrals, then helped Paul with his cases, not allowing herself any free time. She didn’t want that much time to think. At five o’clock, someone else would finally know what was happening to her body. The contents of her mind and heart, though, would have to remain hidden.

At quarter after five, she sat down in the chair across the desk from Rebecca Reed and offered the doctor a weak smile.

“Thanks for seeing me,” she said.

Rebecca shoved aside a stack of charts to give Joelle her full attention. “So,” she said, “what’s up with you?” Even at the end of a long day, the doctor’s blond hair was still neatly, sleekly, pulled back into a clasp at the nape of her neck, and her face looked freshly scrubbed, her skin smooth and glowing.

Joelle had spoken about her personal problems once before with Rebecca, many years earlier, when she and Rusty had been unable to conceive. Rebecca had been her usual cool and clinical self, giving Joelle the names of several fertility specialists, spelling out their credentials and offering her own opinion of each of them, but she’d offered Joelle no words of sympathy, no hand-holding, and Joelle had not expected any. That was not Rebecca’s style. She didn’t expect any sympathy now, either. What she needed was excellent clinical skills embodied in a woman who was certain not to either meddle or gossip.

“I have to ask for complete confidentiality,” Joelle began, and Rebecca smiled.

“Is there any other kind?” she asked.

Joelle could not smile back. “Right. I guess not,” she said. She looked squarely at Rebecca and took in a breath. “I’m pregnant,” she said.

Rebecca raised her eyebrows and for a moment seemed speechless. “Wow,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Wow.”

“Lousy timing, isn’t it?” Joelle asked.

Rebecca folded her arms across her chest and shook her head in what Joelle thought was wonder. “Well, there was a time when I would have congratulated you on this news and broken out the Perrier,” Rebecca said, “but I’m not quite sure what to say right now. Is this good news for you or not? Or would you prefer not to discuss it?”