“Almost,” Katz said. “Just got to lop off this last one and take care of the bleeding.”
Will went back to his chair. Katz lassoed the polyp and thumbed the plunger. There was a brief, wet
snap!
and Katz withdrew the instrument. Hanging from its tip was a globular yellow mass the size of a robin’s egg. Blood welled from the patient’s nostril, pooling in the socket of one eye.
Stacy said, “That is so gross.”
Katz waggled the specimen in the air. “Had lunch yet, Stace?”
“I mean it, Katz,” Will said from his chair. “I haven’t got all day.”
“Excuse me,” Katz said, his face above his mask turning beet red. “We were just—”
“Just finish.”
Katz glanced at Stacy, then set about controlling the bleeding. The silence is the room was palpable.
When the case was finished, Will dropped the patient off in the recovery room and went to the nearest phone. On the fortieth ring—he counted them, each unanswered buzz dialing his rage to a hotter setting—he slammed down the receiver. Where was she now? He’d talked to her not ten minutes ago, listened to her exasperated bullshit about him driving her crazy phoning all the time, and finally elicited her plans for the day. “I’m staying right here, in our home sweet home.” He hated it when she took that tone with him. “I’m going to vacuum the rugs, then sweat my way through the
Buns of Steel
video. If I should need to take a pee in there somewhere, shall I give you a call?”
Livid, Will hung up on her; but a few minutes later he felt foolish, paranoid, contrite. He called back this time to apologize, but all he got was dead air.
All right. This time I’ve got you.
He stalked out of the anesthesia office, almost bowling over a cleaning lady, and headed for the parking lot at a brisk jog.
* * *
Dr. Katz said, “Where is he?”
Stacy said, “I don’t know. We’ve been paging him for the last fifteen minutes.”
Katz checked his watch. “I’ve got a rhinoplasty at the Civic this afternoon. How am I supposed to get through a list like this with all these delays? Where
is
the son of a bitch?”
“I have no idea,” Stacy said, thinking,
Why don’t you go track him down yourself, tough guy?
People only bad-mouthed Dr. Armstrong when he was well out of earshot.
Katz huffed and stalked away. Stacy went back to her magazine.
* * *
Will drove with both fists clamped to the wheel. He was in a state of rage that had been building for months, and all he could think about was murder. And if he did kill the cheating bitch, what jury in the country would convict him?
Crime of passion, baby. Crime of passion.
He parked in the alley behind the house and started with the basement windows—dim views of the rec-room, laundry and furnace rooms—but could see nothing out of the ordinary.
If she’s fucking him in our bed,
he thought, climbing the flagstone steps to the main level,
I’ll make her eat his balls.
He peered into the dining room, his office, the guest rooms, and again saw nothing unusual. Then he climbed onto the deck, crawled on all fours to the living room windows and looked inside.
He could just see the top of her head beyond the sectional sofa, bobbing up and down. There was music blaring and something playing on the TV he couldn’t quite see.
But there was no doubt in his mind about what she was up to. He couldn’t see the fucker she was with...not that it mattered. Whoever he was, the jig was just about up.
Will backtracked to the steps, walked through the breezeway to the front door and let himself in with his key. As he entered he realized his cock was almost painfully stiff. It felt like a club against his belly.
“Honey,” he said. “I’m home...”
* * *
Nina didn’t hear him, wasn’t even aware of him until she looked up and saw him in the archway. She had the stereo cranked up to the two o’clock position—rap: tough, plaintive voices; a bassy, hard-driving beat—and when she let out a startled cry she could hardly hear herself.
Will was wearing a scrub suit, the pants loose at the waist, and his penis was out. It was a fierce purple color and rock hard, pointing at the ceiling in an angry salute the likes of which Nina hadn’t seen in years. She was momentarily stunned by the sight of it.
She was alone, doing her aerobics, stretched out in a split she was very proud of. She hadn’t managed one this deep since her majorette days. When Will looked in through the window she was bouncing herself deeper into the split.
“Where is he?” Will howled over the music.
Nina got her legs under her. “Who?” she said, moving toward the stereo. The notion that Will had come home to make amends and the prospect had given him this hefty hard-on vanished when she saw his face. The man was wild, red eyes flashing around the room.
