Betrayal (6 page)

13

Adam White finished the
rhinoplasty early. Almost half an hour early. That would give him enough time to have a decent lunch rather than shoving food in his face at his desk or going next door to the Subway. A chicken and walnut salad from Fauvina’s sounded divine.

He changed out of his scrubs and headed out. As he got
to the door, his receptionist called to him.

“Dr. White?”

“Yeah.”

“I have a
Wendy Portman on the phone. She says she’s a patient of yours.”

“What does she need?”

“I don’t know. She’s crying and says she really needs to talk to you.”

Adam hesitated, and then walked back and took the phone. “This is Dr. White.”

“Dr. White,” a voice said frantically. “You need to help me. They beat me and my face… my face… please!”

“Calm down. Who beat you?”

“These men… oh shit. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”

The phone
went quiet and then Adam heard it fall and someone else was on the line.

“Hello?” a female voice said.

“This is Dr. Adam White. What’s going on over there?”

“I’m a friend of Wendy’s. Some guys, like, beat the shit outta her. You
gotta help her.”

“You need to take her to the emergency room.”

“We’re at the emergency room. They’re not even seeing her. They don’t care about her.”

“What hospital?”

“Saint Catherine’s.”

He checked his watch. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone and looked to his secretary. “I’ll try and be back in a couple of hours. Clear my consults.”

Adam hurried out to his car and hopped onto the 405. He rarely felt the sting of traffic, which was all people in Los Angeles seemed to talk about, but right now it was like a weight crushing him. Why would they not see her? Maybe she was overreacting? It probably would have saved a lot of time if he would’ve just called the ER and seen what the problem was.

Too late now, he thought.

By the time he got to the hospital, it’d been nearly an hour wasted on the 405. He parked in the emergency room parking and trotted inside. The front desk clerk looked him up and down as he approached and said, “I’m looking for a Wendy Portman.”

“Only two people back there at a time.”

“I’m her doctor. She called me and said there was a problem and I’d like to speak to her.”

The clerk sighed and then pressed a button, opening the double doors leading back to the rooms. “Make it quick. Room 1102.”

He quickly found room 1102 and went inside. A woman was seated in a chair next to the hospital bed. Lying on the bed was Wendy Portman.

Her face was bleeding and bruised. Dried blood was caked to her skin and
, even from across the room, he could see that her cheekbone was shattered.

“What happened?” he said.

Wendy turned away from him and quietly sobbed.

“Four guys called her a fag and when she said something to them they jumped her,” the woman said. “I was
screamin’ for them to stop, throwin’ stuff. But they just kept kickin’ her while she was already knocked out.”

Adam came to her bedside.

“I can tell you were uncomfortable with me,” Wendy said. “When I was in your office.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I can just tell. You haven’t worked on many transgender people, have you?”

Adam
observed her broken face. The swelling was severe. So much so that it was closing up one of her eyes. “What have the doctors said?”

“They haven’t seen me. We’ve been here almost three hours.”

“Why haven’t they seen you?”

She shrugged.

Adam left the room. He saw a few of the nurses and a doctor lounging at the nurse’s station. They were chatting about the latest episode of some reality series Adam had never seen. “Excuse me,” he said. “Ms. Portman in there hasn’t been seen yet.”

“Sir, we’re moving as fast as we can. There are over six patients ahead of her.”

“She’s been here three hours. You telling me you can’t even go in and make sure she’s not hemorrhaging to death in three hours?”

“Sir—”

“She needs to be seen.”

One of the nurses, a male, mumbled, “
Maybe don’t dress like a woman and you won’t get your ass kicked.”

Adam stared at him. He turned to the doctor.
A middle-aged woman in a white coat. “I’m Dr. Adam White. I’m on the Council for Ethical Affairs for the CMA. Is this how you treat patients that come to you for help? You sit here and gab while she bleeds out on your bed?”

The doctor’s face flushed read and she walked past him without a word and went into Wendy’s room. Adam glared at the nurse that had made the comment and then followed the doctor.

Wendy Portman had several fractures. From her cheeks all the way to the metatarsals of her right hand. It took several hours before she was ready to be released. Despite the pain and time, she was lucky. Adam had seen beatings that were far less brutal end in cerebral edema. A swelling of the brain that eventually killed the patient.

