The Devil You Know

by Freida McFadden

  I immediately carry the huge brown box into our living room, where Ben and Leah are sitting together on the couch. Ben’s got his laptop, as usual, but he’s looking at it with Leah this time. They’re on YouTube and he’s showing her videos of animals doing funny things. Leah is having a great time. I hear her giggling nonstop, with occasion interjections of, “Aw!” or “Oh no!” and once, “Do you think it’s dead?”

  Ben straightens up on the couch when he sees me dump the package on the floor. “What’s that?”

  Leah’s eyes widen. “A present?”

  “Yes.” I brandish a pair of scissors in my hand. “It’s a really special present for Leah!”

  Technically, that’s true.

  “Is it a birthday present?” she asks.

  “It’s not your birthday yet,” I tell her.

  “Happy birthday to Mommy, happy Mommy to Mommy,” she chants as I grab a scissors to cut the tape on the box. Leah is practically climbing on top of me to get to the contents. She doesn’t seem entirely thrilled when she sees what’s inside.

  It’s a potty. But not just a potty. This is a Frozen-themed princess potty, covered with drawings of icicles and a picture of Queen Elsa on the seat. And when you successfully pee in it, it plays several bars of, “Let It Go.” This is the Rolls Royce of potties.

  “We already have a potty,” Ben says.

  “Yeah, Mommy,” Leah agrees. “We’ve got the froggy.”

  That’s the potty Ben bought her. It’s green and looks like a frog. When I saw that potty, I knew Leah would never go for it. It’s not even pink!

  “This one is better,” I explain. “Leah, if you go pee-pee in it, it will play, ‘Let It Go.’”

  Ben grins at me. “Shouldn’t it play that before she pees?”

  “Shut-up.” I unwrap the remaining pieces of the potty and put the finished product in front of my daughter. “Leah, do you want to try using your brand new potty?”

  Leah looks at the potty thoughtfully. “Okay.”

  I feel a thrill of victory when Leah pulls down her pants and pull-ups to sit on her new potty. I sit down next to her cross-legged, because going to the bathroom is a group activity for a three year old—I love how she has no inkling of a desire for privacy. I once was in the bathroom myself and I asked Leah to give me privacy—she left for a moment, then came back and handed me the charger for my phone.

  Ben watches Leah crouched on her princess potty, shaking his head, “I’m telling you, Jane. This could be done in one weekend. One weekend.”

  “This new potty is going to work,” I insist.

  It has to. Because I refuse to change a four year old’s diapers.

  I hear my phone buzz from where I left it on the coffee table. Then it buzzes a second time. Ben is standing about a foot away from it, and I see him glance down. Maybe it’s my imagination, but he seems to do a double-take when he sees what’s on the screen.

  “Jane.” He lifts his brown eyes to meet mine. “Who’s Ryan?”

  I get this sudden sick feeling in my stomach. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal, but his eyes are still trained on mine. “Somebody named Ryan wrote to you, ‘Lunch tomorrow?’ Then, ‘Think about it before you say no.’”

  Gee, thanks, Ryan.

  I never told Ben about Ryan. Not exactly. Not the whole story. I mentioned that there was a surgeon I used to date sometimes in residency, but left out the fact that I was (sort of) in love with him. Ben wasn’t too interested in talking about his ex-girlfriends, which gave me an out when it came to discussing my own past. A few times I tried to press him for details about the girl he dated right before me.

  “Did you love her?” I asked him.

  “I guess,” he said. “But not the way I love you. Not even close.”

  I felt the same way. As much as my previous relationships seemed significant at the time, they seemed so frivolous and unimportant after I met Ben. Even what I had with Ryan seemed to pale in comparison. So Ben was right—there was no point in talking about the past.

  Ben is watching my face, expecting an answer. I’m the worst liar. My skin always gives me away—I blush like a madwoman when I’m lying. But there’s no reason to lie—there’s nothing worth lying about.

  Yet the way Ben is looking at me is making me feel like maybe there is.

