Kitabı oku: «Tortured by Her Touch», sayfa 2

CHAPTER TWO

“I UNDERSTAND YOU met him,” Jason said to Anne.

“He sat at one end of a table for eight, I sat at the other. Nobody sat between us. And we didn’t talk. Not one word. I paid for his lunch and when he was through eating, he left. Thanked me for my hospitality and simply left.”

“But other than that, how was he?”

“Rude, arrogant, obnoxious, fixed on his work to the point of not even noticing anybody else there.” Her office was adjacent to her treatment room, and both were very relaxed and cozy. An immediate warm feeling drifted down over most of her patients when they came in, and that was done on purpose. Her walls were medium blue, her furniture a lighter blue accented in white, and the music piped in was a soothing Vivaldi or Bach. Atmosphere made a difference in so many of her cases, and she tried hard to achieve that comfort, as comfort equated to trust.

“But workable?”

“That, I don’t know. He’s as resistant a person as I’ve ever met. So this one is going to be the flip of a coin.”

“But you’ll try, since the majority of your referrals will come from him?”

“For a while. But if I see that he’s not working out, you’ll hear from me, Jason. And probably not just me.” Just as that threat rolled off her tongue, she received a text. When she checked it, it said: “See. I don’t bite. Lunch tomorrow?”

Anne sighed.

“What?” Jason asked.

“Nothing. Just an invite to lunch tomorrow,” she said, forcing a smile. “Lucky me.”

Jason headed for the door. “Just be careful, Anne, and you’ll be fine.”

“Don’t worry. I can handle him.” How was the question, though, especially since Jason seemed to have made her the one-person welcome committee, probably owing to her background in psychiatry. If the shrink couldn’t handle him, no one else could, either. What an assumption!

It was going on to seven that evening when Anne finally decided to call it quits. Long days were her norm, especially since she had nothing or no one to go home to. But that was OK because the last time she’d had someone to go home to, he’d been going to other homes. A lot of them. And it made her wonder how she could have been so truly wrong about the man.

Had she expected him to stay faithful while she was overseas? Of course she had. She would have. In fact, she’d been faithful when he’d been the one overseas, fighting, and she’d been stateside, working in a military hospital. It would have never occurred to her to cheat on him, and now she went home to a big, empty house every night, fixed herself a microwave dinner, caught up on some reading, showered and went to bed.

Big night. And nights were the worst, which was why she put in at least a dozen hours a day at the hospital. It was better than going home.

Flipping off the lights, she opened up the door and nearly tripped over Marc, who was merely sitting outside her office door. “What do you want?” she snapped.

“You bought me lunch, so I owe you a meal. Dinner?”

“You don’t owe me anything.” Her heart skipped a beat as she did like the idea of eating with him but she didn’t want to sound too anxious.

“Maybe an apology for being such a jerk today.”

“Apology accepted. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”

“Married, divorced from a lousy cheater, work longer hours than any other doc at Gallahue. I’m betting your evening consists of a microwave dinner and reading medical journals until you fall asleep.”

“I do watch the eleven o’clock news.”

“The epitome of a boring life. Which is why I thought dinner with me is better than dinner with the microwave. Besides, I have some questions to ask you.”

“If they pertain to the hospital, ask Jason.”

“Don’t you find him a little boring?” Marc asked.

“As a chief of staff or as my brother-in-law? Because I’m actually quite fine with him in both capacities.”

“Ah, a family tie.”

“He’s married to my twin sister, so that makes him family.”

“And you spend all the holidays with them, right?”

“How did you know about my divorce?” she asked.

“People talk.”

“But you haven’t even started to practice here yet.”

“And like I said, people talk.”

“They talk to people who give them a warm and fuzzy feeling, and you haven’t got a warm or fuzzy feeling in you.”

“Then it has to be the other thing.”

“What other thing?”

“People don’t see you when you’re in a wheelchair. For some reason, you’re invisible to them, so they talk around you.”

“And people are talking about me?”

“About how your divorce became final recently. Apparently, he’s been fighting you for everything, but you won. Left the man practically destitute.”

“People know too much,” she snapped. “It was an ugly divorce. But since he’s the one who deserted the marriage and left me holding a whole lot of hard feelings, and debt, what can I say other than I’m glad he got everything that’s coming to him?”

