Digging Out by Katherine Leiner Read Free Book Online Page B

test with flying colors, that you told him he had the heart of a twenty-five year old.”
    “It is quite common to fail the stress test, dozens fail each day. Often it is the machine’s fault, a malfunction of some kind. So we did the test again, and just to be on the extra-safe side, with Marc’s history of dodgy genetics, we did a thallium treadmill.”
    I am totally confused. The doctor must be making it up, covering his tracks somehow to prevent a possible lawsuit, because Marc never lied to me. He would have told me about the machine screwing up, having to take a second test.
    “But why would Marc tell me he had passed the test with flying colors if he hadn’t?”
    “Well, he certainly did fine on the second test, the thallium test,” the doctor says. “Like I said, the first test is not nearly as conclusive.”
    I am stunned. “Are you sure? I mean, about the first test?”
    The doctor says he is positive. He has Marc’s file right in front of him, and he goes on to explain that often even a thallium stress test doesn’t pick up the blockage, as this one hadn’t. “Medicine’s not perfect,” he says. “That’s why we call it ‘practicing.’ ” I feel like smacking him upside his head. It’s grace that I’ve got him on the telephone and not in person. Why couldn’t he “practice” on someone else’s husband?
    “So why didn’t he tell me about failing the first test?”
    The doctor actually laughs. “I can’t help you on that one.”
    “So if he failed one and passed one, if you wanted to be so bloody
extra safe,
why the hell didn’t you do a third test?” I yell into the phone before slamming it down.
    I call Dan Wolfe again and again. Each time he tells me something different: his genetics. His diet. The fact that he smoked. Possible arrhythmia. He isn’t sure.
    I pace. I sit by Marc’s side of the bed on the floor and read through all the books on his bedside table looking for clues. He was reading Simon Winchester’s
The Professor and the Madman
and highlighted lines all the way through it. Ian McEwan’s
Atonement, A Multitude of Sins
by Richard Ford and Bob Smith’s
Hamlet’s Dresser.
There is a stack of film scripts. I read every single one of the pages he marked. I throw the one book Joe lent him about health and aging through the window.
    Searching through his calendar, I find he has appointments and meetings scheduled through January. On January 28, he has marked:
I’s bill due?
Who is I? I don’t know. My birthday is circled. He’s got two trips to Brazil scheduled with Joe. I call Joe, who says he’ll get his secretary to cancel Marc’s flights and Brazilian appointments. I take our walks on the beach and in the hills. I weep.
    Finally, after the morgue calls several times, I pick up Marc’s ashes. Dan Wolfe arranged for the morgue and the crematorium. The ashes are in a small copper box. This has me confused. Marc was not a big man, but he was certainly too big to fit in this small space. I stare at the box. What am I to do with it? The man who has handed it to me puts it in a blue velvet bag with a pull string and asks me if he can walk me to my car. He smiles and I notice he has crooked teeth. He puts his hand on my shoulder and I curl down to avoid his touch.
    “This is not my husband,” I tell the man. “It can’t be my husband. You have given me the wrong box. This is a mistake.” I suck in a deep breath and stagger in the reception area of the funeral home, the bagged box between my legs. I am doubled over, and the pain everywhere is excruciating. The man puts his arm around my shoulders. The next thing I know I am in the car, the box on the seat next to me. Driving home, I wonder where Marc will live now. Where will we put him?
    I awaken in the middle of the night, holding my heart. Working by ear in the darkness, I can still hear Marc’s voice. It comes to me when I least expect it, like now, in the deepest, darkest part of night,wrapping me wild as he