Nina turned the music off. If she had to scream—and every instinct told her it was coming to that—she wanted at least a reasonable chance of being heard by someone outside. She said, “There’s nobody here, Will. I told you that over the phone.”
He was edging closer, eyes still darting around, and Nina realized she was cornered. Deck windows on one side, wall unit on the other.
“Fix your pants,” she said without much hope.
Will grinned. “Nope. Uh-uh.” He flicked his penis with a fingernail. “Blue steel, sweetie. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Well, come get it.”
“Will,” Nina said, tensing. “You stop this right now.”
Will made a grab for her and Nina side-stepped, nimbly darting past him. Cat-quick, Will stuck his foot out and tangled her legs. Nina fell in a sprawl, hitting the rug hard, the wind knocked out of her.
Will turned the music on again. Turned it on loud. “Now,” he said, grinning. “Where’s your little friend? Maybe he’d like to watch.”
Gasping for breath, Nina said, “There’s nobody
here
.” He was standing in front of the windows now, backlit by the sun. “I’ve never cheated on you, Will, though I’ve had enough offers. Even from some of your so called friends. But I turned them down. Now stop this.”
Will dropped to one knee and caught her by the ankle. Nina kicked at him with her free foot, but he grabbed that one, too. Then her legs were pinned beneath his weight.
Will shimmied up her body and sat on her chest. Nina could hardly breathe.
“Wanna get fucked?” He grabbed her by the hair and slapped her hard. A thin ribbon of blood flew from her mouth, streaking the brushed white carpet. “Like it rough?”
He raised his hand to slap her again and Nina grabbed him by the balls, squeezing with everything she had. The crazed expression on his face vanished, changing to that of a man impaled on an iron spike.
Still clutching his scrotum, Nina squirmed out from under him, then let him go. Will roared and started to get up. Nina scooped a heavy potted cactus off the coffee table and brought it down on the back of his neck. The big pot shattered, sending dirt and chunks of cactus flying everywhere. Will grunted and slumped to the floor.
“Stay right where you are,” Nina said. She grabbed a brass table lamp. “Or I swear to God, I’ll cave your fucking head in.”
Dazed, Will blinked up at her.
“You’re out of control,” Nina said, jabbing the lamp at him, “and I can’t take this anymore. I refuse to take it.”
Will shook his head, the madness seeping back into his eyes. He started to get up.
And Nina ran.
“Where is he?” Will bellowed, going after her.
“Where is he?”
Nina cut through the kitchen to the back door, outpacing him easily. She grabbed her keys off the counter and slammed the door behind her. She was backing out of the carport when Will appeared in the laneway, his penis still exposed, flaccid now, waggling in the sunlight. He hammered the roof of her Accord, denting it, as she accelerated past him into the alley.
* * *
Once Will had satisfied himself the house was empty, the fog of rage began to clear, revealing the obvious: he’d been wrong. Shaken, he made about a dozen frantic phone calls, trying to track Nina down. She’d been faithful all along, he believed her now, and he’d ruined it out of sheer paranoia.
When he could think of no one else to call he started back to the hospital.
One thing at a time
, he told himself as he drove.
Go back to work, make up an excuse, then wait and see
. She’d calm down after a couple of hours. She’d never pull the twins out of their home.
He found Katz in the OR lounge. The little guy was pissed, and Will let him rave a bit.
“Where the hell have you been? If you’re going to screw off like that, the least you could do is let somebody know.”
“It was my wife,” Will said. He put his arm around Katz’s shoulders and led him into the hall. “She thought there was someone in the house and she called me. I could get there a lot faster than the cops...”
“Oh, Jesus,” Katz said. “Is she okay?”
“Yeah. Turns out it was just her imagination. I would’ve gotten back to you sooner, but she was hysterical. You understand.”
“Of course. Can we carry on now?”
“I’ll have your next patient ready in five minutes,” Will said and left Katz standing in the hall.
* * *
Nina’s lawyer, Mark Blumstein, called Will at the hospital later that afternoon. Blumstein had been with Nina’s family for years, managing various affairs, but Will had met him only once. He did his best to respond politely to the barrister’s comments.
