Chapter 2

When I woke up, I felt awful. My head hurt, my sides hurt, my stomach hurt, but most of all, my heart was still broken. I lay there for a while with my eyes closed and tried to figure out where I was. I could hear the beep of a heart monitor somewhere, so that told me that my whore of a wife HAD called 911 in time. Bitch.

My next priority was to try to figure out if I was alone or if she was waiting for me to wake up so she could start trying to convince me to be like she was again. There was too much background noise for me to tell if there was someone in the room with me or not so I finally opened my eyes. There she was, sitting in a chair asleep. I didn’t have my watch, so I had no idea what time it was or even what day. It had been Tuesday when the conversation started, so I assumed we were somewhere in the early morning hours of Wednesday. There was no window in this room, so it was hard to tell.

I closed my eyes and thought about everything that had been said last night, hoping that she’d assume I was still asleep and leave me alone.

I heard the door click open as someone came in and a few seconds later, she squeaked in surprise. “JOHN!” she exclaimed in confusion.

“No,” said a male voice. “It’s me. Has there been any change?” he asked, sounding concerned. It wasn’t someone I knew.

“None,” she croaked miserably. “Oh my God, Brad! You should have seen his face. I mean, we knew that he’d be mad, but ... I thought he might be coming around. I told him about Cecilia and he lost his mind. I don’t know what he’ll do when he wakes up. He kept asking me to kill him.”

“Oh, God!” he sighed anxiously. “We just have to hope we can convince him that we’re not a threat to him and that you still love him. Neither of us wanted him hurt. Certainly not like this! I wish we could have found an easier way to break it to him,” Brad told her. “I wish I could stay, but Doris will have dinner ready. Call me if there’s any change. I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said and I could hear them exchange kisses before the door opened again and Brad let himself out. My heart broke all over again, hearing her say those words to someone else.

Brad and Doris, I mused to myself. That was a lot more information than I had before. What would I do with that information? Probably not as much as I could. I lost myself in a daydream of pounding the living shit out of Brad and then fucking his wife in front of him while he bled on the floor, begging me to stop. Doris and I were on our third round with Brad whimpering piteously on the floor when the door opened again.

I heard the chair scrape as she stood up to greet the newcomer. “Doctor?” she asked tentatively. “You said he’d be awake tonight. I’ve been here all day and he hasn’t moved. What’s wrong?”

The doctor made a concerned sound and looked over my chart. “There was no real sign of brain trauma in his tests,” he said. “It’s possible that there was some minor damage from the alcohol poisoning, but I’m told that you called 911 in time for them to pump his stomach, so that shouldn’t be an issue.”

I heard him approach the bed and then he was thumbing back my eyelids, shining a light in them. I stared at a point on the ceiling when he did it and didn’t flinch. That’s a lot harder than it sounds, but right now, the cost of flinching was listening to my wife try to brain-wash me into joining her little cult of polyamory and I’d rather stare into the flashlight until I went blind.

At least the conversation was informative. It was evening, not morning. I didn’t have a concussion. My stomach had been pumped. That helped me figure out a lot.

“Look, Mrs. Hooker, why don’t you go home and get some rest?” he suggested gently. “If there’s any change in his condition, we’ll be sure to notify you and you’ll want to be well-rested when he does wake up. I’m sure you’ll have a lot to talk about.”

“I don’t want to leave him like this,” she protested.

“Isn’t there any other family you can call to sit with him while you take some time to rest?” he asked gently. “You’ve been here since last night. You won’t do him any good if you end up in a bed yourself.”

She sighed. “Do you know when he should regain consciousness?” she asked, torn between staying and going.

“Not specifically,” the doctor said. “He may sleep through the night or he might be awake now and just not ready to cope with the outside world yet. You said that he’d been drinking far heavier than normal for him? Was there anything that might have upset him?”

“We ... we were arguing when it happened. He didn’t react very well to some news I had for him,” she admitted.

“He may still be processing that news then,” the doctor told her. “It sounds like you’ll want to be in complete control of your senses when you sit down to talk it out with him though. Best to get a full night’s sleep and come back fresh. You have my word that we’ll take good care of him.”

She sighed again and agreed. I could hear her gather up her things and then she left the room. I thought for a minute that the doctor had gone with her, but then he spoke from the doorway.

“Okay, she just got on the elevator,” he told me. “You mind telling me why you won’t speak to your wife?”

