Free The Doctor's Wife by Elizabeth Brundage

Annie, didn’t you?”
     
     
    The sound of his wife’s name in this woman’s mouth frightens him. “Do you know my wife?”
     
     
    “Of course.”
     
     
    She sits down and continues to smoke. He does not want her sitting there. He does not want her anywhere near him. He watches her, all the colors smearing together. The drugs she gives him, making him sick. He wants to ask her how she knows Annie, but he is too tired now. He does not have enough energy to make words out of air. It is better if he lies perfectly still. It is better if he pretends he is dead. I’m dead, can’t you see? “I’m sick,” he mutters.
     
     
    “It’s just the drugs.” She lights a cigarette off the first and gets up, roams the room like a restless animal. “You don’t remember me, do you?” He doesn’t move, concentrating on focusing. His heart twisting. His mouth like he’s swallowed warm sand. “Jack’s party. We had a conversation in his kitchen.”
     
     
    Jack?
     
     
    “I cut myself. My husband was so embarrassed. He nearly knocked my teeth out when he got me home.” She laughs and then it slams into him: Lydia Haas, the painter’s wife.
     
     
    Yes. “I remember,” he manages. “In the kitchen.”
     
     
    He’d gotten paged and went to use the phone. She was at the table, doodling on a pad of paper the way a child draws, her mouth tight, making flowers, hearts, rainbows, gripping the pencil awkwardly.
     
     
    “I was drinking vodka,” she reminds him. “There was a great big knife and I went oops with the big knife, didn’t I? I went oops ,” she says in a baby voice.
     
     
    He hadn’t done much, he recalls. Wrapped her up with a napkin, then went and found her a Band-Aid.
     
     
    “I liked you right away,” she says. “You listened to me. You put your ego in your pocket. You weren’t a big show-off like your wife.”
     
     
    “It was a fun party,” he says just to keep her talking.
     
     
    “No, it was not fun.”
     
     
    “Why not?”
     
     
    She goes quiet suddenly and shakes her head, then stands up and begins to gather her things. Their visit is over. A slow deep agony flourishes in his ribs. His breathing is shallow, labored. Just the turn of his head sends the pain down his spine.
     
     
    “Why?” he says, his voice a ragged whisper. “Why are you doing this?”
     
     
    “He told me to,” she says in a singsong voice. “For the ghost in my womb.”
     
     
    “Ghost?” he spits uselessly.
     
     
    This makes her quiet. She stands up, weaving slightly. “I don’t want to talk about my ghost right now. Anyway, you wouldn’t understand.”
     
     
    “I will,” he says. “I’m a doctor. I understand about ghosts.”
     
     
    She turns, her face in the shadows.
     
     
    “There was somebody else, wasn’t there? You had help getting me here.”
     
     
    “No.”
     
     
    “I remember someone. A man’s voice.”
     
     
    “You don’t have to worry about him.”
     
     
    “He may tell someone. The police.” He cannot disguise the hope in his voice.
     
     
    “No. Not even a remote possibility. I’m very thorough, Michael, that’s something you need to realize about me. When I set my mind to something. No loose ends.” She drops the cigarette to the floor and puts it out with her shoe. “The car wasn’t supposed to catch fire. That was my little bonus.” She smiles. “See what I mean? No loose ends. No tattletales.”
     
     
    It comes to him that he is completely at her mercy.
     
     
    “You need to rest now.” She climbs the stairs.
     
     
    “Please, don’t leave me here.”
     
     
    “You’ll be fine, Michael. Don’t be a scaredy-cat.”
     
     
    He remembers his hands, bound together at the wrists. “Untie my hands at least.”
     
     
    “Not yet. You need to sleep and you won’t do that if you have your hands. Try to remember that I know you, Michael, I know the way you think.”
     
     
    “You don’t know me.”
     
     
    “In a strange