“I’m sorry, Faith,” Eric had said to me then, holding me close to his chest and kissing me all over. “I’m just not going to take your virginity when I’m this drunk. It wouldn’t be right and I don’t want to hurt you. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
He was fine with marrying me when we were blackout drunk. That was just fine. But having sex with me? No. Yuck. That was a line too far.
The irrational anger I’d felt then raged back. “I’m sorry too,” I snapped. I’d said something nearly as rude and defensive the night before. I’d felt rejected and hurt that he wouldn’t take my virginity when it was so freely and excitedly offered to him—and by his wife, no less. I’d wanted to make love and he’d rejected me. Eric had tried to explain, but I wasn’t having any of it. He spent the rest of the night on the ground.
In hindsight, he was being a real gentleman. But in that moment—when I was drunk and horny—I could have just about strangled him for telling me no. Part of me still could. The other part… was thankfully a sober adult.
“I’m really sorry,” I said after a moment. My anger drained almost as quickly as it had surged, leaving only vulnerability in its wake. “I don’t know what to do, Eric.”
“We’ll look into the annulment,” Eric said. “My sister Mary is actually a divorce attorney here in town and she specializes in Catholic divorces. She’ll know exactly what to do in order to make this like it never happened.” His eyes searched mine for something, but I wasn’t sure if he found it or not. Either way, he swallowed hard and sat up straight. “But maybe we don’t have to do it right away.”
I felt my jaw go slack and I stared into Eric’s green eyes like he’d begun speaking an unfamiliarly language. “Huh?” I was really articulate today, myself. I could barely string two words together.
“Faith, those jobs Koels offered us,” he said, spreading his hands wide. The ring was still sitting between us on the table, reflecting the morning light in every direction. It tempted me to stare at it. “We have to at least consider the jobs.”
My heart thumped. He was right. Just like he had been right last night about the sex. Why did he have to always be right?
The RN to APN program offered by the University of Texas was one of the best in the country. It was also incredibly expensive. I supported my mom as well as myself in a high cost of living city. Mom hadn’t been able to work much since my dad’s death, although she did a lot of volunteer work with the church. Without really expensive student loans, or an employer who wanted to fund me, I’d probably never be able to afford to advance my degree.
“I’ve already been accepted to the UT APN program,” I confessed. “I’ve been deferring my start date over and over.”
Eric nodded after a moment. His gaze was understanding. “I’ve already started researching programs for my next surgical residency. The idea of going straight into my specialty…”
I’d been around enough residents to know that their world was nothing I wanted any part of. Hyper-competitive didn’t begin to describe the environment they lived in. A huge number of brilliant, relentless, type A people were competing for a tiny number of prestigious programs. They were all smart and talented at the resident level. They’d been winnowed and funneled and weeded out so many times that only best were left, and they still had to compete for what they wanted.
“We didn’t earn those jobs,” I heard myself saying. “We don’t deserve them.”
Eric shrugged. “We don’t not deserve them.”
I frowned. “But there are probably more qualified people.”
“Who in that hospital is a better nurse than you?” Eric asked me. “Because I’ve worked with most of them, and you’re the best.”
I felt a hot blush creep across my cheeks. “You’re only saying that because you want me to stay married to you so that you can keep your new job.”
“I’m not just saying that. I believe it.” Eric smirked. “But even if I was just saying it, Koels clearly doesn’t give people the jobs they deserve. He clearly gives them the jobs he wants them to have. It might as well be us.”
He had a point. If Koels really was always as mercurial as he was this morning, the man needed to retire. He was clearly losing his mind. We all were.
“What are you suggesting?” I questioned. “That we just pretend to be married?”
“For a while, yeah.” Eric looked like he was making this up as he went along. “I mean, we are married so I guess we just have to, you know, keep up appearances for a while.”
“How long would we have to keep up appearances?” I asked Eric. “If I was going to do this, there would have to be an end date. And an exit strategy.”
Eric nodded at me. “Koels is retiring soon. At Easter, right? We could make it until Easter.”
We could?
“You really think we could convince everyone we know that our drunken mistake marriage is real for almost four months?”
“Three and a half.”
I blinked at him. “You’re serious.”
He nodded again. “We’d be crazy not to do this. Look, I’m no fan of the situation either, but think of what we’d be giving up if we just marched back into Koels’ office and told him the unvarnished truth.”
“But we don’t even know each other!”
He smiled sweetly. “Sure, we do. We’ve known each other for over a year.”
“Professionally yes, but I don’t even know your middle name,” I told him.
“It’s Joseph, after my father,” he replied. “What else do you want to know?”
I frowned. What sort of information would I like to know about my fake husband? What information would make me feel better about deceiving everyone I knew, for months? “It doesn’t matter. Even if I asked you questions all day, we’d never know enough about each other to make this believable.”
“Why?” His eyes were starting to shine mischievously, and it made me nervous—and excited. “I don’t think marriages are usually judged on the amount of trivia the two people know about each other.”
“You’re right. They’re judged on how much they love each other.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t know that I can convincingly pretend to be in love with you.”
“You convinced people last night.”
I winced. He was right again. Last night, I’d convinced him. And me.
“Sure, but I’m not drunk all the time.” Thankfully. Apparently, I knew how to get myself into all sorts of trouble when I was drunk.
“We can do this,” he told me. “All we have to do is maintain the loosest, vaguest marriage on the planet. We don’t go around telling our coworkers every detail of our personal lives as it is, right? I know I don’t. As long as Koels doesn’t figure out what we’re up to before he retires, we’re in the clear. After he’s gone, nobody is going to care. This won’t be that hard.”
He was right, again. It really was frustrating how much he seemed to be right. But I was tempted. By the money, obviously. Not, you know, by him.
I took a deep breath to try and clear my mind. “It would only be in public, professional settings that we’d have to pretend to be a married couple, right?”
“Right.”
I looked at Eric’s emerald green eyes, and then the emerald on the table. I thought about the APN program and my mom. I thought about all my student loans I still had from undergrad. I thought about the way I’d felt when Eric held me last night, when he kissed me, and what I’d felt when I said, ‘I Do’.
“We wouldn’t have to do anything I’m not comfortable with, um, affection-wise, right?” I asked.
Eric looked offended at the suggestion. “Of course not.” He frowned at me. “I won’t even touch you if you don’t want me to.”
And if I did want him to? Would he reject me again? I managed not to let it slip out. My insecurity could wait until I was out of this high-stakes conversation.
“My mom can’t know about any of this,” I said instead. I bit my lip. “She’d b
e furious. She’s really conservative.”
Eric nodded. “Ok. So, don’t tell her.”
He said it like it was a simple thing, but it wasn’t. “I live with her.” She was a huge part of my daily life, and although I did occasionally lie to her, it was usually about how many donuts I ate or whether I really wanted to watch that Lifetime movie with her. Not anything important. Certainly not about pretending to be married to a handsome young doctor in order to get the job of my dreams. The idea was so preposterous that I laughed. “You’re crazy,” I told him. “I mean it. You’re actually insane.”
“Maybe. But I believe we can do this, and it won’t be horrible,” Eric said. He slid the ring across the table at me. I picked it up carefully and turned it over in my hands. “I think we can both get what we want, and get the annulment we so obviously are going to need.” I frowned at him. “Try it on,” he urged. There was an emotion in his voice I couldn’t place and an intensity in his stare that hadn’t been there a moment before. “I want to see what it looks like again.”
Feeling a bit foolish, I slipped the gorgeous emerald ring back onto my ring finger. I had no idea how I knew, but I knew to my marrow that the ring cost much more than my car, my worldly possessions, and my diploma—all combined. Wherever it was that Eric came from, it was a richer world than my own. The ring fit perfectly, like it had been custom made for me. It felt nice on my hand, although not as nice as Eric had felt in my arms last night. Our marriage might not be real, but the ring sure was pretty and the benefits would be good. I looked up at Eric and his expression said that he knew I’d come to my decision as soon as I put it on.
“This is such a very bad idea,” I told him. “I already regret it, and I haven’t even agreed to it yet.”
“Just think about it. We got ourselves into this mess by being impulsive. We can’t get ourselves out of it by making the same mistake.”
That thing about Eric always being right? It was seriously starting to get old.
5
Eric
Faith might regret entertaining the idea of staying married for financial gain, but I didn’t. Now that I remembered what had happened the night before (the bizarre interaction we’d had with Koels and Wheeler had seen to that), I couldn’t imagine a better thing coming out of an ill-considered decision.
As I gazed across the table at Faith, who looked beautiful and for all the world like she’d gotten a full eight hours of restful sleep, I certainly couldn’t think of a better fake wife. I’d been dying to get close to Faith for months, and now I had the opportunity to do that and snag the world’s biggest promotion to boot. So long as I didn’t blow either of those opportunities, I was golden.
At the very least, maybe I could parlay our fake marriage into some sort of a relationship before everything fell apart. Considering that I initially expected to be fired, this was actually a very positive outcome. As long as I resigned and wasn’t fired, I could pretty easily find another residency program. I resolved to look on the sunny side.
We went our separate ways once inside the hospital again. Faith was working on a different floor today, but I was still felt like she was close. Plus, I still had her little black panties in my pocket. It hadn’t seemed like the right time to return them in the coffee shop. It was with that pair of lacy black panties on my mind that I started making my rounds. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t long before that distraction led to my first mistake.
“Good morning Mr. Ochoa—” I said, rounding the corner to his room to find that I’d walked into entirely the wrong place. Before me, an unconscious blond woman in her forties was surrounded by what looked like her family. I blinked and backpedaled. “Sorry, I must have the wrong room,” I managed, stepping back out into the hall. “My apologies.”
I stared up at the room, and then down at my chart, and then at the chart on the wall next to the door. Deborah McAllister, age forty-nine. Presenting with chest pains, most likely angina. The room was right, but the name was wrong.
Oh no. Please no. Not that.
Lucy happened to be passing by in the hallway and I motioned her over. She came over reluctantly, and the look on her face said it all.
“Where’s Mr. Ochoa?” I asked, already knowing the answer. If there was one thing I’d learned in medicine though, it was to be optimistic.