“And you’re going to get …”

“First, sell my house. Then buy a nice little cottage, maybe take up gardening. I’d like a cat, too.”

“A cat?”

She smiled. “Everything that makes life nice.”

“No man?”

“Absolutely not! Been there, don’t want to go back.”

“Good, then I’m not taking out another man’s woman to dinner tonight.”

“I didn’t accept your invitation, and I don’t intend to.”

“Because we’re not compatible?” That was an understatement.

“Because I don’t particularly like you.”

Rather than being angry, Marc smiled. “Do you realize how many people actually put up with me and my attitude just because I’m in a wheelchair? They find that if they deny me or do something other than what I want, they’re doing something deeply wrong or offensive. The man’s a wounded war veteran and it’s important to appease him.”

“Appease you? Let me tell you, your wheelchair’s not off-putting, Marc. But your attitude is. So thanks for the invitation but I’d rather curl up with a good medical journal than suffer another meal with you.” With that, she strode away, the sound of angry heels clicking on the floor tile. Rather than frowning, though, a slight smile actually turned up the corners of her lips. This was going to be interesting.

“Well, then, we’ll stick to the plan. I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow.”

She turned back to give him a stiff glare, but what came off was more confused than anything, and she hated wearing her emotions on her sleeve, as they always sent out the wrong impression. “Not if your life depended on it, Marc Rousseau,” she said, trying to remain rigid, although her insides were quivering. “Not if your life depended on it!”

Anne snuggled down on her sofa with a glass of white grape juice and a medical journal and a soft Schubert quintet playing in the background. She wasn’t really so physically tired as she was mentally stressed. Nothing had gone well today. Two of her patients had had emotional breaks—big ones. One had tried to jump out her window until he remembered her office was on the first floor, and then he’d simply smashed furniture. After which he’d apologized and offered to pay for the damages. The other had sat in her office and wept uncontrollably for over an hour, until she’d finally had him sedated and checked in for a night of observation.

Shutting her eyes, she rotated her ankles for a moment, then sank further back into the sofa pillows, not sure if, when the time came, she’d be able to get up and make it all the way upstairs to the bedroom.

She really did hate this house. Hated everything in it because it stood for a happier time—a time when love had been fresh and exciting and she’d known it would last forever. And it wasn’t like Bill hadn’t known she’d be serving overseas when he’d asked her to marry him. He’d be good with it, he’d claimed. There was nothing for her to worry about.

Stupid her, she’d believed him. And on her first leave, she’d come back to a marriage she’d believed was as stable as it had ever been in their three years. But on her second trip stateside he’d seemed more remote. He’d claimed he was tired, too much work, just getting over a cold … there’d been a whole string of excuses, but by the end of her leave, things had been normal again, and she’d returned overseas happy to know that the next time she came home it would be for good.

But when that day came, she’d found earrings in a drawer on her side of the bed. And a bra. And panties. It had seemed, as the days had gone by, there had been more and more excuses for Bill to invent. None of them plausible. Then her neighbor, an older lady, had commented on the succession of housekeepers who’d come and gone at odd hours of the day and night. “Sometimes two, three times a week!” Mrs. Gentry had exclaimed.

One check with the cleaning service confirmed her suspicion. The cleaning service cleaned every Friday morning. Once a week. No more, no less. Her accountant had verified that with the checks that had been written. He’d also recommended the best lawyer in Port Duncan, New York.

“Protect your assets, Anne. Bill’s been doing a lot of spending while you were gone, and if you want to keep anything for yourself, it’s time to lawyer up.” Said by James Callahan, the attorney she’d hired that day.

Through it all, though, Anne had been numb. She had been unable to function. Betrayal. Fragments of memories left over from Afghanistan. Things she hadn’t been able to forget … or fix. No, it hadn’t made sense, but it had seemed like her world had been closing in around her. She’d been unable to breathe half the time. The other half of the time, she hadn’t been able to quit crying. Vicious circle. Every day. Sucking the life out of her every day. Little pieces of it just falling away, one at a time.

She’d almost been at the point of complete breakdown when she’d realized she couldn’t control what was happening to her, so she’d sought counseling. Her condition hadn’t been diagnosed as PTSD, but the emotional conflict had given her a deep understanding of those who did suffer through it—the confusion, the anger, the pain. After seeing it on the field and coming up to the edge of it herself, before she’d realized it, she’d been in a PhD program, coupling what she knew as an MD with learning about stress disorders. It had seemed a logical place for her to be. Where she’d wanted to be.

