The Choice

It was well after dark when Gabby turned in the drive. He remembered the steady way she looked at him as she stepped out of the car. Without a word, she took a seat beside him on the steps. Molly wandered up and began to nuzzle her. Gabby ran her hand rhythmically through her fur.

“Hey,” he said, breaking the silence.

“Hey.” Her voice sounded drained of emotion.

“I think I found homes for all of the puppies,” he offered.

“Yeah?”

He nodded, and the two of them sat together without speaking, like two people who’d run out of things to talk about.

“I’m always going to love you,” he said, searching and failing to find adequate words to comfort her.

“I believe you,” she whispered. She looped her arm through his and leaned her head against his shoulder. “That’s why I’m here.”

Travis had never liked hospitals. Unlike the veterinary clinic, which closed its doors around dinnertime, Carteret General Hospital struck him as the endless turning of a Ferris wheel, with patients and employees hopping on and off every minute of every day. From where he was sitting, he could see nurses bustling in and out of rooms or clustering around the station at the end of the hall. Some were frazzled while others seemed bored; the doctors were no different. On other floors, Travis knew that mothers were giving birth and the elderly were passing away, a microcosm of the world. As oppressive as he found it, Gabby had thrived working here, energized by the steady buzz of activity.

There’d been a letter in the mailbox months earlier, something from the administrator’s office announcing that the hospital planned to honor Gabby’s tenth year working at the hospital. The letter didn’t allude to anything specific that Gabby had accomplished; it was nothing more than a form letter, something no doubt sent out to a dozen other people who’d started working around the same time she had. A small plaque, the letter promised, would be hung in Gabby’s honor in one of the corridors, along with other recipients’, though as yet it hadn’t happened.

He doubted that she cared. Gabby had taken the job at the hospital not because she might one day receive a plaque, but because she’d felt she hadn’t much choice. Though she had alluded to some problems at the pediatrician’s office during their first weekend together, she hadn’t been specific. He’d let the comment pass without pressing her, but he knew even then that the problem wasn’t simply going to go away.

Eventually, she told him about it. It was the end of a long day. He’d been called out the previous night to the equestrian center, where he found an Arabian sweating and pawing the ground, its stomach tender to the touch. Classic signs of equine colic, though with a bit of luck, he didn’t think it would require surgery. Still, with the owners in their seventies, Travis wasn’t comfortable asking them to walk the horse for fifteen minutes every hour, in case the horse became more agitated or took a turn for the worse. Instead, he decided to stay with the horse himself, and though the horse gradually improved as the day rolled on into the next evening, he was exhausted by the time he left.

He arrived home, sweaty and filthy, to find Gabby crying at her kitchen table. It took a few minutes before she was able to tell him the story—how she’d had to stay late with a patient who was waiting for an ambulance for what she was fairly certain was appendicitis; by the time she was able to leave, most of the staff had gone home. The attending physician, Adrian Melton, had not. They left together, and Gabby didn’t realize that Melton was walking with her toward her car until it was too late. There, he laid a hand on her shoulder and told her that he was heading to the hospital and would update her on the patient’s condition. When she forced a smile, however, he leaned in to kiss her.

It was a clumsy effort, reminiscent of high school, and she recoiled before he could finish. He stared at her, seemingly put out. “I thought this was what you wanted,” he’d said.

At the table, Gabby shuddered. “He made it sound like it was my fault.”

“Has it happened before?”

“No, not like this. But . . .”

When she trailed off, Travis reached over and took her hand. “Come on,” he said. “It’s me. Talk to me.”

Her gaze remained focused on the surface of the table, but her voice was steady as she recounted the history of Melton’s behavior. By the time she finished, his face was tight with barely suppressed rage.

“I’ll fix this,” he said without waiting for a response.

It took two phone calls to find out where Adrian Melton lived. Within minutes, his car screeched to a stop in front of Melton’s house. His insistent finger on the doorbell brought the doctor to the front door. Melton barely registered his puzzlement before Travis’s fist crashed into his jaw. A woman Travis assumed was Melton’s wife materialized the same instant Melton hit the floor, and her screams echoed in the hallway.

