This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Fleece
At her eighth anniversary dinner Mara gets a free fleece and watches her husband leave for Chantal, so she signs the divorce papers in front of her department. Hook: the mission's surgeon asked for her by name.
At our eighth anniversary dinner, my husband handed me a gift bag with the ambulance service's logo on it.
Most of my trauma department was sitting at the long table, and they all watched me open it.
Inside was a gray fleece vest.
The paper tag was still on the zipper.
It said the vest was a free giveaway at the county safety fair.
"It's warm," Colson said. "You're always cold in the OR, Mar."
"It is warm," I said.
The anesthesiologist next to me looked down at her bread plate and stayed there.
For our seventh anniversary Colson had forgotten the date completely.
I found out when his mother called to say happy anniversary and asked what he'd planned.
This year he had remembered.
He had also invited the whole department, because eight years deserved witnesses.
His phone buzzed on the tablecloth.
He read the screen and his face went soft in the way I knew.
"It's Chantal," he said. "Her car won't start. She's on Burnside in the rain."
"Colson, it's our anniversary."
"It's twenty minutes, tops. She's alone out there. You're the strong one, you know that."
He kissed my forehead.
"Order dessert," he said. "I'll be back before it comes."
Chantal Ransom had been his neighbor since they were nine years old.
She sold houses and wore good jewelry, and she had hugged me at our wedding and cried.
Her voice came through his phone as he stood up.
"Mara! Happy anniversary! I feel awful, I'd never steal him tonight if I had anyone else."
She always sounded sorry.
Through the restaurant window I watched Colson cross the street to his truck.
He pulled out and turned left, the long way around the hospital.
Every night for six years he had picked me up from the far parking lot.
The ambulance bay is twenty steps from my exit, and he has never once pulled up there.
I stopped asking years ago.
The waiter brought the dessert menus.
My chief of surgery cleared his throat. "Mara, you know we don't have to stay."
"Stay," I said. "Please. It's a good restaurant."
Twenty minutes went by. Then thirty-five.
At the far end of the table, a resident's phone lit up and she turned it facedown, too fast.
"Show me," I said.
She went red. "Dr. Kincaid, I don't think..."
"Show me."
It was Chantal's story, posted two minutes ago.
It showed a man's hands on the hood of a car in the rain.
The sleeve was gray, with a county patch.
The hands were Colson's, with the wedding ring I had put on him.
The caption said: Some people just show up. My hero, always.
Under it, Chantal had added a row of hearts.
I looked at the photo for a long time.
Eight years.
I had gone to his cousin's wedding straight off a thirty-six hour call.
I had sat with his mother at the dentist's when he was too busy.
Every Christmas Eve I had eaten at nine, after Chantal's family dinner ended and Colson finally came home.
The dessert came.
It was a slice of cake with a candle in it, and the waiter set it in front of Colson's empty chair.
I reached into my bag.
The manila envelope had been in there for five weeks.
My lawyer had drafted it, and I had carried it to work every morning since, in case I got brave.
I took out a pen.
The whole table went quiet.
"Mara," the anesthesiologist said gently, "you don't have to do this here."
"I know."
I flipped to the last page, to the line with my name printed under it, and signed.
So I signed.
I put the envelope back in my bag.
Colson could sign his page at home, where I could watch him do it.
Then I took the paper tag off the fleece vest and put it in my pocket.
I put the vest on the back of Colson's chair.
"Happy anniversary," I said to the cake. I blew out the candle.
My phone buzzed in my bag.
I thought it was him. I almost let it ring.
It was an email from the relief mission's coordinator, the one I had applied to the same week as the lawyer. I had stopped checking for it two weeks ago.
I opened it under the edge of the table.
Dear Dr. Kincaid, your application to the Himalayan Relief Surgical Team has been approved.
Your flight leaves in nine days.
Dr. Padraig Lowry, who leads the field hospital, reviewed every file himself.
Below that was a second line, typed separately from the rest.
He asked for you by name.
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