The Bookshop at Water's End Read online

  He opened a kitchen drawer, pawing through it with the sound of clattering knives and forks and whatever else was in there. He drew out a plastic digital thermometer.

  “Here,” he said.

  I sat on the hardwood floor, not bothering to find a chair, the coldness of it on my bottom a relief. I lay flat then, my cheek resting on the cool surface, my lips pursed around the thermometer as it settled under my tongue. Running water from somewhere sounded like a waterfall, and Fletch sat next to me, spread a cold washcloth on my neck and I moaned. “Feels good,” I said, or something that vaguely sounded like it around the thermometer, which then beeped.

  Fletch took it from my mouth and looked at it. “Oh, God, Piper, you have a 103.2 fever. We have to get you to a doctor.”

  “My mom’s a doctor.” This was a statement I’d said my entire life. Now it mattered.

  “Come on, let’s get you dressed and to your mom.”

  I mumbled something affirmative. The rest was blurry—Fletch helped me get dressed and buckled me into the Jeep. We were at Sea La Vie in minutes and banging on the front door. It was Mom who answered and Mom who took me into her arms and into the kitchen. Fletch told her of my fever.

  “Oh, Piper,” she said and placed her hand on my forehead. “You need IV fluids. You’re dehydrated. Come on; let’s get to an emergency clinic. Fletch?” she asked. “Where is the closest one?”

  “We don’t have one.”

  “Closest hospital?” she asked, but she was already grabbing at her phone to look it up.

  “Derry, about twenty minutes away,” he said.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  Mom and I were in the car and I fell asleep again. I drifted off to vivid dreams of bonfires and lit matches tossed into the air to land on my skin, sparks settling onto my forearms and thighs.

  chapter 33

  BONNY BLANKENSHIP

  I sat in a hardback chair and monitored the IV pump that dripped fluids into my daughter’s veins. She had been dehydrated enough to spike a fever, and she needed fluids badly. I should have brought her home and made sure she drank water. I should have insisted. I should have done a lot of things I hadn’t done.

  It was an hour after I walked Piper through the door of the ER, after I’d told everyone what to do, that I realized I hadn’t been hit with an anxiety attack at the first sight of the hospital or the stretcher. My daughter’s own sickness had been the cure for my own, I thought.

  How had I believed that I could give up this profession? I sat quietly listening to the thrumming operations of a place I knew, although I’d never been to that particular one. I wanted to get up, instruct them on why the patient in the next cubicle had stomach pains or how to keep the IV pump from beeping with air bubbles. I wanted to . . . well, I wanted to be a doctor again. All it might take was listening to the voice mail sitting in my phone—a condemnation or a redemption—a voice mail I hadn’t yet listened to.

  I watched Piper sleep and had the most desperate feeling that I wanted to do it all again: a home; a family; a nice little life. I felt homesick, but I didn’t know for where. Where was home? Maybe that was what I’d been trying to do all along—make the home that I wanted to return to, make the home that I longed for. But instead it was all now a mess, a broken toy, a replacement house that didn’t feel real. Sea La Vie now held all the secrets and trash of the past like debris that had floated in on the tide, flotsam.

  Maybe everyone ached for something that didn’t exist, and that was what we searched for in each other, and everywhere we went. I’d believed that I could gather everything that mattered the most and build a new life, but the old one returned again and again. I felt sick with the kind of abandonment I hadn’t felt since I was a child at summer camp where Mom and Dad had sent me off for an experience “all children should have.” Maybe it was too much to hope that I could find a new way of being when I’d already lived another way for so very long.

  I needed to call Lucas and tell him about Piper. He would be livid, and I needed to prepare myself.

  “Mom.” Piper’s voice broke my reverie.

  I opened my eyes to see her looking at me, her blue eyes washed of color and hollow in her face. Her little nose peeled already.

  “Hey, sweetie, how do you feel?”

  “Are you mad at me?” She winced with the words.

  “What? No. What for?” I covered her forehead with kisses. “Why would you ask that?”

  “You told me to come straight home and I didn’t. I just couldn’t face everyone. I just couldn’t . . .”

  “Baby, no. I should have made you come with us. I should have taken you home. I didn’t know you were so dehydrated, so sick.”

  “I didn’t either, Mom.”

  “I’m not mad. Not one bit. I’ve been worried sick, but not mad.”

  “Mom, I’m so, so sorry. I’m so . . .” Her face crumbled and tears slid down the left side of her face onto the pillow.

  “Stop, sweetie. You can stop saying it.”

  “I can’t face everyone. Everything bad that has happened is my fault. Everything. I texted Owen. I lost George. I made you take me to the hospital.”

  “You didn’t cause everything to go wrong. It was all well on its way to wrong before you came along.” I tried to make her laugh, but it didn’t work.

  “Mom, you can try to make me feel better, but no one lost George but me.”

  “And no one found him but you.”

  “I was the one who texted Owen, Mom. I made him come here. I pretended I was you. I’m such an asshole.”

