The Devil You Know

by Freida McFadden

  “I forgot,” I say, which is better than telling him that there was absolutely nothing that happened in the last several minutes that was worth videotaping.

  I can see Mila glaring at us across the room. We’re quite a couple—I failed to put Leah in a dress and Ben missed the whole concert. We’re not winning the Parents of the Year Award any time soon.

  “Well, now what?” Ben asks me.

  “I don’t know.” I look over at Leah, who is busy socializing with her friends. “We could take her to that McDonald’s with the play area.”

  Ben groans. “McDonald’s? Do we have to?”

  Ben is a food snob. He hates fast food with a passion. He doesn’t make a fuss if I take Leah to McDonald’s, but he doesn’t want any part of it. He says one of the things he hates the most about living out on the island is that the food here is universally awful. He insists you can’t get good sushi anywhere within a thirty mile radius. Maybe it’s true, but I don’t care. I actually like Chicken McNuggets. Although Ben gives me a hard time if I call them “McNuggets” instead of just “nuggets.” He hates McBastardization of food names.

  “She likes it,” I say.

  “It just smells so… disgusting,” he says. “How can you stand it?”

  “Well, why don’t we take her to Eleven Madison Park then?” I suggest. Eleven Madison Park is one of the swankiest restaurants in Manhattan—it’s something like two-hundred bucks for dinner. Ben took me there once, and I don’t think he could afford to eat anything besides ramen noodles for the next two weeks.

  Ben rolls his eyes. “I just don’t like McDonald’s, okay?”

  “Noted.”

  He eyes the door. “Maybe I’ll just go home.”

  “You can’t leave yet!” I say. “We have to socialize for a few minutes.”

  That’s my least favorite part of these events: socializing with other parents. These are people I would never be friends with under any other circumstances, but because we all have kids at Mila’s preschool, we are forced to make small talk. Usually about the preschool and our kids, since we have absolutely nothing else in common. At least on playdates, we can talk trash about Mila.

  Exactly on cue, a woman named Ann approaches me, nibbling on one of the sugar cookies that Mila has provided as the event’s refreshments. Ben and I both hate sugar cookies. Leah apparently does not hate sugar cookies because I can see she’s got one in each hand.

  “Wasn’t that great?” Ann says to me.

  Was it? Either way, we have to say it was. “Yes,” I lie.

  Ann looks at Ben, who also nods with equal earnestness. “Yep.”

  “I can’t believe they’re getting so big already,” Ann says.

  “Yes,” I agree. “So big.”

  I’m not good at small talk.

  “Any luck with the toilet training, Jane?” Ann asks me.

  I wince. “Not really.”

  “The best thing to do,” she tells me, “is just put them in underwear for a weekend. It’s a messy weekend, but by the end of the weekend, it’s done.”

  “That’s what I said,” Ben speaks up. Maybe I should have let him leave.

  “It’s just a lot of clean up,” I point out.

  “True,” Ann says. “But by the end of the weekend, she’ll be trained!”

  Or she won’t be trained and my house will smell like urine.

  “Maybe when she’s four,” I say.

  “She’ll be four in two months,” Ben reminds me.

  I glare at him. “Well, maybe when she’s five then.”

  “We are not having a five year old in diapers!”

  “Well, I’m not having a house covered in pee!”

  I can tell that Ann is sorry she brought it up. “I’m going to get more fruit punch,” she tells me as the two of us glare at each other. Ben’s cheeks are pink and I don’t think it’s from the cold anymore. But I’m certainly not having it out with him at the preschool.

  I look around the room. None of the other parents in the room have randomly started yelling at each other. What’s wrong with us? We didn’t used to be this way. There was, believe it or not, a time when Ben and I never fought. At all. Well, there would be a tense moment here or there, like if I wanted Italian food and he wanted Indian, but I could honestly say we’d never had a fight.

  That changed after Leah was born. She wasn’t a great sleeper, and almost immediately, the competition over who was going to slip in a few hours of sleep started to wear on us. And then when I returned to work when she was three months old, things just got worse.

