The Repeat Year (11 page)

“I’m not kidding. The man said he named the lake after his wife.” Phil stopped abruptly. “And I knew it must be the lake’s real name right away because I’d never seen a more beautiful lake before, and I’ve never seen a girl more beautiful than you.”

She stood next to him and looked out at the iced-over lake. It was bleak-looking now, but she imagined it looked pretty in the summer with ripples and waves and reflections of the sky. “Thank you, Phil,” she said.

“I knew when he told me that that I’d have to bring you here one day. I’ve been in love with you for three years, Olive.” His tone was suddenly formal and scripted-sounding. “Three transformative years. You’ve made me so happy, and I want to spend the rest of my life making you as happy as you’ve made me.” Surprised, Olive turned around to discover him bent down on one knee in front of her in the snow. “Olive Elizabeth Watson, will you marry me?”

She couldn’t move or speak. She could only stare. She was sure her mouth was hanging open. Was he serious? He must be serious. He couldn’t be kidding. There he was, oh my God, yes, there he was producing a little black velvet box from his jacket pocket and then opening it, and there was a diamond ring inside it. His face was pensive and white as the snow. He was waiting for her to speak, but what could she say? The simplicity and clarity she’d been experiencing since last night clouded over as the weight of last year’s events returned to her.

She couldn’t, shouldn’t say yes, knowing what she knew. They had frustrations and misunderstandings lying in wait for them. They had gone on without each other last year. They had dated other people. A month after their breakup, she had left him a voice mail:
I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you, Phil. If you ever feel you can get past this and forgive me, please call.
But he had never called her back. She had tried all measures to mend herself—work, Alex, more work. Phil had given up on her, but she, she had remained permanently halved. Was it possible that he had felt incomplete without her, too? Maybe his wary heart had disallowed him from returning to her. She supposed now she would never know.

How could it be that their relationship was balanced on such an extreme precipice? Marriage one way, total dissolution the other?

It struck her then with a bolt of certainty that this proposal had been on Phil’s agenda last year, too. That was why he had wanted the weekend’s events to go so perfectly, and that was why he had been so frustrated when they hadn’t. The night had gone so horribly wrong that he had decided not to propose to her, not to even let her know his intentions. And then a week later, she had done something that made Phil change his mind about her forever. She reeled at the thought of how badly she had hurt him. Had anyone in her family known about his intentions? Had he asked for her mom’s permission to propose? Had he told Kerrigan? No one had ever let on to her.

“Phil,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Please stand up. Your knee must be freezing.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “All I care about right now is hearing one little word from you. Say yes, Olive.”

It should’ve been so simple to say yes, but guilt thickened her tongue. Sherry’s words sounded like an alarm in her head.
It’s easy enough to change your actions, but it’s a lot harder to change your heart. And it’s impossible to change someone else’s.
She could perfect this weekend with her foreknowledge, and she could control her body’s reckless impulses. She could wear Phil’s ring. But what if it wasn’t enough? When it came right down to it, they still had unresolved issues, and until they worked through those, she couldn’t be fully confident in their love.

“You are so sweet, Phil. But marriage is so . . . permanent. How do you know—how can you be so certain—that we’re meant to be together forever?”

He looked into her eyes with disbelief. “Without a doubt, Ollie, you are the only woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

She pictured the way his handsome face had shut down when she’d revealed her betrayal, and then the way he had tenderly brushed back the redhead’s hair in the coffee shop. “You
don’t
know that,” she said, and her words came out a little more harshly than she had planned.

Phil rose to his feet. He still held the open ring box in his right hand. He brushed off the snow on the knee of his pants with his left. “Yes,
I do
. Don’t you want to spend the rest of your life with me?”

“I love you, Phil.” She mopped up her tears with the fingers of her fleece gloves.

“I love you, too. Don’t you want to be with me forever?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m not ready to answer that question, yet. I need more time.”

“I can’t believe this,” he said. He snapped the ring box shut and thrust it back into his jacket pocket. “I thought you would say yes. I thought we felt the same way about each other.”

“Please don’t be angry. I’m not saying that I feel any differently about you or that I wouldn’t consider one day marrying you—”

“Gee, thanks. That makes me feel a lot better. Just what every guy who’s proposed wants to hear.” He kicked a hard chunk of snow onto the icy surface of the lake.

She didn’t know what to say to make this better. She doubted there was anything she could say.