For that part of her life, she’d put her divorce on hold and concentrated only on herself. Fixing herself first, retraining herself second. Of course, her intention had been to restart divorce proceedings once the rest of it was behind her. One trauma at a time was what she’d learned. Deal with one at a time. And while Bill had been a problem, he hadn’t been a trauma. In fact, getting rid of him would be her easiest fix.

So then, a whole year after she’d decided to take that fix, he’d come after her, claiming that her being gone had caused him PTSD. Of all the low, miserable things to do …

“But he learned,” she said as she shut her book and decided she was comfortable right where she was. “When I got through with him, he’d learned to pick his women dumb and dependent. God forbid he should ever get a fighter again or she might do worse to him than I did.”

Sighing, she shut her eyes, and while she expected to go to sleep with visions of Bill in her choke hold filling her dreams, the person there tonight was … Marc. And he was smiling.

“Nice smile,” she whispered as she dozed off. Yes, it was a very nice smile to go to sleep with.

He’d been in bed two hours now, alternately staring at the ceiling, then watching the green numbers on the digital clock. The harder he tried to sleep, the more he couldn’t. Marc’s first thought was a nice cup of hot herbal tea—something soothing. Then in his mind he added brandy to it, just a sip, but the problem with that was he wasn’t a drinker. Never had been. No booze, no pills. Just a bad attitude to get him through.

So what got Anne through? he wondered. She seemed pretty straightforward. Even functional, considering her divorce.

“Some people are made to be more functional,” he told his orange-striped tomcat named Sarge, who was stretched out on the bed, snoozing quite contentedly. Sarge was huge, a Maine Coon weighing in at twenty-five pounds. He’d been cowering on Marc’s doorstep one day, all beaten and bloody, and there hadn’t been a muscle or sinew in Marc’s body that could have shut the door on him because he’d known exactly how the cat had felt—defeated. So he’d taken him in, nursed him back to health, yet hadn’t named him, as his intention had been to turn him over to a no-kill rescue shelter for adoption.

Except the damned cat had these soulful big green eyes that Marc had been unable to resist. So he’d eventually called him Sarge, mostly because his huge size reminded him of an overwhelmingly large and tender-hearted sergeant he’d had working for him in Afghanistan, and he and the cat had become best buddies.

“She’s something, Sarge,” he told the cat as he pulled a can of cat tuna off the shelf. “And so damn obvious it’s laughable. The lady’s in charge of the PTSD program, and I’m sure I’m supposed to be her secret conquest.” He chuckled as he filled the cat bowl and laid it on the floor at the back door to his apartment—a door never used, due to the six steps down. Management had offered to ramp it for him, but he’d told them, no, that one door was plenty. He lived a Spartan life, didn’t need people fawning all over him. Especially his family. He wondered where Nick was right now. Maybe living it up somewhere and doing every dumb thing in the book just to prove he could. He shuddered, thinking about his brother’s lifestyle. Wild. Carefree. Nothing mattered. Most of all, he wondered if Nick even appreciated the freedom he had to do so many stupid things.

Whatever the case, his parents, Jane and Henry, had been ready to drop everything to take care of him, but that was too clingy. No phone calls or texts, he’d said. He was fine. No sad faces, no mother’s tears, no overcompensation from his dad. A cat was good, though. You fed him, watered him, changed his pan, and he didn’t give a hang whether or not all that came from a paraplegic or someone who could walk.

And he never should have asked Anne Sebastian out, not even for a make-good on a very miserable lunch. What had he expected? That she’d actually want to go with him after he’d been so obnoxious? “I deserved it,” he told the cat, who was busy gulping down his food. “I’m not exactly dating material and, God knows, I don’t have friends.” But for one brief moment, he’d actually thought a couple hours with Anne might be nice.

So much for thinking. So much for anything that resembled a normal life. This was it. A tiny apartment, a cat and an SUV that had been fixed for him to drive. Yep, that was his life. Except he did have a job to add to that mix now. Admittedly, he was looking forward to the work, to having the chance to help others like himself. “Time to go do the weights,” he said to his cat as he spun his chair around and went to the second bedroom, which had been turned into a workout room. “Wanna come spot me, Sarge?” he called out. The cat’s response was to simply stop in the hall outside the workout room and wash his face.