When the police arrived at the house, Travis was arrested for the first and only time in his life. He was brought to the station, where most of the officers treated him with amused respect. Every one of them had brought their pets to the clinic and were clearly skeptical of Mrs. Melton’s claim that “some psycho has assaulted my husband!”

When Travis called his sister, Stephanie showed up looking less worried than amused. She found Travis sitting in a single cell, deep in discussion with the sheriff; as she approached, he realized they were talking about the sheriff’s cat, who seemed to have developed a rash of some sort and couldn’t stop scratching.

“Bummer,” she said.

“What?”

“And here I thought I was going to find you wearing an orange jumper.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Maybe there’s still time. What do you think, Sheriff?”

The sheriff didn’t know what to think, and a moment later, he left them alone.

“Thanks for that,” Travis said once the sheriff was gone. “He’s probably considering your suggestion.”

“Don’t blame me. I’m not the one attacking doctors on doorsteps.”

“He deserved it.”

“I’m sure he did.”

Travis smiled. “Thanks for coming.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it, Rocky. Or would you prefer I call you Apollo Creed?”

“How about you work on getting me out of here instead of trying to come up with nicknames?”

“Coming up with nicknames is more fun.”

“Maybe I should have called Dad.”

“But you didn’t. You got me. And trust me, you made the right choice. Now let me go talk to the sheriff, okay?”

Later, while Stephanie was talking to the sheriff, Adrian Melton visited Travis. He’d never met the local veterinarian and demanded to know the reason for Travis’s assault. Though he never told Gabby what he said, Adrian Melton promptly dropped the charges, despite protests from Mrs. Melton. Within a few days, Travis heard through the small-town grapevine that Dr. and Mrs. Melton were in counseling. Nonetheless, the workplace remained tense for Gabby, and a few weeks later, Dr. Furman called Gabby into the office and suggested that she consider trying to find another place to work.

“I know it’s not fair,” he said. “And if you stay, we’ll somehow make it work. But I’m sixty-four, and I’m planning to retire next year. Dr. Melton has agreed to buy me out, and I doubt that he’ll want to keep you on anyway, or that you’d want to work for him. I think it would be easier and better for you if you take the time to find a place where you’re comfortable and simply put this awful thing behind you.” He shrugged. “I’m not saying that his behavior wasn’t reprehensible; it was. But even if he’s a jerk, he’s the best pediatrician I interviewed and the only one who was willing to practice in a small town like this. If you leave voluntarily, I’ll write the finest recommendation you can imagine. You’ll be able to get a job anywhere. I’ll make sure of it.”

She recognized the manipulation for what it was, and while her emotions cried out for retribution on her behalf and that of sexu

ally harassed women everywhere, her pragmatic side asserted itself. In the end, she took a job in the emergency room at the hospital.

There had been only one problem: When Gabby found out what Travis had done, she’d been furious. It was the first argument they had as a couple, and Travis could still remember her outrage when she demanded to know whether he believed she was “grown-up enough to handle her own problems” and why he acted “as if she were some silly damsel in distress.” Travis didn’t bother trying to defend himself. In his heart, he knew he’d do the same thing again in an instant, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

For all Gabby’s outrage, Travis suspected there was part of her that had admired what he’d done. The simple logic of the act—He bothered you? Let me at ’im—had appealed to her, no matter how angry she’d appeared, for later that night her lovemaking had seemed particularly passionate.

Or at least, that’s the way Travis remembered it. Had the evening unfolded exactly like that? He wasn’t sure. These days, it seemed that the only thing he was certain about was the knowledge that he wouldn’t trade his years with Gabby for anything. Without her, his life had little meaning. He was a small-town husband with a small-town occupation and his cares were no different from anyone else’s. He’d been neither a leader nor a follower, nor had he been someone who would be remembered long after he passed away. He was the most ordinary of men with only one exception: He’d fallen in love with a woman named Gabby, his love deepening in the years they’d been married. But fate had conspired to ruin all that, and now he spent long portions of his days wondering whether it was humanly possible to fix things between them.

