Healer Read online




  Praise for healer by Carol Cassella

  “A smart second novel. . . . Cassella excels at dialogue and creating distinctly colorful minor characters. . . . Cassella’s writing about medical care and ethics, pharmaceutical drug development and the conditions of migrant workers’ lives is moving and sophisticated; let’s hope this doctor has more stories to tell.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “Healer has much to recommend it. Claire and Addison’s relationship is rocked not by infidelity, but by their attitudes toward money. It’s a theme rarely explored in fiction these days, even as many people with lavish lifestyles find themselves in trouble with their mortgages. Cassella paints a clear picture of Hallum and its surroundings. Supporting characters, particularly in the medical clinic, shine. Cassella, a working anesthesiologist, has a keen ear and uses it to great effect to create realistic situations in which to place a nerve-racked Claire.”

  —The Oregonian

  “Healer is a story of steadfastness in the face of quiet desperation, of staying afloat in a sea of uncertainty simply because there is no other choice. Anesthesiologist Carol Cassella draws on both her professional and personal knowledge to propel the story of a family whose lives are on the ropes. . . . Cassella writes like a dream, with language that is lyrical and direct without being sparse. When she writes of Claire’s worry, and her struggles to find a way forward given the hand life has dealt, it’s personal . . . this is where Healer finds its resonance. Claire must find her way through changed economics, a story many will find familiar. . . . And Claire’s search for a new path is a redemptive journey, for Claire and for the reader.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Carol Cassella provides her engrossing second novel, Healer, with the kind of issues over trust that any couple could have. Cassella is especially good at conveying all the frustration, embarrassment and disappointment that Claire feels as she tries to settle into a temporary life in Hallam. Her medical background obviously helped with her first novel, Oxygen, and it helps again as she describes Claire’s halting attempts to make her way into the medical community of this resort town.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “In her second novel, Healer, Carol Cassella draws upon her own medical background to lend credence to the fast-paced, emotionally moving story of family relationships and sacrifices. It is easy to admire Cassella’s depiction of the strength of her characters Claire and Miguela, both mothers trying to do their best for their daughters. . . . Cassella’s creative storytelling makes Healer a novel that is a pleasure to read.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Carol Cassella’s sophomore novel is already attracting attention. Following her excellent medical drama Oxygen, Healer also touches upon the issue of immigration, while unraveling an intriguing mystery that lives up to the promise of her debut.”

  —CultureMob

  “Claire Boehning faces a bleak future when her privileged life ends abruptly in Cassella’s second novel (after Oxygen). Cassella (a real-life doctor) takes a hard look at a faulty health-care system to illustrate the power of money and class in this timely and multifaceted novel.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “It’s tough to follow a spectacular debut like Oxygen, Carol Cassella’s striking first novel, with an even stronger second novel, but she’s done it with Healer. There are no blatant good guys and bad guys in Healer, no simple blacks and whites. Cassella’s characters come in myriad shades of gray that make up the complex psyche of all human beings. And when money competes with good intentions, Cassella doesn’t shy away from negotiating the murky ethical areas where profit and altruism collide, weaving questions of immigration, health care, and the power of big pharma into a page turning drama. I highly recommend this compelling new book by this remarkable author.”

  —Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

  “A deeply powerful story about the intricate intersection of marriage, motherhood, and career. Clear-eyed and compassionate, Carol Cassella takes her readers on the roller-coaster ride of a marriage and family shaken by financial upheaval.”

  —Erica Bauermeister, author of The School of Essential Ingredients

  “Healer contains absolutely everything I love in a book—a strong, sympathetic female character, suspense that keeps you turning pages, and a deep and nuanced understanding of love. Cassella’s book is brilliant on all fronts. It is one of the most gripping and ingeniously crafted novels I have read this year.”

  —Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of The Castaways

  Also by Carol Cassella

  Oxygen

  SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Carol Wiley Cassella

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Paperbacks Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition June 2011

  SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Cassella, Carol Wiley.

  Healer / Carol Wiley Cassella

  p. cm.

  1. Single women—Fiction. 2. Anesthesiologists—Fiction.

  3. Seattle (Wash.)—Fiction.

  PS3603.A8684 O99 2008

  813'.622 2007037542

  ISBN 978-1-4165-5612-1

  ISBN 978-1-4165-5614-5 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4391-8040-2 (ebook)

  For Kathie and Ray, who showed me

  what marriage can be

  healer

  Content

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Acknowledgments

  • 1 •

  The body is a miracle, the way it heals. A factory of survival and self-repair. As soon as flesh is cut, cells spontaneously begin to divide and knit themselves into a protective scar. A million new organic bonds bridge the broken space, with no judgment passed on the method of injury. In her residency, Claire had treated a trauma patient who’d felt only one quick tug, looked down at her s
evered hand and wondered to whom on earth it might belong; even pain can be stunned into silence by the imperative to live.