“Some friend you are!”

“He’s interesting,” Anne said to Hannah, her twin sister, the next evening. Hannah was now confined to bed as much as possible as she was nearing her due date and she’d been diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Anne perched herself on the side of the bed with a carton of ice cream and two spoons, ready to eat their favorite—vanilla fudge. Even at the age of thirty-five, they were still identical in every way that counted, right down to the clothes they picked out and the food they liked and disliked.

“Jason said he’s pretty bitter.”

“I suppose I would be, too, if that had happened to me. I mean, I deal with returning soldiers every day who come back just like Dr. Rousseau … like him and worse. I was lucky. All I had to come back to was …”

“How is Bill, by the way?”

“Even though the divorce is final, he’s still fighting me just as hard as ever.” Anne wrung her hands nervously, then continued on in a shaky voice, “For two cents, I’d just hand it all over to him and walk away, but my attorney believes I’m entitled to my share since I was the one off fighting for my country while Bill was spending his time on the golf course and in our bed, so he’s not going to let Bill go back and amend the settlement.”

She shrugged, then patted her sister’s enormous belly. “Glad we never had children to enter into the mix. Don’t know how I would have handled having to have interaction with him because of a child. This way, I don’t ever have to deal with him again. I just refer him to my lawyer.” She let out a ragged sigh. “It’s better that way.”

“But children are going to be nice.”

“For you. And I predict I’m going to make a great aunt. Spoil the baby rotten, then send her home to her mother.”

“Instead of dating? You know, going out, having fun. Have a life. It’s been a long time coming.”

“But I’m not really going to do the dating thing for a while, if ever.”

“You may change your mind,” Hannah said as she scooped a spoon of ice cream from the container. “When you meet the right man, or realize you’ve already met him.”

“Who? Marc?”

Hannah shrugged.

“Ha! Those pregnancy hormones have gone to your brain and left you with an imagination as big as your belly.”

Hannah shrugged again. “Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not.”

“You’re the acquiescent one, Hannah, and I’m—”

“The stubborn one,” Hannah supplied. “I know. But relationships don’t always make sense. Don’t follow a logical pattern.”

“Tell me about it. Look what I fell for the first time around.” Anne winced. She’d fallen head over heels in days, maybe in minutes. Had married in mere weeks. “Yeah, well, next time, if there is a next time, I won’t be looking for perfection as much as compatibility. Too bad Jason is taken, because I think you got the last good man. He doesn’t happen to have a secret brother hidden somewhere, does he?”

Hannah laughed. “Men like that don’t stay available too long, sis. I’m lucky I got Jason when I did because it was only a matter of time until some other fortunate woman would have plucked him off the market.”

Anne couldn’t help but wonder if Marc had been married or engaged or near the plucking stage prior to his accident. “Well, right now I have a nemesis who’s going to fight me every step of the way and that’s the only man I want to contend with for a while. And, trust me, that’s enough for anyone.”

“He’ll come round,” Hannah said, taking another bite of ice cream. “Once he gets settled into the routine, you’ll persuade him. Or let’s say out-stubborn him. Poor man doesn’t even know what’s headed his direction.”

Anne jabbed her spoon into the ice cream. “I think he’s equal to it. And I think he’s going to be lots of fun,” she said with a sarcastic grimace on her face to Hannah. “About as much fun as a sticker bush with large stickers.”

CHAPTER THREE

HIS APARTMENT WASN’T much in the way of square footage, but it didn’t matter because there wasn’t much that he needed in this world and that included space. But he did have to admit that his office was everything he could have wanted, and more. It was spacious, accessible. Larger than his apartment, actually.

“You like it?” Anne asked as she followed him in through the door.

“Are you my appointed keeper now?”

“In a way, I suppose you could say that. We’re the only two with offices and treatment rooms at this end of the building, and physical rehab has enough space it’s practically a wing unto itself, so I’m appointed by proximity.”

“Don’t need a keeper, don’t need the proximity either.”

“Not your choice, Marc. This is the way the hospital is laid out and, as it stands, our offices are back to back. If you don’t like it, well …” She shrugged her shoulders. “Too bad. Because I don’t think they’re going to rearrange an entire hospital wing to suit your needs. It is what it is, so get used to it.”

