The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [88]
“And since the plane crash? How has he been as a dad since the accident?” he asked.
“Still great. He’s a terrific parent. I mean, he’s been a little spacey. How could he not? And, as you know, he’s been depressed. There was a period when I don’t think he was getting dressed until the girls were about to get off the school bus in the afternoon.”
“Here in New Hampshire?”
“No, this was in those months right after the crash. Back in Pennsylvania.”
He rubbed at his eyes, and she guessed that he was probably as tired as she was.
“How is he doing now?” she asked.
“Well, he’s sticking with his story that it was an accident. He fell. And I guess it is possible that he happened to have the knife with him when he took a tumble while going downstairs to check on the pilot light. Or maybe he fell and didn’t fall on the knife. Then, as he was sitting on the basement floor in the dark—he has no flashlight, remember—it all just overwhelms him: the accident, the move, the lack of purpose in his life right now. The flashbacks, the guilt. There is a lot going on inside his head. And so he hurts himself. I mean, we usually associate cutting with teen girls and young women. But it can affect anyone.”
“He’d never cut himself before tonight.”
“And perhaps he never will again. But it’s still going to take a bit of work to answer your question: Why did he do this? And we may never answer that question, at least not to our satisfaction. But your husband has no history of schizophrenia or mental illness or violence, correct?”
“No,” she agreed. “None. Trust me, they don’t let schizophrenics fly planes. They don’t let people who are likely to take a knife to themselves pilot commercial jets.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“But what about that thing he said about some girl on his flight—his last flight—needing a playmate? What was that about?”
“Oh, it could mean any one of a hundred things. What I found interesting is that he only brought that up after he had given you the knife and collapsed.”
“He didn’t give me the knife,” she corrected him. “He pulled it out of his stomach and tossed it on to the floor. It was like it was something that repulsed him.”
The doctor stretched his legs out straight in front of him. She noticed he was wearing black Converse sneakers. “Your husband’s contrition is profound. He is calm but ashamed. Appalled at what he did tonight. He is devastated that his girls saw him that way. But he is also continuing to insist that the water in the sink seemed a little cool when the two of you were doing the dishes after dinner. He says you went to the dining room to continue clearing the table and he went downstairs to the basement to see what was going on with the hot-water tank. But he tripped and fell. Then the lights went out.” He paused, thinking, and then turned to her. “Did that ER doctor check for a head injury?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Before your husband goes home tomorrow—”
“If my husband goes home tomorrow—”
“Make sure he was checked for a concussion. There was no obvious sign of a head injury, but I wonder if maybe he hit the back or the side of his head in the dark and blacked out. It’s just an idea.”
Emily thought about this and about how Chip hadn’t answered her when she had called out his name over and over, yelling for him as she went from floor to floor in the house. “Wouldn’t the ER have looked into a concussion?” she asked.
“You had a pretty green doctor and nurse. I think he had graduated, oh, around three-thirty this afternoon. A lot would have depended on what he thought to ask your husband. And I’m not saying your husband even has a concussion. I’m only suggesting that he may have blacked out—if only briefly.”
“You might be onto something,” she said, and she told Richmond about her attempts to find Chip and how he hadn’t responded when she had positively screamed for him during the blackout. She actually felt a little relieved at the idea that he may have