One boy, when Adam
was a trauma surgeon in the Valley, had been punched by a full grown male. His uncle. For no other reason than the boy had spilled a drink in the uncle’s Chrysler 300. He caught the boy off guard and the fist had slammed directly into the upper jaw, catching some of the skull. The boy came to the hospital in a coma and Adam did everything he could for over two hours. But the boy wouldn’t wake. He thought perhaps the boy needed time. He took a quick break, no more than fifteen minutes, and when he came back, the boy had passed away.

He helped Wendy out to her car with the other woman. They climbed in and Wendy leaned back in the passenger seat. A cast was on her right arm and several bandages covered other areas of her body.

“My cheek,” she said, “I don’t know what to do about it.”

Adam saw the damage to the eye socket. He knew she wouldn’t look the same
once it healed. It would give her a constant droopy look on one side. “Come into the office on Monday. We’ll schedule something.”

She smiled. “I’m sorry I called you. I didn’t know
who else to call. My family… doesn’t talk to me. And Sarah’s the only friend I have.”

“It’s alright. You just keep ice on that cheek and come see me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Adam watched as they drove away. He exhaled loudly and checked the time. The clinic and at least four patients were waiting for him. As he walked to his car, a smile came over his face
.

14

Kali had dinner prepared early and then sat at the dining room table and sipped a glass of red wine. Her kids were at Tami’s, her neighbor’s house, and Tami had agreed to watch them until ten, their bedtime.

When she heard Adam’s car come into the driveway, she lit the candles on the dining table and turned the lights off. Adam walked in and placed his keys in the key bowl and walked around the corner to see her sitting at the table, the meal spread out before her. He grinned and sat down.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he said.

“Yes I did. We haven’t gotten to spend much time together.”

“Where are the kids?”

“At Tami’s house until ten.”

“That’s in two hours. How will we ever fill the time?”

“Oh, I’m sure we can think of something.”

Kali slipped on a robe in the darkness. Adam lay nude behind her. He rolled over and wrapped his arm around her waist, dragging her back to bed. He kissed her neck, making her giggle.

“Who says we’re done?” he said.

“The kids’ll be home soon.”

“They have to learn about sex sometime.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” she said, playfully elbowing him in the chest.

He put his face to her neck, inhaling her scent. “I love the way you smell. It was one of the first things I noticed about you.”

“You smelled me when we were first dating?”

“Oh, yeah. We were at that movie… I don’t remember what it was.
Some Western that I forced you to go watch with me. We were standing in line for popcorn and I leaned down and smelled your hair.”

“
Ew, pervert.”

“Oh relax. Remember when you were really drunk and begging to have sex and I said I wouldn’t because it wouldn’t be right?”

“Yes, for the five hundredth time, you’re a great guy. They will build monuments to you in the future.”

He tickled her and she laughed. “Well maybe they will.”

She got up and strolled across the room. She glanced back and saw him laying on the bed, the moonlight on his chest, a smile on his face as his eyes closed, and for some reason she felt closer to him than she had in a long time. She didn’t know why or how. But she knew the feeling wasn’t deceptive.

She headed downstairs and began cleaning up dinner when she happened to glance to her cell phone. She had a
missed call from a number she recognized. Sebastian. She picked up the phone and glanced up the staircase to their bedroom. Then she hit the call button and it called the number back.

“Where are you?” he said by way of greeting.

She walked into the parlor and shut the door. “I’m in my house.”

“What are you wearing?” he said.

“A robe… nothing else.”

“Do you always walk around your house nude?”

“No… I just had sex with my husband.”

She didn’t know how he would react. A part of her felt like he would yell at her and hang up. Or at the very least be offended or ask her not to talk about that with him. But that’s not what he did. He simply said, “How?”

“He took me from behind. I was on my hands and knees and he pulled my hair with one hand. His other hand was on my breast and he pulled at my nipple.”

“Was it hard or soft?”

“It was soft. Gentle. His fingers would caress my breasts and then he’d kiss me. I’d lean back and put one arm on his neck and he’d put his hand on my throat, but he wouldn’t squeeze hard. Just have it there. And we’d kiss. He’d run his tongue over my lips and I let him.”

“Did you come?”

“Yes.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Then we laid in the dark and just… felt each other. Felt each other lying there.”

A pause. “Come over tonight.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t or you won’t?” he said.

“I can’t. Not now. But maybe tomorrow.”

