Listed: Volume III (10 page)

As
he reached over to pick it up, he wondered when Emily had gotten up and why she
hadn’t stopped by to say good-morning to him.

“Mr.
Marino,” a voice greeted on the other end of the line, “It’s Dr. Franklin
calling. I hope it’s not too early for a Saturday.”

“No,
of course not. Is everything all right?” For a moment, he felt a flare of hope.
Maybe Dr. Franklin had a potential treatment for Emily. Why else would he be
calling the morning after they’d had an office visit with him?

“Yes,
yes, everything is fine. I just wanted to check in about one of your wife’s
concerns yesterday.”

“I
see,” Paul said, although he didn’t really see at all. The flicker of hope was
extinguished, and he grew worried instead.

“She
didn’t bring it up as we were talking, but I guess Mrs. Marino had mentioned to
my nurse during the physical exam that her menstrual cycle had stopped a month
or two ago. She was asking if that was normal with this kind of virus.”

“Oh,
yes,” Paul said automatically, pretending he knew what the doctor was talking
about. He didn’t know about it. Since Dr. Franklin obviously assumed he did, he
added, “Is it normal?”

“It’s
difficult to say what’s normal in a case as rare as this, but I will say that
an illness such as this affects the body so fundamentally that I’m not
surprised she stopped menstruating.  It’s probably a hormonal response to the
progress of the virus in her body. I think it’s likely she'll be infertile for
the remainder of her life, unless we find a cure for the disease.”

“I
see,” Paul said, shifting in his desk chair.

“I
trust this isn’t…” For once, Dr. Franklin faltered with his words, “I trust
this isn’t a disappointment. I know you and your wife are recently married and
haven’t had the chance to have children, but…”

“But
she wouldn’t live long enough anyway,” Paul finished for him. “Yes, naturally
we weren’t considering having children.”

For
some reason—for absolutely no good reason—he felt a pang in his chest as he
spoke the words. He couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to have a
future with Emily, to have a baby with her. He snuffed the thought as soon as
it crossed his mind, however, since such idle imaginings were dangerous and
futile.

“Yes.
Anyway, I hope you’ll tell her not to worry about it. Nothing has changed
physically, so it’s likely a hormonal response to the virus.”

“I’ll
tell her. Thank you.”

When
Paul hung up the phone, he sat for a few minutes and tried to talk himself down
from being deeply annoyed with Emily for not telling him a possibly important
detail of her health situation. He didn’t know how she would feel about the
fact that her reproductive system was shutting down, a first step in the decline
of her whole body. It might be hard for her to hear, though, and it wouldn’t
help if he were bristling with indignation over being left out of this
information.

When
he decided he was suitably under control, he went to find her. He was very
surprised to discover that she wasn’t yet out of bed. Normally, she would have
been up for at least an hour or two by now.

She
could be really tired. His father’s trial had taken a lot out of her, and she
hadn’t gotten to bed until after one the night before. He fixed her a cup of
coffee and carried it into his bedroom.

She
was still curled up under the covers, but she opened her eyes halfway when he
approached the bed with the cup of coffee. She didn’t smile, though, which was
unusual.

“Good
morning,” he said, putting the coffee down on the nightstand on her side of the
bed. “Are you feeling all right?” He sat down on the edge of the bed beside her
and reached to feel her forehead again.

She
grumbled and rolled away from him, but he’d felt her enough to be assured she
didn’t have a fever.

“I
just got a call from Dr. Franklin,” Paul said. He knew she was awake, and she seemed
to be in a bad mood. However, he also knew she wouldn’t appreciate his holding
onto any information he had about her. “Do you want to hear about it now?”

She
rolled over onto her back and looked up at him through heavy eyelids. Her hair
was a tangled mess around her face, and her lips were curved down in an
uncharacteristic droop. “What did he say?”

“He
said you’d asked the nurse about your period stopping, and he wanted to let you
know that wasn’t an unusual hormonal response to an illness like yours. You
probably won’t be fertile again.”

“Oh.”
She stared at him blankly. “Why did he talk to you and not me?”

Paul
lifted his eyebrows. “Because I was the one who answered the phone, and you’d
signed the form that allowed him to share with me your medical—”

“Fine,
fine,” Emily interrupted. “It’s no big deal.” She rolled back over onto her
side, facing away from him. “It’s not like I can ever have a baby now anyway. I
might as well not have to mess with cramps and PMS.”

“Emily?”
Paul asked, feeling irrationally annoyed again that she seemed to be closing
him out for no reason. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

She
made a muffled grunt that he couldn’t identify as any specific words.

“Emily?”

“I
just didn’t,” she mumbled, “Do we have to talk about this now?”

“No,
we don’t.” Paul stood up and stared down at her messy hair and stiff back. He
felt hurt and confused and almost snubbed by her obvious desire to get rid of
him. She’d never acted like this with him before.

But
she’d just woken up, and that was hardly the ideal circumstance to have a
serious conversation. So he said, “We can talk later.”

She
made another wordless sound but didn’t turn over as he left the bedroom.

Feeling
annoyed and restless, he went back to work and managed to distract himself for
another hour and a half.

His
mind kept straying to Emily, however, wondering what was going on in her mind
and if she was really all right.

He
finally got up to go talk to her again.

He
was genuinely worried when he found her still in bed. It was almost noon now.
Not once had he known her to sleep so late. The coffee he’d brought in earlier
was sitting cold and untouched on the nightstand.

“Emily?”
he asked, not really caring if he was waking her up now. “What’s going on? Are
you all right?”

She
shifted under the covers and turned to glare at him over her shoulder. “I’m
sleeping.”