Sixteen

Hey, Travis,” said a voice from the doorway. “I thought I’d find you in here.”

Dr. Stallings was in his thirties and made rounds every morning. Over the years, he and his wife had become good friends of Gabby and Travis’s, and last summer the four of them had traveled to Orlando with kids in tow. “More flowers?”

Travis nodded, feeling the stiffness in his back.

Stallings hesitated on the threshold of the room. “I take it you haven’t seen her yet.”

“Kind of. I saw her earlier, but . . .”

When he trailed off, Stallings finished for him. “You needed some time alone?” He entered and took a seat beside Travis. “I guess that makes you normal.”

“I don’t feel normal. Nothing about this feels normal at all.”

“No, I don’t suppose it does.”

Travis reached for the flowers again, trying to keep his thoughts at bay, knowing there were some things he couldn’t talk about.

“I don’t know what to do,” he finally admitted.

Stallings put his hand on Travis’s shoulder. “I wish I knew what to tell you.”

Travis turned toward him. “What would you do?”

Stallings remained silent for a long moment. “If I were in your position?” He brought his lips together, considering the questions, looking older than his years. “In all honesty, I don’t know.”

Travis nodded. He hadn’t expected Stallings to answer. “I just want to do the right thing.”

Stallings brought his hands together. “Don’t we all.”

When Stallings left, Travis shifted in his seat, conscious of the papers in his pocket. Where once he’d kept them in his desk, he now found it impossible to go about his daily life without them nearby, even though they portended the end of everything he held dear.

The elderly attorney who drafted them seemed to find nothing unusual about their request. His small-town family law practice had been located in Morehead City, close enough to the hospital where Gabby worked to be able to see it from the windows of the paneled walls of the conference room. The meeting hadn’t lasted long; the lawyer explained the relevant statutes and offered a few anecdotal experiences; later Travis could remember only the loose, almost weak way he had grasped Travis’s hand on his way out the door.

It seemed strange that those papers could signal the official end of his marriage. They were codified words, nothing more, but the power afforded them now seemed almost malevolent. Where, he wondered, was the humanity in those phrases? Where was the emotion governed by these laws? Where was the acknowledgment of the life they’d led together, until everything went wrong? And why in God’s name had Gabby wanted them drawn up in the first place?

It shouldn’t end like this, and it was certainly not an outcome he foresaw when he’d proposed to Gabby. He remembered their autumn trip to New York; while Gabby had been at the hotel spa getting a massage and a pedicure, he’d sneaked over to West 47th Street, where he’d purchased the engagement ring. After dining at Tavern on the Green, they’d taken a carriage ride through Central Park. And beneath a cloudy, full-moon sky, he’d asked for her hand in marriage and was overcome by the passionate way she’d wrapped her arms around him while whispering her consent over and over.

And then? Life, he supposed. In between her shifts at the hospital, she planned the wedding: Despite his friends’ warnings to simply go with the flow, Travis relished being part of the process. He helped her pick out the invitations, the flowers, and the cake; he sat beside her as she flipped through albums in downtown studios, hoping to find the right photographer to memorialize the day. In the end, they invited eighty people to a small, weathered chapel on Cumberland Island in spring 1997; they honeymooned in Cancún, which ended up being an idyllic choice for both of them. Gabby wanted someplace relaxing, and they spent hours lying in the sun and eating well; he wanted a bit more adventure, so she learned to scuba dive and joined him on a day trip to see the nearby Aztec ruins.

The give-and-take of the honeymoon set the tone for the marriage. Their dream house was constructed with little stress and was completed by their first anniversary; when Gabby ran her finger over the rim of her glass of champagne and wondered aloud whether they should start a family, the idea struck him as not only reasonable, but something he desperately wanted. She was pregnant within a couple of months, her pregnancy devoid of complications or even much discomfort. After Christine was born, Gabby cut back on her hours and they worked out a schedule that ensured one of them was always home with the baby. When Lisa followed two years later, neither of them noticed much of a change, other than added joy and excitement in the house.

