“Ready?”
“To leave.”
I threw back the duvet. “I’m getting my shoes on, right now. I’ll call for a helicopter—”
“No, no.” He halted. “I can’t come back to New York. That would be far too much.”
My hopes plummeted. He was ready to leave but not to come home?
“I was wondering,” he beg
an, almost like a child too afraid to ask for something he really, really wanted, for fear of being turned down. “Would you considering coming to Iceland? With Olivia?”
“Iceland?” Pack up all the baby stuff and haul ourselves all the way to Iceland?
For Neil? “Absolutely.”
“Oh, Sophie. Oh, that’s wonderful.” He laughed. “I’m so excited to see you. And Olivia. God, I can’t wait to hold her.”
“She’ll squirm right out of your arms.” I hoped like hell that she would remember him. Though he would understand the limitations of baby brains, it would still crush him if she didn’t. “When do we do this?”
“Well, Dr. Harris is going to accompany me there in two days,” he said. “You could meet me on the weekend. Would that be enough time?”
“No, it’s going to be a mess trying to get packed,” I told him, and it would be. I added, “But, yes. I would swim us there.”
“Or you could take the jet,” he teased back. “I’ll have it on standby at JFK on Saturday?”
“Yeah, I’ll figure out a time frame.” This was so weird. Just casually talking about how in a few days, we would uproot and haul our asses to Iceland.
And we were uprooting Dr. Harris, as well. “Is Doctor Harris staying with us?”
“Oh, no. No, he’s coming for a week, and I’m putting him up in a very posh hotel. It won’t be a terrible hardship. After that, we’ll do some Skype sessions until I’m ready to come back.” Neil sounded relieved, and my heart loosened up. I hadn’t even realized that I’d been carrying my stress in a non-physical, fully metaphorical body part.
He was ready to leave the hospital. Ready to come home and be with us. Well, not to this home. “Why Iceland, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“There are too many chances at home to fall into my old problems, again.”
“I flushed all your cocaine,” I said flatly.
“Oh, thank god.” His deep exhale was audible. “I promise we’ll talk about all of this in Reykjavik.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” I was, even if it sounded a little unorthodox for someone’s psychiatrist to visit a small European country with them. But whatever. Stranger things happened in rich people world, and I was going to have Neil back.
“I love you…so much.” He laughed quietly. “And I’ve missed you.”
“You know what I’ve missed the most?” I asked.
He snorted. “I’m sure I do.”
“No, perv!” My laugh was like a recording of an extinct bird’s call. That’s how long it had been since I’d felt so happy. “I’ve missed sitting in bed watching T.V. with you.”
“And we can catch up on all of that,” he promised. “I need to go get some sleep, we’re filling out all of the discharge papers early in the morning, then we’ll be flying out of Montreal tomorrow evening.”
“Okay. Sleep well, baby. I love you.”
“I love you. I will tell you how much the first chance I get.”
When we hung up, my heart pounded. There was so much I was going to have to do. I breathed a sigh of relief that Olivia already had a passport from her trip to London with Valerie, because that would have been a nightmare. But getting a nursery set up there, dragging all our stuff…