“Hi, Jillian,” said Megan when Jillian came out into their desk area.
“Hey, Megan.”
“How are you? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, you know, I just hit this enormous deer with my car,” she said.
“Oh, no,” said Megan.
They worked quietly. Dr. Billings came out and said, “Jillian! Good to see you again. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m still a little shaken up more than anything. But my back is killing me, too, and my car is, you know, absolutely useless. Umm . . .”
“Where were you driving that you came across a deer?” he asked. His question was innocent.
“Oh, I was picking up a dog from a rescue center outside of town.”
Bold, thought Megan. A very bold choice.
“Ah, good. Was the dog hurt at all?”
“No, no one was hurt, we’re all fine.”
“Good, good. Well, good to have you back.”
A truly needless fib. Megan sort of admired it.
Dr. Schraeder came out of the examination room. “Here you go, Jillian,” she said, putting a piece of white paper on Jillian’s desk.
“Thank you so much,” said Jillian.
“Now that has two refills, and it’s free of charge, okay? I’ll cover it.”
“Thank you so much.” She breathed this, lower than a whisper.
When the doctors and patients had left for the day, Jillian said, “Hey, I’m sorry for leaving you all alone.”
“It’s okay.”
“Yeah, everyone’s being really nice about it. No one’s mad and Dr. Schraeder just gave me a prescription for some thirty-milligram Tylenol T3s with codeine,” she said. “You know, for the pain of my injuries.”
“Oh, wow, I didn’t even know she could prescribe that.”
• • •
It was always interesting the way things worked out, thought Jillian on the ride home, the train taking her where she needed to go, chugging along, her thoughts free to roam. A bottle of midgrade painkillers in her purse. A kind of general hilarity all around her. She’d thought she might get fired or reprimanded and she’d been planning to settle into a comfortable depression, but no. They’d been really nice. And Megan hadn’t said anything about the dog, and it tickled Jillian that Megan could be so understanding.
I was in a really bad car accident, she thought. She carried herself like someone who had been in a car accident. She rubbed her shoulder and drew a breath in through her teeth. She visualized the deer and how she hadn’t screamed and how Adam had thought it was exciting. The dog barked at the deer to protect them all from the deer. The deer wasn’t hurt, it ran away, just smashed up the car real bad, and now she had horrible back pain. She shook her head and exhaled.
If anyone asked, she’d tell them that’s what happened. “Oh my gosh, that happened to me, too,” they’d say.
Sunset on the train was great. It was only eighty dollars a month for the pass, maybe she could get Elena to pick up Adam all the time. This might have been the best thing that had ever happened to her, getting into this silly car accident.
She got home and let Crispy out of the bathroom. She’d pooped on the floor and chewed up the bath mat. Jillian picked up the bath mat and Crispy lunged at it. “Oooohhh, I forgot to leave you your bone, didn’t I, you crazy girl?” she said, tugging the bath mat while Crispy bore down on the other end. “Time to go on out,” she said.
Dinner was cooking when Elena came by to drop Adam off.
“Hey, you want to stay for dinner? I made plenty.”
“No,” said Elena. “I have to get home and make dinner for my own family.”
“Oh, okay,” Jillian said. “Well, anytime, you know. Thanks for picking him up.”
They laughed at the movie while they ate dinner. It was great that the apartment was still kind of clean from the weekend. She changed her boy into his pajamas, tucked him in, and then went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. She slipped into a fresh nightgown and washed her face, something she didn’t always do. She brushed and flossed. Then she went into the dark apartment and found her purse on the kitchen chair. Crispy walked up to her and looked at her.
“Hi, Crispy,” she whispered.
She got the bottle of medicine just so she could put it away in the cabinet.
When she was back in the bathroom, she looked at the bottle and said, “I’ve been in a bad accident.”
2
Things were still pretty awkward between Megan and Randy, and she hadn’t heard anything from or said anything to Amanda since the fight. But did she still go to the grocery store and buy dinner and stuff? Oh, totally, yeah, of course, of course, because life just keeps grinding on, right?
That day she thought, Fuck it, and went to the smaller grocery store. The store was for rich people, but fuck it, right? There were delights there.
She wanted to make something out of vegetables. The selection was small but everything did look so much healthier. There were summer squash the size of a baby’s arm and baby bok choy that looked clean and smooth and not like a bunch of slugs had been fucking and barfing on it in the back of a truck for weeks. So this is how the better half eats. She picked out two well-formed bunches of baby bok choy and put them in her basket. There was a wall of salad dressing in a refrigerated shelf that she stared at for five minutes. Next to that was a section for juices and anciently formulated teas with helpful bacteria. On one of the teas was a drawing of a thin female torso with a spiral on it that looked like a twister. Detoxification. Gotta get this inside me. It was five dollars. She picked up the bottle and stood in front of the case for two minutes, staring at it. It was a glass bottle. She needed
