Friday

"I think you should go now." She spoke in a raspy whisper. I stood and walked toward the door.

"I love you, Jason."

What a waste, I thought. What a terrible, tragic, God-damned waste it was. Those four people and their little sex games, Lena's failure to think straight, and something beautiful and unique beyond description is destroyed forever. Those idiots had no idea what they'd killed; they would neither know nor understand what Lena and I had had together. Then there was Lena. Do you take a priceless crystal vase and throw it around the room, or play volleyball with it or something, and not ever think, hey, this might break, and if it does, it's gone forever?

Did I believe Lena? Yes, completely. Did it change anything? No. Nothing could put the pieces back together.

Anna wanted to see me Friday night. I met her at the coffee joint and listened to her blather on for a while about saving Lena, not believing a word she said. Finally, she stopped for a response from me. What she got was:

"You see that coffee?"

"Yes... why?"

"It's the last one I'm buying you until you start telling the truth." She was all indignant, of course, but I took hold of her left wrist, perhaps a little more strongly than necessary, and held her ring finger about two inches in front of her eyes.

"Oh, that. I, well, I like the ring, and it's mine, so why shouldn't I wear it?" I gave a contemptuous snort, or maybe I just sprayed coffee everywhere for effect, I'm not sure. She got the message. After a lot of hemming and hawing, Anna finally spilled the beans. It turned out Bill had the brilliant idea that if I would give Anna a tumble, I wouldn't be able to go through with divorcing Lena, and better yet I'd have to go along with Girls' Fucking Night Out. Then he would get to fuck Lena some more. It seems he missed her.

I made sure Anna knew what I thought of that plan. I suspect most of the other patrons at Moonbuck's knew, too. She just sat there and smiled at me.

"Are you finished, Jason?" she asked after I wound down.

"Okay, so you found me out. Big deal. Your choices are still the same: go along with this or be alone. You were supposed to be offered that choice two weeks ago, and I'm truly sorry you weren't. You can believe me or not; I don't really care. Just so you know, whatever you choose, Lena won't be lonely. I don't think she'll be there tonight, but we both know she'll come back, and soon, with you or without you.

"Tonight, you also have two choices. You can come with me to Chrissy and Bill's, and we'll all have fun together. Or you can go back to your lonely apartment and a date with your right hand." After what Lena had done to me, there was no earthly reason I shouldn't spend this evening screwing two very pretty women, at the same place I'd watch her screw two other men. There was also no way on earth I could do it. Anna smiled at my confusion.

"Oh, come on. It shouldn't be that hard a choice." She thrust out her ample chest at me and winked, as she stood up to leave.

"Right hand it is, then. If you change your mind, you know where to find me." Anna stood and sashayed out of the room, making sure everyone there knew what I wouldn't be getting any of that night.

Friday. Bleccch.

It was a couple of weeks later, maybe three, when a couple of guys from work apparently decided something had to be done. I guess I had turned into a bit of a hard ass, but I rationalized it by thinking I was a code reviewer, and it was my job to find mistakes, and make sure they were corrected and didn't happen again. They were probably right that there were ways of doing that, which didn't involve quite as much yelling and cussing as I found myself doing since Fatal Friday.

I was informed that the three of us were going to a bar with a somewhat tainted reputation, and I was going to get thoroughly plastered, and maybe even laid, and then the world would look like a brighter place. There were all sorts of flaws in this logic, but I felt guilty enough about the way I'd been acting at work that I went along with them. They drove me there, and made me leave my phone at home, so I had no way to go anywhere without them.

The bar lived down to its reputation, but it wasn't too long before I stopped caring. The women looked better, too, as the night went on. None of them were in Lena's class, of course, but I already knew that didn't exist. I was never a very good dancer, but I was enthusiastic, and tried my luck with several of the females present. They seemed to enjoy it. At least, they were smiling. Perhaps they were laughing at me; I was beyond making fine distinctions at that point.

My good buddies were also smiling. They were reminding me what good friends we were, and how good friends didn't cuss each other out over little teeny tiny mistakes in code. I agreed. Of course I did. They could have told me the sky was yellow and I would have agreed.

