‘What do you know about him, Carter?’ Nikki countered.
‘Enough. I know enough,’ Carter pronounced, cryptically. Although, again, he offered no evidence to back this up.
I’m not making him better, Nikki thought sadly. I might actually be making him worse. Why am I even here?
She knew the answer to that, deep down. She was here – at work, in her office, seeing patients – because she had nowhere else to be. Nowhere else except home, alone, with no Doug, and no answers. That prospect was quite unbearable.
Unbearable …
The word took Nikki back.
It was only a year ago, but it felt like a lifetime.
Doug was smiling at her across the table at Luigi’s, wolfing down his spaghetti vongole as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks, talking at a million miles an hour, the way he always did when the two of them were together.
‘“It’s unbearable.” What do people even mean when they say that?’ Doug asked Nikki. ‘My patients say it to me all the time: “It’s unbearable, Doc. I can’t bear it.” As if they have any alternative.’
Nikki and Doug Roberts had been married for seven years and together for almost three times that long. But the thrill of each other’s company, of talking and sharing ideas and feelings and experiences, never faded. No lunch date with Doug was ever dull.
‘I guess they’re speaking metaphorically,’ Nikki observed, toying with her own crab salad. Luigi’s food was delicious, but even the salads were rich. Doug might be incapable of gaining weight, but since she turned thirty-eight Nikki found increasingly that she had to watch her figure. There was nothing worse than thinking you might be pregnant at long last, only to realize that your rounded belly was actually ugly, middle-aged fat.
‘They mean that they don’t want to bear it. It hurts. Don’t forget, these are desperate addicts we’re talking about.’
‘You’re right.’ Doug nodded, slurping down the last of his pasta before reaching for the bread basket. ‘I guess I just get frustrated sometimes. Because, at the end of the day, it really is that black and white. Do you want to get better or not? Do you want to die or not? That’s it. That’s the choice.’
To an outsider, Doug Roberts might sound compassionless toward his junkie patients, but Nikki knew that he was anything but. He’d raced to meet her for lunch today directly from the latest meth and opioid clinic he was busy setting up in Venice with his good friend from med school, Haddon Defoe. Helping LA’s most hardened, most helpless addicts had become Doug Roberts’ passion, his life’s work.
‘Anyway, enough about me.’ He looked at Nikki lovingly. ‘How’s your morning been, sweetheart? Did you do another test?’
‘Not yet.’ Nikki looked down shyly at her half-eaten food. ‘Maybe tonight.’
‘Why not now?’ asked Doug.
‘Because. If it’s negative and I feel shitty, it might distract me from my afternoon clients,’ said Nikki.
Doug reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘It could be positive, honey. No reason why it shouldn’t be.’
‘Yup,’ Nikki forced a smile. ‘No reason.’
Except that the last six times we tried, it was negative. And with every month that passes my eggs are getting older and more worn out. And some cruel god out there, some malicious force beyond our control, seems to have decided that we’ll never become parents.
She and Doug had everything else, after all. A wonderful, loving marriage. Wealth. Status. Meaningful, rewarding careers. Great friends. Great family. In what alternate universe did they deserve children, as well as all that?
‘I love you, Nik,’ Doug said softly.
‘I love you, too.’
‘It’ll happen. We still have time. So much time.’
That’s right, thought Nikki. We still have time.
‘Dr Roberts?’ Carter Berkeley sounded irritated. ‘Were you even listening to me?’
‘Of course.’ Nikki dutifully repeated everything her client had just said. She’d long ago learned the knack of ‘surface listening’, using one’s brain to multitask, in this case memorizing Carter’s words whilst actively focusing on something else entirely. It was a trick Doug had taught her.
Why did everything seem to come back to Doug?
‘Now, as we’re almost out of time, I suggest we finish up with a mindfulness exercise,’ Nikki told Carter, deftly regaining control of the session. ‘If you don’t mind putting your feet flat on the floor …’