  “Piper!” I took her face in my hands and kissed the tears on her cheeks. “What does Lainey always remind us? Words have power. Do not call yourself such a horrid thing. You are no such thing. You made a mistake. You were angry and you reacted.”

  “It was such a bad move. I just felt so badly for Lainey and I thought you were hiding him from her.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “I know that now.” She closed her eyes and heartbreaking tears leaked out from under her weary and purple eyelids. “I want to go home. To the river house. That home.”

  “The nurse went to get your discharge papers, sweetie. We will go home in a minute.”

  Home.

  It didn’t take long for them to pull her IV, have me sign the papers and offer instructions on how to care for her, what to watch for. The nurse was going through her list, and had gotten to “check her temperature every two hours,” when Piper interrupted.

  “She knows what to do. She’s an ER doc.”

  The nurse laughed. “Well, you should have said something.” Then she pointed to the line where to sign. “Right here, Dr. Blankenship.”

  Now Lucas. I needed to call Lucas.

  After a silent twenty-minute drive, I parked at Sea La Vie and called him; he answered on the first ring.

  “Finally,” he said.

  “Hi, Lucas.”

  “Is everything okay?” he asked, able to hear my weariness, my hesitancy. He’d always been able to read me so well.

  “Yes, it is now, but I just wanted to let you know that Piper got sunburned and dehydrated . . . she needed some fluids and we’re just returning from the hospital now.”

  “What hospital?”

  “The one in Derry. They don’t have one in Watersend. But really, she’s okay. Here, you can talk to her.”

  Piper and I climbed out of the car, and I handed the cell phone to her. She started a conversation with her dad, beginning with the morning, when she took the kids to the beach. I would let her tell Lucas in private, the way she wanted to tell it. I kissed her on the cheek and motioned that I was going into the house. She followed me in, telling the story without taking a breath, not waiting for his response. Her voice cracked and she wiped at a tear even as the torrent of words continued.

  Onc
e inside, she went back to her room, still talking. I couldn’t hear her any longer and I was relieved. I was as tired as I’d ever been. No all-nighter in the ER had ever taken out of me what the past twenty-four hours had. I went to my own bedroom and closed my eyes. It was nine in the morning by then, and yet the house was still quiet with sleep. I couldn’t check the message from the hospital, as Piper had my phone. I closed my eyes to let the sunshine, sneaking through the slatted blinds in stripes of lemon yellow, fall over my face.

  A couple hours later, I awoke confused, and then remembered where I was. I rolled over and saw my cell on the bedside table. Piper must have slipped in earlier with it. I picked it up and hit the button to hear my messages, whatever those messages might be.

  “Dr. Blankenship, this is Frank Preston. Can you please call me as soon as possible?”

  Now I knew how patients felt when we had their diagnosis, a paper with their results on our desk, and yet asked them to come in or call us back. The doctors, the privileged ones who knew it all. I hit “call back” and the phone rang far off into my other life, the one I’d thought I could just leave to start again. How very wrong I’d been. My past was still there, waiting, lurking in the background the same way Owen had been, the same way Loretta had been, the same way an ignored lump in the breast grows large enough to take a life.

  “Hello,” his deep voice said.

  “Hi, Dr. Preston. It’s Bonny.”

  “Hello, Bonny,” he said, as if he agreed with me before he let loose the worst of it. “I’m calling to let you know that the committee has met and the diagnostic tests were confirmed. It has been determined that your mistake—a wrong dosage of Dilaudid—was a contributing factor in Nicholas Rohr’s death.”

  “A contributing factor?” I asked. Bile, fear and shame, now tasting like death, rose in me. “Or the factor?”

  “He had multiple injuries, Bonny. At least two of which probably would have taken his life. That’s why this committee took so long. You are a respected doctor here. One of our very best, and we don’t want to lose you over one mistake on a night when many mistakes could have been made in the chaos.”

  “I appreciate your vote of confidence in my abilities,” I said slowly, carefully, seeing a way out of this, seeing that I could skim over this thin ice and not fall in if I granted myself the chance. But I needed to take the truth to its end, past the unadorned “we love you” truth.

  “But what I need to know is, this time did I cause a death? I’m not asking you to weigh it against the other lives I’ve saved.”

  He was silent for too long, which predicated the answer that eventually came. “Yes. Technically, yes. But he wouldn’t have made it, Bonny. Even without the dosage error, he would not have made it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Now what?” I could wait to fall apart when we hung up. I could face the worst of the worst, but I would wait.

  “Bonny, he had a grade-four liver laceration. He’d lost a lot of blood and was already in hemorrhagic shock. The surgeon doesn’t believe he could have been saved even if he had made it to the OR.”

  “But he didn’t make it to the OR,” I said.

  “No one is pressing charges. There is no malpractice. You will be able to have your license back immediately, and start work when you please.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Preston,” I said. “Can I get back to you? Let me absorb this information?”