  Ben has never been the jealous type. At all. I would say he definitely trusts me. And I’ve never given him anything to get jealous about. I’ve never even considered cheating on him. Since we’ve been together, there have never been any remotely significant men in my life aside from him.

  Ben has been similarly loyal to me. He’s not the kind of guy who generally makes friends with women, so there haven’t been any women in his life for me to be jealous of. The one exception was several years ago, before Leah came along, when we were first married and living in Manhattan. It was before he joined the start-up company and he was going to work on a daily basis. At the time, he was working on a big project with some woman named Jen. And it just seemed like he was talking to her a lot and texting with her a lot, but I wasn’t really bothered by it until I went to a party at his company where Jen was present.

  At Ben’s old company, a lot of the people who worked there were older, maybe middle-aged, and the ones who weren’t were the stereotypical computer geeks who lived in their parents’ basement. Jen wasn’t like that though. She was in her late twenties, had her black hair cut in an attractive bob, and she was rocking a pair of Tina Fey glasses. And her black dress was far too short.

  Moreover, I couldn’t help but notice that Ben was one of the more attractive men in the room. He was young and clean-cut and looked really sharp in his shirt and tie. Not that Ben isn’t always cute, but he looked downright handsome that night. And it was obvious that Jen was aware of it.

  She wouldn’t leave us alone all night. She followed us to the hors d’oeurvres table, she followed us to the bar—I swear to God, I thought she was going to follow Ben to the bathroom at one point. And she was hanging on his every word. When Ben made a joke about their boss’s obviously crooked toupee, she slapped him in the biceps and cried, “Ben Ross, you’re so bad!”

  That was pretty much it for me.

  On the subway ride home, I read him the riot act about Jen. “It was disgusting the way she was flirting with you!”

  He shrugged. “So?”

  “So…” I shook my head at him. “It’s inappropriate. It could lead to something else.”

  I remember the way he looked at me in utter amazement. “What do you think?” he said. “That I would actually cheat on you? With Jen? Are you serious?”

  The way he said it made me realize how much Ben took our marital vows for granted. He couldn’t conceive of ever cheating on me, and he believed the same of me.

  Anyway, I should probably answer his question about Ryan. The longer I hesitate, the worse it sounds.

  “He’s just some doctor at work,” I finally say. “I had to organize grand rounds for him recently and he was a huge diva about the whole thing.”

  “Oh.” Ben looks down at my phone again, which has stayed blessedly silent. “Okay.”

  He doesn’t press me further. He seems to accept my answer, although he doesn’t look thrilled. Ben trusts me though. Which is why my answer to Ryan’s question about lunch will be “no.” And yes, I’ve thought about it.

  Chapter 12

  It’s never good when you take a patient’s blood pressure and you gasp when you see the result.

  We do have an automatic blood pressure cuff on Primary Care C. It’s our one luxury, in addition to, I guess, running water and electricity. I guard that cuff with my life. So when I’m taking eighty-two-year-old Joseph McAuliffe’s blood pressure and the result reads 238/115, I assume the damn machine must finally have broken on me.

  Well, at least we still have electricity and running water.

  “What’s wrong?” Mr. McAuliffe’s daughter asks
me. “Is that high?”

  Is that a real question? I mean, even if you don’t know the medical association’s recommendations for blood pressure control, you’ve got to recognize that a top number of 238 is not just high, but really freaking high. Like, let’s get you to the ER before you have a stroke kind of high.

  “I’m going to recheck it manually,” I tell them.

  Except when I recheck it, the number is similar. This man is dangerously hypertensive.

  I’m getting ready to tell the McAuliffes that I’m going to have to call the ER when I happen to notice a note from the last time Mr. McAuliffe was seen in clinic. His blood pressure then was 223/110. And it was similarly high the time before that.

  So this is normal for him. He’s probably headed for a stroke or heart attack or something else bad, but not in the next day. Eventually though.

  “Have you been taking the medications I prescribed for your blood pressure?” I ask Mr. McAuliffe.

