The Devil You Know

by Freida McFadden

  “Yes,” I say without offering Leah’s name. She eyes him silently, no longer singing any risqué lyrics.

  I glance at Mr. Katz’s grocery cart. It’s filled with bacon, beef, potato chips, and the bag of peanut butter cups that I talked Leah out of purchasing. None of this stuff is going to keep his arms from rubbing against his chest when he walks. But I’m certainly not going to start lecturing him in the middle of the supermarket.

  “Hello, there.” Mr. Katz bends down to address Leah. “Your mommy is a really, really good doctor. And a really nice lady. She reminds me a lot of my own daughter.”

  Strangely enough, in all the times I’ve talked with Mr. Katz, the subject of his daughter has never come up. “You have a daughter?”

  His face brightens. “Yes. Her name is Rachel. But she moved upstate just before my wife died so I don’t get to see her or my grandkids very much.” He frowns. “Judy used to do most of the long drives.”

  I feel an ache for poor Mr. Katz. First his daughter moves away, then his wife passes away. No wonder he’s always running to the doctor—he’s probably just lonely.

  “Anyway.” He straightens up. “I won’t keep you, Dr. McGill. You must have lots to do on your day off.”

  “Yes,” I say. I clear my throat. “It was nice seeing you, Mr. Katz.”

  He smiles at me. “Same here. Have a great day, Doctor.”

  I watch him push his cart of horribly unhealthy food down the aisle. Before he gets out of sight, I’ve grabbed the bag of peanut butter cups and stuffed it in my own cart.

  Chapter 15

  I hate snow.

  Does that make me some kind of Grinch? I don’t know, maybe. But I don’t care. I. Hate. Snow.

  I used to like it. When I was a kid and snow meant snow days and snowmen and snowball fights. Now it means driving carefully through slippery streets, struggling to get Leah into her snow boots, and shoveling. Shoveling is the worst. How can something that looks so light and fluffy coming down be so heavy?

  Last night, when I saw the snow starting to come down, I was furiously checking the weather site on my phone. Would it be snowing enough to close down the daycare? Or better yet, the primary care clinic? And if not, how am I going to get my car out?

  “Calm down,” Ben kept saying. “I got that guy to plow our driveway in the morning. You’ll be fine.”

  “But he can’t plow the whole driveway,” I pointed out. “There’s always that area right in front of the garage that he misses.”

  “So I’ll shovel you out.”

  I looked at Ben’s face. He at least seemed to think he meant it.

  But now it’s seven-thirty in the morning, I’ve already showered, I’m shaking Ben awake, and he does not want to wake up. He keeps muttering, “Five more minutes,” then I hear him snoring again. He doesn’t seem to have any intention of getting up in the near future.

  “Get Leah up,” he mumbles. “I just need another minute, okay?”

  I’m skeptical, to say the least. But I go into Leah’s room to wake her up. Leah seems to vacillate between either waking up ridiculously early or refusing to get up at all. Today she’s reluctant. “My bed is so warm,” she whines. I’m sympathetic.

  And to top things off, her diaper has leaked all over the sheets.

  After I’ve gotten Leah dressed and stripped her bed of the sheets, I return to our bedroom, where my dear husband is still sound asleep. I want to yell in his ear, “WAKE UP!” But instead I shake his shoulder. Not gently.

  “Ben,” I say. “You told me you’d shovel the driveway for me.”

  Ben rolls over. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hand and squints at me. “Okay,” he says. “Just let me take a quick shower.”

  “A shower?” I nearly scream. “Why do you need to have a shower before shoveling snow in our driveway?”

  “I just feel all greasy when I wake up.”

  “Ben, I’m going to be late for work.”

  He rubs his eyes again. “I don’t know what to tell you. Either give me five minutes to shower or shovel the snow yourself.” He raises his eyebrows at me. “You can shovel yourself, you know.”

  “Great,” I say. “Thanks a bunch.”

  “Jane…”

  I storm out of the bedroom. Leah is at least waiting downstairs with her coat on, which is a bit of a miracle. I go to the garage door and press the button to open it, to check out the damage.

