Better to Trust Read online

  “Do we have to do this today?” Cynthia said.

  “Mom has a lot going on,” Sadie said. “She’s on the committee for the fall fundraiser at the synagogue again.”

  “Again?” Grant remembered last year’s mind-numbing conversations about the tablecloths, centerpieces, and invitations like it was yesterday.

  “Yes, again,” Cynthia said. “They invited me back, if you can believe it.”

  “Mazel Tov.” He would need something more than red wine to make it through this dinner. Reaching into his pocket, he found the paper envelope he’d stashed there earlier. He had taken some of the Oxycontin tablets from his office drawer and put them in an envelope so he could access them easily without having to take out a bottle and unscrew the cap. He slid two pills into his hand, and then pretended to cough so he could sneak them in his mouth.

  “Enough,” Sadie said. “Why are you two always on each other’s cases?”

  Grant washed the pills down with a sip of wine. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I think we’re all feeling a little stressed right now.”

  “About Aunt Alison?”

  “Yes,” Cynthia said. “She needs your father’s help.”

  “You know about it?” Grant said.

  “I heard you and Mom arguing,” Sadie said.

  “Discussing,” Cynthia said. “We both want to do the right thing for my sister, don’t we?”

  “You keep saying that, but the right thing is not so clear to me,” Grant said.

  “It is to me.”

  “Well, it’s not your medical license on the line.”

  “Don’t get on your high horse with me,” Cynthia said. “She’s my sister and she’s waiting for an answer.”

  “Have you talked to Aunt Alison about this?” Sadie asked her mom.

  “She called yesterday. She feels weird about the situation, but she’s on board with it.”

  “On board with what?” Sadie asked.

  “With seeing your father as a patient. Alison knows he will give her the best chance.”

  “There are other choices,” Grant said.

  “If she were anyone else, you would have started treatment already.”

  “I don’t want to fight about this.” Grant leaned back in his chair, relishing the feeling of relaxation as the Oxy travelled across his blood brain barrier. “I just think it’s not a straightforward decision and we shouldn’t take it lightly.”

  “What happens if you decide not to treat her?” Sadie asked. “Will she die?”

  “I hope not,” Grant said. “But she has a tricky problem. Even my cowboy colleagues don’t want to touch her with a ten-foot pole.”

  “She could die?” Sadie asked again.

  “All of us could die at any moment,” Grant said. “There are no guarantees in life.”

  “Don’t feed us that bullshit, Grant,” Cynthia said. “We all know that Alison’s best chance is with you, so this conversation is over.”

  Grant gave Cynthia a pointed look. “To be continued,” he said.

  A whimpering sound came from Sadie’s side of the table, and when Grant looked back at her, there were tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “I can’t lose her.” Sadie gulped for breath and pulled her hair into a bun, securing it with a rubber band from her pocket. “Not right now.”

  “Oh, sweetie, Aunt Alison won’t die,” Cynthia said. “Not if your father has anything to say about it.”

  As Sadie dried her eyes with a napkin, Grant notice black marks on the back of her neck. Had one of her friends drawn something on her with marker? The skin around the marks was red and angry. Maybe the Oxy was making him see things, but when he squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, it was still there.

  “I hope you can convince him to do this, Mom,” Sadie said through her tears. She turned to Grant. “You need to do this, Dad.”

  Grant grabbed hold of Sadie’s chin and turned her face away so he could inspect her neck. It was a figure skate etched in black, the laces tied in a neat bow, the toe-pick ragged and sharp.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  Sadie pulled her hair back out of the bun to cover up the evidence. “I forgot about it, with everything going on.”

  “You forgot you were trying to hide it from us?”

  “What?” Cynthia said. She got up from her seat and came around the table to see what they were talking about. When she lifted Sadie’s hair and saw the tattoo, she licked her index finger and tried to rub it away.

  Sadie scrunched up her face. “Mom, really?”

