The Perfect Son

by Freida McFadden

  This was, in fact, the very same bar and grill where we had our first official date together all those years back—if that wasn’t a sign he was about to pop the question, what was? I had barely enough time to change clothes after work, and I’d made the most of it. I splurged on the Ultimate Little Black Dress last month, and I’d been dying for an occasion to wear it. I spent nearly an hour with my curling iron, trying to get my hair maximally silky and shiny. I loved the look on Joel’s face when he saw me in a sexy outfit—the way his mouth dropped open slightly, and a smile spread across his face.

  My first clue that something was amiss was that Joel was wearing his green scrubs. Not that Joel wearing scrubs was anything out of the ordinary. He worked as an Emergency Room physician at a local hospital, and he admitted he’d live in scrubs if it were socially acceptable. I did our laundry every Sunday, and there was usually a full load of nothing but scrubs. He wore them whenever I didn’t nag him to put on real clothes. I mean, jeans and a T-shirt would have been fine. I wasn’t picky.

  So it wasn’t a surprise to see him wearing scrubs. Yet I figured if he were going to propose, wouldn’t he want to wear something nicer? Also, it made me feel ridiculously overdressed in my Ultimate Little Black Dress when he was wearing freaking scrubs.

  A waitress started talking to Joel as I approached the table. She was all of twenty-two with curvy hips and blond hair, and before I got to my seat, her hand was on his shoulder. Joel in regular clothes got second looks, with his penetrating blue eyes, shy smile, and lean but muscular build. But in scrubs, he was absolutely irresistible to women.

  “Hey.” He lifted those blue eyes when he saw me. He looked tired, but that was also nothing new. “You’re here.”

  The waitress reluctantly pulled her hand off my boyfriend’s shoulders. I was unsurprised by her reaction to me because I got it all the time. The eyes traveling up and down my body as she appraised her competition. But at last she left us alone.

  “How was your shift?” I asked as I settled into the chair across from him.

  His face brightened the way it always did whenever the subject of his work came up. Joel loved his work more than anyone I knew. Even when we first met, back when he was a first year medical student, he knew he wanted to be an ER doc. He lived for his work. It was absolutely the most important thing in his life.

  How things have changed since then. Now that he has her.

  “I diagnosed a dural venous sinus thrombosis,” he said. “Two days ago, they let this girl walk out with just some Fioricet for her headache. I caught it though.”

  “So…” I grinned at him. “You saved her life.”

  “Well.” He lowered his eyes. One thing about Joel was that he never oversold himself. “Maybe. I’m sure someone would have figured it out eventually. And then I passed her on to neurology, so if anyone is going to save her life, it’s them.”

  “Of course you did,” I insisted. Because while my boyfriend was always reluctant to tout his own achievements, I had no trouble doing it. I would tell anyone who would listen about the Great Dr. Joel Broder. I wasn’t bragging—I believed everything I said. I was so proud of everything he had achieved during the time we were together. In my eyes, there was nobody better than him. No better doctor. No better man.

  No better person to spend the rest of my life with.

  I still believe that. In spite of everything that happened next.

  “There are lots of people I don’t save,” he said.

  Without him saying the words, I know what he’s referring to. One month ago, a man dropped dead in his ER. A young man—about our age, give or take a year. He came in complaining of vague chest pain that had been triaged as “likely heartburn.” Joel hadn’t even seen him yet when a “Code Blue” was called. Joel rushed to the room, but wasn’t able to save him. Cardiac arrest, he said.

  Joel took it really hard. He went into our bedroom, lay down on the bed, and stared up at the ceiling without speaking for several hours. I couldn’t get him to eat dinner, even though I made his favorite: spaghetti with homemade marinara sauce and meatballs. It takes me nearly two hours to get that recipe perfect, but it’s Joel’s favorite. How do you get the meatballs to taste so good? (The secret ingredient is buttermilk—a tip from my Italian grandma. I never told him that though.)

  I woke up at two in the morning that night, and he wasn’t in bed or even in our apartment. When I frantically called him on his cell, he said he was “taking a walk.” He didn’t return until sunrise—I know because I sat up waiting. It took days for him to start acting normally again. And it was clearly still in the back of his mind at all times.

  I didn’t entirely understand it. He’d seen dozens of people die during his career in medicine. Maybe even hundreds. Why did this one death shake him so badly?

  “He was a doctor too,” Joel said to me now. “Did I tell you that? He worked as a hospitalist downtown. One of our ER docs went to med school with him.”

  “Oh,” I said, because I wasn’t sure what else to say. I didn’t want to talk about death. Not now. It was the least romantic thing I could think of.

  He took a swig from his copper-colored drink. I didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t his usual wine or beer. It looked and smelled like… bourbon. I’d never seen him drink hard liquor before. Well, that wasn’t true. But not since he graduated medical school.

  It was my second clue something was amiss. Yet I ignored it and plowed forward anyway.

  “So,” I said cheerfully, “you said you wanted to talk to me about something? Something important?”

  When I relive that night in my memory, it’s at this point that I start to cringe.

  “Yeah.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. His eyes were avoiding mine. I looked at the pocket of his scrub top, trying to make out the outline of a ring box. “So here’s the thing…”

  Will you marry me?

  “I…” He coughed into his hand and took another swig from his drink. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately, you know? After that guy…”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Joel.”

  “I know, but that’s not the point.” He rubbed his eyes with the balls of his hands. “I just… I can’t stop thinking about him. He was… I mean, it’s not like he was a walking coronary. He was healthy. Young… like me. A doctor, like me. And he just… dropped dead. No warning. Just…” He snapped his fingers. “Like that.”