She hung up the phone. Opening the parlor door, she took a deep breath to compose herself before stepping out. She shut the door behind her and walked to the kitchen. As she was about to place the phone down on the counter, she heard Adam’s voice behind her.

“Who was that?” he said, taking a bite of an apple.

Her heart jumped into her throat. “It was Tami. Just wondering when we were going to pick up the kids. I’m going right now.”

“No, don’t worry about it. I’ll go get ’em.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” he said, taking another bite. He was dressed in sweats and he kissed her, grabbed his keys, and headed out the door.

Kali nearly collapsed. Every muscle felt weak and she
was lightheaded. She sat down at the dining room table and put her face in her hands. What the hell was she doing? She ran her hands through her hair and then rose and poured another glass of wine.

She left the mess and went upstairs to change. The kids would be home soon. And her life would return to normal. She needed that normalcy. That predictability.

But she knew she also needed something else. And it frightened her.

15

Kali walked down the isle of Barnes and Noble as
Sebastian walked with her, sipping a latté. The scent of coffee and books reminded her of long study sessions in college. Cramming and late nights and professors whose job seemed to be to make her life miserable. But for some reason, as hard as it was, she remembered it with fondness.

“When I was in college,” she said as they browsed the photography section, “the English professor as
ked about a word in a book we’d been assigned. I don’t actually remember the book or the word. But he asked what part of speech it was. I said it was a noun. It wasn’t a noun, it was an adjective. And he asked if I needed to go back to grade school. I was so humiliated I dropped the class.”

“A good professor’s rare
.”

“I sometimes want to go back and see him. Maybe just yell at him or something.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jim Burbank. I still remember. He had this nasty mustache that would catch his food and my class was right after lunch.”

He took her hand. “Come on,” he said, leading her out of the store.

“Where we going?”

“It’s funner if you don’t ask.”

The UCLA campus didn’t look anywhere near what it did nearly a decade ago when Kali was
here. New buildings, new courtyards, and a renovated stadium stuck out to her. But there were other things, too. More subtle, so she couldn’t really tell.

“We’re not doing what I think we’re doing,” she said.

“We are.”

“We’ll get arrested.”

“We won’t.”

Despite the upgrades everywhere else, the humanities building looked the same. The
y entered through the main doors and several classes were in session. They went up to the faculty offices. Burbank’s was the second one in.

Sebastian smiled to the secretary, a graduate student who didn’t even look up from her iPad, and they went inside Burbank’s office.

“This is so bad,” she said.

“We’re fine. We’ll just
say we were confused if we’re caught.”

The office, which Kali had never seen, was exactly as she had thought the office of someone like James Burbank would be.
Meticulous to the point that there wasn’t any dust on the desk. The usual professor trait of books stacked everywhere wasn’t prominent. In fact, he only had a small collection of books neatly arranged on the desk. No bookshelf.

Sebastian sat down at the computer. It was on.

“What’re you going to do?”

“Watch.”

He opened Burbank’s email, which he wasn’t logged out of, and did a search for the name “Burbank.” He came up with the name Tracy Burbank and Todd Burbank. He included both of them in the send line of a new email. Then he searched his contacts and selected all of them, over fifty. Then Sebastian wrote:

Dear gang, I just can’t live with this secret anymore. Just wanted to share with you that I like to wear women’s clothing. I trust you will not judge me, as I do not judge myself. My favorite are the silken panties my wife likes to keep, as well as the thongs. I’m sorry for the image this conjures, however, I simply love it and wish for you all to know.

Sincerely, James Burbank

He logged out of the email account and the two of them ran out of the office like teenagers. Kali had to suppress her laugh as they trotted past the secretary and out the doors.

As soon as they were in the hall, she burst out laughing. Sebastian chuckled and held her, his arms around her waist.

“Now that, was fun,” she said.

He kissed her once, gently, almost gingerly. “I love seeing you laugh. Your whole face lights
up.”

They kissed again. She pushed him up against the wall, her little pink tongue curling around his, his hands running up her back.
She reached down into his pants. Her fingers, ever so softly, wrapped around his cock and she started stroking him. No one was in the hallway, but she kind of wished there was.

Sebastian groaned, pushing his hips into her. She bit his lower lip and hung on as she brought him to climax.
He came and it spewed over her hand, hot and dripping down her fingers.

When she was done, leaving a
wet stain on his jeans, she kissed his lip and pulled her hand out. She ran off giggling like a schoolgirl and he chased her.