two charges to a Rita’s Italian Ice in Poughkeepsie and a sixty-five-dollar charge, probably for a summer dress, from a place called Elizabeth’s Boutique.
There was no charge to DNAYourStory.
But Simon did find a seventy-nine-dollar charge to something called Ance-Story. He Googled the company and yep, it was a genealogy website that concentrated on “filling the branches on your family tree” via DNA testing. He was just reading through the site when a tired female voice called his name.
“Simon Greene?”
Dr. Heather Grewe was still dressed in her classic blue surgical scrubs. Classic blue. Simon liked that. He found the color properly somber and therefore comforting. Too many of the nurses and staff members had funky or fun scrubs, bright pinks or floral patterns or ones with SpongeBob or Cookie Monster, and fine, Simon got it—if you work here all day, maybe you wanted to change it up or do something different, and sure, the contrast of wearing something bright in this grim environment made sense, but no, unless you were in the pediatric wing, Simon wanted the somber, serious scrubs, and he was glad to see Ingrid’s surgeon wearing them.
“Your wife is out of surgery. She’s stabilized.”
“Is she still in a coma?”
“I’m afraid she is, but we alleviated the immediate problem.”
Dr. Grewe began to explain in some detail, but it was hard for Simon to focus on the medical minutiae. The big picture—the words in caps, if you will—seemed to be the same:
NO CHANGE.
After Dr. Grewe finished, Simon thanked her and asked, “Can I see my wife?”
“Yes, of course.”
She led him down to the recovery area. He had no idea how a body in a coma could appear more exhausted, but Ingrid’s ferocious battle with whatever had dragged her back into surgery had clearly left her drained. She lay completely still, like before, but now the stillness seemed somehow worse, more sunken, fragile. He was almost afraid to take her hand, as though it might somehow break off in his.
But he did take the hand.
He tried to picture Ingrid upright and healthy and beautiful and vibrant. He tried to flashback to other times in this hospital, happier times, Ingrid holding one of her newborn children, but the vision would not hold. All he could see right now was this Ingrid, weak, pale, drawn, more gone than here. He stared at her and thought about what Yvonne had told him about the past and secrets.
“I don’t care.”
He said the words out loud to his comatose wife.
Whatever she had done in the past—he tried to imagine the worst: crime, drugs, prostitution, even murder—he’d forgive. Didn’t matter what. No questions asked.
He stood and put his lips to his wife’s ear.
“I just need you back, babe.”
It was the truth. But it also wasn’t. He didn’t care about her past. But there were some questions that still needed to be asked. At six a.m., he checked in with the duty nurse, made sure they had his mobile phone number, and headed out of the cloying hospital air and into the city street. Normally he’d take the subway to his apartment, but he wanted to be above ground in case a call came in. At this hour, the ride from the hospital to his place on the Upper West Side should be fifteen minutes tops. As long as he had his phone with him, he could come back immediately if there were any changes.
He didn’t want to leave her, but there was something he needed to do.
Simon called a ride share with his app and had the driver stop in front of a twenty-four-hour Duane Reade pharmacy on Columbus Avenue near Seventy-Fifth Street. He ran in, bought a six-pack of toothbrushes, hopped back into the car. When he got home—man, how long had it been since he’d been in his own home?—the apartment was silent. He tiptoed down the corridor and looked into the bedroom on the right.
Sam was asleep on his side, fetal position, legs pulled up tight. That was how his son always slept. Simon didn’t want to wake Sam yet. He headed into the kitchen and opened the drawer with the Ziploc plastic bags. He grabbed some out and quietly made his way to what they’d dubbed “the girls’ bathroom,” the one Paige had shared with her little sister Anya.
It had become something of a running joke in the house that the kids never changed their toothbrushes until the bristles were not only frayed but pretty much nonexistent—so years ago, Simon took it upon