“Let’s just go back up to the cabin.” He set off up the hill without looking back to see if she was behind him. She had a hard time keeping up with him, and he didn’t offer her his arm this time. Her calves were aching from the climb, and her lungs were burning from breathing so heavily by the time they got back to the cabin. He went directly into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him. Olive collapsed onto the couch.

When the bathroom door finally creaked open, he was across the room before she could even look up. He held her face between his hands. They felt cool against her scalding cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He kissed her eyelashes, then her nose and forehead. “I shouldn’t have roared at you like that.”

“I’m sorry, too.” She managed to catch his lips and press them against her own. “I wish you knew how much I wanted to say yes.”

He twisted his fingers through hers. “You can still say yes.”

Founding a marriage on secrets and lies was out of the question. She told herself it would be unfair to him if she said yes, since he didn’t truly know what he was getting himself into. He didn’t understand the woman she was or what they had been through together in a previous time. There was no way she could accept his proposal without first telling him the truth, but there didn’t seem to be a way to tell him the truth, either.

“I don’t want this to break us up. I’m not ready for marriage yet, but I don’t want to lose you.” She squeezed his hand.

“Okay,” he said simply.

They didn’t make love that night. They left the next day in the late morning. Things weren’t hostile or tense between them. A casual onlooker wouldn’t have suspected a thing. But they both knew things had changed between them. The silliness and affection they had so openly displayed before was all but gone. Olive was reminded of the drive back to Madison last year when she had then, too, pointed out a huddle of brown-spotted cows just to have something to say.

Chapter 8

O
h, man. I still can’t believe you said no,” Kerrigan said. It had been her unrelenting chorus for the past week, as if the current strain on Olive and Phil’s relationship wasn’t enough of a reminder.

Olive ignored her. She brushed her hair into a ponytail and snapped an elastic band around it. It was a Friday night, and they were in Kerrigan’s room. Kerrigan was getting ready to go out; Olive was getting ready for work.

“Has he taken back the ring?” Kerrigan persisted. She threaded a pair of gold-beaded chandelier earrings through her ears. In the ICU, Olive wasn’t allowed to wear earrings or necklaces, perfume or nail polish. Not even clear nail polish.

“I don’t know. We’re not talking about it. It’s kind of a touchy subject, you know?” Olive sat down on the desk chair and crossed her arms. In her faded green scrubs, she felt frumpy next to her friend. She wished she hadn’t agreed to let Kerrigan wear her red halter dress. Kerrigan had the eye-catching cleavage Olive lacked and the dress required.

“I know, I know,” Kerrigan said. “It’s just
you and Phil
. Phil and Olive: the cutest couple I know. I can’t get over it. You guys are so perfect for each other. I wish I could find that.” Despite her careful primping, she looked miserable. She and Steve had called it quits a few weeks ago.

“You will,” Olive said. “In a dress like that, probably sooner rather than later.”

Kerrigan blotted her red lips on a tissue, crumpled it up, and tossed it into the wastebasket across the room. She had bombarded Olive with questions the moment she’d gotten home from the trip, and when Olive had finally told her that she had refused Phil’s proposal, they had cried together about it. It had felt so good to share her problems with someone other than unsympathetic Sherry that she had been tempted to tell Kerrigan the whole truth. A fleeting temptation, but one that was now resurfacing.

Tonight was the night she had cheated on Phil. She longed to confess to Kerrigan the mix of uneasiness and shame she felt. Surely, Kerrigan would have something consoling to say. With her own checkered past, Kerrigan was not one to judge; she would probably want to hear all the dirty details.

Yet whenever Olive tried to formulate in her head how she would convince Kerrigan of her extraordinary situation, it sounded ridiculous.
Do you remember how you thought I had a head injury on New Year’s Day? Well, the reason I was acting so strange is that I’m caught in some kind of time warp. I’ve actually seen the future. Well, at least one year of it.
No, that wouldn’t do.

“It’s going to be okay, sweetie,” Kerrigan said. “Why don’t you give him a call?”

On the short drive to Dane County General, Olive tried to do just that, but Phil didn’t answer his phone. She left him a message: “Hi, honey. I’m headed to work now. I wish we were spending the night together instead.”

Her mom beeped in as she was leaving the message. She hurriedly switched over. “Hi, Mom. I don’t have a ton of time to talk right now. I’m driving to work. How are you doing?”

