He wasn’t getting it. Maybe I wasn’t either.

  We made love that afternoon.

  And by “made love,” I mean we fucked passionately and considerately. We used our mouths for pleasure. He eased into me with grace, touched me where I liked to be touched, made sure I came long and hard before he did.

  The bite mark was gone the next day, and though I didn’t forget about the self-doubt it had revealed, I didn’t think about it much because I didn’t want to.

  Two weeks passed.

  I picked up two more clients from Ronin, which pretty much filled my schedule. I seemed to have a gift for counseling and medicating PTSD. Go figure. My military life was of use, and as that became apparent, I missed it less and less.

  One night, as I was coming out of the bathroom, I caught Caden looking into an empty corner. I say “caught” because when he heard me, he jumped as if he was doing something wrong, then he passed me to go into the bathroom without saying a word or touching me.

  He usually found some way to touch me.

  The last lack of affection had ended at the fundraiser where he’d fucked me on a banquet hall table. Brutal sex after days of growing emotional distance. And boom, fixed the next morning as if nothing had happened.

  Was he having an affair?

  I felt every pulse of blood through my veins, hot with sparking electricity at the thought of his body touching another woman’s.

  I breathed through it, telling myself nice things about trust and the basic goodness inside my husband. It worked to clear the room of the noise, but the hum of possibility remained in the corners, cowed but not killed.

  I didn’t have time to see Jenn’s show. Not really. I had an emergency session with a new patient who hadn’t slept in a week. His wife had called me in desperation. He was having aural hallucinations and she couldn’t tell if it was the exhaustion or the PTSD.

  I met him, wrote him a script, and didn’t have a place in my schedule to see him until he started crying. A grown man. A soldier. Six feet tall and two hundred pounds of muscle, weeping in my office.

  And I got upset when my husband was a little distant.

  I handed the patient a tissue. He cracked his neck and got on with it. Maybe I needed to relax on Caden a little.

  Deciding I didn’t need lunch on Wednesdays, I fit him into my schedule. Then I got a cab to 57th Street while it was still daylight.

  “Here!” The driver pulled over in front of the Kadousian Gallery.

  From the street, I saw Jenn, in baggy overalls and Vans, animatedly talking to people I couldn’t discern past the glass’s reflection. Rows of painted masks hung on the walls.

  Jenn saw me and opened the glass door. “Hey!”

  We hugged, and she introduced me to her guests. Tina Molino of Mt. Sinai’s Psychiatric Division, and Dylan Coda from the VA Hospital in Newark.

  “I’m sorry I’m late. I had an emergency.”

  “I was just telling Tina she works in the same hospital as your husband.”

  Tina was almost six feet tall with a black bob, white skin, and red lipstick. She looked like Snow White. “I was hoping to meet you at the fundraiser. Caden St. John is quite a star around the doctors’ lounge.”

  “Careful. His ego can get to the size of a blimp.”

  “You trained him well.”

  “War makes men humble.”

  “Nice segue.” Jenn held her hand out to the rows of masks and began the tour. “All of these were made by vets as part of the NEA’s Creative Forces program.”

  I was halfway down the block when I heard a woman’s voice calling my name.

  Tina scurried toward me. “Hey, I wanted to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

  I looked at my watch. “I have about eleven if there’s no traffic uptown.”

  “It’s enough.”

  We went into the little coffee shop wedged between a FedEx and an office building. We had our coffee in ninety seconds and seats on the window ledge in five more.

  “Okay. Jenn told me you’re an officer and an MD specializing in PTSD in vets.”

  “Kind of fell into it. But yeah.”

  “Do you like it? I’m trying to hurry so I don’t keep you.”

  “Do I have to answer quickly?”

  “Take your time.” She sipped her coffee, leaving red lipmarks on the plastic top.

  “I’m from a military family. I enlisted at eighteen.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. It was the only life I knew. Then I met Caden, and he wanted to go into private practice. So I left the army and came here with him. I thought I’d never feel right as a civilian, and New York… my God, there’s no place in the world more overwhelming.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  We tapped our coffee cups together.

  “Helping these men and women… they’re broken, but working with them makes me feel like I’m home. I love it.”

  “That’s…” She shook her head in appreciation. “I’m glad to hear that. We’re tackling a mental health unit to serve the military and—here’s the newish thing—civilian contractors. Anyone who’s worked in war. We’re financed by Darren Gibson, and I think I may have an opportunity for you.”