“It’s
almost noon. You don’t sleep this late.”

“I
do today.”

Something
was definitely wrong. He walked around to his side of the bed so he could see
her face. Her eyes were shut, and her hair was hanging over her cheek. “Emily,”
he said, an edge of warning in his tone. “You have to tell me if you’re getting
sick.”

“I’m
not sick.” She scowled with transparent impatience before she rolled over onto
her other side, showing him her back again.

Paul
sighed in frustration, but he was too worried now to be genuinely angry. “Then
why aren’t you getting up?”

“What’s
the point?” she muttered, almost too muffled for him to register the words.

He
did hear them, though, and he suddenly understood them.

If
all of this had happened to
him
, he would have fallen into a depressed
(and probably drunken) stupor weeks ago. Emily wasn’t him. She was bright and
strong and resilient, and she’d handled tragedy better than he could have dreamed
of doing. But she was still human, and yesterday one of the biggest tasks she’d
had left to accomplish had been completed.

Since
he was tired of standing next to the bed, he got into it, propping himself
against the pillows in the middle so Emily couldn’t get very far away from him.
“My dad’s trial wasn’t the only reason you have to get out of bed, Emily.”

She
turned to peer at him over her shoulder but then frowned. “Don’t try to
psychoanalyze me. I just want to sleep in.”

“You’ve
already slept in. It’s almost lunchtime. Now it’s time to get up.” He kept the
surge of sympathy out of his voice—since he knew she’d resent it—so he sounded
bland and matter-of-fact.

“Why
exactly?”

“There
are things to do, and you have a husband who’s getting bored trying to amuse
himself.”

She
snorted, but she did roll over onto her back, instead of huddling away from
him, so that was improvement. “I don’t have anything I need to do today.”

“Then
we’ll find something to do. Your birthday is next week. We can start making
plans. Do you have any thoughts about what you'd like to do?”

“Nothing,”
she mumbled, glancing away from him. “What’s the point? Nothing is going to
change.”

“What
does that mean? It’s a birthday whether things change or not. Tell me what
you’d like to do, and we’ll do it.”

“It’s
not like I can have a party or anything.” She sighed and stared at a blank spot
across the room. She didn’t seem to be whining as much as reflecting
poignantly.

“Of
course, you can. You have a lot of friends in the neighborhood. Who do you want
there? Just tell me who you want, and I’ll make sure they come.”

Emily
gave a thick exhale and a little shrug. “I don’t know. It would be weird to
have all my friends hanging around me waiting for me to die.”

 “I
don’t think that’s why they’d be there, but we can do something alone, if you’d
rather.”

She
didn’t answer immediately. She just stared down at her hands, where she was
idly twisting her emerald and diamond engagement ring.

“Do
you have any ideas about what you want for your birthday?” he asked, when she
still didn’t respond.

“I
don’t know.”

“We
can figure it out later. But you still need to get out of bed.”

She
rolled her eyes at him, which he thought was an improvement, since he’d rather
see her looking annoyed than depressed.

“You
have an extra month, according to Dr. Franklin, remember?” Paul said. “That’s
good news.”

“Yeah,
an extra month to suffer through fevers. Yay me.”

Paul’s
chest twisted painfully. “You won’t be sick the whole time. You feel fine
today, right? So why waste it?”

Her
blue eyes darted up at him, almost questioningly, before they returned to stare
at her ring.

“Emily?”
he asked softly, feeling a sudden cold wave as he thought about why she was
staring that way at her rings. “Is there anything else bothering you? You’re
happy…you’re happy with our marriage, aren’t you?”

It
had meant so much to Paul last night that she’d said she was on his side, and he
believed she’d meant it. She’d never been in love with him, though. Maybe, now
that she had an extra month to live, she was tired of being shackled to such a
mess of a man.

“Yeah.
Of course.”

“That
doesn’t sound very convincing.” His tone sounded a little forced to his own
ears, but he kept his expression as natural as possible. “You know, if you
decide you want out, all you need to do is—”

Emily
made a choked noise of outrage. “I don’t want out of the marriage. What the
hell are you talking about?”

Her
grumpiness was more comforting than any kind words would have been. The tension
in his chest eased. “I was just checking. So you’re satisfied with everything
about our marriage?”

“Yes,”
she said slowly, with a strange twist of her mouth, “It’s good. I just…”

Paul’s
breath hitched. “You just want?”

She
opened her mouth as if she would answer, but then she just shook her head and
looked away.

“Emily,
you have to tell me.” He reached out and took her by the shoulders. Made her
look at him. “If something in our marriage isn’t working for you, you have to
tell me what it is so I can fix it.”

Her
expression changed. Grew soft. She gazed up at him with obvious affection.
“It’s nothing for you to fix, Paul. You don’t have to fix anything. You’ve been
a better husband to me than I could ever have imagined. There’s nothing you
need to fix.”

He
wanted to lean into the words, let them wash over him, but he wasn’t sure if he
could really believe them. It had felt like she had something to say. Something
he needed to know. He pushed the thought aside for now, since he still needed
to get Emily out of bed.

"All
right. If it's not the marriage, then tell me what's wrong," he said.

Emily
slumped down again and shook her head.

"Were
you upset about what Dr. Franklin said this morning?"

She
gave a half-shrug. "Not really. I mean, it's kind of depressing, but
obviously I wasn't going to have a baby anyway." She sighed and darted a
glance over to him. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it. I just…"

"You
just what?"

"It's
just embarrassing," she admitted, making a pained face, "That my body
isn't working the way it's supposed. That
nothing
is working. I didn't
want you to treat me like I was…like I was…"