  It’s worse than I thought. The plow cleared about three quarters of our driveway, but there’s still several feet of thick white snow between my car and freedom. It’s got to be shoveled.

  I pick up the shovel and start in on the snow. Even before I’ve shoveled two loads of snow, I can feel the callouses forming on my palm. I should probably go put on some gloves, but I’m running late and I’m too pissed off to stop. Every time my shovel digs into the fresh white powder, I feel a new surge of resentment toward my husband.

  After fifteen minutes, I’ve mostly cleared it all away. By this point, every muscle in my upper body is aching. I feel like I’ve just run a marathon entirely using my arms. This probably indicates that I’m not in very good shape.

  I look back at the entrance to the garage. Ben never came to help me. Not that I’m even surprised.

  _____

  John Singer is sick. He’s really sick.

  He’s only fifty-five years old, but he’s already got diabetes, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation. He’s had two heart attacks. His kidneys have failed and he’s been on dialysis for three years. And last year, he had his right leg amputated due to a diabetic foot ulcer that got infected.

  Like I said—really sick.

  I’ve never seen Mr. Singer before, but I’m going to be taking over his primary care from now on from another physician who left the VA. If you didn’t tell me that he was fifty-five, I would have guessed seventy-five. He limps into the examining room using a cane to support himself, with his wife at his side.

  I wonder if she knows that the five-year mortality rate after an amputation due to diabetes is about fifty percent.

  The only good news is that I see from his social history that three years ago, he quit smoking. So he’s got that going for him. Better late than never.

  “There’s a mistake in your records, I think,” I tell Mr. Singer. “It says that you started smoking four years ago. I’m assuming that’s forty years ago, right?”

  Mr. Singer shakes his heavily lined face. “No, four years is right.”

  I frown. The fact that the blood vessels are obviously shot in Mr. Singer’s legs and kidneys means that the ones going to his brain probably aren’t looking too good either.

  “That can’t be right,” I explain slowly. “That would mean you started smoking when you were in your fifties.”

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Singer pipes up. “Smoking was just something that he always wanted to start doing. But he had to quit when he started dialysis.”

  I guess at the point that he was being dialyzed three times a week, he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to live out his lifelong dream of being a smoker.

  After I finish up with Mr. Singer, I emerge from the examining room to find Dr. Kirschstein waiting for me with a stern expression on his face. He has his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his white coat and all the lines on his face have deepened.

  “Dr. McGill,” he says in a grave voice. “I must talk to you about your note on a patient named Richard Connor.” His frown deepens. “You left a critical piece of information off your note.”

  My heart speeds up. Oh my God… what did I do? I search my brain, trying to remember this patient. Richard Connor… did he come in for… a diabetes check? Hypertension? Back pain? What the hell was he here for? The name sounds familiar but I genuinely can’t remember. “I… I did?”

  He nods. “Richard Connor was a Colonel in the army! A Colonel, Dr. McGill! That’s the highest rank before General. And you didn’t mention that in your note!”

&nbs
p; “Oh.” My heart slows. “Sorry.”

  “Colonels command a brigade, you know,” he says. “I had to addend your note with this information.”

  “Sorry,” I say again. And because Dr. Kirschstein is still staring at me, I add, “I won’t do it again.”

  He nods. “We’re having a staff meeting now. I’ve ordered deli sandwiches. Would you go downstairs to the cafeteria to get plates and napkins?”

  It would be nice if Barbara could be responsible for something like that, but I’m just happy to get free lunch. Back when I was a poor med student or resident, free lunch was something I used to get obscenely excited about. And weirdly enough, I still do. But to be fair, I’m not exactly rich now.

  “By the way,” I say to Dr. Kirschstein. “Do you have that book from your wife about raising children?”

  He looks at me blankly. “What book?”

  “You told me that your wife had a book about…” I see from his face that he has no clue what I’m talking about. “Never mind. I’ll get the plates.”

  Dr. Kirschstein’s going senile. It was only a matter of time.

