“There usually aren’t many people in that part of the park,” she said, “which I guess must be why you chose it. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t come along. Would you have tried again, after a while?”
He said nothing.
There were deep lines around his eyes, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. His lips were unnaturally pale. Beneath the thin hospital blanket his body looked sturdy and solidly muscled. It was impossible to tell, as he lay there, whether he was handsome or not. The spirit that would have animated his face, giving it character and attitude, had receded from view. She stepped closer. Even at this little distance his body seemed to give off no heat whatsoever, as if he’d been permanently chilled.
“You’re back from the dead,” she said. “Maybe you don’t want to be, but you are.”
For the first time his eyes met hers. They were green. Then he blinked again and closed them.
“If you want to talk,” Grace said, “I can listen.”
They wheeled him out and then returned him to the room with his leg encased in a black boot, and the doctor came and spoke to Grace as if she had a right to be there. His ankle was sprained. There were scrapes and bruises all over his face, but they weren’t serious. A nurse dropped off some crutches. The doctor, who looked exhausted and no more than twenty-five, gave him a prescription for painkillers and told him to come back in two weeks. Grace said she’d drive him home.
“Sir, we need to evaluate your situation before you go,” the doctor said obliquely. When the patient said nothing, he turned to Grace. “An appointment will be made with the psychiatric department,” he said, his manner very formal.
She nodded.
“Our staff will make you the appointment?” the doctor said, turning back toward him.
From the bed, the man’s eyes met hers in a plea. She shrugged; he had already refused her help.
He coughed and said, “I didn’t really mean to do it.” His voice was hoarse and clouded with phlegm, as if the words were caught deep inside, trapped in some cave or web.
“What do you mean?” the doctor asked.
“I just wanted to see what she’d say.” Tugwell jerked a thumb in Grace’s direction. His voice was painfully rasped and he swallowed visibly after he spoke, but then he modulated it to a tone of playful wryness. “We were skiing together and I told her I was going to kill myself and went off in a different direction. I said I had the rope with me and was going to do it immediately. It took her nine minutes to decide to come after me. Nine minutes! Can you believe that? I timed her.”
“You told your wife you were going to kill yourself to see how she would react, and then you timed her?” the doctor said, frowning skeptically. A francophone, possibly he thought he hadn’t understood the story correctly.
“Almost ten minutes,” Tugwell said. His eyes sprang back to her, and her heart twisted strangely in her chest.
The doctor looked at Grace. For a moment she hesitated: to go along with his story was so absurd that no sane person would even consider it. This man needed help, starting with the psychiatric evaluation and professional intervention. Yet something in his expression, a sense of collusion, drew her in. The spark of life in his eyes was so sudden and bright that she wanted to keep it there, to fan it from a flicker to a flame.
Maybe it was because she thought the hospital would likely give him the briefest, most cursory treatment. Or because she felt responsible for having brought him in. Or because she was happy that he’d turned to her for help.
“He’s never there for me either,” she said, as petulantly as she could.
The doctor sighed heavily and checked his watch. “So this is a marital squabble.”
Grace nodded.
Tugwell said, “I guess things got out of hand.”
The doctor, shrugging as if this weren’t the strangest behavior he had ever seen, clicked the end of his pen and made a notation on the chart.
“I’ll take care of him,” Grace said.
Too busy to worry about it, the doctor left.
When they were alone in the room, Tugwell looked at her again. The flicker had gone from his eyes, as if the effort of that one lie had tired him beyond all reckoning. “Don’t you have anywhere else to be?”
“This isn’t about me,” she said.
“Dodgeball.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, I meant dodging the question. I’m groggy.”
“I’m not dodging the question,” Grace said, although she was. “I just don’t think it really matters. Nothing about me really matters right now, not to you. You’re hurt and I’m willing to drive you home and get you settled. Or I can call someone else. Do you want me to do that? Is there somebody you want me to call?”
He closed his eyes.
“Do you need help getting dressed, John?”
“Tug,” he said. “And no.”
“Is this another dodgeball thing?”
“I’m called Tug.”
“Okay, Tug,” she said. “I’ll be right outside. Call if you need me.”
When she came back five minutes later he was in his gray fleece jacket and black ski pants, with one unzipped pant leg rolled up over the ankle cast. She pushed him in a wheelchair to the parking lot and helped him into her car, stowing the crutches in the backseat. Inside she cranked up the heat, and he leaned his head back and said nothing. She wondered where his family was. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. If he didn’t want her to be taking care of him, he wasn’t putting up much of a fight — but the resistance could be internal. He might just be waiting for her to go away, and then he’d try again. Those were the ones who often went through with it, the cases who humored you until you finally left them alone.
“Do you live by yourself?”
“Yes. You?”
“Yes.”
“Not married?”
“Divorced.”
“Me too,” he said. “Well, separated. Not official.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Is that why you wanted to do this?”
There was a slight pause before he said, “You don’t beat around.”
“No point,” she said, adopting his bulleted way of speaking.
He looked out the window until she understood he wasn’t going to answer the question. Which was fair enough, but then he turned back. “You’re a therapist, you said.”
“Yes, that’s right. I have an office on Côte-des-Neiges. Grace Tomlinson. You could come by if you wanted to, or call, any time. I’m listed.”
“This is how you get business? Skiing around looking for depressed people?”
“That’s right, exactly,” Grace said cheerfully. One of her professional skills was to remain unruffled. “It was a slow day until you turned up. Can you direct me from here?”
He nodded. They drove north along St. Laurent, through Little Italy, into a neighborhood where most of the signs were in Vietnamese. He told her to turn onto a darker side street, mainly of triplexes, the external staircases dusted with snow. Finally, in front of a yellow brick building, he asked her to pull over. Lights showed on every floor. People don’t leave lights on unless they think they’re coming back, she thought. “Someone waiting for you in there, Tug?”
“You’re inquisitive,” he said.
“Yes. You said you lived alone, so why didn’t you turn off the lights?”
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. After a moment he said, “The lights are on for the dog.”
“You have a dog?”
He shook his head. “It’s my ex-wife’s dog. My wife’s. Whatever she is to me now, it’s her dog. But she had to go out of town, so I’m taking care of it. This happens all the time. She’s picking him up later. He would’ve been fine, okay? He has water, food, a chew toy. I hate that dog.”