“Look, Doctor, I know you’re probably only following orders, but I’m perfectly capable of managing this department on my own. Tell your brother-in-law that if he believes I need a keeper, he can have my keys back.” He fished his set of keys from his pocket and held them out for her. “Take them. I don’t want this job after all.”

Rather than taking the keys, she merely stood back and laughed at him. “You really are full of yourself, aren’t you?”

He looked like he’d been stung by a bee, the words shocked him that much. “I came here to do a specific job, and I’m good at it.”

“When you don’t let yourself get in the way. Which probably is too often,” she quipped.

“And you know what it’s like?”

“To be you? No, I don’t. I can’t even imagine. But I do know what it’s like to be the new person in the door where everybody’s watching you and waiting for you to mess up. I was there not that long ago, and it was as if every time I turned around someone was staring at me or whispering. Probably because I’m Jason’s sister-in-law who came in here with her own set of problems. The difference between you and me was that I wasn’t so thin-skinned on my way in the door. Nor was I so defensive. I just came to do a job and so far that’s what I’ve done.”

“You’re calling me thin-skinned?”

She shrugged. “Maybe not thin-skinned so much as overly sensitive. You’re adjusting to a new life, where everything is different, and it seems like every little thing bothers you.”

“So I’m either thin-skinned or overly sensitive?”

“Maybe a little. I mean, I had my divorce going on when I got here and it was a struggle not to let it follow me in the door. But I succeeded.”

Marc spun in his chair to see her. “I don’t think you can compare yours to mine.”

“No. I got out in one piece.”

“Out of what?”

“The war. Afghanistan. Three tours. I was a major in the army, which outranks you as a captain.” She smiled. “Just in case you’re interested.”

“You served?” he asked, totally stunned.

“Three times overseas, would have gone back for four. I ran a field hospital.”

“Sorry, I had no idea.”

“Because I don’t wear it as some sort of badge. I just come to work, recognize PTSD when I see it, and go to work trying to fix it.”

“And you think you’re seeing it in me.”

“The bigger question is, do you think you’re seeing it in yourself? See, the thing is, you won’t get fixed, or even helped, if you don’t want to. That’s the deal with PTSD. You have to be willing to accept treatment in order to get past it, or at least know how to deal with it.”

“Well, my injuries are all on the outside,” he snapped, slapping his leg. “Something counseling isn’t going to fix, if that’s what you were going to ask. I healed fine, and I live fine. Better than a lot of the men and women coming back. So save your healing touch for them, Major …” he gave her a mock salute “… because I don’t need it and I don’t need you.”

“But some of your patients will, and I’m wondering if you’ll be objective enough to know which ones. Because they usually don’t ask, Doctor. In fact, part of your responsibility will be to make referrals to me and that, quite frankly, worries me.”

“Why? Don’t you think I can do my job?”

“Honestly, no, I don’t. When Jason brought your name to the board as someone to investigate, I voted against you because everything I’d heard, not to mention everything I’d read, indicated you were still fighting your own demons. But he out-talked me, swayed the voting members over to his side to give you an interview, and I lost. So here you are on a trial basis being exactly the way I predicted you’d be.”

“It’s nice to know who your enemies are.” He arched skeptical eyebrows. “Especially when they make no effort to hide themselves.”

“You’re not my enemy, Marc, and I’m not yours. But I’m not sure you’re capable of being a responsible colleague, either. At least, nothing you’ve shown me so far gives me the impression that you are.”

“Maybe that’s because you haven’t seen me work as a doctor.”

“And maybe that’s because you’ve never worked in physical rehab. According to your résumé this is your first job in that specialty. You’re here straight from your residency.”

“So tell me, how long had you worked in your specialty when your sister’s husband hired you to work here?”

“That’s different. He knew me.”

“But no experience means no experience. Isn’t it all the same?”

“You’re trying to twist my words,” she said, struggling to stay calm.

“What I said was that you got hired based on who you’d been and not who you were. In my opinion, if that’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me. Unless nepotism carries more weight than skills do.”

“I’m not debating your skill as a doctor. You come with a lot of commendations, including a Medal of Honor.”

“Then what are you debating?”

