“It hasn’t been the best morning,” he said, holding her tighter. “But better now that I’m here with you.”
“Good,” she told him, wondering if today was a day she’d have to dig, if he would let her in or push her away.
* * *
—
When they spoke for the very first time, in the elevator in the Global Public Health building, Emily had been surprised that Ezra noticed her. She’d seen him around—in the hallways, walking from the subway—and he always seemed absorbed in thought, as if the only world that existed was the one in his head. He wore round tortoiseshell glasses, which added to the sense that he was somehow separated from the world, looking at it through a window. And he kept to himself. Only a handful of people on the faculty knew anything about him other than his name.
Once they got together, Emily realized that Ezra’s studious appearance, his quiet reserve, masked the heart of a doctor who felt deeply for his patients and their families, and who was always thinking about what he could do to make their lives easier, how he could practice medicine more ethically, not just to make their health outcomes better but their quality of life, too. He tried, tirelessly, to find trials his patients could be part of to improve their outcomes.
“Your husband is an angel,” his patients’ parents would tell her when she went to the hospital to pick him up at the end of a long day. She thought so, too—though those parents never saw the toll the job took on him. The nights he stayed awake staring at the ceiling afraid of the dreams that might come, the hours he spent inside his own head, unable to find the words to express how he felt. The worst was when one of his patients died, and he spiraled into self-doubt and silence. Sometimes for days.
“Don’t dwell on failure,” Emily had heard Ezra’s father tell him when he felt that way. “Just learn from it.” A sentiment that Ezra seemed to have internalized, like he did so many of his parents’ beliefs.
What she told him, though, was that a death wasn’t his failure. It was the world acting out its plans. He wasn’t a god. He couldn’t fend off the inevitable forever. But Ezra didn’t see it that way. Emily wondered if it was easier to believe it was all in his power. It made failure harder, but it made everything else more meaningful.
* * *
—
“Want to talk about it?” she asked him, lifting her cheek off his shoulder.
Ezra shook his head, his wavy brown hair falling in front of his glasses. It somehow always seemed like it needed a trim. “I’d rather not,” he said.
“You don’t have to,” she told him, brushing his hair out of his eyes, knowing he’d tell eventually, when he was ready.
It might take hours, days, sometimes even weeks, but she knew how to give him his space when he needed it. And she could usually comfort him when he was finally ready to talk. She could read people like she could read music, feeling the emotion between the notes, the way to tease the meaning from the melody with her fingers. She wondered, sometimes, if Ezra’d had to marry a therapist, if someone who hadn’t been trained in psychology could’ve made a relationship work with him.
“Thank you,” he said, and kissed her again.
“How about I come get you at the end of the day?” she asked. “Maybe we can walk home? Stop for dinner on the way?”
“Lady’s choice,” he told her. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She wove her fingers through his. “You have to head back now?”
“Now that I’m fortified, I’ll be able to handle it all.”
“Good.” She knew this wouldn’t be the end of it, but it was what he needed now, and she was happy to give it to him.
They kissed one last time, and Ezra left Emily’s office. She stood at her second-floor window to watch him appear below her on Broadway, hailing a yellow cab amid the traffic and jumping inside. Sometimes she still couldn’t believe that she and Ezra were married—that this beautiful, brilliant, broken man brought her more happiness than she’d felt in more than a decade. It made her strive to be better, to make sure she was a woman worthy of a man like that.
* * *
—
Arielle had argued with Emily when she told her, three years ago, that she was going to take Ezra’s last name.
“But you’ve got a doctorate,” Ari said. “You’re one of the authors on a clinical study.” Arielle had been particularly proud of her sister’s byline on that paper.