  “Eh?” Mr. McAuliffe says.

  Approximately ninety percent of my patients are deaf. That’s probably why every patient with normal hearing keeps asking me why I’m screaming.

  “I have his medications here,” his daughter tells me.

  And then she pulls out The Sack.

  The Sack refers to the giant bag that some large percentage of elderly people toss their pill bottles into. Then, as far as I can tell, they just reach in to take whatever medication they randomly pull out. I hate The Sack.

  Mr. McAuliffe’s sack is a big black garbage bag. I start rifling through it, pulling out half-filled bottles of pills. Before I’m done, I’ve lined up two bottles of amlodipine, three bottles of atenolol and four bottles of hydrochlorothiazide, all blood pressure lowering medications.

  “Do you help him with his medications?” I ask the daughter.

  She shakes her head. “No, he can do it himself.”

  “Mr. McAuliffe.” I face my patient, who is scratching absently at a scab on his balding scalp that is probably skin cancer. But one thing at a time. “Are you taking pills from all these bottles?”

  Mr. McAuliffe stares blankly at the bottles. “No, just the ones I’m supposed to.”

  “He knows what he’s doing,” the daughter assures me.

  “Mr. McAuliffe,” I say again. “What month is it?”

  “Uh…” He thinks for a minute. “June? Or is it July yet?”

  The parking lot is literally coated in snow. I glance at the daughter, who looks slightly pale.

  “And what year is it?” I ask.

  “It’s…” He thinks again, finally trailing off and possibly forgetting my question.

  “What year is it?” I press him.

  He scratches his skin cancer again. “It’s 1967, I think.”

  “Oh my God,” the daughter murmurs. “He’s been paying his own bills too. No wonder the power got shut off!”

  I extract a solemn promise from Mr. McAuliffe’s daughter to supervise her father on his medications, although we have to start from scratch considering we don’t know what he’d been actually taking. She seems to understand how serious the situation is. Daughters are usually good in that respect. When you get old, it’s way better to have daughters than sons. Daughters usually take care of their elderly parents. Sons, less so.

  It’s not a surprise that the next patient on my list is Herman Katz. It’s been a whole week and a half since his last visit to see me. That might be some kind of record. Under reason for the visit, it says, “Worried about arms.”

  Huh. That’s a new one.

  “So what’s going on, Mr. Katz?” I ask him.

  Mr. Katz slumps forward on the examining table. His gut strains slightly against the fabric of his gown. “I’m really worried, Dr. McGill.”

  I put on my most concerned and caring expression. “Why are you worried?”

  “Well…” He takes a deep breath, the crease between his eyebrows deepening. “When I walk, I just feel like… like my arms are rubbing against my chest. I mean, a lot more than they used to.” He bites his lip. “I think… could it be cancer?”

  “I don’t think you have cancer,” I say.

  I see some of the tension leave his face. “Really? Then what could cause that?”

  “Um.” I cross my legs. “Mr. Katz, you’ve gained about twenty pounds since your wife died, haven’t you? Maybe the extra weight is why your arms are rubbing against your chest.”

  His eyes widen. “You really think so?”

  “Definitely.”

  “But I’ve felt… tired.” He shakes his head. “Really tired.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “You’re tired all the time?”

  “Not all the time, no,” he says. “Just when I use my computer. To do the email.”

  I stand up from my stool. “You don’t have cancer, Mr. Katz. You just need to lose a little weight.”

  He’s so incredibly relieved that he can’t stop shaking my hand and thanking me. Well, even if everyone else in the world hates me, at least Mr. Katz likes me.

  After Mr. Katz leaves the room, I notice that we are not only out of clean gowns, but the laundry basket in the room is absolutely overflowing. In the past, housekeeping has always emptied it, but somehow it hasn’t happened recently. Maybe I was supposed to tip them at Christmas?

  I’ve got five minutes before my next patient. I walk down the hall, where Barbara is affixing fake nails onto her real nails. I’ve never seen a person so interested in nail care—mine are bitten to quicks. For a short time between graduation from residency and the birth of Leah, I had nice, healthy nails. But that’s a distant memory.

