NICK

      BEFORE

      Stacy is waiting for me in the parking lot when I pull into work. In her hands rest two Starbucks cups, one for her and one for Dr. C, both containing an overdose of caffeine. She holds them out to torment me and says the exact same thing that’s on my mind, “Two more months,” because we both know I’ll be celebrating my baby’s arrival with a venti coffee, fully loaded, to make up for nine months of caffeine withdrawal.

      The headaches were stymieing at first, enough that I almost caved after the first two days. Like some sort of alcoholic on a drinking binge, I sneaked into the closest chain coffee shop twice a day and stood in line, standing there with no intent to buy, inhaling the aroma of freshly brewed coffee to see if it was enough to jump-start my day. One time I even ordered a double espresso, but before the barista could hand it to me, I changed my mind. Trust is one of the pillars of a good marriage, the foundation a marriage is built upon. I had made a promise to Clara, and I intended to keep it.

      Now, as I hold open the door for Stacy and she and her two cups of coffee pass through, I tell myself only two more months to go. Two more months until I can drink caffeine, too. “Your perseverance is quite impressive, my friend,” says Stacy as I follow her into the dental practice that bears my name on the front door, Solberg & Associates Family Dental. It’s a space that’s entirely chic—and not at all my style—Clara’s design because it was the only way she’d say yes to my idea of starting my own practice. To me, it just made sense. There were more start-up costs initially, but in the long run we, Clara and me, would see the financial benefits of owning our own practice, as well as being blessed with financial independence that working for another practice would curtail. That’s the way I explained it to Clara anyway, a few years ago as we sat at the breakfast nook of the fixer-upper we’d just bought for a steal, well below asking price because my negotiation skills weren’t half bad, Clara’s disinterested eyes glazing over as I went on and on about the costs of a tenant upfit to an existing commercial structure, dental lenders, malpractice insurance and operating fees—employee salaries, office equipment, the pricey drip coffee maker I’d go nine months without being able to use.

      As it was, I had an undergrad in business administration plus a DMD. It seemed the logical next step for me. I was in the know, a businessman with a doctor of dental medicine degree. And Clara, with full decorating authority and a liberal budget, agreed. In time. My credit was good enough, and so even though we had a house and cars to pay for, my hefty student loans, securing a loan wasn’t a big deal, even one in excess of four hundred grand, though I had to get life and disability insurance to go with it, money set aside to cover my debt should I die. It was a formidable proposition, and yet, at twenty-six, death wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon. I also put our house on the line as collateral. Though the medical and dental industries weren’t hit by the same recession that hampered other businesses at the time, I had to prove to the lender I wasn’t going to default on the loan.

      The space Clara and I picked out for the practice was close to home, less than nine miles, so that my commute was a mere thirteen minutes each way. We paid more to find space on a four-lane highway, on one of the main arteries in town, so that the thousands of cars that drove past each day would see us, Solberg & Associates Family Dental, and that we weren’t tucked off on some country road that no one ever used. Clara agreed. Not right away, no, but in time she agreed, and eventually set to work ordering furniture to fill the waiting room, a wide-screen TV and expensive diversions for the kids: a sand maze and a play cube and a top-of-the-line roller-coaster table, because at the time she was newly pregnant with Maisie and could think of nothing but catering to kids. She subscribed to magazines and got a wire wall rack to hold them all. She insisted we line the floor with hardwood or tile, and I readily agreed, knowing that winter in Chicagoland is replete with slush and snow, and hardwood would be easier to keep clean. Of course it cost more than carpeting, but at a time when we were putting so much into the practice, it seemed so easy just to throw a little more in. And a little more, and a little more. Clara and I were both consumed with this false sense of free money, forgetting somehow that sooner or later we’d need to pay it all back, convincing ourselves that defrayment would come in the form of small payments, and by then business would be booming anyway and money wouldn’t be a concern at all.

      Clearly we were wrong.

      And now, as I walk into the office and watch Nancy at the front desk, Nancy the receptionist, reprinting a receipt because she’s managed to drip her cocoa on it so that blotches of brown sully the words on the receipt, I wonder how much the additional sheet of paper is costing me, how much for the toner and the electricity that keeps the printer functional, how much I pay Nancy, kind, affable Nancy whom every patient likes, to sip her cocoa and answer the phones and spill her drink on the receipts.

      There was a time when I didn’t think about any of it, but now I can’t help but think of it all, every last penny I no longer have to my name. The truth of the matter is, I’m in dire straits and I don’t want Clara to know. I’ve tried to think of ways to turn a quick and easy profit before having to admit to her that the practice is crumbling, our life savings nearly gone. I’ve looked into everything I can think of to make extra cash: dog walking on my lunch break, taking a second job in the evenings and telling Clara that I’ve expanded my hours again, selling my own plasma, selling my sperm. Selling drugs. I could get my hands on all sorts of pharmaceuticals—the perks of being a dentist—and then sell them on the street to middle-class moms. Heck, I have even considered heading to Vegas and betting everything I have on roulette, but the cost of a hotel and an airplane ticket quickly sapped that idea, as well as the need to explain to Clara where I’d been.

      And then, in these moments of total desperation, when my self-pity gets the best of me and I can barely see beyond the past due notices to think logically, my mind drifts to the notion of Russian roulette—one round in the chamber of a revolver—wondering if Clara might be better off without me around. It is morbid, which really isn’t me. I like to think of myself as a glass-half-full kind of guy. And yet it is natural, human nature, when the stress gets the best of me, to think to myself, I wish I was dead.