I opened my eyes and he was coming to take the chair that she’d vacated. “Have you seen the man that was here to visit my room earlier?” I asked.

He nodded. “Brad Davis. He’s a member of our church.”

“He’s my wife’s lover,” I said. “She told me they’ve been together for a year. They’re in love.”

“Ah,” he said uncomfortably. “That’s a very delicate situation,” he admitted. “He told me he was a friend of the family. They both seemed very concerned about you.”

“They’re hoping that I’ll approve of their happiness and my lovely wife spent last night trying to convince me that everything would be fine if I’d just take a lover of my own,” I said to him. I looked down at my hands. “I never wanted to hit a woman before, but last night, I wanted to beat her half to death until she gave me his name and then make her watch while I killed him with my bare hands.”

“I think that impulse is understandable,” he said carefully. “Is that why you started to drink heavily?”

“No,” I admitted. “When she wouldn’t shut up, I just started trying to drown myself in a bottle. Whether I blacked out or died of alcohol poisoning, I was still spared another round of arguments that me taking a mistress would make everything better.”

“So she wants you to allow her arrangement with her current lover and in exchange, you get one of your own?” he clarified.

I nodded. “That’s about the size of it,” I admitted.

“What do you have to lose?” he asked pointedly.

“What?” I asked, flabbergasted at the attitude.

“Hear me out,” he said, seeing me start to get angry. “Your wife’s already cheating. That damage is done. California is a no-fault divorce state. It doesn’t matter if she banged the whole cast of Lord of the Rings. It doesn’t affect the divorce. It doesn’t touch property division, alimony, any of it. Take it from a guy that’s got two divorces under his belt. At this point, you could go out and fuck every starlet wandering around Hollywood looking for a casting director and a couch. Yeah, there’s the fact that two wrongs don’t make a right, but there’s also the fact that you’re probably planning on divorcing her as soon as you can get your hot little hands on a lawyer. Why not ease yourself back into dating? You can use her for sex, support, laundry services and whatever else she does in the marriage and pick your time.”

I considered it, nodding slowly. “Okay, that makes a certain degree of sense,” I admitted.

He shrugged. “Hell, you might find that this is ideal. You get a girlfriend you love and a wife you put up with. It’s how most marriages work these days. If I’d had this arrangement through either of my first two marriages, I might have stayed married to them.”

I nodded again. “Okay. So I kind of hate the cheating slut, but you’ve given me something to think about.”

He chuckled. “Just so you know, we won’t be able to stall her much longer. You should have woken up hours ago.”

I nodded. “Can I ask you about something else?”

“You want to know about Brad,” he said flatly. I nodded and he settled back to talk some more. “Brad’s an okay guy. He works real estate and married Doris right out of college. They’d been together since high school. They have a son, Brad Jr. He’s active in the church and the community and you’re probably one of the only people that knows him that doesn’t like him.”

“I’m guessing Doris wouldn’t be thrilled to know what he’s been doing in his spare time,” I grumbled sourly.

“You’re probably right about that,” he admitted. “Doris is a very pleasant woman, but pregnancy wasn’t kind to her. Brad doesn’t make the kind of money it would take to pay for the surgery she’d need to get her pre-pregnancy body back. My guess is that he loves her, but he’s not turned on by her anymore. I kind of wish I didn’t know about what he was up to. It’ll make things awkward at the church events.”

“Sorry,” I shrugged.

“Not blaming,” he said jovially. “I’m just lamenting my lost ignorance. How would you like us to handle your wife?”

“Could I borrow a defibrillator?” I asked with a roll of my eyes.

“Probably not,” he chuckled. “We can tell her you’ve requested no visitors, but that generally leads to histrionics and we have a few patients that wouldn’t appreciate the noise.”

“Well, if my clothes are here, you could release me,” I suggested.

“The clothes you were wearing were destroyed,” he said with some sympathy. “When you came in unresponsive, they cut them off. They were covered in vomit and blood anyway.”

“How bad was I hurt?” I asked with a sigh.

“Not really badly at all,” he confided. “No concussion, two stitches and a moderate case of alcohol poisoning. You’re fine now. If you’d opened your eyes earlier, I might have let you go home with your wife, but I was concerned as to why you were unresponsive.”

I nodded. “I still have a lot to think about,” I admitted.