  This didn’t feel like a marriage proposal. If it was, it was a really, really bad one.

  “Well,” I said, trying to turn this around. “That sort of thing makes you want to… you know, reevaluate your life. Move forward. Right?”

  Buy a house. Have babies. Grow old together. Sit on a porch in matching rocking chairs, holding hands.

  Joel’s eyes lit up. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “Wonderful!” I reached out across the table for Joel’s hand, but he pulled it away before I could reach him. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

  “I think it’s for the best.” He picked up his drink and swished the copper liquid around. “You and I—we’re not good together. Not anymore. And it’s better to move on, rather than—”

  “What?” My heart skipped in my chest. “Not good together? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about…” He blinked a few times. “Isn’t that what you meant? That we should… go our separate ways? Move on?”

  “Not move on!” I practically spit out the words. People had started to turn and stare at us. “I said ‘move forward.’ Like… get married.”

  And this is the part where the memory really makes me cringe.

  Joel’s mouth fell open. “Get married?”

  “Well, why not?” My heart was slamming in my chest. I wondered if Joel would feel bad if he made me drop dead. “We’ve been together forever. We live together. We’re great together. And… I love you.”

  This was the part where he was supposed to tell me he loved me
too. I sat there, waiting for him to say it. But he didn’t. He just sank down in his seat, staring at his drink.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just… our relationship isn’t working for me anymore.”

  Not working for him? What the hell did that mean? I still can’t figure it out. I felt like an employee he’d decided to let go because I’d outlived my usefulness. Or maybe I was too old.

  When I later saw the next girl he dated, the latter became a real possibility. And I do mean “girl.”

  “Joel, I love you,” I said again. “Please. Don’t do this. You’re my whole life.” My eyes filled with tears. “Please.”

  If there’s one thing I wish I could take back about that day, it would be to eliminate the begging. I’d never considered myself a weak woman. Begging a man not to leave me—I still feel the sting of humiliation from that one. But my words were true. Joel was my life. I loved him more than I’d ever imagined loving a man. It was fairy tale love. And fairy tales always have happy endings.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, unable to meet my eyes. “You… you can have the apartment.”

  “I can’t afford the rent on my own,” I said. I loved my job and I was very good at it, but my salary was piddling compared with his.

  “I’ll help you pay it then,” he offered. “Until you can find another place.”

  He was so nice about it. That’s the thing about Joel—he’s a good guy. Always so kind and considerate and good. He had two months off after he graduated from medical school, and instead of using that time to have some fun like his buddies, he decided to fly to Senegal to volunteer at a medical clinic. I went with him and volunteered to help out doing what I could. We got our shots together—the yellow fever one made me particularly ill—and stocked up on malaria pills, and we spent six weeks living in a hut together. The room we shared was only slightly bigger than our walk-in closet, and the one tiny fan in the corner of the room did nothing to dissipate the stifling heat. After a week, I was covered head-to-toe in mosquito bites. But somehow, it was the happiest six weeks of my life.

  “What if we went to Senegal again?” I suggested, clinging to the memory of when we used to be happy together. “We could volunteer again. Couldn’t we?”

  He shook his head. “That… it wouldn’t…”

  I was running out of ideas. I felt like I could convince him not to go if only I could come up with the right words.

  “Please don’t do this,” I whispered. “Please.”

  More begging. Ugh. I promise I’m not usually so pathetic.

  I studied Joel’s face, with his pale eyelashes, thick brown hair, and the flush creeping up his neck. “Is there someone else?” I asked.

  “No,” he said quickly. “There’s no one else.”

  The subtext was obvious: Not yet. There would be someone else someday. Another woman. One he’d someday deem worthy of marriage, the house in the suburbs, the kids, the matching rocking chairs—everything I wasn’t good enough for. Because he and I didn’t work.

  “Don’t do this to me,” I said, the volume of my voice rising above the din of the restaurant. Joel hated making a scene. He would do anything to avoid it. I was making him very uncomfortable now, although it was his own damn fault for doing this in a restaurant. Maybe he thought if he did it at home, I’d rip the whole place apart. I had no idea that as we were having this conversation, his buddy Pete was hauling his belongings out of the apartment so they wouldn’t be there when I got back.

  Joel glanced around. Half the people in the restaurant had their eyes on us now. He looked really uncomfortable. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

  “I’m sorry,” he said for the third time. And then he stood up, tossed a few bills on the table, and sprinted out of the restaurant.

  I was stunned. Fifteen minutes earlier, I had been planning a life with the man I loved. And now? Now it was all down the toilet.

  They say there’s a thin line between love and hate. In those few seconds between when Joel stood up and when the door to the restaurant slammed behind him, my love for Joel Broder started to morph into hatred. It didn’t all happen that day, but with time, I grew to hate him. I hated that I wasn’t good enough for the life he imagined for himself. I hated the pity in his eyes when he offered to pay the rent on our apartment because he knew I couldn’t afford it. I came to despise the new girl he would meet who would someday take my place at the altar when he was finally ready to settle down. Much more than I ever hated Joel, I came to hate this nameless, faceless woman.

  I wanted to get back at him for what he did to me.

  And her.

  That was my intention from the beginning. When Joel dumped me that night, he took away my entire life—my home, my friends, my dignity. I could never get any of that back. All I wanted was to even the score.

  I never meant to kill anyone.

  I swear.

  Buy The Ex on Amazon today!