  Our first blowout fight happened when Leah was about six months old. Ben didn’t have to be at work the next day, so he was staying up late, and I was in bed sleeping. At around two in the morning, I heard Leah start to wail. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for Ben to soothe her back to sleep. I waited and waited, but it never happened.

  Finally, after ten agonizing minutes of listening to my daughter’s escalating screams, I stormed into the living room, where I found Ben casually working on his computer.

  “Aren’t you going to get her?” I nearly yelled at him.

  “I’m letting her cry it out,” he said casually.

  “It’s two in the morning and I’m working all day tomorrow!” I shot back.

  “Fine,” he said, although he didn’t make a move off the couch. “Hold on. Just a minute.”

  “Seriously?” I yelled. “Go get her now! I! Have! Work! Tomorrow!”

  “Just chill out,” Ben said.

  And that’s when I lost it. Let me tell you, if you are a man, never ever tell your wife to “just chill out.” We ended up staying up for most of the rest of the night, alternately yelling at each other and unsuccessfully attempting to soothe Leah back to sleep.

  But we made up. Or at least, we both calmed down and we didn’t get divorced or anything. So in that sense, we made up. But after that, the arguments just seemed to happen much easier than they used to.

  In any case, I’m certainly not going to have it out with him here and now.

  “Listen,” I mutter to Ben, “I’ll take care of Leah. Just… go.”

  It’s the right thing to say to diffuse the situation. He sighs, his shoulders slumping as the fight goes out of him. “Okay, thanks. You know I hate these things, Jane.”

  “Right.” I glance at Leah, wondering how fast I can get out of here. If I have to stick around this place for another hour, I might slit my wrists.

  Chapter 7

  I smell like a chimney.

  There should be a law about smoking prior to a doctor’s appointment. You can’t eat after midnight prior to a surgery, and you shouldn’t be allowed to smoke within an hour of a doctor’s appointment. Because being trapped in a tiny room with a man who has clearly just been outside smoking two packs of cigarettes is torture. If you think primary care docs aren’t at risk for disease from second hand smoke, think again. By the end of my visit with Mr. Callahan, my eyes were watering and I was practically having an asthma attack.

  I spent a good ten minutes gently lecturing Mr. Callahan about his smoking habits. Smoking is one of the worst vices, in my opinion. When I was a kid, I remember all the anti-smoking people would talk about how if you smoke, you could get lung cancer, so that’s why it’s bad. Now that I’m an adult, I think that’s an awful way to present smoking—because kids think that either they’ll get lung cancer and die or else they won’t.

  Except the reality is that smoking will inevitably mess you up, no matter what. Nobody escapes it. It ages you well beyond your years—it makes your teeth yellow and your skin wrinkled. It causes strokes and heart attacks, and it could land you with an oxygen tank you’ll have to lug around everywhere you go. And hey guys—it can cause impotence.

  Also, it causes lung cancer. That too.

  Mr. Callahan already has difficult to control high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and I heard a bruit in his carotids last time I saw him, so I ordered a carotid ultrasound that ended
up showing the blood vessels going to his brain are more than fifty percent occluded.

  “I’m going to quit smoking,” Mr. Callahan promised me. “Just as soon as I turn fifty.”

  “You’re forty-nine,” I said.

  “Right. So… next year.”

  “Why not now?”

  “It’s a decision I made,” he said. “When I turn fifty, I’m going to quit. Cold turkey.”

  If he makes it to fifty.

  I walk briskly down the hallway to the elevator, hoping that maybe I’ll air myself out. I don’t know how to get the stink of cigarettes off me. It’s permeated my hair molecules. I feel like I need a shower. Maybe it’s not as bad as I think though.

  I get into the elevator with George the Elevator Operator and I can see his nose wrinkle up when I step inside. He looks like he wants to wave his hand in front of his nose. Damn, it really is bad.

  “Cafeteria,” I tell him.

  George hits the button for the second floor, all the while glaring at me like I’ve brought Ebola into the elevator.

  “I don’t smoke,” I blurt out.

  George shrugs but gives me a skeptical look. Oh well.