  As many years as it has been, Claire still understands the human body. She understands the involuntary mechanics of healing. But how an injured marriage heals—that remains a mystery.

  This house feels so cold. Claire’s fingers had been a shocking white from the knuckles to the tips after she stripped off her gloves when they finished unloading the U-Haul a few hours ago. She should be somewhat warmer by now, indoors, but it’s as if the cold has worked its way into her core and radiates outward, chilling the room. They haven’t been out to the house since summer, and dust coats every surface; seed-shaped mouse droppings dot the sofa cushions and countertops. The pallid light seeping through the windows seems too weak to hold color; everything in the room is muted to a shade of gray.

  Jory sits on a cardboard box with her arms hugged across her stomach, her hair draped around her shoulders. “When is Dad getting here?” she asks.

  “Between business trips. He’ll come as soon as he can.” Claire says this calmly, soothingly, the way she tries to say everything to Jory these days; announcing breakfast cereal choices and packing instructions as if they were salves, verbal Vicodin or Xanax. She kneels to open the door on the cast-iron woodstove and crumples newspaper between broken sticks, watching Jory without watching. Hunting for other emotions behind her sullen anger. Claire strikes a match, shelters it inside her cupped palm until it burns plump and dependable, touches it to an edge of newsprint and a week of stock quotes flames into hot orange light. The smoke stings her eyes, she squints and closes the thick glass door, toggles the metal lever of the damper until the sluggish air inside the chimney rouses and twists silver-gray tendrils up into the night.

  Jory is quiet for a while, then says, almost accusingly, “We don’t have very much wood.”

  Claire flinches, hears it as, “Fathers build fires, mothers only turn up thermostats,” wants to retort that they have a lot less of everything they are used to, thanks to her husband. “We have plenty of wood out in the shed,” she answers. “I should teach you how to get the stove going.”

  Jory ignores her, tucking her hands between her knees and turning toward the windows so that all Claire sees is the fall of gold hair.

  “It’s a good woodstove,” Claire continues. The Realtor had told them that, hadn’t he? She hadn’t really cared at the time; they’d never expected to sleep here in winter. “I’ll call the furnace man tomorrow. And Dad can bring some space heaters when he comes.”

  “School starts tomorrow,” Jory says. Claire chucks bits of wood onto the conflagrant pile and slams the stove door before they can spill out. “School starts tomorrow,” Jory repeats, taunting her now.

  Claire looks up and answers her, for the first time today, in the voice of an equal. “It will be all right. There’s a school in Hallum if we stay very long.” She sees Jory’s stony expression and adds, “Or you can homeschool if you want. Whatever you want.”

  Jory seems to grow smaller, as if she would clench herself into a tight ball. Her face is locked inside her crossed arms so that her voice is barely audible. “I want to go back.”

  Claire sits on the ash-covered hearth and stares at the burning cinders tumbling against the glass like small animals scrambling to escape an inferno. “Well. There is no going back. Not yet.” The words come out as stern as a slap, not what she’d intended; she clenches her teeth at the sound. But other words still burn inside her head, words she chokes before she can hurt the people she loves—a litany of all they can’t go back to: no private school, no ballet lessons, no abiding trust that tomorrow will be the same or better than today. Not even the leeway to haggle for a fair offer on their lakeside home in Seattle.

  It seems a perverse joke, Claire thinks, that after years of saving and insuring it had not been a fire or flood or disease that brought their world down. It wasn’t global warming or terrorism, no collapsing levies or tsunamis—none of the headline threats that had spurred her to restock their Rubbermaid emergency boxes and stash wads of cash in suit jacket pockets at the back of the closet. Instead, for Claire and Addison and Jory, it felt quite personal, like a precisely-placed bomb destroying only their lives, leaving their neighbors and friends to stand unscathed and sympathetically gawking.

  Claire had discovered the first hint of their ruination smoldering in a declined Visa credit card on a Christmas shopping trip with Jory, buying, of all the ironic possibilities, a twelve dollar collapsible umbrella. She’d left a message on Addison’s cell phone warning him that their credit card number had been hacked, thinking the problem lay with the bank or the computer system. Surely they had been wronged by some outside force.