“Nina told me about what happened today, Doctor Armstrong, and quite frankly, it’s my feeling that she should have you arrested. I’ve urged her strongly to do so.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“That is quite immaterial, I assure you. In any case, she’s decided to go easy on you. On one condition.”
“Which is?”
“That you sign the separation agreement which is being drawn up as we speak. That you sign it without argument and without trying to contact Nina in any way, and that the children remain with her.”
“That’s three conditions.”
Are you reading me, Doctor?”
“Loud and clear.”
“If you don’t agree to the clauses in the agreement—and I mean
all
of them—then we will proceed with criminal charges.”
“Specifically?” Will’s fist was starting to crack the handset.
“Assault with intent to rape. Attempted rape—”
“But—”
“Don’t even breathe the fact that she’s your wife. I can put you away on this one, Doctor Armstrong. Believe me.”
And why are you so interested? Are you the one who’s been banging her?
“I understand. No problem.”
“I’ll have the documents delivered to you by courier no later than Friday. Until then, consider yourself duly warned: stay away from—”
Will hung up the phone.
* * *
Nina awoke abruptly on Thursday morning from a dream in which Will had found her and chased her into the night. In the dream she was scrambling up a gravel incline, the sharp stones stinging her bare feet. When she made the summit she looked back—and Will was
right there
, reaching for her ankle. She turned to run, skidded on a greasy railway tie and fell in a sprawl. Then a freight train was high-balling toward her, its blazing headlight pinning her to the rails...
Nina sat up. The bed shimmied and the screeching clamor of a passing train filled the room. She was in a hotel, one of those cheesy, out-of-the-way joints that serviced long-haul truckers and trysting teenagers and always seemed to be within spitting distance of a railway track. The twins were with her, sound asleep in the sagging bed next to hers. Nina smiled a little, watching them in the thin light of dawn. Those two could sleep through a gunfight.
She climbed out of bed as the racket receded, stiff and sore from her battle with Will. Stretching, she drew the curtain aside and squinted through the grimy window. Apart from a couple of transports idling in front of the diner, hers was the only vehicle in the lot. Further off, near the highway, the establishment’s neon sign buzzed indolently against a purple sky. Twin Palms Motel, and not a palm tree for a thousand miles.
She let the curtain fall and hugged herself against the chill of the room. She felt undone, shattered by Will’s unexpected violence. When he sat on her chest and slapped her like that she’d thought:
I don’t know this man
. It was as if the preceding thirteen years never existed and this raging, somehow familiar lunatic had broken into her house to rape her. So much had changed in those few insane moments. So much had been lost forever.
Jeffrey moaned in his sleep, Jerry echoing the sound, and Nina felt a tug at her heart. What would she tell the boys? They idolized their dad. Maybe with time and professional counseling...but no. Going down that road, she’d be talking herself out of the only acceptable course of action. But it was hard. She’d been with Will so long, had fallen so deeply under his sway, she could almost hear his voice in the room...
“I couldn’t bear to lose you, sweetheart. You’re the one I love. And it’d kill the boys. Ruin them. They need their dad. I’ll do anything...”
She had to stick to her guns. She had her own credit card, and after picking the boys up at school she’d withdrawn a wad of cash from their joint account. Then she’d spent an hour with her lawyer before driving out here, forty minutes south of the city, looking for something off the beaten track. She’d paid the desk clerk with cash and hadn’t called anyone but her sister, Claudia. No one else knew where she was, not even her lawyer. She had another appointment with him tomorrow, to review the first draft of the separation agreement. Until then, the plan was to just lay low. As for the boys, she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. For now they seemed content with the white lie she’d told them about a fun-filled holiday for just the three of them. Today they’d be visiting the wave pool in Kanata, then checking out the IMAX theater in Hull.
Tip-toeing past the twins, Nina went into the bathroom to clean herself up.
JENNY SAID, “NOW REMEMBER, SWEETIE, , your father said no company, so don’t blow it.” She adjusted Kim’s collar. “Your exams start next week, so you could do a little studying.”