  The VA cafeteria isn’t terrible. I know it’s supposed to be healthier and cheaper to bring my lunch, but I already have to spend time packing a lunch for Leah and I just… can’t. Today they’re serving salmon burgers, which are surprisingly not terrible. Salmon burgers seem like something a hospital cafeteria could never get right in a million years, but somehow, they make it happen.

  I order my salmon burger with fries and then fill a cup with tap water instead of one of the soft drinks. That’s me being healthy. Well, at least I don’t smoke.

  Unfortunately, there’s only one lunch-lady on duty right now and it’s Gloria. Gloria and I are not simpatico. I’m not entirely sure why, because I’m always perfectly nice to her, but she seems to despise me. Why do all the VA staff members hate me?

  Gloria peers up at me through her half-moon glasses and pats the dark bun at the back of her head. “What you got?”

  “Salmon burger and fries,” I tell her. “And this is just a cup of water.”

  Gloria rings up my purchase. “That’ll be four dollars, one cent.”

  I left my wallet upstairs but I put four crumpled dollar bills in my pocket because I know that the lunch entrée always costs three dollars and ninety-one cents, including tax.

  “Um,” I say. “Did the price go up?”

  “No,” Gloria says. “I had to charge you for the cup. Ten cents.”

  Well, great.

  “So, um…” I look down at the bills in my hand. “I actually don’t have that extra penny. I have four dollars. Is that… okay?”

  Gloria shakes her head no. “I gotta have exact change or else the register won’t balance.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a penny.”

  “I don’t make the rules, doc.”

  I sigh, looking into the cafeteria to see if Lisa is close enough that she’ll see me waving. “Is there any way you could spot me that penny? I promise I’ll pay it back.”

  Gloria taps a sign that is taped to the register. “No credit.”

  “It’s a penny.”

  “If everyone did it, that’s a lot of pennies.”

  I’m about to pop an aneurysm in my brain when I hear a voice to my right say, “I’ll cover Dr. McGill’s meal.”

  Oh no.

  I turn my head and there he is. Dr. Ryan Reilly—the sexiest surgeon I’ve ever known. He’s in scrubs again, which is his attire of choice. He’s got a tray with a salmon burger of his own and a Coca Cola that he slides alongside mine. He hands Gloria a ten dollar bill and she beams at him.

  “Hello, Dr. Reilly!” she chirps in a friendly tone I had no idea she possessed.

  He winks at her. “Hello yourself, Gloria. Please keep the change.”

  “You’re so sweet, Dr. Reilly,” she sighs. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if she leaned across the cash register and kissed him. He’s worked here less than a week and already every female employee of the hospital is in love with him. Figures.

  I try to hand Ryan my four crumpled bills, but he holds up his hand. “Please, Jane. Don’t insult me.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I mumble.

  He grins at me. “You’re welcome. I missed being your hero.”

  I want to tell him he’s not my hero, but the truth is, he sort of is right now. What the hell would I have done if I couldn’t come up with that extra penny?

  “So where are we sitting?” he asks me.

  No. No way. I’m not having lunch with him.

  “Actually,” I say, “I’m sitting with my friend Lisa.”

  “And I can’t join you because…?”

  I give him a look and he just shakes his head innocently. Fine. He can sit with me and Lisa. Hopefully, he’ll behave himself. After all, he’s had eight years to mature.

  Who am I kidding? This is going to be awful.

  As I approach the table where Lisa is sitting, she looks up and her eyes go wide as she sees Ryan following me. When he puts his tray down on our table, she jumps out of her seat. “Hi!” She thrusts her manicured fingers in his direction. Her nails are decorated with the colors of the American flag. “I’m Lisa. And you are…?”

  “I’m Ryan.” He takes her outstretched hand and I can see a flush on Lisa’s face. Seriously? He’s not that good looking. “I’m the new vascular surgeon here.”

  “Oh!” Lisa’s eyes widen further. I know she thinks surgeons are crazy sexy.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I join you,” Ryan says.

  Lisa settles back into her seat, mouthing something possibly obscene in my direction. “Of course not.”

  Lisa is staring at Ryan so blatantly that it’s embarrassing. He’s everything she likes in the opposite sex. She might even like him better than Hugh Jackman. It takes her approximately thirty seconds to ask the dreaded question: “So how do you two know each other?”

  I don’t even have a chance to give my innocent answer before Ryan says, “We used to hook up.”

  Lisa’s mouth falls open.

  “A long time ago,” I quickly add.

  “Before she was with Pip,” Ryan says.

  I glare at him. “Ben.”

  “Oh yeah.” He grins at me. “Of course, there may have been some intersection between us.”

  “There was no intersection,” I say.

  There was a little intersection. Ben doesn’t know about that. Ryan probably knew but didn’t care. The thing was, I was always with Ryan when I was a resident. We both saw other people, him definitely way, way more than me, but we kept ending up together. I have no idea why. I think part of it was the fact that I knew something about him that nobody else knew. I’m sure none of the other girls he hooked up with knew his secret.

  “Jane broke my heart.” Ryan clutches his chest dramatically. “I was never the same after she dumped me.”

  I roll my eyes. “That would have been a good thing.”

  “That’s for sure,” he agrees.

  Ryan reaches into the pocket of his green scrubs and pulls out his buzzing phone. He takes the call, which is clearly work-related. I try not to ogle the hard muscles in his arm that I can see peeking out below the sleeve of his shirt. When does he find time to work out?

  Oh yeah, he doesn’t have a preschooler at home.

  “Well,” he says as he rises to his feet, “it’s been a pleasure, ladies, but duty calls.”

  Lisa’s face falls. “You’re leaving? Already?”

  In the entire time I knew Ryan, I never saw him get through an entire meal without getting paged away. Some things never change. Also, he’s still crazy hot. That didn’t change either.

  “I’m sure I’ll see you both around in the near future,” he assures Lisa. “Nice meeting you, Lisa. See you later, Jane.”

  I don’t like the way he said my name. Actually, I do like the way he said my name. Too much. That’s the problem.


  Lisa keeps staring at Ryan as he leaves our table. Her eyes never leave him until he’s exited the cafeteria’s big red swinging doors. She’s nearly salivating. It’s disgusting.

  “Holy crap,” she breathes. “He’s so hot.”

  “He sure thinks he is,” I mutter.

  “Well, he’s right then.” Lisa shakes her head. “I think he’s going on my list. Right between Hugh Jackman and Chris Evans.”

  I roll my eyes. “He’s not a celebrity though. I thought the whole point of having a list of people that you could cheat with is that they’re essentially unattainable.”

  She shrugs. “Well, he’s basically unattainable. I mean, look at him.”

  “Yeah, not so unattainable.”

  Lisa regards me curiously. “You really dated Dr. Hottie McHotterson, Jane?”

  I frown at her. “Is that really so hard to believe?”

  “Um, no,” Lisa says. Yeah, nice save. Okay, I get it. Ryan is hotter than I am. “I just can’t believe you picked Ben over him. I mean, not that Ben isn’t a great guy and all…”

  I glare at her.

  “Come on, Jane!” She runs a hand through her wild dark curls. I only notice now that she’s got a red flower in there. It’s not clear whether she pinned it there this morning herself, or she was just walking by some flowers at some point during the morning and one of them caught in her curls. “You know what I’m talking about. How did you have the willpower to turn down a guy like that?”

  “He really isn’t all that great,” I tell her, “once you get to know him. I mean, sure, he’s good looking. But there’s a lot more to a relationship.”

  Except that’s not entirely the truth. My relationship with Ryan went beyond the physical—I was always struggling not to fall too deeply for him, because it would have been so easy. If Ryan had been willing to marry me, I’d be Mrs. Jane Reilly right now. Actually, I’d still be Jane McGill since I didn’t want to change my name. But I’d definitely have married Ryan if he’d ever asked me. Or if he didn’t assure me that it would never happen in a million years.

  But there’s no point in thinking about any of that. I’m with Ben and it all worked out for the best.