The Devil You Know

by Freida McFadden

  “Tomorrow?” I gasp. “Without even telling me?”

  Ryan shrugs again. “Why would I have told you?”

  Good point. Why would he have told me? What am I to him? Nothing. What was I ever to him? Not really much more than a fling. “You know,” I say, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice, “your brother told me that you loved me.”

  “That’s true.” He rubs the slight stubble on his chin with the back of his hand. “I did love you.”

  I snort. “Well, you never said that to me.”

  “Yeah, so?” He shakes his head. “Come on. I obviously loved you. There was no point in complicating things by saying so.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you did,” I mutter. No matter what he says now, Ryan really only cared about one thing, above everything, and that was himself. Himself and especially his career.

  “Jane.” He waits for a moment until I turn to meet his gaze. “You were the love of my life. You had to know that, didn’t you?”

  “The love of your life!” I burst out. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You weren’t even faithful to me!”

  “You weren’t faithful to me.”

  “I would have been if you were!”

  “Look,” he says, “before you came along, I’d never dated a girl more than a few months. And after you, there was nobody. I mean, nobody important. You were the only one who ever meant a goddamn thing to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I mutter. “It’s a nice thing to say, but you can probably understand why I don’t believe you.”

  Ryan just looks at me for a minute, glassy-eyed, like he’s struggling with some deep internal debate. It’s so quiet that I can hear the ticking of a clock somewhere in the distance. Finally, he says, “I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “I knew I had Huntington’s disease,” he says. “Like, before the symptoms started, I already knew I had it. For sure.”

  I frown at him. “How did you know?”

  “I got myself tested. Years ago.”

  “You did?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I told him a million times to get tested, and now I find out that he actually did it? How come he never told me? “Seriously?”

  “Yes, seriously,” he sighs. “It was eight years ago, actually. Right after you dumped me for Pip.” He smiles crookedly. “I decided that I had to know for sure if I had it or not. And if I didn’t, I vowed that I was going to win you back from him and marry you. But then…” He clears his throat. “Well, you know what happened.”

  “Jesus,” I breathe. My knees are feeling shaky again and I cling to the kitchen counter for support.

  “I’d never met another woman who made me want to know my fate before,” he says softly. “I just wish… it could have been different.”

  All the times he started to say to me “I wish…” then couldn’t complete the sentence, that was what he meant. He didn’t regret his life. He just wished that he wasn’t doomed. That Huntington’s wouldn’t inevitably claim his mind and body.

  I hate that this happened to him, but I’m not sorry that I ended up with Ben. If Ryan were cured right this minute, I wouldn’t leave Ben for him. Ben is my husband. He’s my soulmate. He and Leah are my everything.

  I can’t help but wonder though. If Ryan’s test had been negative, if he had gotten to me while my relationship with Ben was still brand new, if he had gotten down on one knee, would I have said yes?

  I don’t know. I very well might have.

  “What will you do when you start to get sick?” I ask him.

  He glances back at his bedroom. “Well, they won’t let me take a gun on the plane, so I’m not sure about that one.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out when it happens.”

  Or maybe he’ll change his mind about ending it all.

  We hear a crash in the other room and Ryan jerks his head back. “Damn it,” he mutters. “What the hell is Nick doing in there?” He sighs. “I’ve got to go check on him. You should probably, you know, go.”

  “Okay.” I bite my lip. “Will I ever see you again?”

  His blue eyes meet mine. “No,” he says.

  _____

  I drive home after that. I’ve got another hour before my afternoon clinic, and I don’t want to be alone. I cross my fingers that Ben chose to work from home today. When I see his Prius in the driveway, I feel a flash of relief.

  He’s sitting on the couch in a T-shirt and boxers, his laptop on his legs, a jar of peanut butter beside him. It’s so classic Ben that my eyes fill with tears. Jesus, what’s wrong with me? I’m sobbing at the sight of my husband eating peanut butter. This is embarrassing.

  Ben looks up and notices me standing there. A surprised smile spreads across his lips. “Jane!” He tosses his computer to the side and stands up. “Hey, what are you doing home?”

  I’m still struggling not to cry. “Oh, you know. Had a break in my schedule.”

  He wraps his big arms around me and I get lost in the warmth and smell of my husband. I lean my head against his shoulder and he holds me tighter. Ben gives the best hugs ever. It’s one of so many things that I love about him.

  “Is everything okay?” he asks me.

  The question somehow puts me over the edge. Tears spill over and now I’m crying. Actually crying. He looks startled but he keeps hugging me and kissing me, which just makes me cry more.

  “Jane,” he says softly. “What’s wrong? Please tell me.”

  I wipe the tears from my eyes the best I can, although most of them are on Ben’s shirt. Plus a lot of my snot. Oh well. That’s the great thing about having a husband. You can get snot all over his shirt and he doesn’t get (too) upset.

  “Jane?” he says again. “Why are you crying?”

  “It’s happy tears,” I tell him, trying to smile. “I’m happy to see you.”

  He raises his eyebrows. He appears skeptical. “I’m happy to see you too. Um, is that all?”