“I’ll send someone around with a tray. It’s nearly dinner time. You’re probably starved.”

I nodded and thanked him.

An orderly brought me a tray about an hour later and I ate hungrily. It wasn’t the best meal I’d ever had, but I was completely empty, so it was a welcome feast. I lay there, turning the problem over in my head most of the evening and into the night. I drifted off sometime after midnight and awoke with the same problem and Barb looking at me anxiously.

“Thank GOD, you’re awake!” she blurted out, jumping up out of the chair she was in and coming to the bed. She was practically vibrating, she was so jittery. It made me wonder if she was running on coffee and anxiety.

“Yeah. Praise Jesus. It’s a miracle,” I said sarcastically, letting her be enthusiastic for both of us. I bet Brad would be thrilled to know I was recovering. After all, he was loved by all, right? GREAT guy!

“How do you feel?” she asked, touching my head gingerly and caressing my arm. She made my skin crawl.

“Sore,” I said, answering her in monosyllable responses.

She nodded. “I talked to the doctor this morning and he said you’ll be stiff and sore for a couple of days. He said your head wound bled a lot, but that’s normal for head wounds. He was surprised that there was no concussion.” She seemed determined to make some upbeat conversation whether I was participating or not. That made sense. I didn’t really participate in the last conversation either until the end.

“Yeah,” I agreed. I’d been surprised that I hadn’t gotten a concussion myself.

“I called your office yesterday and told them you were in the hospital. They said to call when you’re feeling up to it and they’d talk to you then. I also called off work yesterday and today. I wanted to be here when you woke up so we could talk about what happened. I’m so sorry, Baby,” she said. “I had no idea that this would hit you this hard. I pushed too and that didn’t help. I know I screwed it up, but can we please talk about it and see if we can find something we can all agree with?”

“Did you bring clothes?” I asked impassively, ignoring her attempt to bring up the subject again.

She leaped into action like she was on fire and had a bag for me. Inside were jeans, socks, underwear, shoes and a shirt. It’d keep me decently covered. “Just wait until the doctor sees you. He said he wanted to talk to you before he released you. Strictly routine.”

I nodded. “I can understand that,” I said distantly.

“Look, I really want to make this up to you,” she said, fidgeting nervously. “I know I really screwed up and I should have found a better way to handle it. Just tell me how to make things right and I’ll do it.”

“Barb, I don’t even know what to say to that,” I told her. “You’ve disrespected me and our relationship for the past year and now you’ve come clean because your side action has gotten so serious that it’s a new level of disrespect. I don’t know whether you were worried that I’d catch you or whether things were heating up to the point where you couldn’t hold it in anymore, but you didn’t come to me with an apology and a determination to show me how sorry you were. You dropped it in my lap like dirty laundry and challenged me to clean it or go look for new clothes. Maybe that’s not how you meant it to come across, but it’s how it ended up.”

She was quiet for a few minutes, digesting what I’d said. I’d managed to hold onto my temper since waking up this morning. It wasn’t easy. I hadn’t ranted at her for bringing her scumbag to visit her while I was in a hospital bed, but that was certainly less than respectful. I didn’t want her to know that I knew the name Brad Davis. I didn’t think I’d do anything with that name, but it was good to have the option.

“I’m sorry, John,” she said at last. “I never meant to show you anything but respect. I can see how it must look from your position. It was a terrible miscalculation on my part. I never thought of it as a respect issue.”

“It’s every kind of issue,” I told her. “It’s emotional, it’s sexual, it’s financial.”

“How is it financial?” she asked, taken off-guard by that.

“You were supposed to be selling houses when you were meeting him. If your boss figured it out, you could have lost your job,” I told her. “For that matter, how many sales could you have made during the hours you were in his arms? Every time you hooked up with him while you were on the clock, you were giving up a chance to make a legitimate sale. Unless he’s a rich buyer and you’ve been convincing him to buy all the properties you were meeting at?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t like that,” she assured me. “I would never sell myself to sell a house. The other night, you asked what he had that drew me to him,” she reminded me.

I cut her off. “It doesn’t matter,” I said before she could finish that sentence. “Whatever it is, he has it and it mattered enough to land us here. So whatever it is, I don’t even care anymore. I think that’s the attitude that I have now. I just don’t give a shit. You want him, you got him. You’re gonna keep seeing him whether I throw a fit or not, so have at it.”