“I’m good. Look, I know you’re busy, but I thought maybe if you have a free moment tonight, I could stop by for a late dinner and bring some subs, or we could go to the cafeteria. I’m not picky.”

The thought of having her mom there as emotional support was appealing, but then she would probably have to share the details of last weekend and listen to stories about how wonderful Harry was. “I appreciate the offer, but I just don’t think I’ll have time tonight. Friday nights are always hectic. Maybe sometime next week?”

The ICU was in its usual tumultuous, transitional period when she arrived. Gloria was shepherding a middle-aged couple into the Family Room, and Olive knew that their loved one had probably just died, and they were now about to learn this unbearable truth—a pain with which Olive was all too familiar. An unusual number of specialists milled around the ICU; she recognized Dr. Nichols from cardiology and Dr. Dumont-Gray from nephrology. The deceased patient had probably been an organ donor. Now, in this critical window, it was important to secure the family’s permission to begin the organ procurement process.

Tina was at the nurses’ station talking to Toya. They were both eating brownies from a white bakery box. Alex was thankfully nowhere to be seen. Olive’s plan was to stay as far away from him as possible.

“Brownie?” Tina offered. “Gloria brought them as a birthday treat.”

“Maybe later. I think I’d better check in first.”

“You’re taking over for Jennifer tonight,” Toya said.

Olive found Jennifer, the new mom, typing rapidly at one of the computer stations outside a fishbowl room. She was wearing pale pink scrubs. Jennifer always wore pastel-colored scrubs; during the later months of her pregnancy she’d looked like an Easter egg. She swiveled on her stool to face Olive.

“You’re not going to like this.” She tapped a finger against the spiky green lines on the computer monitor. “You’ll have only one patient tonight because she’s circling the drain. Mrs. Gardner was brought in this morning. End-stage renal disease, congestive heart failure, and emphysema. I don’t expect she’ll make it through the night.”

Betty Gardner. Olive pictured the old woman’s frail, hunched body, her translucent skin and the web of purple veins beneath. She could almost smell the cloying scent of rose talcum powder and urine. She wasn’t the first patient under Olive’s care who had died—there had been five others before her last year—yet she was the first patient who had died on Olive’s watch. Her family was the first that Olive had comforted, or rather had tried to comfort—Mr. Gardner had advanced Alzheimer’s. Alex had requested she be there when he broke the news.

“Her daughter’s in the waiting room. At the first sign of a downturn, she wants to know so she can make sure her dad’s here for the end.” Jennifer slid off her stool. “Ask Tina if you have any questions. The new resident’s on tonight, and he can’t find his ass with both hands.”

She was referring to Alex. Olive smiled tightly and accepted Mrs. Gardner’s chart.

She took the vacated seat. Behind the glass lay the old woman’s motionless body. The chart and the ill patient it described felt damning. She had forgotten about Betty Gardner in the context of this night; she had thought only of her own tawdry, trivial affairs. Now she was starting to understand the connection between these two events. How had she not seen it before? Her raw sense of culpability and failure had blinded her.

The chart offered no answers, no loopholes; it read like a death sentence.

“Mrs. Gardner, I’m your nurse, Olive. You’re in good hands tonight.”

Olive squeezed the old woman’s gray nail beds. She pressed down on her breastbone. No response. She felt like she was handling a corpse, a woman who had literally been raised from the dead. She had been the one to wash Mrs. Gardner’s body last year and prepare it for the morgue. She knew she would be repeating the procedure again tonight. The thought made her light-headed. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

What was the point of this? To make these poor people suffer all over again? If there was nothing she could do for her patients anyway, then why taunt her with the possibility? The cosmos had a cruel sense of humor.

“Olive.”

She leaped up at the sound of Alex’s voice. It was almost as if she had summoned him through her thoughts. He was like some kind of wicked reply: the universe wasn’t through with her yet. His light brown hair and beard were shaved close and looked fuzzy to the touch. He wore his wrinkled white coat over pale blue scrubs that matched his eyes. His presence filled the room. Her body felt extremely conscious of his as he walked to Mrs. Gardner’s bedside.

“I’m glad you’re on tonight,” he said. Both last year and this year, he had made much of their both being “new.” Like Olive, he had initially been intimidated by Tina and some of the other nurses. “Is this your first time losing a patient?”

