Chapter 3: The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat

January 19, 1986, Chicago, Illinois

Jessica, Kara, and I had spent a wonderful weekend together, talking, cuddling, and making love. When they did homework, I was either programming or playing one of my video games. We hadn't come any closer to finding a solution to our mutual problem of missing each other during the week, and Kara raised an issue that was potentially even more troublesome.

"Jess," Kara said as we lay in bed late Sunday morning. "I feel like I have an unfair advantage. I'm with our husband all the time and you aren't."

"That was supposed to be a good thing — you take care of Steve while I was up to my eyeballs in my education and training."

"I'm worried that the relationship won't develop properly," Kara said. "I already started out with an advantage because I've been with Steve for five years. And now I'm more or less monopolizing him during the week. Maybe that's part of the problem he's sensing."

Jessica sighed, "You know, this is turning out to be just as difficult as I was afraid it would be. All the stuff I worried about is happening. In a sense, that's OK because it means I went into this with open eyes. But it's still a problem because we don't know how to solve any of this."

"Wouldn't it be grand if love just made all the problems of the world go away?" I quipped.

"It doesn't, Snuggle Bear. If anyone on the planet knows that, it's you. Jess, are you thinking that we made a mistake?"

"No!" she declared emphatically. "The timing was just wrong. We did the right thing, and we have some adversity to work through before things fall into place. We're all smart enough and stubborn enough to make this work. I'm not giving up, and neither of you will either."

"True," I said. "And there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it's just seems like it's so far away."

"Will you do something for me?" Jessica asked.

"Anything," I said.

She laughed, "You might regret saying that some day! But this is easy — I want you to fix your relationship with Bethany. Really fix it. Well, with the obvious caveat that you can't marry her. I think you need to be able to talk to her the way you used to. Talking to Doctor Barton will be good for you, because it'll give you a man's perspective from a man who has struggled with relationships. But Bethany knows you inside out, backwards and forwards. Only Kara comes close at this point, I think."

"I'm not sure that's the right thing to do," I said.

"It is," Jessica said. "Do what you need to do to fix it. I mean that. You'll beat yourself up about it until you do."

"I'll work on it," I said. "But there are lines that can't be crossed."

"There always are, in every relationship. But, do whatever it takes. For your own good. For our good."

I nodded, understanding what she was saying, but there really was a bright red line I couldn't cross with Bethany. I wondered if Jessica was testing me, and if she was, there was no way in heck I was going to disappoint her. I'd done that to Kara, and I was not going to do that again. If Bethany and I were going to be intimate, it was going to be the kind of intimacy that Anala had taught me about, not sexual intimacy. That was the line I couldn't cross for my sake, for Jessica's sake, and most importantly, for Bethany's sake.

Jessica stayed as late as she could, finally leaving about 5:30pm, after an early dinner. Kara and I walked her out to her car, and after hugs and kisses all around, Jessica drove off. She'd be back Friday, which seemed so close and yet so far. When she turned the corner, Kara and I walked back up the steps to the porch. Kara stopped me.

"Are you going to do what she said?"

"With Bethany? Absolutely. But there are limits, as I said."

"Jess gave you permission to sleep with Bethany."

"No, I don't think that she did," I said. "It's a test. And even if she did give permission, which I do not think she did, I think that in the long run it would be bad for Bethany. Look, I got Jess to agree to dalliances because I thought I would want them. I'm not so sure at this point. Maybe. But Bethany could never, ever be a dalliance. That would hurt her, it would hurt Jess, and it would hurt me."

"You really have changed," Kara said, pulling me into a tight embrace.

"Maybe I have. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ruling it out forever, but right now? I have no interest."

"Not even if Lyudmila appeared at your door asking for you to make her a woman?" Kara giggled.

"If her mom were in the Soviet Union, I might consider it. Otherwise, despite my joke with Jess, I don't feel like dying or having a 9mm castration!"

"If Tanya's dad didn't have you shot for sleeping with his daughter, I think the KGB would leave you alone."