Lucy hung her head. “I’m sorry Dr. Carter. He’s dead. He and Mrs. Ochoa both passed during the night. The staff nurse found them when she made her hourly rounds. They were holding hands.”
Faith had been right. The Widowhood effect had struck again. I knew they probably wanted to go like that, holding hands and sleeping peacefully, but I wasn’t ready to let them go. I was never ready to let my patients die.
You might think that even if I wasn’t ready, I would at least get used to my patients dying. After all, heart problems are among the most serious and deadly medical issues there are. People die all the time from diseases of the heart. In fact, one in every four people alive will one day die from heart disease. But I hadn’t gotten used to it.
Part of me hoped that I never would. Not only did it seem too callous and too heartless for me to stop being affected by the death of my patients, but it made the victories and the occasional miracles all that much sweeter. They say you can’t have joy without suffering. It’s certainly true in the practice of medicine.
But just because I didn’t want to rid myself of feeling sadness when my patients died didn’t mean I liked it. I fucking hated it. I fucking hated when my patients died because it meant that not only had I lost another round with death (and I hated losing), but somewhere out there, someone’s loved one was gone forever.
It’s hard not to blame yourself. Maybe that’s why so many doctors choose to become numb. It’s easier than shouldering the guilt.
The moment in the hallway stretched. Lucy was staring at me, clearly wondering if she should say something else or just walk away. Once again, it was time to compartmentalize before I did or said something I might regret.
“Thanks Lucy,” I heard myself saying. She nodded and continued on her way.
I was now operating on autopilot again. With an almost robotic efficiency, I put my head down and kept working. It wasn’t time right then to digest how I felt about the Ochoas. There were a dozen other people I needed to see and treat first, and some of them had been hours waiting for me.
My patients always deserved my full attention, but that morning they didn’t get it. My mind was swimming with unwelcome thoughts.
“No doctor’s ever ready for a patient to die,” I remembered one of my mentors saying to me once. “But you have to remember that it isn’t about you. Everybody dies. Death always wins. Always. Your one and only job, the best you can ever do, is to bargain with death a little bit and negotiate the best outcome for your patients that you can.”
“Think of practicing medicine like flying a plane,” someone else had told me. “A pilot knows that gravity is always going to have the last laugh. His goal is just to trick the law of physics as gracefully as possible. It’s never really flying. It’s always just controlled falling.”
All the metaphors were nice and instructive, but they didn’t fix the situation. Mr. and Mrs. Ochoa were stone dead and I felt like shit about it because maybe there was something I could have done, should have done, but didn’t. There were no do-overs in cardiology. One mistake and all the cards come falling down.
But dwelling endlessly on my mistakes, real or imagined, was not productive. I pushed the impulse to review my notes back down next to the sadness I felt and tried to focus on the men and women in front of me. It may not have been my best day at the hospital, but it wasn’t my worst, either. By lunch time, I’d reached a sort of rhythm with my work and equilibrium with my feelings.
As I wolfed down a strawberry pop tart (the lunch of champions), I texted Faith and told her about the Ochoas. It wasn’t something I’d ever done before, but this morning her number was in my phone, and it felt like the r
ight thing to do. I figured she might as well learn it from me, and I… I missed her. Even though it had only been a couple of hours, I wanted to see her again. This was the next best thing. She took the news better than me.
Faith McNamara [1:30 p.m.]: It’s sad, but I also think it’s romantic. I mean, if you have to die, it could be a lot worse.
Eric Carter [1:32 p.m.]: I guess so.
Faith McNamara [1:33 p.m.]: You’d rather die alone?
Eric Carter [1:33 p.m.]: I’d rather not die. Period.
Faith McNamara [1:33 p.m.]: Then you really would be alone, considering that everybody else is going to die. Plus, there’s always heaven.
I blinked at her message in surprise. I’d known she was Catholic, she’d taken off holidays before and mentioned it now and then, but I was ostensibly Catholic as well and never did. I seized on the opportunity to actually talk, well text, with her. Despite my attempts to be charming over the last few months, getting Faith to talk to me had historically been a challenge. Could this be the key to unlocking her lips?
Eric Carter [1:33 p.m.]: You believe in heaven?
Faith McNamara [1:34 p.m.]: I don’t not believe in heaven. It’s a nice thing to believe in. I hope there’s something though, even if it’s not pearly gates, milk and honey. Otherwise what’s the point?
Eric Carter [1:35 p.m.]: You’re definitely asking the wrong guy. Maybe there’s no point. Maybe it’s just a random accident.
Faith McNamara [1:37 p.m.]: Oh no. Did I accidentally marry an atheist? ;)
Eric Carter [1:38 p.m.]: No, but if I was would that pose a problem?
Faith McNamara [1:39 p.m.]: For my fake marriage? I don’t see how it possibly could.
Eric Carter [1:4o p.m.]: What about for you?
Faith McNamara [1:39 p.m.]: I don’t care that much. But it would definitely be an issue for my mom. She only likes nice Catholic boys for her daughter.
Eric Carter [1:40 p.m.]: What about a lapsed Catholic boy?
A Bad Case of You Page 4