  The daylight has almost faded but she doesn’t want to leave the fire even to turn on the light. It is easier with Addison away. The thought darts across the surface of Claire’s subconscious with the speed of an endangered bird. Jory is staring down at the scarred pine floor, oblivious to her mother’s distress. Claire can keep up a front for Jory—mothering teaches you that from the first reassuring smile you give your toddler after a tumble. But if Addison were here he would see through Claire, she is sure. He would see her doubt and then the doubt could become real—could become the edge of the splitting maul. It almost makes her want their life here to be too difficult without him. If they can make it alone, just Jory and her, what unites their family except the tenuous hold of memories?

  Jory is shivering and Claire hunts around for a box that might hold sweaters. She rips packing tape off cartons of china and shoes and bedding, the gritty sound of tearing cardboard almost welcome in the face of Jory’s determined silence. In the third box Claire finds some of Addison’s ancient high school track sweatshirts protectively folded around candlesticks and vases and a favorite Waterford bowl. She tosses a sweatshirt to Jory and pulls another one over her own head, cinching the hood close around her face, smelling something familiar in the thick cotton: a musty hint of old wood, or even, she imagines, Addison’s gym locker, the indelible perfume of his adolescent sweat. She lines the fragile crystal pieces along the mantelpiece, dusting the bowl with her sleeve before she sets it down.

  “Why are you unpacking that stuff?” Jory asks through her cloak of hair.

  “No reason to leave everything in storage.” Claire unwraps a serving platter, searching her emotional reserves for some way to mitigate the desolation she hears in her daughter’s voice. “They’re pretty, aren’t they? We might as well enjoy them while we’re here.”

  “They’ll just get dirty. Or broken.”

  “Your grandmother gave us this plate, right before you were born.” Claire looks at her distorted image in the silver, imagines her own mother sitting down for dinner with them in this drafty room, pursing her lips as she serves herself slices of tomato or fruit tart while Claire tries to explain why they’ve moved. “Put it on the table for me, please?”

  Jory doesn’t move. Claire sets the platter on top of another unopened box and stands up, brushes the ash off her blue jeans. “Let’s go into town for dinner.”

  Without looking at her, Jory says, “I thought we couldn’t afford to eat out anymore.”

  “We can’t.” Claire pats her pockets and kicks aside the newspapers scattered beside the woodbin. “Where did I leave my keys?”

  • • •

  Food helps. The cheaper and greasier the better, sometimes. Over a cheeseburger Jory starts to talk again: a conversation about hair straighteners—what is the ideal width of the irons? Can eyelash curlers really pull out your lashes? And ballet, of course, her friends at the dance school and what they think of the recital piece. Maybe she could get new pointe shoes mailed to her, since there is no place to buy them in this itsy town.

  Claire has begun to view adolescence as a compartmentalized, revolving door. Openings flash by into different sectors of her daughter’s life and the trick is to stand close at hand, poised and ready to jump
in. There is a time-warping aspect to it: a flash forward to Jory at eighteen, competent and hopeful; a glimpse back to Jory at eight, vocal, with fresh, uninhibited awe.

  Claire pushes her French fries across the Formica table toward her daughter and rests her chin on interlaced hands. “We’ll drive back to Seattle when you need new toe shoes. It’s not so far if the passes are clear. We can make a weekend of it now and then. Get your friends together.” She doesn’t bring up the fact that there is no ballet school in Hallum Valley. “Once the furniture comes how about you invite some friends over here?”

  “Like, to do what?”

  “Ski. Hike. Mountain bike.” Claire eats another French fry, stalling to come up with something teenage girls might actually enjoy in Hallum. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

  “Go to the movies. Shop. Hang out in the mall. Nothing we can do here.” Jory drifts into silence again. “Speaking of, where am I supposed to sleep tonight?”

  “Were we speaking of that? Just share with me tonight.” The house is minimally furnished with a sofa they’d bought at a yard sale last summer, a set of folding metal chairs and a dining table. But until the moving truck arrives they have only the old double bed they’d squeezed into the U-Haul with some smaller boxes. “We’ll be warmer that way.” She expects Jory to balk at this suggestion, but instead her face softens, as if she’s been relieved of an unexpressed burden. It occurs to Claire that it is the very mattress Jory was conceived upon.

  The waitress brings the check over and asks if they want any dessert. Claire orders two ice creams and a coffee only to postpone looking at the bill. Every penny of it will be borrowed; they are borrowing to pay interest on borrowed money. What’s another ice cream? Jory slides the plastic binder that holds the check toward herself and flips it open to see the total, then slaps it shut again and pushes it back to her mother. “Let’s say Dad finds a new investor next week. Can we buy our house back?” She flashes the comic grin that has always signaled she is near the edge, ready to snatch her feelings back at the slightest threat and turn everything into a joke.