  I hurry down the hallway, hoping to grab the plates fast because I’m absolutely starving. Also, Lisa always takes the egg salad sandwich but I want the egg salad sandwich. Maybe I can beat her to it.

  I get to the cafeteria and find a stack of crappy paper plates. Our cafeteria has the absolute worst plates—they’re always threatening to fall apart the second you put food on them. Still, they’ll do the job. I grab five of them and head for the exit. Then I hear the voice of Gloria, the cashier:

  “Are you buying some plates?”

  I laugh at the joke. “Yeah.”

  I continue on my way, but then I hear Gloria call out, more sharply this time: “You have to pay for those plates!”

  Wait. She was serious?

  For a moment, I debate pretending I didn’t hear her and making a run for it. After all, it’s five paper plates. What are they going to do? Then again, this is the VA. It could be a felony to steal plates from the cafeteria.

  Reluctantly, I turn around and trudge back to the cashier. “How much are the plates?”

  “Five cents each,” Gloria reports.

  They may as well be a hundred dollars each, because naturally, I don’t have my wallet. And I didn’t take any cash with me downstairs because I thought I was just grabbing some freaking plates.

  Ryan, where are you when I need you? Moreover, I’m certain Ryan would easily be able to charm Gloria out of a few measly plates.

  I consider going up to a random stranger in the cafeteria and begging for a quarter. But I just can’t make myself do it. So I leave the plates behind and run up the four flights to go get my purse.

  The plates are right where I left them when I return. I also decide that since I now have money, I’m going to grab myself a pack of gummi bears, just to make myself feel better about how pissed off I am. I lay the gummi bears down with the plates in front of Gloria.

  “Oh,” she says. “Since you’re buying something, I can give you three of those plates for free.”

  I think I hate this woman.

  My stomach growls with hunger. I shove the gummi bears into my purse, and ring for the elevator. The doors open instantly and I see George sitting on his stool. I hesitate. I don’t want to be in the elevator with George, but I’ve already wasted way too much time. I’m too hungry to wait for another elevator and my legs are exhausted from running up and down the stairs. So I get inside.

  Smile, Jane!

  My lips curve into something resembling a smile. George doesn’t return my faux-smile. In fact, he’s staring at the five paper plates that I’m holding.

  “You know,” he says, “you’re supposed to pay for those plates.”

  If I make it out of here without being arrested, it will be a miracle.

  _____

  The worst part about snow days is what your car looks like at the end of the day. After seeing patients all day with a brief reprieve for sandwiches (Lisa got the egg salad—I had tuna), then returning phone calls and charting for another hour, I’m dreading having to spend the next twenty minutes cleaning off my car. It’s probably half buried by now.

  I trudge through the parking lot, feeling the snow seeping into my boots. I don’t have stylish, high-heeled boots like Lisa. I have the ugliest black boots you’ve ever seen in your whole life, which I bought specifically because they were advertised to be warm and waterproof. They’re warm—at least, until the ice-cold water starts seeping into them. Then, not so much.

  This is so wrong.

  My poor car barely resembles a car. It looks more like a big car-shaped lump of snow. Moreover, the snow plow has been doing a crappy job clearing the parking lot, because there’s lots of snow around the tires of my car, that will almost certainly make it difficult, if not impossible, to drive out of my parking spot. But I’m not going to think about that now. Hopefully, if I gun the engine, it will all be okay.

  I dig around in my trunk for the snow brush and find it shoved under a bag of spare clothes for Leah. My snow brush is tiny. Cleaning all this snow off my car with this tiny brush would be like mixing cake batter with a toothpick. But it’s all I’ve got. I also may need to use it to shovel out my tires. At this rate, it will be spring by the time I get out of here.

  “Need a hand?”

  I look up and see Ryan Reilly standing behind me. No, not just Ryan Reilly. Ryan Reilly, holding a shovel.

  “You have a shovel!” I gasp, like he’s brought me the Holy Grail.