"Lyudmila will find someone in California. And all I can say is 'look out'!" I chuckled.

"That was an interesting list of girls, though none of them really surprised me, except maybe Aimee. I know you two hit it off, but wasn't that just a fling?"

"Sure, but it was a fling that could have gone somewhere if I was of a different mindset. Anna was kind of the same, though Aimee was a better fit, if you will."

"You fit just fine!" Kara teased, and we went into the house.

January 20, 1986, Chicago, Illinois

"I declare the first of our monthly lunches in session!" Doctor Barton laughed after we'd ordered our food.

We were sitting at Medici, and his pager was sitting on the table. It had already gone off once, but it was something he could ignore until our lunch was over. If he got a page with six 9's, he'd immediately hurry the few blocks to the hospital for whatever trauma awaited him.

"How are things with the new job?" I asked.

"Just fine, though I'm not happy with the quality of Fourth Years who are doing elective surgical Sub-Internships. None of them are even close to Jessica. The Emergency Medicine program here isn't as good, either. I'm going to have to whip that into shape, but it's going to take time. My methods in Indianapolis were a bit unorthodox."

"How so?" I asked.

"First and Second Year students do not usually set foot in a hospital except on rare occasions. I think that's a foolish practice. I try to get them used to the pace and flow of the hospital, and expose them to as much as possible before they start their Third Year Clerkships. That's how you met Jessica. I had my First and Second Year students who were interested in surgery observing Bethany's surgery. Sort of a pre-Clerkship. I can usually tell who the ones are who should go into surgery. I discourage the others by pushing them to electives that better suit their skills. Jessica would make a terrible GP, don't you think?"

"Just as you would have," I said. "I'd actually like to talk to you and get some advice, if you have any."

"I always have advice," Doctor Barton said with a smile. "The question is whether or not it's any good! What's your concern?"

"The distance between me and Jess. I don't mean emotional — I'm talking purely about the 175 miles from Hyde Park to Indianapolis. You and Belinda spend a lot of time apart. How do you manage missing her?"

He nodded, "I'm afraid it's reversed from yours. It's Belinda that misses being with me, not the other way around. Maybe I'm just a cold-hearted bastard, or maybe I spend too much time working and thinking about work, but I'm happy to just see her on the weekends and vacations. That's what I needed. I think you need something entirely different."

"I tried to be a cold-hearted bastard once, but I didn't like it, so I stopped doing it."

Doctor Barton chuckled, "You either are one, or you aren't." He turned serious, "It's not something you wake up one day and decide to do or don't do. And I'd suggest not trying to be one. That's not what Jessica needs, and I daresay it's not what your other wife needs, either. You can be logical and calculating without being a cold-hearted bastard. In my case, it's partly a self-defense mechanism. When you are surrounded by death, you have to become at least somewhat indifferent to it or it'll drive you to depression. That's the number one cause for doctors having high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, divorce, and suicide."

"I can see the value of being cool as ice in trauma surgery. If you got rattled, bad things would happen."

"Exactly," Doctor Barton said. "Jessica has the mental and emotional strength to do it. And that's going to strain your relationship in years to come. She's going to seem indifferent to things that you think should matter because she'll have learned to simply turn off her emotions in many circumstances. You may find your situation as parents to be a role-reversal, where you provide the emotional support and she provides the firm hand."

"So what do I do about the fact that I miss her?"

"Maybe take a step back and look at what you're doing when you're apart. Do you obsess about her? Do you think about her when you should be focused on other things? Let me ask you this question — do you call her every single night?"

"Of course."

"And you spend a lot of time thinking about her."

"Yes, obviously."

"Find a way to occupy yourself and take your mind off of her. I'm not suggesting that you forget her by any stretch of the imagination, but obsessing over the fact that you miss her is probably making it worse. What do you do in your spare time?"

"Read, play computer games, and practice karate. Occasionally, I go to movies, races, and hockey games."

"Karate is a good way to take your mind off everything else. How often do you go?"

