“I got an apartment,” Caroline said.
“Like a new one?”
She nodded, and I felt my stomach sink. “For your family?”
She shook her head, and I understood.
“You’re leaving him?” I whispered.
“Not necessarily,” she said. “But I need to know that I can.”
I felt like I should ask her more, but I really didn’t have to. I understood. No one wants to feel trapped in her marriage. It made me think of Mark, whom, I’m embarrassed to say, I hadn’t thought of much. We had talked on the phone a few times, and we were both still mourning the end of our relationship, but the reality was that I was happy here. This work fulfilled me. I was where I needed to be.
“Emerson!” the director called.
I squeezed Caroline again and scampered off. We were doing one of my favorite scenes, the one where Johnny, my sister’s husband, came home drunk, and I locked myself in a room with him and got him off the bottle, with nothing more than whisky and my raw sexuality to keep the tremors at bay. This was the second take, and I had to admit that this scene—and every scene I shot with one of my husbands or lovers—made me think about Kyle. Not in a fleeting, wistful way but in an obsessive, can’t-go-another-minute-without-your-kiss kind of way.
As I walked over to the set’s fake bedroom, adorned with a stark Victorian bed and a night table with a worn Bible on it, I started to feel a little light-headed. I went to reach for a chair that was close by, but before I could, I felt my legs go out from under me, and I knew that I was fainting. Before I hit the floor, I had the sickening feeling that the doctor in New York had been too nonchalant. Something was very, very wrong.
IT SHOCKED ME WHENI woke up in the backseat of a car that Caroline was driving. “Oh, God,” I said. “Did I pee?”
“Shockingly, no.”
I had a cold compress over my head. Well, that was a relief, at least. I usually peed when I fainted. “Where are we going?”
“The ER, obviously.”
I was super-glad she hadn’t, but I had to ask anyway. “You didn’t call an ambulance?”
“Too much traffic,” she said. She almost seemed mad at me.
“Where’s Vivi?” I asked, suddenly remembering my niece.
“Hazel’s mom is taking them to dinner. Sorry, Emerson. Your present just got beat.”
I laughed. “I think I’m fine,” I said. “I probably didn’t eat enough today.”
“You are not fine,” Caroline said, her voice cracking. “That quack in New York was wrong, and you are sick, and it’s all my fault because I made you go there.”
“It’s not your fault, and I’m fine,” I repeated, not totally believing it.
Caroline, who hates hospitals with a vengeance, pulled into the emergency lane, took a deep breath, and hoisted me out of the backseat. “I’m being brave,” she said, “but I’d sooner die than touch one of those hospital wheelchairs.”
I was still dizzy, but I was fine to walk with Caroline’s assistance. As soon as the double doors opened, a gurney appeared, and I was immediately swept back to triage and hooked to an IV of fluids and iron, on my New York doctor’s insistence. It was only then that I said, “Caroline, your car.”
“I don’t give a shit about the car,” Caroline snapped. “They can impound it for all I care.”
Caroline very rarely cussed, so it made me nervous.
A very kind doctor who looked a few years older than I was said, “Ms. Murphy, we’re going to run a few tests to see what’s going on here. I’ve talked to your doctor in New York, so I’m all up to speed there.”
A nurse came in to take blood, and Caroline looked like she was trying not to cry, vomit, or touch anything.
“You can go,” I said. “I know this is killing you.”
She looked horrified. “I’m not going to go. I’m going to stay right here with my baby sister. Do we think Hazel is well behaved?”
I nodded. “Totally. She’s very serious about her work. Plus, her mom is stricter than you.”