  “Barbara,” I say. “The laundry basket in my examining room is full. And I don’t have any clean gowns in there.”

  Barbara looks up at me with her mascaraed eyes. “It’s not my job to take care of that.”

  “Well, could you please call housekeeping then?” I ask. “I need to finish documenting before my next patient.”

  “It’s not my job,” she repeats, more firmly this time.

  I sigh. “Is there any chance you could talk to them as a favor to me?”

  “It’s not my job,” Barbara says, like a robot who’s gotten stuck in some circuit loop.

  “Fine,” I say, more angrily than I intended. Or maybe just as angrily as I intended.

  I’m furious at Barbara. She is the most useless person on the entire planet. Her entire job is somehow just to check off boxes on a piece of paper, and she doesn’t even do that right half the time. Yet no degree of laziness or incompetence will be enough to get her out of here. Lisa always says that it’s almost impossible to get fired at the VA. The only way to do it is to make babies with a dead patient… twice. “Because the first time, you’d only get a warning,” she told me.

  I march out of the waiting area. I don’t have much time before my next patient, but I need gowns. I peek in all the open exam rooms, but they all appear to be barren. Damn it.

  Finally, I decide to call housekeeping. I punch in zero for the operator and wait an agonizing two minutes before a bored-sounding voice answers, “Hello?”

  “Can you transfer me to housekeeping?” I ask.

  I hear some shuffling of papers, and for a moment, I’m terrified that the operator will announce that it’s not her job to do that. Finally, without further explanation, I hear ringing on the other line. I wait through half a dozen rings before I hear a recorded voice: “You’ve reached the housekeeping department…”

  I look at my watch. I don’t want to be late to seeing my next patient, but I’ve got to have new gowns and I also don’t want an overflowing basket of laundry in my room. Maybe I can run down to housekeeping in the basement and be back in just a few minutes.

  Well, it’s not like I have much of a choice.

  The laundry basket is on wheels, so at least I’ve got that going for me. But it weighs about a thousand pounds. Still, once I start pushing it, it’s not so bad. Maybe after I take it down in the elevator, Geo
rge the elevator guy can help me push it to housekeeping.

  (That was a joke.)

  I push the button for the elevator and wait patiently, making calculations in my head to determine whether the cart will fit through the elevator doors or if I’ll have to use the service elevator. That’s when the doors swing open and none other than Ryan Reilly is standing before me.

  Great. Just what I need. To get mocked by Ryan.

  His blue eyes widen when he sees me with the basket full of dirty gowns. “What are you doing?”

  “I couldn’t get ahold of housekeeping.” I can’t even meet his eyes. “We’re all out of clean gowns.”

  Ryan steps out of the elevator. At first I think he’s going to help me load the cart into the elevator, but then he lets the doors close behind me.

  “What about your receptionist?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “Barbara says it’s not her job.”

  “Jane,” he says, “I don’t know why I’m the one who has to tell you this, but it’s not your job to take the laundry down to the basement.”

  “Well, nobody else will do it.” I try to keep the bitterness from creeping into my voice. “So it’s got to be me.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see about that.”

  Ryan seizes the laundry basket and shoos me away to push it back to Primary Care C. I hurry after him, nervous about what he’s going to do, but also glad that maybe I won’t have to do the laundry. I swear to God, there was a reasonable chance that if I went to housekeeping, they’d make me wash the gowns myself.

  Ryan pushes the cart all the way to the waiting area, then steps inside to find Barbara still hard at work on her nails. He clears his throat once, loudly, then she looks up.

  At first Barbara looks horribly irritated by having her nail ritual disturbed. But the second she realizes who’s standing in front of her, the sour look on her face disappears and is replaced by a smile that I’ve never seen before.

  “How can I help you?” Barbara asks sweetly.

  Ryan rewards her with a sexy smile. “Hi, Barbara. I’m Dr. Reilly.”

  “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Reilly,” she coos.