  “Sadie Jane Kaplan, haven’t we taught you better than this?” She looked at her finger and then continued rubbing. “When did you get this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t give me that,” Cynthia said. “Was this what you did in Boston on Saturday?”

  “Piper really wanted me to get one,” Sadie admitted.

  “And you just went along with it?” Grant couldn’t believe this.

  “Between this, and your new clothes, and that awful girl, I don’t know what’s going on with you lately,” Cynthia said.

  “That’s offensive, Mom. Piper is my best friend.”

  Giving up on her effort to erase the tattoo, Cynthia groaned and started gathering the plates from the table, her motions rushed and jerky. “She’s not the kind of friend you need,” Cynthia said, making more noise than necessary stacking the plates.

  “This is so unlike you,” Grant said. Sometimes he felt like he was watching his daughter disappear a little more every day. How long would it be until he couldn’t find the old Sadie anymore? He could still remember the feel of her tiny hand in his when they took hikes together on Sunday mornings at Nahanton Park while Cynthia slept. Full of questions, Sadie never gave him a moment of peace. What kind of bird is that? Why do the leaves fall off the trees? Where do the squirrels sleep at night? Now, he was lucky if she talked to him at all.

  “I’m a teenager. I’m supposed to experiment.”

  “This experiment is permanent,” Grant said firmly. “Do you know how much it costs to remove them? Ed Kerrick makes a mint specializing in just that.”

  “So, it’s not permanent,” Sadie said with a snarky tone. She had never spoken to him like this before. Maybe it was all Piper’s influence. He hadn’t met the girl yet, but he didn’t like the sound of her.

  “You know what I mean, Sadie.” He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t contradict me.”

  “Well, the experimentation ends here and now,” Cynthia crashed the plates into the sink. “As of today, you’re grounded for a month.”

  Sadie stormed up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door with a bang.

  Grant excused himself to the bedroom. He swallowed another pill, then sat down on the side of the bed and put his head in his hands. He punched himself in the thigh, first lightly, and then several more times with more force. The pain felt strangely satisfying, a reminder that he was human and alive. In quiet moments like this, he felt ashamed that he had to rely on pills to get through his days, that they’d become such an integral part of his life, but he didn’t linger too long in that feeling. Everyone had points of weakness, soft spots and defects they never allowed anyone else to see, and if this was his, so be it. Grant was a loyal husband, a good father, and an excellent surgeon. So what if he took medicine to keep him at his best?

  He couldn’t believe his little girl had gotten a tattoo. Grant wasn’t sure what was going on with her. Was she trying to prove something to them or was this just normal adolescent exploration? He wished she’d chosen a less permanent way to declare her independence. He couldn’t help thinking about the boy with the tattoo. Five years ago, Grant had been paged to the emergency room for a head trauma. A seventeen-year-old boy had been riding on the back of his older brother’s motorcycle without a helmet and was thrown from the bike at high speed. He was awake and alert when the medics wheeled him in, constantly asking if his brother was okay. Grant had noticed the music not
e tattoo behind his left ear as he inspected the boy’s head for bruising and lacerations, making him wonder about his connection to music. Maybe he played the trumpet or the sax, or maybe he was a piano virtuoso. As the minutes passed, the boy became more confused and stopped responding to questions. His CT scan showed a skull fracture with a huge epidural hematoma that needed to be evacuated immediately. Though Grant rushed him to the OR and removed as much of the blood as he could, it was too late. The boy hadn’t been much older than Sadie was now.

  After that day, Grant couldn’t stop thinking about that kid, the fear in his eyes, the smoothness of his skin, the way he had asked about his brother. But the thing that really haunted him was the sound his mother made when she heard the news, a painful keening he would never forget. That sound recurred is his dreams, startling him awake in the middle of the night, his pajamas drenched in sweat. Weeks later, in the middle of an operation, he found his mind turning back to that day and wondering whether he could have done anything differently, whether he had missed that the boy’s pupils were unequal or his reflexes asymmetric, whether he could have gotten him up to the operating room any faster or used a different surgical technique. He couldn’t imagine the devastation the boy’s parents felt when they heard their son was gone before his life had really begun, his music silenced well before his time. Though he’d lost patients before, this one stayed with him in a different way. This one was his fault.

