Даниэла Стил - Turning Point

Six years later, he was still married and his youngest child was eleven. The oldest had just left for college. He assured Wendy now that by the time his youngest son was in high school, he would feel comfortable leaving the family home. It was only three years away, but Wendy wondered if he would actually leave before his youngest was in college, or at all. She had promised herself she would end the affair a hundred times, but she never did. He always talked her into staying. His arguments were so convincing. And they loved each other.

They were well suited. They were both physicians and graduates of Harvard. Her work in trauma was almost as stressful and high pressured as his. The men she went out with before had complained about her dedication to her work. Jeff always understood. She had done her residency at Mass General, after getting her undergraduate degree and MD at Harvard, and been offered an outstanding job at Stanford, which was the same career path Jeff had chosen. Jeff’s wife was the daughter of a highly respected surgeon, but she had said she didn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps with an absentee husband who was never around and hardly knew his own kids. And yet, it was exactly what she was doing, and had done since they married.

Wendy frequently wondered if he made the same empty promises to his wife as to her, but things never changed. He worked too hard and had too many patients to be more attentive than he was to either of them. His first responsibility was to his patients, more than to either of the women in his life. He spent weekends at home, and attempted to spend time with his children. He was with his family for holidays, and he spent Wednesday nights at Wendy’s, when he had time and Wendy wasn’t working herself. He spent an hour with her on his way home from time to time and would drop by without warning. She enjoyed the time with him, their discussions, and their sex life, which made her fall even more deeply in love with him, but for the past few years, he’d stopped mentioning marriage or leaving his wife. Wendy no longer broached the subject with him, and it was on holidays like Christmas that she realized how little she had with him. All she had were Wednesday nights, when they were both available, and an hour here and there. Jeff compartmentalized everything in his life, and he had put her in a little box, where he expected her to stay.

What she had noticed in recent years were the things she no longer did because she couldn’t do them with him. The symphony, the opera, the ballet. What if he called and wanted to drop by? She didn’t want to miss a visit by not being there. She loved museums, but had stopped going. And she no longer saw her girlfriends because they had husbands and children, and she was a married man’s mistress and was ashamed.

For six years she had followed his rules. She was thirty-seven years old, she had her work, and one night a week with a man who belonged to someone else. Her work was fulfilling, but the rest of her life wasn’t. Wendy felt like a car Jeff took out for special occasions, and left in the garage the rest of the time. She wanted to share so much more with him and couldn’t. There were no weekends or holidays in her arrangement with him. And every year, on Christmas, she thought about what a fool she was, as the truth hit her squarely in the face, again. Even if she promised herself she’d leave him, she knew now she wouldn’t. When the holidays were over, she’d go back to their weekly nights together, silently hoping something would change. She didn’t want to rock the boat and lose him. She was living on crumbs, and pretending to herself it was a meal.

In Wendy’s eyes, no one measured up to him, no one was as smart, as capable, or appealed to her as much. He was a trap she had fallen into and couldn’t get out of, and didn’t even want to. She’d had a text message from him the night before, on Christmas Eve, that said only, “Thinking of you, love, J.” And now he was with his wife and children, while she sat alone in her house in Palo Alto, wondering what she was doing with him. Little by little, she had given everything up for him and now all she had was her career and a Wednesday night date.

She had been at the top of her medical school class at Harvard, and graduated cum laude, but what difference did it make? She was in good shape, a small, lithe, beautiful woman with dark hair and deep blue eyes. She had a successful career at Stanford, and every decision she made was influenced by her relationship with Jeff. She accepted no invitations in case he wanted to stop by on his way home without calling first, she didn’t want to miss a minute with him. Their Wednesday nights were sacred to her, and Jeff tried to be reliable about them, as best he could. But she had to fit into the tiny little space allotted to her. Jeff always set firm boundaries, and everything was on his terms. He controlled his world and hers. She could never call or email him, and could only text him during office hours. She often wondered what would happen if she had an emergency and needed to get hold of him, but she never had. She hated herself for how willing she was to give up her life, and how little she expected in return.

She hadn’t put up a Christmas tree this year. There was no point, he’d never see it and it would only make her sad. She tried to ignore the holiday entirely. He had given her a narrow diamond bangle bracelet from Cartier, which she was wearing, but she would have traded it and everything she had to spend Christmas with him. Her every thought was filled with him, and she kept imagining him with his wife and children while she sat alone. At thirty-seven, she knew that she was giving up her chance to have children, and now she could see herself still with him at forty-five or fifty. She knew that next year, on Christmas, everything would be the same. She was too hooked to leave him, and Jeff relied on it. The situation they had created worked perfectly for him, but a lot less well for her.

She was on call for Christmas Day and night, but her phone hadn’t rung. Things were obviously quiet in the ER. No big trauma cases had come in, or they would have called her. She was listening to Christmas carols, which depressed her, and thinking of Jeff. Six years with Jeff lay behind her, and the future was a blur. And she knew, as she did every year, that nothing was going to change. Jeff had her exactly where he wanted her.

Chapter Two

Tom Wylie was in the doctors’ lounge at Alta Bates, having a cup of coffee and chatting with one of the anesthesiologists, when he saw flames shooting out of a building on the TV screen behind the other doctor’s head. Someone had muted the TV, and he stared at the screen for a minute, wondering where the fire was, then a banner moved across the bottom, announcing the name of a hotel on Market Street in San Francisco. He picked up the remote on the table and turned the sound back on. The cameras showed Market Street closed to traffic, with fire trucks everywhere, hotel guests milling around in a cordoned area half a block away, and firefighters rushing past them into the hotel. The tall ladders had been set up against the building, and firemen were entering through windows on several floors. It was a five-alarm fire, and two hundred firefighters were on the scene. The reporter announced that several guests were being treated for smoke inhalation, and two firefighters had been injured. Due to their extensive conference rooms and grand ballroom for weddings, the reporter estimated that two thousand guests and several hundred employees were in the hotel. Both doctors stood and stared at the TV as the floor below the one on fire burst into flame and the windows exploded outward from the heat.

There was silence in the room for a minute, then Tom commented, “Looks like we might get a flood of customers tonight.”