  “Of course.” He paused and I imagined him as I’d always seen him—behind his mahogany desk with diplomas framed and hung on his walls, a white lab coat with his name stitched in blue ink and a furrowed forehead that never relaxed. “Take all the time you need. We are here for you when you’re ready.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Preston. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  I didn’t know if I’d be in touch soon. I didn’t know anything other than that the outcome I’d been staving off was finally here in its ugly truth: I’d killed someone.

  I ran to the bathroom and vomited so violently into the new porcelain toilet that Lainey came running, banging on the door. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” I said from the tile floor, my face flat to the coolness of the marble I’d chosen in a store in Charleston when I imagined a new life, a new start and a better way to live.

  All this time I’d been thinking of that night in the ER like a hinge on a door, one that swung open to allow me to reassess my life, to start over and try again. To take stock of all that was important and focus on finding that “one thing.” I’d been acting like I was going to camp to learn how to darn pot holders, or attending a retreat to learn to paint with watercolors. But it was nothing like that: I was running away from the cold hard fact that I’d killed someone because I was obsessed with someone else.

  I could live here at the river house or in a shack or back at home with Lucas, and the facts of who I was and the damage I’d done wouldn’t vary. Nothing would ever be the same.

  I don’t know how much time passed before Lainey banged again on the door.

  “Bonny, please. What’s wrong in there?”

  The marble felt too good against my cheek, a stony and cold reminder of the truth, and I didn’t want to get up. But out there in my house, the home I’d thought would save us all with some kind of magical thinking, was my best friend, my daughter, and now I heard his voice—Owen was out there, also. The man I’d loved for far too long. I couldn’t stay in here. I needed to face them. All of them.

  I knew the hospital would not make the full truth public, and I would never have to speak the truth if I didn’t want to. I could carry this around for all of my life and let it eat away at me, and destroy only me. Yes, that was the best way.

  “I’m fine,” I called out to Lainey. “I just got really sick to my stomach. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Okay,” she said and her footsteps faded.

  Far off, in the bedroom, my phone rang over and over. It was like a train whistle in the middle of the night, something you knew was going by but had no idea to where, or why. And I didn’t care.

  Until Piper banged on the bathroom door. “Mom? Are you okay in there?”

  The standing took time: one foot and then to one knee, and then another foot and another knee. I pulled myself up and balanced my hands on the sink. The air-conditioning vent blew cold air between the V of my legs. My face stared straight back at me from the mirror, eyes ringed and dark hair sweaty and stuck to my right cheek: crazed. I took in a long breath and pulled my hair back and stroked it into a smooth ponytail at the base of my neck. I splashed some cold water on my face and then I opened the door to find Piper standing there waiting, her face a mask of confusion. “What is going on?”

  “I just don’t feel good,” I said.

  “No. Something happened,” she said.

  “A lot has happened, Piper.”

  “I know, but still . . .”

  I walked past her with a pat on her shoulder as if she’d done something good at preschool. The living room was buzzing, with talk from Owen, and also from the kids and Lainey. The words were like bees, and my thoughts like a net catching only snippets of conversation.

  How did you learn to capture an emotion in your art so well? Owen.

  I hate peanut butter. Daisy.

  Can I please have more lemonade? Daisy again.

  What time should we meet for dinner? Lainey.

  Mom, are you okay? Piper.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Mom”—Piper handed me my phone as her face wavered in front of me—“Dad has called, like, six hundred times.”

  I felt but didn’t see Owen’s gaze between my shoulder blades. I took the phone from her and tried to smile, but smiling wasn’t anything I could do right then. “I’ll be right back,” I said in a voice I didn’t recognize.

  Alone in the back bedroom, I pushed Lucas’s number and waited for him to
answer. His voice came on the line and he didn’t greet me but only told me what he had called to say. “The hospital has been trying to call the home phone. Have you talked to them?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m coming home today. I will talk to you then.”

  And I hung up on him. I returned to the living room and glanced around at the improbable room. Who would have thought all these people would end up in my river house? Only months ago it would have seemed impossible. “Listen, I have to go back to Charleston. Just for a day or so. Please, all of you, stay here. I know there is so much going on, and I don’t want to leave. But the hospital called.” I paused and in that space of time, the confession rose to my lips, a sacrament to all the truths set free here in the last days. “It was my fault. I killed a man.”

  Silence, heavy and thick, fell into that room. I didn’t want anyone to say anything; I wouldn’t have been able to bear a platitude, depleted in its ability to save me.

  “I have to go, but I’ll be back. In a day. Or so.”

  “Mom.” Piper stepped forward. “Can I come with you?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I promise to come right back.”

  “We’ll be here,” Lainey said.

  “Where’s Tim?” I asked. I’d known he was coming to Watersend and had heard his voice while I was in and out of sleep, but I hadn’t yet seen him.

  “I sent him on a run to the grocery store.” She smiled. “He needed to stop hovering over George.”

  I took a step toward Owen and his pained expression so clearly etched on his face and in his eyes. “It’s not your fault,” I told him.

  He took my hand and led me outside, to the back porch and then to the dock where I’d called George’s name so many times that my throat was still sore.

  “Please let me come with you,” he said. “Let me be there for you.”