  The pills had definitely helped him move on, but he wasn’t really addicted. He could stop at any time. Grant punched his leg a few more times, the sharp pain in his quadriceps centering him and calming him down.

  “What are you doing?” Cynthia walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

  “Cramp. Too much lifting at the gym.” Grant couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to the gym.

  “What the hell is happening with Sadie? As far as I’m concerned, I think we should lock her in her bedroom and throw away the key.”

  “Don’t you need a parent’s permission to get a tattoo?” he said. “When did she get it?”

  “It must have been Saturday when she went downtown to walk the Freedom Trail.”

  “The Freedom Trail my ass. She’s declaring her freedom loud and clear.”

  Cynthia shot him a look.

  Grant could feel the blood surging to his head, his face heating up. “How did you let this happen?” he said, before he could stop himself. “You quit your job to be a stay-at-home mother. As far as I know, that entails keeping track of the kid.”

  “I don’t know what your problem is all of sudden. Now you’re blaming me for Sadie’s bad choice?”

  “I’m just saying that maybe this could have been prevented if you didn’t spend all your time volunteering for other things, letting our kid run wild.”

  “I’m doing my best,” Cynthia said. “I spend plenty of time with her, more than she would like.”

  “It seems to me that you spend more time at synagogue fundraisers, lunching with the ladies, and Weight Watchers meetings. How are those meetings working for you by the way?”

  “Fuck you, Grant.”

  “Is that an offer?”

  Cynthia reached into her pocket and pulled out the bottle of Adderall Grant must have left on the counter last week ago. After looking everywhere for it when he got home from work, he’d given up and called Adam’s office for a new prescription. “Is everything okay?” she asked, her tone softening. “I thought these were a temporary thing.” She reached out to touch his arm.

  “It was,” he said, brushing her hand away.

  “It’s been years. I had no idea you were still taking them,” she said.

  “It really helps me focus, tunes my brain to the right frequency. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Something tells me the hospital might not agree with you,” she said. “Remember what happened to Alvin Cassidy?” A few years ago, one of the anesthesiologists had been suspended from the medical staff. Rumor had it he had been injecting himself with the pre-filled Fentanyl syringes from the narcotics cabinet, even going so far as to place a PICC line into a vein in his ankle for easy access. No one on staff knew where he was now, and when anyone talked about him, it was always with a head shake or proclamation like, “What a shame. He was such a good doctor.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Grant asked.

  Cynthia threw him the bottle. The plastic bottle felt smooth and familiar in this palm. “No, I’m just saying it’s time for you to stop this nonsense. You don’t need these pills. Especially with a lawsuit hanging over your head.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Cyn,” he said, tucking the bottle into his pocket. “I have everything under control.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sadie

  March 14, 2019

  AFTER ALISON LOCKED THE CAR, they walked to pay the parking fee at the machine. With Alison’s surgery scheduled for the next morning, Sadie had assumed their annual back to school shopping trip would be cancelled, but her aunt had insisted they keep the date.

  “Let’s start on the second floor and make our way downstairs,” Sadie said. She had this weird routine at the mall—she had to walk by every store. If she missed even one, she felt like her mission was incomplete.

  “Just like your mother,” Alison said. “A methodical planner.”

  “I’m nothing like her,” Sadie said emphatically. “She’s much more anal than I am.”

  “My sister does like things her way,” Alison said.

  Sadie stopped in front of her favorite bath store. “Let’s go in,” she said.

  “We usually save this one for last.”

