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Agnes sent a message with one of the interns to ask Cora to come to her office at three and spent the next two hours pacing anxiously, going over what she would say to Cora in her head.
When there was a knock on the door, Agnes took a deep breath before wrenching it open.
She blinked in surprise. It wasn’t who she was expecting. “Kate? Do you need something?”
“Dr. Hope sent me. She’s busy with a patient, but she said I was to get instructions from you as to what you need and pass it on to her.”
Smart move. Cora couldn’t very well outright refuse a meeting with her boss, but she had sidestepped it skillfully.
Agnes sighed, her shoulders slumping. She could push it. She could insist that Cora come and see her in person, but that wouldn’t be fair. That would be abusing her power. It was the very reason relationships between bosses and employees weren’t allowed. It would be predatory and wrong.
“Dr. Frame? Are you alright?”
Agnes looked into Kate’s wide, sincere eyes, and found she didn’t know how to answer her.
After several awkward seconds, she was able to force a lie out. “I’m fine, Kate. Tell Dr. Hope it was nothing. I just… It’s nothing.”
“Okay, then. Did you need anything else?”
Agnes shook her head, and Kate left, shooting one last confused look over her shoulder.
The following days were some of the darkest Agnes had experienced other than the days immediately after Jackie died.
She felt like she didn’t know who she was anymore. The black cloud that had followed her around after she lost Jackie seemed to thicken. Cora had been a ray of light through that cloud, but now she was gone, as distant from Agnes as if she lived on another continent.
Agnes considered engineering another situation in which she could talk to Cora, like she had done with the elevator, but what would be the point? What could she say to Cora?
That she was too much of a coward to commit to something new and beautiful because she was so busy holding onto a dead past? That she had promised not to hurt her again but had done it anyway?
No, Cora was better off without her. Agnes didn’t deserve Cora. Sure, Cora was hurting now, but she was young, beautiful, smart, compassionate… all the things any woman in the world would be lucky to have in a partner. Cora would start again and soon forget all about the brief flame that had been between her and Agnes.
Agnes had always taken pleasure in her work, but to her dismay, that pleasure started to dim. Honestly, her pleasure in everything started to dim. It was like Cora was a firework, and now that her brilliant light had faded, Agnes’ eyes were left blinded to anything but darkness.
She started having trouble sleeping, plagued by nightmares of Jackie’s death, only instead of Jackie in the hospital bed, it was Cora.
Agnes didn’t know what she could do about it except keep going. She’d been through depression before, after Jackie died. Everyone had been insistent that she go see a shrink, but Agnes had adamantly refused. She hadn’t been ready to talk about her feelings. They were too painful.
She felt the same now. Examining the open wound that Cora had left wasn’t going to help anything except to keep that wound open.
Agnes didn’t hesitate to recommend therapy to her patients who were having psychological issues, but she was sure it wouldn’t work for her. Just thinking about certain things was enough to send her spiraling into despair. Talking about them would surely make it worse, and no one needed to deal with her when she was like that, even someone who was paid for it.
“Agnes?”
Agnes looked up to see Kate poking her head through the office door.
“Come in, Kate.”
Kate edged into the room, eyeing Agnes as though she might pounce at any moment.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. I just…”
Agnes had never seen Kate look so uncomfortable. “Why don’t you sit down. Tell me what’s going on. How are your studies going?”
“They’re going well,” Kate said reluctantly. “How is your work going?”
“Fine, thank you.”