He had asked her this last year. Then the question had seemed premature to her; she hadn’t picked up on the inevitability that all the other staff sensed when a patient was about to pass.

“It feels like it,” she said.

“I know what you mean. It never gets any easier, does it?” As he pulled the loop of his stethoscope from his lab coat pocket, his arm brushed softly against hers. She wondered if his body had a recollection of hers, if somehow it had secretly retained memories separate from his mind.

She held the clipboard against her breasts like a shield. “Only if you want it to.”

Alex looked up at her with startled eyes. Not the answer he’d been expecting.

It was a lesson she was still learning. When she had first started nursing, she had taken every death personally, like she was losing her father all over again. Every patient lost under her care was a little piece of death she would carry around with her until the end of her own life. But the alternative seemed so unfeeling. Tina and the other nurses could crack jokes and banter back and forth about contestants on
American Idol
before the body of a deceased patient was even cold. It was a coping mechanism, she knew, but not necessarily one she thought she would ever adopt. There had to be something in between. Olive had been called a bleeding heart before, but her heart no longer had the same plasticity and tenderness—it was scarred and worn beyond repair.

Alex warmed the bell of his stethoscope with his breath before touching Mrs. Gardner’s skin with it. “I lost my first patient in medical school,” he started, “my very first day of my internal medicine rotation. A middle-aged man came in complaining of a horrible headache. He begged me for some pain medication, Tylenol, anything. I left the room to check with a resident. When I came back in, he was unconscious on the floor. He died within minutes. A subarachnoid hemorrhage.”

Olive had heard this story before. It was obviously one that had left a deep impression on Alex; it had stuck with her as well. “That’s awful,” she murmured.

“The resident had never seen anything like that before, either, so he tried to make a joke out of it. Called me Dr. Death. They called the man’s wife at work to ask her to come to the hospital. I remember this because it was so strange—she worked at a travel agency that planned big-game hunting safaris. They made me stay in the room to learn how to break the news to a family member. She didn’t believe that he was dead until we showed her.”

He smoothed the white hair off Mrs. Gardner’s forehead. “You should contact her family now,” he said. He prescribed a dosage of morphine, squeezed Olive’s shoulder, and left the room.

Olive administered the morphine, watched the labored rise and fall of the old woman’s chest a few moments longer, and then left the room, too. She wished she could leave the ICU, the hospital even. She didn’t feel strong enough to handle this again. The woman she was now seemed a lot weaker than the woman she had been.

It was nine twenty-five. Mrs. Gardner’s daughter was watching a rerun of
Friends
in the otherwise empty waiting room. She was somewhere in her fifties or sixties, a woman who had probably once been very handsome, but time and misfortune had aged her severely. She was still bundled in her winter jacket and a pink scarf, despite the fact that it was unusually warm in the waiting room.

She stood up when Olive entered the room. “Anne Delaney. How’s my mother?”

“She’s hanging on, but we don’t know for how much longer. Dr. Carpenter suggested you contact any family you wish to have with you.”

“I should call Michelle to bring my dad.” Anne said this without any conviction. She looked at Olive for affirmation.

Last year, Olive hadn’t known who Michelle was. She had thought she was a sister, a daughter, a partner maybe. Now she knew she was the home health aide. She had a sudden image of Mr. Gardner, a giant of a man, strangely dignified in his plaid pajamas. With his advanced Alzheimer’s, he hadn’t understood the reason for the late-night ICU visit, hadn’t even recognized his wife’s name. He’d become agitated and mean. Olive suspected he had brought more sorrow than comfort to his grieving daughter, but she didn’t feel she had the right to instruct Anne to do otherwise.

“That’s your decision, Anne. I know it’s a difficult one.” Olive rubbed Anne’s upper arm, but she didn’t know if the woman could feel it through her heavy jacket.

“It will be after ten o’clock by the time they get here. He’s normally in bed by eight. And I just don’t know”—here her voice broke as she stifled a sob—“if he’ll even remember.” She covered her face with the tail of her pink scarf like a child. “If you had loved someone for sixty-one years but couldn’t remember that now, would you still want to be there at the end?”

In nursing school, they had taught her how to deflect personal questions, as well as moral or value judgments. The trick was to turn it around on the person with a question about them.
What do you think about that? How does that make you feel? What religion do you practice?
It didn’t fool the persistent patients, and Olive knew Anne deserved better than that.

“Yes, I would. But it would be hard. It
will
be hard.”