I have no idea how much later it was when I latched onto a girl. I say 'latched onto' because that's pretty much what I did: I was beyond dancing at that point. Remaining somewhat upright was about all I was good for. She had some very nice places to latch onto, and didn't seem to mind when I grabbed them and held on for dear life. She was smiling, anyway, which was good enough for me. It was not good enough for a couple of large fellows who were not very gentle about separating us. I explained, quite clearly I'm sure, that my friends were over there, and I needed the girl's help to get there. With that, I latched onto her again.

Things happened far too quickly after that. The girl disappeared, the two large fellows were joined by a third, and they were all very upset with me for some reason. I found myself in the parking lot with no idea how I'd gotten there. I offered a manly apology for whatever I'd done, then collected my dignity and started to walk back into the bar, to find my friends and go home. At least, that's what I imagined I was doing. In fact, I wasn't going anywhere. The only reason I was upright at all was because one of the large fellows was holding me that way. The reason he was doing that was so that the other two could beat me up. Which they did. Thoroughly. My state of extreme wastedness dulled most of the feeling, but not all of it. I felt a lot of blood running down past my mouth. I heard things going crack now and then, and figured it wasn't good.

I didn't know when the guy holding me let go; I just remember thinking parking lots weren't supposed to tilt like that, how would the cars stay on them if they did? I remember lying on the pavement, thinking I was half asleep, so I might as well go the rest of the way, when I heard it. A woman's voice, screaming, frantic, calling my name over and over again, coming closer. It sounded like Lena, but it couldn't be. What could she possibly be doing here, anyway? Then something heavy thudded into my side, and everything went black. I was incapable of coherent thought at the time, but I'll put it down here anyway: Friday. Bleccch.

"Ah, so there you are. I'm glad you finally joined us." I tried to turn my head to look at the source of the voice, which sounded female, kind, and middle-aged, but neither my head nor anything else was moving.

"You are at County Memorial Hospital, it is 3:27 AM Tuesday, March 27th, and I am the nurse in charge of your case. You were in a bar fight Friday night, and in case you're wondering, you did not win. The only reason you aren't screaming in pain is the massive amounts of pain-killers we're pumping into you. That's also why you're having trouble thinking clearly and forming words. We have put quite a lot of time into putting you back together, and we don't want the effort wasted, so it's gratifying to see you come round. Don't try to move; you won't be able to, anyway. I'll summon Doctor and we'll have a look at you. You probably want some water."

She opened my lips and put an ice chip on my tongue. It was the best thing I'd ever tasted, and I would have told her so, if anything in my mouth had worked. I could see her now, bending over me with that gentle but impersonal smile that they must teach in nursing school.

"I'll bet that tasted pretty good. Let's try another." Mind you, my memory of all of this is fuzzy at best, and some of it I don't remember at all, but I've had some help reconstructing the events.

The doctor came in, but I was out of it again before he even finished his examination. Just before I went back under, I had a fleeting impression that someone else was in the room besides the doctor and nurse, but I was too muzzy-headed to pay attention.

I won't go into specifics; I'll just say I was pretty messed up. It took the rest of the week for me to be weaned off the pain medication to the point that I could take an intelligent interest in my surroundings, one of which turned out to be Lena. I don't remember the days well enough to tell when I first spotted her, sitting small and silent in a corner of the room, but after that, she was there every time I looked. Sometimes she was reading a book; sometimes just sitting looking at me. She never spoke, but she sometimes smiled. I could see her, rigidly attentive in the background, when the doctors came to check on me and discussed my treatment with the nurses.

When I awoke Saturday morning, her chair was empty, and her bag of books and necessaries was gone. Unreasonably petulant, I asked the nurse (my old friend of the ice chips) why she wasn't there.

"I sent her home."

"Why? I want her here!" I don't know why I said that, except that I hurt and my temper was short. Maybe I wanted her to see me suffer some more, I don't know.

"I sent her home because there are some things you need to understand before you talk to her, and I can't really tell you with her here. Are you ready to listen?"

"What else can I do? I'm stuck here, aren't I?" No, I wasn't winning any niceness points, but if you were hurting like I was, you wouldn't either. Goodness, it hurt to talk!