Christmases and birthdays came and went, the kids grew out of one outfit only to be replaced by the next. They vacationed as a family, yet Travis and Gabby also spent time alone, keeping the flame of romance alive between them. Max eventually retired, leaving Travis to take over the clinic; Gabby limited her hours even more and had enough time to volunteer at school. On their fourth anniversary, they went to Italy and Greece; for their sixth, they spent a week on safari in Africa. On their seventh, Travis built Gabby a gazebo in the backyard, where she could sit and read and watch the play of light reflecting on the water. He taught his daughters to wakeboard and ski when each was five years old; he coached their soccer teams in the fall. On the rare occasions when he stopped to reflect on his life, he wondered if anyone in the world felt as blessed as he did.

Not that things were always perfect. Years ago, he and Gabby had gone through a rough patch. The reasons were fuzzy now, lost in the recesses of time, but even then, there had never been a point when he truly believed their marriage to be in jeopardy. Nor, he suspected, had she. Marriage, each of them realized intuitively, was about compromise and forgiveness. It was about balance, where one person complemented the other. He and Gabby had that for years, and he hoped they could have it again. But right now they didn’t, and the realization left him wishing there was something, anything, he could do to restore that delicate balance between them.

Travis knew he couldn’t postpone seeing her any longer, and he rose from his seat. Holding the flowers, he started down the corridor, feeling almost disembodied. He saw a few nurses glance at him, and though he sometimes wondered what they thought, he never stopped to ask. Instead, he summoned his nerve.

His legs were shaky, and he could feel the beginning of a headache, a dull throb at the back of his head. If he allowed himself to close his eyes, he felt sure he would sleep for hours. He was falling apart, a thought that made about as much sense as a square golf ball. He was forty-three, not seventy-two, and though he hadn’t been eating much lately, he still forced himself to go to the gym. “You’ve got to keep exercising,” his dad had urged. “If only for your own sanity.” He’d lost eighteen pounds in the last twelve weeks, and in the mirror he could see that his cheeks had hollowed out. He reached the door and pushed it open, forcing himself to smile as he saw her.

“Hi, sweetheart.”

He waited for her to stir, waited for any response to let him know that things were somehow returning to normal. But nothing happened, and in the long, empty silence that followed, Travis felt an ache like a physical pain in his heart. It was always like this. Stepping into the room, he continued to stare at Gabby as if trying to memorize her every feature, though he knew it was a pointless exercise. He knew her face better than his own.

At the window, he opened the blinds, allowing sunlight to spill across the floor. There wasn’t much of a view; the room overlooked a small highway that bisected the town. Slow-moving cars drifted past fast-food restaurants, and he could imagine the drivers listening to music on the radio, or chatting on cell phones, or heading to work, or making deliveries, or running errands, or going to visit friends. People going about their daily lives, people lost in their own concerns, all of them oblivious to what was going on in the hospital. He had once been one of them, and he felt the loss of his previous life.

He set the flowers on the sill, wishing he had remembered to bring a vase. He had chosen a winter bouquet, and the burnt orange and violet colors seemed muted, almost mournful. The florist considered himself an artist of sorts, and in all the years Travis had used him, he’d never been disappointed. The florist was a good man, a kind man, and sometimes Travis wondered how much the florist knew about their marriage. Over the years, Travis had purchased bouquets on anniversaries and birthdays; he’d purchased them as apologies or on the spur of the moment, as a romantic surprise. And each time, he’d dictated to the florist what he wanted written on the card. Sometimes he’d recited a poem he’d either found in a book or written on his own; at other times, he’d come straight to the point and simply said what was on his mind. Gabby had saved these cards in a tiny bundle held together by a rubber band. They were a kind of history of Travis and Gabby’s life together, described in tiny snippets.