  “I’m allowed to change things up a little.” Sadie wanted to prove she was more flexible than her mother.

  A wave of fragrance hit Sadie as they entered the store: rose and almond and lavender, the combination of smells overwhelming. Bath bombs and handmade soaps in an array of rainbow colors were stacked on shelves against the walls and on tables throughout the store.

  “We did a lot of damage here last year,” Alison said.

  “Why do you think I wanted to come in?” Sadie grabbed a basket.

  They wandered around the store, Sadie piling soaps and shampoos and bath bombs into her basket. She squirted a sample of hand cream into her palm, holding out her hand for Alison to smell. It smelled like sugar cookies.

  “Yum, right?” Sadie said, holding up a bottle of shampoo. “I’m going to get some more of this, too. It makes my hair feel so soft.”

  “Fair-trade, honey,” Alison said, looking at the label. “Your mom may even approve.”

  Sadie laughed and put the shampoo in her basket. “It depends what phase she’s in at the moment. But she still wouldn’t buy it for me.”

  Alison picked up two bottles of nail polish, one black and one bright pink. “Would she buy these?”

  “No way.” Sadie took the pink one, opening it and using the brush to test the color on her pinky. “I like this one.” She put the bottle in the basket. When Sadie looked up, she noticed something had changed on her aunt’s face.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I’m thinking about tomorrow,” Alison said. “The shampoo made me think—”

  “About your hair?”

  “Your dad said they have to shave the side of my head for the surgery.” Alison ran her hand through her hair.

  Sadie gave Alison’s hand a quick squeeze. “They have to shave it to keep things sterile. That’s what dad says. But it grows back really quick.”

  “I know. I guess the whole thing is a little scary.”

  “My dad will take good care of you,” Sadie said. “He’s one of the best neurosurgeons in the country.” Sadie had heard her mom say that so many times it was almost meaningless, but she didn’t know what else to say. It felt strange being the one to offer comfort and advice to her aunt rather than the other way around.

  “I know everything will be fine,” Alison said. “I just can’
t help thinking about what could go wrong.”

  “It’s been a little tense in our house in the last few weeks,” Sadie said, immediately sorry that she’d let that information slip.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s nothing. I don’t want to make you more nervous than you already are.”

  “Now you have to tell me.”

  “Um, okay, but don’t tell my mother I said anything.”

  “You know your secrets are always safe with me,” Alison said.

  “They’ve been arguing about your treatment,” Sadie said. “Me and Mom had to push Dad to take you on as a patient. Dad said something about ethics and not treating family members unless there was no other choice. Mom insisted only the best was good enough for her sister.”

  “Cynthia said that?” Aunt Alison seemed surprised.

  Sadie nodded.

  Alison leaned forward, hanging on Sadie’s every word. “And then what happened?”

  “My dad caved.”

  “Your mom strong-armed him? Sounds like my sister.”

  “Exactly,” Sadie said. “It’s her way or the highway. That’s what Uncle Michael would say, right?”

  “Something like that. Are they still arguing about it?”

  “I think they’ve both come to terms with the situation.” Sadie could tell this discussion was making her aunt anxious. Lifting her hair to reveal the back of her neck, she knew exactly how to change the topic of conversation. “Look what I got.”

  “Wow, when did you do this?” Alison reached up to run her fingers along the outline of the ice skate.

  “A few weeks ago. When Mom and Dad found out, I was supposed to be grounded, but then I think they forgot. My mom didn’t tell you?”

  Alison shook her head.

  “Do you like it?” Sadie prayed her aunt would approve. Since getting the tattoo last month, she’d had more than a few second thoughts. At the time, an ice skate had seemed like the perfect design to choose—a symbol of her dedication and perseverance, of her single-minded determination to excel—but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a mistake. Emma had a shot to make it to the Olympic team, and Sadie would be left with early morning practices in the freezing rink and lame routines at the Bay State Games, a handful of bored parents watching from the stands.