“Your past, your attitude. A couple of people in rehab with you said you were the worst case in the bunch. Your therapist agreed, and said you fought everything and everybody. She said when someone crossed you, you simply shut them out, and that went for the whole team assigned to you. Yet the people who worked with you on the battlefield gave you glowing praises. Which tells me that the before version of you is the real you and you’re keeping it hidden. Or, in other words, you’re afraid to let it back out.”

“So you have done your homework.” Laughing derisively, he simply shook his head.

“To be honest, Marc, I’ve done a ton of homework on you, starting with your trip back to med school to do a physical rehab residency. Couldn’t have been easy.”

He winced. “It was … fine. I mean, what were my choices? Take a desk job somewhere, teach? I wanted to practice, and this gave me an opportunity. Who better to teach someone like me than me?”

“Maybe someone with more compassion?” Anne snapped.

“You haven’t seen my level of compassion, so it’s not fair of you to judge me. And, no, this isn’t PTSD talking. It’s one angry-as-hell former army medic talking—one who lost the use of his legs and had to change his whole life plan. So I’m not like you, Anne, who had emotional difficulties because I couldn’t cope. If a hysterical outbreak was all it took to get me out of the chair, I’d be happy to become hysterical in a heartbeat.”

She drew in a bracing breath. She was used to being challenged by patients. Happened every day. Their tragedies were greater than hers, their suffering more—something she couldn’t possibly understand, so many of them told her. But she’d been to the very depths of hell, too, and she knew what that felt like. Maybe not in the same way others experienced it, because no two people went through it the same way. But like Marc, she’d had to fight hard to come back. And who knew? Maybe one day he’d finally understand that suffering was suffering, no matter the form in which it came.

“Look, we have a meet-and-greet tomorrow to give you a chance to meet all your new colleagues. I was wondering, since you’re new in town, if you’d like to grab a quick dinner afterward.”

“You’re asking me on a date?”

“Not a date, but I thought that since these meet-and-greets are usually pretty boring, you might appreciate the opportunity to get out of there a little early without looking like some pathetic loser who leaves there alone.”

“Aren’t you the picture of compassion?” he said, his voice perfectly even.

“Just trying to be friendly. That is, if you’re capable of being friendly.”

“I can be as friendly as the next guy when I have to be.”

“I have a degree in psychology as well as medicine, Doctor. Want me to tell you in how many ways that sounded antisocial?”

“You are stubborn, aren’t you?” He actually laughed out loud. “And you think I don’t know?”

“Go ahead, call it what it is … stubborn. I am stubborn, I like it and I own it.”

A hint of a smile crinkled his eyes. “Well, you’ve met your match. My stubbornness is going to put yours to shame.”

“And you’re proud of it?”

“About as much as you are.”

She studied him for a moment and noticed that he’d visibly relaxed in his chair. Was he all bark, no bite? She doubted that. But she also doubted that his bite was worse than his bark. Marc Rousseau was hiding behind his disability, and doing so by lashing out. It was a typical scenario for an atypical man. Somehow, she looked forward to the challenge. No, he wasn’t her patient, but when had that ever stopped her? “OK, then. Tomorrow after the meet-and-greet. Would you prefer Greek or Chinese?”

“I would prefer a bowl of cold cereal, alone.”

“I didn’t hear that as an option, Doctor. So Chinese it is.”

“Chinese,” he muttered as he rolled away from her. “I hate Chinese.”

“Then Greek it is.”

“Hate Greek.”

“Then there’s an all-night diner down the street and I’m sure they serve cold cereal.” She smiled. “See you then, if not sooner.”

What had she just done? Actually, she didn’t have time to think about it on her way to her group session. Every morning was reserved for private patients who were not yet ready to face others, and every afternoon was much the same, except she blocked out two hours after lunch for her group session where anybody was welcome to sit in and talk.

Talking was cathartic. Too bad she hadn’t talked more. If she had, she might not have found herself in the depths of despair after she’d learned about Bill. But that’s where she’d ended up. Too much trauma, too much death, too many patch jobs that just hadn’t been good enough. She’d held up in the field just fine because she’d had a real purpose there, but when she’d come home to face all the things a family practitioner had to face—coughs and sore throats and gallstones—she’d broken in half. That, plus a failing marriage and her whole life had started to decompose.