She asked, ‘Did you wash it?’
‘I tried in the shower, but it hurt.’
‘This is going to hurt more.’ Sara unwrapped the bottle of Betadine. She closed the toilet lid so she could sit down. She didn’t give him any warning before she blasted a steady stream of cold antiseptic directly into the wound.
Will grabbed the curtain rod, almost ripping it from the wall. He hissed air between his teeth.
‘Okay?’ she asked.
‘Yep.’
Sara jetted out a chunk of debris. He’d done a poor job of cleaning the site. Caked blood dropped onto the white porcelain tub. Will lifted up onto his toes. He had braced his hands on the curtain rod and shower head. His teeth were clenched. So much for the Hippocratic Oath. Sara had gone from being a caring doctor to a passive-aggressive bitch. She put down the bottle. Will’s leg was shaking. ‘Do you want me to numb you?’
He shook his head. His shirt had ridden up. He was holding his breath. She could see every single clenched muscle in his abdomen.
Sara felt the full weight of her transgression. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you. I mean, obviously, I did, but I—’
‘It’s okay.’
‘No, it’s not okay, Will. It’s not okay.’
Her words echoed in the bathroom. She sounded angry. She was angry. Both of them knew that Sara wasn’t talking about his leg.
He said, ‘I know why Angie took your lipstick.’
Sara waited.
‘She was trying to bully you. I should’ve stopped her.’
‘How?’ Sara genuinely wanted to know. ‘It’s like the note she left for you on the wall at the club. She knew that Charlie or somebody would luminol the area. That I would see it. That it would be a public thing. She does what she wants to do.’
‘The wall.’ Will nodded, as if that explained everything. ‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah,’ Sara agreed, which brought them right back to where they had started.
She wet some gauze under the tub faucet and used it to wipe off the Betadine. Will eventually lowered his heel. She scooped warm water onto his leg and foot, rubbing away the iodine stain. She’d made a mess of everything. Even the hand towel she used to pat him dry showed streaks of yellow-brown from the antiseptic.
Sara told him, ‘The hard part’s over. I can still numb you. Some of the splinters are deep.’
‘I’m fine.’
Sara took a flashlight out of the drawer. She found the tweezers from her bag. There were several tiny black splinters just below the surface of his skin. She counted three that were deeper, more like shards of wood. They would’ve been jabbing him every time he took a step.
She folded the hand towel and knelt on the tile floor so she could get at the splinters.
Will flinched before she touched him.
‘Try to relax the muscle.’
‘I’m trying.’
She made the offer again. ‘I have some lidocaine right here. It’s a tiny needle.’
‘I’m fine.’ His death grip on the curtain rod said otherwise.
This time, Sara tried to be gentle. As a pediatric intern, she’d spent hours sewing sutures onto peaches in order to train a softer touch into her hands. Still, there was no way to get around some types of hurt. Will remained stoic, even as she worked a piece of wood the size of a toothpick out of the open gash.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated, because she hated the thought of hurting him. At least she hated it now. ‘This one is really deep.’
‘It’s okay.’ He allowed a breath, but only so he could speak. ‘Just hurry.’
Sara tried to hurry, but it didn’t help that Will’s calf was a concrete block. She remembered the first time she’d seen him in running shorts. She’d felt a rush of heat at the sight of his lean, muscular legs. He ran five miles a day, five days a week. Most of the time he took a detour to the local high school, where he sprinted up and down the stadium steps. There were sculptures in Florence with less definition.
‘Sara?’
She looked up at him.
‘I could’ve gotten stronger locks for the doors. A Flip Guard. An alarm. I’m sorry I didn’t do that. It was disrespectful to you.’
Sara carefully worked out the last splinter. Now that he was talking about it, Sara didn’t want to have the conversation. She sat back on her heels. She put down the tweezers. She hooked her glasses on her collar. Will was standing in front of her in his boxers. His arms were still raised over his head. The alcohol inside of her suggested that there was an easy way to get them through the night.
Will said, ‘Everyone’s been telling me what it’s like to lose somebody.’
Sara reached into the sink for the bandage roll and some fresh gauze.
‘Faith told me about her dad dying. Amanda told me about her mother. Did you know she hanged herself?’
Sara shook her head as she tied the bandage around Will’s leg.
‘I’m just going to tell myself that Angie’s where she always goes when she leaves me. Wherever that is.’
Sara stood up. She washed her hands.
Will pulled on his jeans. ‘I think I’ll be okay if I can do that. Just tell myself that she’s not really gone. That way, when she doesn’t come back, it won’t matter. It’ll just be like all the times before.’
Sara turned off the water. There was a tremble in her hand, more like a vibration that was working through her body, as if a tuning fork had been touched to her nerves.
She asked, ‘Do you want to know what it was like when my husband died?’
He looked up from buttoning his jeans. Sara had told him the story, but not the details.
She said, ‘It felt like someone had reached inside of my chest and ripped out my heart.’
Will zipped his pants. His expression was blank. He really had no idea what Angie’s death was going to do to him.
She said, ‘I felt hollow. Like there was nothing inside of me. I wanted to kill myself. I did try to kill myself. Did you know that?’
Will looked stunned. She had told him about the pills, but not her intentions. ‘You said it was an accident.’
‘I’m a doctor, Will. I knew what to do. Ambien. Hydrocodone. Tylenol.’ Tears started to fall. Now that the words were coming out, she couldn’t stop them. ‘My mother found me. She called an ambulance and they took me to the hospital, and people I worked with, people I’ve known since I was a child, had to pump my stomach so that I wouldn’t die.’ Her fists were clenched. She wanted to grab him and shake him and make him understand that death wasn’t the kind of thing you could just pretend away. ‘I begged them to let me go. I wanted to die. I loved him. He was my life. He was the center of my universe, and when he was gone, that was it. There was nothing left for me.’
Will slipped on his sneakers. He was listening, but he wasn’t hearing.
‘Angie’s dead. Brutally murdered.’ He didn’t flinch from her words. Four years ago, if someone had said the same thing about Jeffrey, Sara would’ve been on the floor. ‘She was the most important person in your life for thirty years. You can’t just tell yourself that she’s on a vacation, that she’s going to come back from the beach with a tan. That’s not how it works when you lose somebody. You see them on street corners. You hear their voice in the other room. You want to sleep all the time so you can dream about them. You don’t want to wash your clothes or your sheets so you can still smell them. I did this for three years, Will. Every single day for three years. I wasn’t living. I was going through the motions. I wanted to be just as dead as he was until—’