On the way to JFK, I ask her about him again.
“For the last time, Rob is back to being a friendwithoutbenefits,” Brigid says evenly. “Which means that going forward, he remains your problem, not mine.”
She smiles, eyes focused on the road, though her expression looks smug.
“Big picture?” she says. “The one who seems incapable of quitting him is you.”
Brigid stops the car and steps out onto the sidewalk as I get my bag out of the back.
“I love you so much,” Brigid says.
“Trust me on this,” I tell her. “I love you more.”
She smiles through her tears. “You need to rethink not taking Ben’s ring,” she says.
I say, “But this girl reserves the right to change her mind if she gets some good news from Dr. Stone Face over there in Switzerland.”
It’s our mutual nickname for Dr. Ludwig, the German who runs the Meier Clinic, one who in comparison makes all other stoic Germans look like the life of the party.
“In German,” Brigid says, “it would beDr. Steingesicht.But I wouldn’t call him that to his face.”
“See,” I say, “you’re still the smart one.”
Her eyes suddenly fill up again and her face turns bright red, the way it used to when she was upset as a little girl.
“You’ve always been my hero,” Brigid says.
“And you need to set the bar a lot higher than me.” I hug her again, tell her one more time that I love her, and then walk into the terminal.
Wishing, not for the first time but especially at times like this, that they called it something else.
THIRTEEN
I’VE BARELY SIGNED MY readmittance papers at Meier when the doctors start poking and prodding and giving me everything except a pregnancy test.
The trip back here happened at the suggestion of my longtime personal physician, Dr. Samantha Wiley, who has been my friend much longer than she’s been my doctor, all the way back to the ninth grade when we had adjacent desks.
“There’re some new clinical trials, like brand new, that I think we should take a shot at,” Sam said.
“You really mean last shot to win the game, don’t you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to, doc.”
“How about you keep playing lawyer, and I play doctor.”
“Not the way you played it with Tommy Morgenthau when we were kids,” I said.
“Have a nice trip,” she said.
They have their own state-of-the-art lab at Meier, which means that new blood work will be back to Dr. Ludwig by tomorrow morning. The Meier Clinic is not much for wasting time, especially not with so many people runningoutof time.
“I don’t like to brag,” I say to the nurse who speaks the best English. “But I feel like I gave you my top-shelf stuff today.”
She stares at me blankly.
“Ja,”she says.