  “No,” I say. I take his warm hand in mine. “I think I’m pregnant.”

  Ben’s eyes light up. He grabs me again in a hug, and for a moment, I allow myself to feel happy again. Except a second later, something occurs to me. And I get a horrible, sinking feeling in my gut…

  Crap! I was supposed to drive Alyssa back to the railroad station.

  Oh well.

  Epilogue

  Ten Months Later

  Edward is a good baby. As far as babies go.

  I’m sure somewhere out there, there’s some magical dream baby that comes home from the hospital and sleeps through the night every night immediately. If you have such a baby, I don’t want to know about it. And P.S., I hate you.

  Most babies don’t do that. They come out of the womb having no sense of when is day and when is night, and they just sleep at random times. And they have tiny little bellies so they need to be fed constantly. It’s not an easy job taking care of a newborn—it’s definitely harder than my primary care clinic at the VA.

  But at two months old, Edward “sleeps through the night.” Notice I put “sleeps through the night” in scare quotes. For a newborn, “sleeping through the night” means that they sleep five hours in a row. So if Edward goes to sleep at ten and then wakes up at three in the morning, he’s “slept through the night.” It’s some sort of sick joke.

  “Do you need anything before I go?” Ben asks me.

  Ben is taking Leah to kindergarten since I’m pinned to the couch with a restless Edward in the crook of my arm. I just fed him, so he can’t be hungry, but he just can’t seem to get comfortable. I’m hoping to get him to sleep in the near future.

  “I’m good,” I say. “Anyway, your mom is upstairs.”

  Nancy Ross is staying with us for a few weeks to “help out.” Again, note the scare quotes.

  Before he goes, Ben bends down to tickle Edward’s tummy. “I’m going to miss you, buddy,” he says. “As soon as you get a little older, you and I are going to a Red Sox game.”
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br />   I roll my eyes. Despite the fact that Edward can barely pay attention to the floating smiley faces we hung over his crib, Ben is obsessed with the idea of taking him to enjoy a sporting event. Oh well. As long as he doesn’t try to feed him peanut butter—that’s like poison to babies, apparently.

  As Ben kisses Edward’s downy blond head, I note the resemblance between the two of them. Leah obviously favors me, but Edward looks like Ben. They have the same lips and nose, and Edward’s blue eyes already seem to be turning brown like Ben’s. Plus he has blond hair the way Ben did as a kid. Then again, how much can an infant resemble an adult? They all just look like tiny old men.

  After kissing Edward, Ben leans in to kiss me goodbye. Our relationship is going as well as it ever has. We still go to marriage counseling intermittently, but mostly, we’ve learned to be a lot more respectful of each other’s feelings. We still fight, but not much. I think we’re well on our way to being a couple of old people holding hands on a porch together.

  Also, it doesn’t hurt that his “Sorry Dear” app is selling like crazy. He’s gotten a lot of kudos at work for that one.

  As soon as Ben leaves, I hear the clip-clop of my mother-in-law’s shoes on the stairs. She’s been obsessively cleaning our entire house since she arrived, despite the fact that I told her we already pay someone to do that. “They don’t do a good job,” she told me. I mean, it’s nice of her to clean, but she puts everything away in random places and seems to throw things away haphazardly. I wish she’d just stick to vacuuming.

  “How’s my grandson doing?” Nancy asks as she comes into the living room, surrounded by a cloud of dust. How can someone nearly twice my age have such an overabundance of energy?

  Edward lets out an adorable cough then bursts into less adorable tears. “A little fussy.”

  “I bet it’s colic,” Nancy says.

  “It’s not colic.”

  She shrugs in a way that makes me feel like she still thinks it’s colic. “How much longer till you have to go back to work?”

  “Another month,” I say.

  I took a three-month maternity leave. Some women take more, but the VA has been really accommodating about letting me come back part-time. I’ll start out working three days a week, which seems perfect. I can’t imagine another three to four months of sitting around the house with Edward, eating pieces of bologna. (I don’t know why but I’m really craving bologna lately.)

  I actually miss my patients and wonder how they’re doing in my absence. But one patient I won’t be returning to is Herman Katz. He’s gone to live upstate with his daughter.

  Mr. Katz did as well as could be expected after his stroke. He completed a course of rehab at our small inpatient unit at the VA, and by the time he was done, he was able to walk again with a quad cane and regained some of his speech. Enough that when I came to visit him during his last day in rehab, he was able to say in a slow, careful voice, “I’ll miss you, Dr. McGill.”

  I checked Mr. Katz’s notes from his time in rehab, and it’s funny that he didn’t have any of the myriad of complaints that he used to come to my clinic with. He never asked if he had cancer. I wonder if the stroke put things in perspective for him. Or maybe he just didn’t have the words to express his worries anymore.

  Either way, he seemed really happy to be going home with his daughter and grandchildren.

  “Do you want me to hold him?” Nancy is eyeing my screaming son.

  “Yes,” I agree gratefully, even though I know that she won’t get him to stop crying when he’s like this. I just want a break at this point.