"That's not what I meant," she said calmly. "You're going to hurt for weeks yet; you might as well get used to it. If you're going to let that control how you act, fine: I can't help you. If you're ready to rejoin humanity again, specifically to see your wife, you need to really hear what I have to say. Can you do that?"

I don't know why it is that women always have things to say that we men "must understand," but once they head down that path, the only thing to do is to sit down, shut up, nod, and smile. The sitting down part was already taken care of, so I just did the other three. She began her story.

"I've been doing this job for quite a while now, Jason. I've seen more than my share of badly injured people. I've seen how much of a support family and friends can be, and I've seen how much harm they can do. I've seen amazing devotion, and equally amazing callousness. Your wife is the most devoted person I've ever seen.

"You're thinking I don't know what I'm talking about, because I don't know what she did to you. You're wrong. I know all about it, because she told me, all the gory details. Poor soul, she had to tell someone, and the nights are long on this ward.

"I'm trained not to react to the stories I hear, but what she did to you almost got me. It was that terrible. Then I saw her here, day after day, not even daring to touch you, let alone speak to you, but never leaving your side. She was with you when you were brought in, you know." No, I didn't.

"She didn't even go home to get her things: her mom brought them for her. Oh, and by the way: you've been here for a week, and your wife has been your only visitor." She gave me a moment to think about that.

"She didn't want to talk about what happened at the bar, but the cops came here and made her. It seems one of the guys who beat you up wanted to charge her with assault, so she had to come clean. They interviewed her here because she didn't want to leave you; that's how I heard it.

"Friday night, Lena got a call from a woman called Anna, saying she'd been staying alone too much and offering to take her out. Lena didn't want to go anywhere, especially not with her. Finally, this Anna said that you needed her, and that did the trick. They were about to go into the bar, when Lena noticed the fight in the parking lot. Lena recognized you immediately, saw you were alone and being beaten by three guys, and took off running toward you. Anna tried to stop her, but Lena pushed her away. By the time she got to you, you were down on the ground and three men were kicking at you.

"One of them had his back turned to Lena; she ran up behind him and kicked him in the balls. He's the one who accused her of assault: he was here for four days himself, and he's still urinating through a catheter. Lena knelt over you, stretching out to protect you from the other two and begging them not to kick you any more. They pulled her off you and started to work her over. One of them held her up off the ground by her arms, so she couldn't get any leverage to kick them. The other one punched her in the abdomen and slapped her around, then they started pulling her clothes off. Someone in the bar apparently called 911; the cops got there before they could do anything else to her. This Anna, it seems, was long gone. The cops arrested the two guys holding Lena, and loaded you and the third guy into ambulances. Lena came in the ambulance with you, and has been here ever since, until today.

"The cops refused to charge Lena, of course. The two guys she didn't kick are going to face a laundry list of charges, just from what the cops saw, let alone what Lena told them.

"Jason, your wife risked being beaten and raped for you, without even thinking twice about it. Had she not done so, you would have been a lot worse off. You might even be dead. That's what you needed to know before you talk to her."

I thought a moment. "Why wouldn't she tell me? Why didn't she want to talk to me about it?"

The nurse's eyes were thoughtful. "I can't say for sure. Possibly, she thought you might think that she was trying to bribe you to take her back. She might have become so used to thinking of herself as the cruel betrayer, and believe me, that's exactly what she thinks, that she had no right for you to consider her a heroine. It might be something else completely; I don't know.

"The truth is, though, that she is a heroine, and you do owe her. She still doesn't expect you to get back together: she thinks she hurt you too badly. Maybe she did. But whatever you're going to do, or say, do it honestly, and kindly. You owe her at least that." She looked me straight in the eye as she said it.

"Lena will be back in about an hour. You have some thinking to do."

She was right. "I'd kill to get you back if I thought that would work," Lena had said. I hadn't doubted her then, and I sure couldn't now. The girl I thought had completely wrecked my life and destroyed our love, shows up out of nowhere and risks getting beaten and raped to save drunken me in a bar parking lot? How do you make sense out of that?

