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“I should go,” I say then, using the brief lull in conversation to my advantage, “I’m sure you want to be alone up here. I’m sure you weren’t expecting company.”
“Don’t leave on my account.”
“My daughter,” I say this time, “will be home from school soon and will wonder where I am.”
“Sure. Yeah. Of course.”
I say goodbye. As I walk away, along the bridge and down the ramp before disappearing beneath the underpass, I feel his eyes on me.
It isn’t until I’m halfway home, back on the L, the Red Line soaring through a narrow tube at the bottom of the Chicago River—which I try not to think about because if I did, it would make me claustrophobic and I’d think about running out of air, about drowning—that I realize: Jackson Beckett arrived from London only two days ago. He couldn’t have been with a friend last weekend at Promontory Point when he was in London for work.
Someone isn’t telling the truth.
Twelve
My head pounds the next night as I slip out through the hospital’s main entrance and onto Wellington. The sky is dark. There is snow in the forecast; it’s supposed to start sometime after midnight, which means that up above, dense clouds paper over the stars, blocking them from view. The sun set a long time ago, but because of the dearth of windows in the ICU, I didn’t see it happen. I didn’t see the sun rise or the sun set, so that it’s almost possible to pretend it was dark all day.
I find two ibuprofen in my purse and take them as I walk west on Wellington toward Sheffield. My commute home is about a mile long. If I walk at a good pace, which I do, I can make it in fifteen minutes. This makes standing on the L platform, waiting for the train to come, not worth it in my opinion. I’d rather keep moving. I stay warmer that way. It feels like I’m making progress and, either way, whether I take the train or walk, I get home at roughly the same time.
When I come to it, I turn right onto Sheffield. Sheffield is the street I always take when I’m going straight home from work. There’s comfort in familiarity. I’ve walked this route so many times I could practically do it with my eyes closed. It’s the most direct route and takes me the whole way from the hospital home, passing by low and midrise apartment buildings mixed with shops, restaurants, doctors’ offices, Wrigley Field. Anyone who knows anything about baseball knows that Sheffield Avenue, behind Wrigley Field, is one of the best spots to stand and catch home run balls.
My mind is elsewhere. I’m not thinking about where I’m going. I’m not paying attention to where I’m walking. My eyes are unfocused, looking where I’m going but not ingesting what I see. I almost don’t see her. I almost walk right past in my haze, but then I hear a man’s cruel words hurled like darts in the air—What the fuck, lady. Why don’t you watch where you’re going?—and I look. It’s not as though I haven’t heard words spoken in this city like that before, but the coldness of strangers, the way people speak to and treat one another, stuns me. This man is in his fifties or sixties. He looks expensively dressed, though the buttons of his black suit coat are strained over a large abdomen and he’s losing his hair. He’s turned toward a woman, and he points a hard-hearted, pitiless, practically inhumane finger at her, so close it almost touches her nose, saying, “What the hell is wrong with you?” before mumbling, “Idiot.”
Just before him, I make out Nat’s shocked face as she stands there, getting shamed in public and reprimanded like a child. Her shoulders round forward, her skin becoming mottled and red, fighting tears. Nat carries a large, black duffel bag over her shoulder, which looks cumbersome enough that she might have clipped the man’s shoulder with it walking by or stepped on the back of his fancy leather shoes. Something like that, something accidental and benign. Not the worst aggrievance, and yet he’s made her feel stupid for it. I read her lips. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she mouths, shaking her head as he pulls down on the lapels of his suit coat, straightening it, and then turns away without another word.
Once he’s gone, Nat seems anxious to get away. I don’t blame her. I see it in her eyes and in her body language. Her eyes flit like hummingbird wings, searching for a place to go, finding one. She turns quickly, attempting to duck into a nearby restaurant, except that on the way in, she struggles to get the large bag through the door.
I make my way to the door. I come up from behind, holding it open for her.
“Thanks,” she says, but it’s offhand and brisk because she hasn’t looked to see it’s me holding the door open for her. All she can think about is getting away from strangers’ eyes.
“Nat,” I say, and only then does she stop and turn to look, her eyes settling on my face, studying it. Nat’s lip is still swollen today, though the dried blood has been washed away. The bruise looks worse. It’s spread closer to the eye, and I think about the man on the street just now, laying into her, and wonder how anyone could do that when she looks like this.
Her words are clipped. “Meghan,” she says, stepping back out onto the sidewalk, instead of into the restaurant where it’s warm and brightly lit. She folds her arms across herself and asks, “What are you doing here?” as I let go of the door, letting it drift closed. Nat pulls her eyebrows together so that her forehead pleats. Her words are not unkind but there is some reservation to them, an undercurrent of distrust that I can’t blame her for, not after all she’s been through.
“That man was an asshole. Whatever happened didn’t deserve that kind of reaction,” I say, and then, “I was just on my way home from work. I walk past this place almost every day.” I say it as justification for my being here, so she doesn’t think I’ve been following her. I can see why she would. “The hospital where I work is only a couple blocks away,” I say, pointing arbitrarily in the direction from which I came. I lower my arm. “That man shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. It wasn’t right. There’s something wrong with him, not you. I hope you know that.”
She nods, but I don’t know if she believes me.
“I’m glad to see you,” I go on. “I didn’t hear from you last night. You were going to send me a message and let me know you made it home.” I’d looked for her message first thing this morning, standing barefoot in the kitchen waiting for the Keurig to warm. I looked again later in the day.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and I feel guilty for even mentioning it. I don’t want to make her feel bad. “I know. I forgot.”
“No, it’s okay. Don’t apologize. I’m just relieved that you’re okay,” I say, though the luggage is hard to ignore. I eye the large duffel bag, wonder if her life’s worth is in there, all of her possessions, everything she managed to take when she left Declan, and ask, “Are you okay?”
She nods, her hair falling in her eyes, where she leaves it.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I... I don’t know,” she says. “I haven’t decided.”
My head lists and I say, “I thought you were staying with your friend.”
“I was. But...” She pauses, tears suddenly pricking her eyes. “I don’t know,” she says again, shaking her head, looking away. She can’t look at me as she says, “I don’t think that’s going to work out.”