  Nancy scoops Edward up in her arms and makes cooing noises at him. He throws back his head and wails, enraged by her attempts to comfort him. She strokes his tiny head gently.

  “Goodness, Jane,” she says, “where did all this blond hair come from? It’s incredible.”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  Nancy starts dancing Edward around the living room, which helps very, very slightly. He’s still not thrilled though. “Well, you’ve got red hair and Ben’s got brown hair.”

  “Right,” I say, “but I thought Ben had blond hair as a child.”

  She shakes her head. “Oh no. Well, maybe dirty blond. But not light like this.”

  I furrow my brow. “Really?”

  “Genetics is so odd,” she muses. “I suppose blond hair is recessive.”

  “I’ve got some relatives with blond hair,” I say, because I think I do.

  The truth is that whenever I look at all that blond hair, I’m reminded of someone else who was very important to me who had a head full of thick blond hair.

  Ryan isn’t on the map anymore. I’ve searched for his name on Google, even going so far as to add “obituary” to my search terms. But nothing ever comes up. He could be in Italy, admiring the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He could be in China, gazing up at the Great Wall. Or he could be dead. I have no idea.

  The last time I heard from Ryan was five months ago. I got a blank email with the subject, “Happy Birthday.” I didn’t recognize the email address, but I was certain it was from him. I replied to the email, but it bounced. Wherever Ryan was, he didn’t want to correspond with me. He only wanted me to know he was thinking of me—nothing more.

  I miss him. He’s responsible for saving my marriage, even if that wasn’t his intention. He’s the only reason I have Edward right now. After all, Edward was conceived the night that I returned to Ben after kissing Ryan. That was the night I realized that no matter what, I was going to make my marriage work.

  I hope Ryan’s still alive.

  “Maybe you should take Edward,” Nancy says. It’s not a suggestion. Edward is actively freaking out now, seemingly energized by the dancing session. She shoves him into my arms.

  I think just the relief of being away from his grandmother calms Edward down. He hiccups in my arms, breathing hard, his little face still bright red. I smooth some of that blond hair out on his sweaty scalp. And I plant a kiss on the forehead of my son, Edward Ryan Ross.

  Did you enjoy reading The Devil You Know?

  If so, please send me an email at fizzziatrist@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you. Or please, please, please consider leaving a review on Amazon!

  Check out my website at:

  http://doccartoon.blogspot.com/

  In the meantime, after the acknowledgements, please enjoy a short excerpt of my last book, Brain Damage…

  Acknowledgements

  A friend once told me that you shouldn’t make any decisions about your marriage until your youngest child is five years old. First and foremost, thanks to that friend. Those are words to live by. It’s my mantra.

  I want to thank my mother, who read this story more times than I can count, and not only pointed out all the times that Jane was being obnoxious, but also circled all the swear words for me to get rid of. Thanks to Catherine, for talking me through the ending and listening to me rant about my insecurities. Thanks to Katie, for the thorough grammar check. Thanks to Gizabeth, for restoring my confidence.

  Thank you to Jody, for an enthusiastic reading. Thanks to Martha, for pointing out my overuse of the word “literally.” And thank you to Erika, for inspiring me to write the scene that brought it all together.

  And of course, I have to again thank the woman who inspired this series, “Dr. Alyssa Morgan.” She really did become a hospice physician. Truth is stranger than fiction.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Brain Damage…

  Brain Damage

  If someone had asked me before this happened if it would hurt to be shot in the head, I almost certainly would’ve answered yes. Of course, yes.

  It makes sense. A piece of metal rapidly shooting through flesh and bone… how could it not hurt? During my intern year, I spent time in the emergency room and I saw people who had been recently shot. None in the head, but one in the shoulder, one through the knee, and one unfortunate bullet ripped its way right through a man’s stomach.
I didn’t need to ask any of those people if the bullet hurt. I could see it in their faces.

  I wasn’t someone who had to worry about being shot though. The patients I treated in the emergency room weren’t upper-middle-class female doctors living in million dollar apartments overlooking Central Park. They all lived in a poor section of the city, where bullets whizzed through the air as commonly as raindrops.

  I, on the other hand, was safe, insulated. I wasn’t the sort of person who would be shot in the street while going to buy soda at the local newsstand. When I died, it would be from a stroke or cancer, or if I was lucky, my heart would stop beating one night in my sleep when my hair was as white as my pillow and my face was crisscrossed with deep wrinkles.

  Or so I thought.

  Back to the initial question of whether it hurt to be shot in the head. Because there is a lot I don’t remember, but this part I remember very well.

  I remember staring at the gun, not really believing that it would go off, not believing that this could happen to me. And then I remember the explosion, seconds before the bullet discharged, passed through my skull, shattering it to pieces, soaring through gray matter, white matter, neurons, ventricles, then back through my skull again, and finally lodging itself in the well-insulated wall that kept our neighbors from hearing the noise of the gunshot.

  And none of that hurt. The truth is, I didn’t feel it at all.

  What hurt is everything that came after.

  Purchase a copy of Brain Damage!