  “Of course I have a shovel,” he says, shaking his head. He’s wearing an army green hat that hides his blond hair, but I can still clearly see his blue eyes. “This is winter in Long Island. I’d have to be nuts not to carry around a shovel.”

  He’s got a point.

  “Your tires aren’t going to budge with all this snow,” he observes. “Let me dig them out.”

  Before I can answer in the affirmative, Ryan digs into the fresh white snow with his large shovel. I start clearing away some of the snow from the windows while he continues to shovel. He’s very fast and he’s got almost all the snow cleared away from my tires before I can even get the right sided windows clean.

  Ryan watches me with my snow brush for a minute. Finally, he says, “Give me that.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, really. It’s painful to watch you. Anyway, I’ve got longer arms.”

  He’s right. The snow that would have taken me another ten minutes to get rid of is cleared away by Ryan in just a few arm sweeps. The top of my car still has a good six inches of snow on it, but at least the windows are clean.

  Ryan hands me back my snow brush. “Words of wisdom: wear gloves next time you clean the snow off your car. I’ve seen enough cases of frostbite this winter.”

  I look down at my fingers, which are raw and pink. “I think I forgot my gloves at home.”

  “Here…” Ryan pulls off his own gloves. At first, I think he’s going to give them to me, but instead he takes my hands in his. They’re so much larger than my own and warm enough that I feel the blood rushing back into my fingers. We stand there for several minutes, Ryan’s hands cupping my own. I’d forgotten the feel of his strong hands against mine.

  The first time Ryan ever held my hand, it had been a cold night. Not cold like this, but cold enough that he noticed me shivering. He teased me about it, then the next thing I knew, his hand was holding mine. And just like now, his hand was so warm and large in mine. And just like now, I wanted him. Even though I didn’t want to want him. If you know what I mean.

  But now, unlike then, I am married.

  I look up into his eyes, noticing the permanent lines where his skin only used to crease when he smiled. But other than that, his face looks the same as it did when I first met him all those years ago. It’s like we haven’t lost a day.

  “I missed you, Jane,” he murmurs. “I never stopped thinking about you.”

&
nbsp; It’s not like Ryan to say something like that. In all the time we were together, he avoided saying anything that might hint that what was between us was anything more than a casual affair. Ben was the opposite. When Ben and I were dating for only a month, we were splitting a vanilla milkshake at a diner and as I yanked the bright red cherry from the top, he blurted out, “I love you, Jane!” Then I watched his ears turn bright red as he quickly lowered his eyes and muttered, “I’m sorry. Too soon.” I had to say it back just so he wouldn’t feel so embarrassed.

  But Ryan was more careful. There were times when I’d catch him looking at me in a way that I was sure he was going to tell me he loved me, but he never said it. Not even close. And if I ever got an inkling in my head to say it to him, he seemed to sense it and would do something to cool things down. He was so nervous about the possibility of ending up sick like his father—he didn’t want to get too close to anyone. But I believe that maybe he’s really been thinking about me all these years. After all, I always got those emails from him on my birthday. He never even missed one.

  And now he’s safe. He knows that he’s probably been spared the diagnosis he’d been dreading most of his life. He can finally move on and start planning his future.

  Is that why he came to the VA Hospital to work?

  Was it for me?

  No. It couldn’t be.

  I break away from Ryan’s gaze. “I have to go pick up my daughter.”

  He nods and releases my hands, which I shove into my pockets. I don’t say to him what I can’t stop thinking, which is that if he hadn’t been such a wuss and just got tested for that dominant gene, Leah could have been his daughter.

  Chapter 16

  Ben and I are going to a party tonight.

  It’s out in Ronkonkoma, where all the best parties are obviously held. It’s being given at Dr. Kirschstein’s house, and I was forced to agree to go at just shy of gunpoint. Dr. Kirschstein and his wife (who is also Dr. Kirschstein—this could get confusing) asked me to go last week and I couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough to get out of it. The only consolation is that Lisa and her husband are also coming, and since Ben is driving, I’m allowed to have a few drinks. Also, maybe I can get that miracle book on child-rearing, if it ever existed in the first place.