Maybe the nurse who'd had those long night talks with Lena would have some ideas. It couldn't hurt to ask. Except for one thing: I didn't know her name, and this was a little - well, personal, to talk about with someone whose name I didn't know. As I write this, it doesn't make much sense, but you have to remember I was only half there because of the pain meds. I couldn't turn my head far enough to read her name tag, so I began the only way I knew how.

"Um?" She looked up from her chart, but said nothing.

"Um, miss?" I tried again.

"Mrs.," she corrected. She was enjoying this way too much.

"Okay, Mrs. Nurse, I want to ask you some things, but I don't know your name, could you please cut the comedy routine and just tell me?"

"Don't you think that's a bit of a liberty?" She tried not to laugh as she said it. She failed. I spluttered a bit, and she finally took pity on me.

"My name is Laura, and yes, I'll be glad to talk with you about Lena. Frankly, it's about time you asked about her. What do you want to know?"

I tried to take a deep breath, but as my chest expanded, the pain in my ribs was excruciating. I winced and howled.

"Don't do that," Laura admonished. "Remember what we talked about yesterday. Breathe from deep in your belly, keep your ribs as still as possible."

I took a few breaths and tried again. "If Lena told you everything, you know that sex with other people was the only thing I ever said no to, and you know I always said no. How did a smart girl like Lena get the idea that she could change my mind about that, and that tying me to a chair and making me watch her do it was the way to make it happen?"

Laura scooted her wheeled stool closer to my bed, so she could look me in the eye. "That's the big question, isn't it? Jason, she doesn't know. She's been beating herself up over that ever since that night, and getting nowhere."

"Then how am I supposed to know she won't do it again?"

"That's simple: you don't. About that, you never completely know, you have to trust. She loves you, and if you ask her, she'll tell you she never stopped. I think that's the truth, for what it's worth. On the other hand, she betrayed your trust, badly, in a very cruel manner. She knows it, and she's as sorry as she can be, but that doesn't help you regain trust. I've known people, and couples, who have gotten past betrayals this bad and even worse. They had a lot of help, and it took a tremendous amount of time and work, and they know they'll never have what they had before, but they did it. The question is, do you want to?"

I couldn't answer that. After several moments, Laura resumed.

"There's one more thing. Lena told me that it was over a week before she finally realized what she had done to you, and what you must feel. Now it's your turn. Think back to before this, to when your marriage with Lena was the best thing you ever imagined having in your life. Then imagine you had done something that would, cruelly and completely, destroy her trust in you."

"I would never do such a thing!" I interrupted.

"Isn't that exactly what Lena would have said before she did it?" She smiled that patient smile at me, and it wasn't so impersonal any more.

"Imagine that precious thing, your marriage, lying shattered at your feet. Imagine looking into Lena's eyes and seeing all of that pain, and knowing that you're the one who put it there, and you'd do anything to make it go away, but you're totally helpless. There is nothing you can do. Imagine that, and you might begin to understand how she feels."

I was ready to tell her what I thought of her making me out to be the bad guy, and ask to see her license to practice psychiatry, when I noticed something, maybe in her eye, maybe in her manner. Maybe it wasn't even physically there at all, but somehow I knew she had walked this road, too, or one like it, and was still walking it. Her hand briefly touched my shoulder, and she left me to my thoughts.

Laura left as Lena walked into the room - but not without giving me one last, warning look. Lena looked shy and tentative as she sat on the chair next to my bed. She had changed clothes, I noticed: she wore a button down shirt and jeans, no make up, and her hair was in a simple pony tail. She was devastatingly beautiful.

"Are you ... are you okay?" It looks like a really stupid question as I write this, but I knew what she meant.

"Well, they've dialed down the pain meds so I'm more than half awake, I think; I can actually see past the bandage on my nose, and I don't hurt too much unless I laugh. Or breathe deeply. Does that count as okay?"

She smiled a little, and I could feel my heart begin to race. Then the maniacally diabolic movie director flipped a switch, and her sweet smile was replaced by the ecstatic expression she wore as Bill skewered her from behind. I closed my eyes to make it go away. When I opened them, Lena was crying. Somehow, she knew what I had seen.