The Other Side of the Pillow

I could tell that she was glad that she had decided to go ahead and marry me. I was walking on air. Seriously, it seemed like my back had straightened and I was walking taller, like someone had snuck into my closet and put some lifts into the heels of all my shoes.

Being back at work had truly helped Jemistry out the most, though. I had never seen someone so committed to changing the lives of children. Her hormones were definitely throwing her for a loop and having to deal with the hectic schedule somehow managed to calm her down instead of overwhelm her. She wasn’t the type of woman who appreciated being able to sit at home and chill. And I actually had never been attracted to that kind of woman. I wanted to be able to talk about each other’s day at the dinner table every night. To be able to give each other career advice and cuddle when a rough day presented itself from time to time. Even if every day ended up being rough, we would be there for each other.

A lot of men—including “he who walked behind the rows and shall remain nameless”—wanted to control their women economically. They wanted their women to have to rely on their income for everything from toothpaste and toilet paper to maintain their hygiene to lipstick and hairbrushes to maintain their looks. I really had nothing against that theory. No man could force a woman to sign up for that, after all. However, my mother had been a stay-at-home wife and I saw how it had affected her in the end.

Daddy had to pay her alimony and child support . . . for a while. Like most women who take the option of not pursuing a career or stacking their own savings, Mom assumed that Daddy would always take care of her. Once all of us—their offspring—were grown and the five years of alimony were up, Mom had found herself struggling financially. No money paid into social security. No pension plan or 401K. No stocks, no bonds, and no true net worth.

She had been given the family home in the divorce, but that was only because Dad didn’t want to look bad in front of my sisters and me. He would’ve never misplaced us out of spite. He had nothing to be spiteful about, really. If not for his actions, there never would have been a divorce. I never blamed my mother for deciding that enough was enough. While my siblings and I surely were not privy to all of what occurred, we knew enough details to determine that Daddy was a disrespectful dog who couldn’t control his dick.

Mom eventually sold the house after we were all grown. Her funds were low so she needed the equity. When she called to inform me that she planned to sell it, I immediately offered to cover all of the household bills and send her several thousand extra a month to live in the lifestyle she was accustomed to. She refused me and she refused both of my sisters who made similar offers. I will never forget her exact words to me: “Children are not supposed to take care of their parents. Your father and I did not put forth the effort to make you all successful, only for me to have to turn around and financially drain you. I love you, but I will not accept your money.”

Mom also said that she would be lonely, living in a seven-bedroom mansion by herself. It was pointless. So she sold the house, moved into a condominium in New York City for several years, believing that being in “the city that never sleeps” would make her life exciting. She had several longtime friends there but all of them had lives of their own and she would often feel like the third wheel.

Eventually, she tapped out of the equity; a lot of it went toward purchasing the condo since the cost of living in New York was so high. Then she had to swallow her pride, call Alexis in Florida, and ask if she could move in. It was devastating to her to have to go there but, out of the three of us and where we were located, Florida made the most sense.

I sent Mom a few thousand dollars a month despite what she had initially said. I refused to see her worry about money; not the woman who had sacrificed all of her time for me as a child, the woman who made me study and complete my homework on time, the woman who fought for me to be valedictorian when my high school tried to rob me of it because another girl’s relatives were “important people.” While I credited my father for a lot—after all, I had followed in his footsteps and became a vascular surgeon—my mother was the glue that held our family together. Such was the case with many wives who, while married, often felt like single parents because their husbands were workaholics—or “playaholics.”

Yes, women were amazing creatures. Women who did everything that they promised to do, who took their marriage vows seriously, and who took raising children even more seriously. And yet, that didn’t prevent a lot of men from trying to self-destruct their family units during a divorce. A lot of men who found themselves no longer desired or tolerated by their wives straight up showed their asses. I had seen many male friends and associates do that over the years.

I bring all of this up for a good reason. November 22nd, 2013, was the day that all of the shit hit the fan in the marriage of my former best friend. And instead of blaming himself, he tried to blame all of his drama on me.

* * *

I had been out of the operating room less than ten minutes. I was in the waiting room on the sixth floor speaking with Mrs. Rosella McCoy, whose husband was in recovery after I had cleared up a clot in his leg.

“Is Michael going to be all right?” she asked, as if she was afraid to know the answer.

“The surgery went very well.” I grinned at her. “He’s in recovery now. You’ll be able to see him in about an hour.”

She sighed in relief and hugged me. I was still wearing my scrubs.

“Oh my God, thank you.” She put her hands in front of her face, palms together as if she was praying, and then lowered them. “So, that’s it? No more complications??

??

I was always cautious not to mislead patients or their families. The fact of the matter was that something could always go wrong after surgery. A person could do anything, from suddenly bleeding profusely to suffering a stroke or heart attack, to slipping into a coma or ending up with no activity in the brain stem, having to be removed from life support within a matter of hours after what seemed like a successful surgery at the time. No matter how skilled a doctor, nature or undiagnosed health conditions could intervene at any moment.

“I cleared the clot,” I said, being truthful. “We’re going to monitor him closely over the next several days. Don’t anticipate him coming home until at least Monday. I never release my patients until I’m confident that they’ll be okay without standby care.”

“I understand, Doctor Harris.” She was fighting off tears. “I’m just glad Michael’s still alive. You hear all those horror stories about people dying on the operating table and—”

I rubbed her shoulder gently. “He was a trooper. The surgery was by the book.”

Mrs. McCoy smiled. “I don’t know what I could ever do to repay you. You saved his life.”

“Ma’am, it was my pleasure to remove the clot. You don’t owe me a thing, except taking care of your husband while he recuperates, and discouraging him from doing anything that may cause another one. He is going to have to stop trying to do a lot of heavy lifting, and he needs to retire from that construction job.”

“I keep telling his hard head that. Now they’ll probably force him to retire. But it’s for the best.”

“Definitely for the best, in this case.”

I reached into the pocket of my scrub pants and hit the button to turn my cell phone back on. I had retrieved it when I left out of the operating room but had neglected to turn it on, both my phone and my hospital pager.

I felt the initial vibration from it powering up and then it started going off like fireworks.

“Excuse me for a moment,” I said to Mrs. McCoy and then took a few steps to the side so I could read my text messages.

All of them were from Jemistry: