Page 64 of The Devil You Know
“What are you saying?” I manage.
Ben is quiet. He bites his lip.
I take a deep breath. “Are you… are you saying you want to leave?”
Please say no. Please say no.
After what seems like an eternity, he says, “Yeah. Maybe.”
I want to hit him. Whatever happened to “we love each other too much for that to happen”? It turns out that was bullshit, like everything else in our marriage.
“I’m going out,” he says.
“Where are you going?” I ask in a tiny voice.
“WherecanI go?” he mutters. “This is fuckingLong Island.”
It’s got to be below freezing out, but Ben tugs on his heavy winter coat and pulls on his hat. He’ll probably end up in his car at some point, because otherwise he’ll end up freezing to death. And while part of me feels like I don’t give a shit what happens to him at this point, the part of me that doesn’t want my husband to die hands him a scarf.
“Thanks,” he says quietly as he accepts the scarf.
“Are you coming back?” I ask in a voice so tiny, it’s almost a whisper.
“I think…” He heaves a sigh. “I think I’m going to stay at a hotel tonight.”
I watch him walk through the front door, slamming it decisively behind him. It’s only when he’s gone that I sink down onto the couch. My hands are trembling and my heart is pounding. I can’t even believe that just happened. Yes, I knew we’d been fighting a lot—okay, more than a lot. But I didn’t think we were getting to the point where Ben was thinking about leaving our family.
But it’s not like this ismyfault.He’sthe one who isn’t pulling his weight around here. And now he’s pissed off when I ask him to pitch in? He’s upset because I wanted him to go to a stupid party? What the hell iswrongwith him?
If he wants to leave, let him leave. It’s not like he helps me with anything anyway. I managed just fine without him when he was in Reading. And right now, I’m not even sure I want him around.
Chapter 25
It took me three hours of tossing and turning in bed to fall asleep. In the beginning, I couldn’t sleep because I was too fired up with anger and adrenaline. I kept thinking of things I wish I had said to Ben, although I have a feeling that none of those things would have made the situation any better.
Then after the first hour, the anger turned into concern. Wherewashe? What kind of hotel was he staying at? Was it some crazy Motel 6 where he was going to get himself murdered? He should have just slept in our spare bedroom.
I kept looking over at Ben’s empty side of the bed. There have been very few nights in our entire marriage that we’ve spent apart. It’s hard to sleep without him next to me. Even though I sort of hate him right now.
At some point, I must have drifted off into a restless sleep, and when I woke up in a cold sweat at five in the morning, the bed was still empty. I stared at the left side ofthe bed for several minutes, then closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep.
When I finally got up in the morning, feeling like a truck had run me over, I discovered Ben asleep on the couch in the living room, snoring softly. I didn’t know when he had come home, but perhaps he decided not to abandon his family after all. Or maybe the hotel he went to had bed bugs.
In any case, I decided not to wake him up. After all, there was nothing I had to say to him.
Right now, I’m trying to do my job even though I feel (and certainly look) like complete shit. I’m avoiding Lisa, because I know the second she asks me what’s wrong, I’m going to burst into tears. But I’m not performing at my best. My shining moment of the day was when I was trying to call the lab to get the results of a urinalysis I ordered. The first time I called, I wasn’t paying enough attention to the phone menu, so I selected the wrong option. I called back, but this time I dialed the wrong phone number altogether. I called back again and listened to the message, but accidentally pressed the wrong option number again anyway. I called back again and this time didn’t listen to the message, but accidentally pressed the wrong option number once again. Finally, on the fifth try, I managed to get through to the lab.
At some point, I started to wonder if none of this was real and I was dreaming the whole thing. That’ssomething that has happened to me before in dreams—I’ve been trying and trying to dial a number and just can’t dial it correctly.
Maybe all of this is a dream. Maybe Ben never told me he was seriously considering leaving me.
The worst part is that today is my evening clinic day of the month. Ben picks up Leah today because I have patients booked until eight at night. It’s horrible. I hope he actually picks her up—I should probably text him to make sure, but I figure that Mila will most certainly be contacting me if he doesn’t.
The patient I’m seeing right now is sapping every last bit of my strength. His name is Sam Powell and he’s an OIF vet. I actually see a lot of younger men in clinic thanks to the most recent wars overseas. Operation Enduring Freedom was the war in Afghanistan that started in 2001 after the World Trade Center bombings. Then two years later was Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Between the two wars, there’s a huge influx of young veterans, many of whom are messed up in the head from their experiences watching their friends get blown to bits by Improvised Explosive Devices, also known as roadside bombs. Some of them are fine, but Sam Powell is not.
Mr. Powell has a bad case of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. It’s not uncommon in vets who have seen some of the awful things that he’s seen. I think he had issues before though, and going off to war only made him worse.I don’t know everything that’s happened to him—that’s a matter for his psychiatrist to address. But I do know one thing: a lot more psychiatrists and psychologists are desperately needed here at the VA. There’s only so much I can do for this guy as his primary care doctor.
“I need to be tested,” Mr. Powell tells me. “For, you know, STDs.”