"Three times a week — Monday and Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings."

"Why don't you go each evening? That would give you one less hour to obsess! Not to mention a way to work out your frustrations!"

I grinned, "Sensei Jim will love you for suggesting that. I'm working on my black belt."

"Then start with that; and find other things that take your mind off of obsessing over the distance."

"Thanks," I said. "It's worth trying."

He smiled and nodded. We managed to eat without his pager going off again and when we finished, he paid the check and we shook hands. We agreed that we'd make the third Monday of each month our day for lunch, and I headed back to the house to get back to work.

January 21, 1986, Chicago, Illinois

The NIKA Board meeting went quite well, and all the proposals Julia made were approved. That meant that Cindi and Mario were now on a commission structure and would receive their small retroactive bonuses. Hiring approval was granted contingent on a signed contract with Waukesha County, as was a plan to start paying profit sharing to Joyce and my dad. Overall, the Board expressed their complete satisfaction with our progress.

The longest discussion came when Cindi raised the question of focusing on the PC market instead of what appeared to be the more lucrative Prime market. In the end, it was Doctor Lambert who brought the conversation to a conclusion, with his belief that companies like Prime and Digital Equipment Corporation were flying high but would soon crash because of the PC, Novell, and high-performance computer workstations like those from Sun Microsystems.

I remembered Jennifer talking about a guy at Stanford, Andy somebody-or-other who had started the company with two other graduate students. I had been intrigued because the workstations ran Unix, and had pretty advanced graphics. IIT had acquired one just before I graduated.

Beth Pater pointed out that we should consider Unix support at some point, because it seemed to be the up-and-coming thing for multi-user systems, pushing aside things like PRIMOS and VMS. She pointed to a company in New Haven, Connecticut, named Multiflow, which was building ultra-fast Unix computers. The University was supposed to receive one of the first ones commercially available, in about a year.

That evening, after karate, I asked Bethany to talk. We went to the Indian room with hot chocolate and sat in two of the basket chairs.

"What's up?" she asked.

"Jess thinks that we need to fix our relationship so that I can come to you for advice the way I used to."

"Jess actually said that?" Bethany asked, sounding surprised.

I smiled, "She said I should, and I quote, 'do whatever it takes' to fix the relationship."

Bethany laughed, "She's taking a big risk there!"

"Is she? Do you really think I'd cross that line?"

"What line? If she gave you permission..."

"Or enough rope to hang myself," I said.

Bethany nodded, "She's worried about me."

"No, she's worried about me. If she can trust me with you, she can trust me with anyone. And she can, because there is no way that I'd ever hurt you."

"And making love would hurt me?"

"I think that it would. It would imply so many things that can't ever happen and can't ever be. It would set things back years for both of us. And it would wreck everything. We can't marry. We can't be a couple. And that means we damned well can't make love, no matter how much we might want it. But that doesn't mean we can't become intimate, maybe not quite as close as before because of my wives, but close nonetheless."

"And you think that's safe?"

"I do. I can keep on the correct side of the line. Can you?"

Bethany was quiet for a moment, and it seemed like an eternity. If her answer was 'no', then there wasn't much I could do to get close to her again.

"I think so," she said.

"Bethany, if you're afraid that you'll fall back in love with me, then we can't do this."

"Who says I'm not in love with you right now?" she asked.

"Nobody. I think you know what I was getting at. Can you handle an intimate relationship that can never, ever lead to us being a couple?"

"I'm not sure," she said.

And that was the rub. If she couldn't handle it, we couldn't do it. And if we couldn't do it, then perhaps I'd talk to Sofia, because she'd suggested such a relationship. And I felt that she could handle it.

"I guess we're on different pages at this point," I observed. "But I'm glad you're being honest about it. The last thing I want to do is hurt you."

"Why did Jessica tell you to fix things with me?"

"She has an idea of the man she wants me to be and there are a few tweaks she wants to make. I'm guessing she thinks that being friends with you will help."

Chapter 4 »