Page 77 of Someone to Watch Over Me

“I know that now, and I’m medicated for it these days, but back then… It wasn’t as common of a thing for people to recognize in others. One time, his flight was delayed, and he didn’t make it home when he was supposed to. He called my mom to tell her, but I didn’t know that. I was sure he was dead.”

“I just want to wrap my arms around young Lexi and hold her tight.”

That’s the sweetest thing he could say. “I’ve never really outgrown this fear, but I’ve learned to manage it better. And what’s ironic is that while I was so busy worrying about him, my mom ended up with skin cancer while I was in high school. Then I had to worry about both of them.”

“She’s doing okay, though?”

“She is, but for the five years after her treatment, I was sure it would come back. I was a wreck over that. All this is one of the reasons why it was so upsetting when we weren’t getting along after Jim died. I love them so much. I never wanted to fight with them.”

“They know that.”

“I was so busy worrying about them that it never occurred to me that I needed to be worried about Jim. Not once, in all the years we were together, did I ever stress out about him dying the way I did my parents.”

“Why would you? He was young and healthy and should’ve had decades left to live.”

“I was so busy being happy with him that it simply never occurred to me to add him to my list of panic-inducing worries.”

“I love hearing that you guys were so happy.”

“We were. He was the best. Every year when I got my class list, he’d ask for a copy of it, and he’d memorize the name of every kid. He knew all their little quirks and the things they struggled with. At dinner, he’d ask me about them. Like, ‘How is Emma’s reading coming along?’ Or, ‘Did Clifton come back to school after his grandfather died?’ Or, ‘How is Daisy’s speech?’ On the last day of school for each of the years I taught, he’d pick me up in his restored Mustang convertible and take me for a ride to Skyline Drive with the top down. I’ve never felt so free as I did on those rides, knowing I had the next two months off.”

“That’s such a sweet tradition.”

“I’d look forward to it all year long.”

“What did he do for work?”

“He was a mechanical engineer and ran a machine shop out by Tysons. He’d come into school once in a while to read to my kids, and they loved him. He did all the voices and brought every character to life. He would’ve been a wonderful father.”

“No doubt. Did you plan on having kids?”

“We were talking about it when the first sign of impending disaster struck.”

“What happened?”

“I was in a faculty meeting after school one day when one of the admins came to the door and signaled for me to come out of the room. I thought she must be talking to someone else, but she was pointing at me. Of course, my first thought was that my father had died.” I give him a wry smile. “Old habits die hard. I gathered my stuff, apologized to the others and left the room. In the hallway, Linda, the admin, told me the police had tried to call my phone, but it was muted for the meeting, so they called the school. Jim had fallen down a flight of concrete stairs leaving work.

“Linda said he wanted me to know where he was and that they were taking him to the hospital. She asked if she could drive me there, and I told her I could probably do it myself, but that was a mistake. I’d driven about two blocks when I realized I had no business driving, because my hands were shaking so hard. I kept thinking it was good news that he was well enough to tell someone to call me, right? He had given them my number, told them where I worked.

“I took comfort in that as I drove through traffic that just wouldn’t move on the way to the hospital. Somehow, I managed to call my parents to tell them Jim had fallen down the stairs at work, and my mom said they’d meet me at the hospital. I told her they didn’t need to. I thought, how bad could it be? He was conscious and talking and was able to tell them how to reach me. I told my parents not to come. I didn’t want to inconvenience them. I actually thought about how they wouldn’t want to missWheel of FortuneandJeopardy!Not to mention theNightly News, which they watch every night.

“For some reason, it never occurred to me to try to call him. I thought about that afterward. Like, why didn’t I try to callhim? I figured he must be busy if he was injured enough to go to the hospital. I didn’t know what to think, honestly. I couldn’t imagine what’d happened. Jim wasn’t one to fall over things or trip over his own feet. That was my thing. I was actually known for it among our group of friends. If there was something to fall over, Lexi was the one going headfirst over it. Never Jim. I figured somebody must’ve pushed him or tripped him somehow or gotten in his way. I thought maybe he was in a rush to get out of work to beat the traffic to get home before me for once. Not for one second did it ever cross my mind that the fall would be the end of our life as we knew it, even if that wasn’t clear for a while afterward.”

Tom hands me his Stanley cup with the ice water I poured for him earlier.

“I’m sorry. I’m talking too much.”

“No, I want to hear it. Tell me the rest.”

I take a deep breath and release it slowly before I continue. “He was a bloody mess. His head and face were cut. He had a concussion and was black and blue all over. When I asked him what happened, he said he wasn’t sure. One minute, he was on the steps leaving work. The next, he was on the sidewalk, surrounded by people who’d rushed to his aid. A woman who was behind him and saw him fall said it looked like his left leg had given out.

“When I heard that, my heart dropped into my stomach. His left leg had been giving him trouble for a while by then. He’d had weakness in his calf and weird tremors in his thigh. Every so often, it would just give out, and he’d stumble. This was the first time he’d gotten hurt, though. And it was the first time I wondered if there was something seriously wrong with him—and the doctors were asking the same questions.

“He was in the hospital for four days. They ran every test imaginable, all of which came back inconclusive. They ruled out a lot of scary things. He didn’t have MS or Parkinson’s. It wasn’t a brain tumor. I remember being relieved as each of those things was knocked off the list of possibilities.”

“Of course you were.”

“After they’d run all their tests, they sent him home without an answer, and once he was recovered from the fall, we sort of picked up where we left off. We went out to the beach for a week that summer and had friends over for cookouts and went sailing on the Chesapeake with one of his college friends. It was a lovely summer, other than the ongoing challenges he was still having with his left leg. He worked out like a demon, trying to strengthen it. He even did two triathlons that summer, but he was upset that his times were way off from the year before, and he couldn’t understand why.”

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