  Chapter Eight

  CADEN

  Greyson spit toothpaste into the sink. When she ran the faucet, the Thing spoke inside the gurgling water. When she took the water in her mouth and her lips tightened and moved when she swished, my inner cold ran boiling hot.

  She spit the water, and the Thing dispersed into the air vents, the fogged mirror, the space between my feet and the floor. It snaked around my wife’s voice when she spoke. “She wants to talk to me about creating a treatment protocol for PTSD in vets. Then she’s thinking of maybe expanding it to the general population. Kids and adults dealing with trauma.”

  She shook excess water off the brush and popped it into the cup. I didn’t know how much longer I could last.

  She was wearing a big T-shirt and underpants. Her feet were bare. Her nipples were hard. She was talking about Tina’s offer to design programs at the Gibson Center, which wasn’t really an offer but more of a suggestion to talk more. She was overwhelmed. She hadn’t been in professional life very long.

  “When I was promoted before, it was all forms and steps,” she said. “Now it’s fuzzier, you know?”

  Sure. I knew.

  “I thought you had a full schedule.”

  “I’m thinking I can squeeze it in.”

  There were reasons she shouldn’t. She’d push herself to exhaustion. No one was here to give her limits. There was no ceiling or walls on what she could accept. This wasn’t the army.

  She crawled onto the bed and flopped into a sitting position with her back against the headboard.

  The reasons she shouldn’t do too much were easily explainable, but if I explained them, she’d fight me. I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to get angry, or I’d lose it again and hurt her. I didn’t want to feel anything. I wanted this deadness, needed it to dampen the fear and anger.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “Did she tell you the salary?”

  “No, I mean about…” She spread her legs.

  I’d made love to her two nights ago and had barely kept myself from hurting her. I’d had to keep my hands on the bed and let her ride me. The Thing had been watching. If I touched her now, I would tear her apart to get rid of it.

  I ran my hand inside her thigh and stopped.

  The sense I wasn’t alone was worse when I touched her.

  “What?” She pouted.

  “Touch yourself.”

  She bit her lower lip and slid her fingers under the crotch of her underwear.

  Was It watching her? Hard to tell, but the feeling wasn’t as strong.

  She groaned. I was aroused, but I didn’t have an emotional response to this beautiful woman running her fingers along her seam.

  “I’m so wet for you,” she said.

  “Don’t stop.” Was my voice as emotionless and robotic to her as it was to me?

  “I want you to fuck me.”

  “Faster.” I stood over her and undid my pants. She reached for me, but I swatted her away.

  “Tease,” she said when I released my dick and fisted it.

  “Pick up your shirt.”

  She showed me her tits. I felt the Thing stretching at the edge of my perception, trying to get in on the action, but for some reason, without a connection between Greyson and me, the circuit wasn’t closed. It could feel what was happening, but not see it, or the other way around.

  Fuck you, Thing. This one’s for you.

  I grunted. “Let me see you come.”

  In another minute, she was pumping her hips under her fingers with heavy, wet breaths. I came over her, leaving my semen streaked over her body.

  She moaned with a satisfied mmm and took her hand from between her legs. I snapped tissues out of the box and wiped her up with all the tenderness of a clinician.

  “Thank you.” She smiled. “Come to bed.”

  I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t but couldn’t avoid it.

  I loved her, but I felt nothing. My balls were empty and my heart was dead.

  My beeper went off.

  “Shit,” she said. “Ignore it.”

  I picked it up, thanking God without the actual feeling of gratitude. “Hospital.”

  She sighed.

  “Greyson.” I was this close to telling her everything. If I didn’t have an emergency to attend to, I would have, right then. Instead, I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “This is the life of a surgeon’s wife.”

  I kissed her forehead and left without looking back.

  This wasn’t sustainable.

  I managed to stay at the hospital through the next day. I didn’t know what I hoped for except this Thing would go away if I starved it of my wife’s presence.

  The surgery wasn’t done until early morning. I showered in the attending lounge and collapsed on one of the cots. The Thing missed her. Its longing whispered through the air conditioning. I could spite it indefinitely, but I didn’t know how long I could spite myself. I missed her already. We’d spent plenty of time apart, but I’d gotten spoiled. If she was next to me, she was safe. Knowing that helped me rest.

  I was awake when she beeped me. I called her back, still on my back on a narrow cot.

  “Hello,” I said. “What are you doing up? It’s not even six.”

  “I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.” Her voice was husky and broken.

  At the sound of her voice, it softened like a puppy and vibrated off the walls. It was worried about her.

  “Figured I’d start working on Tina’s proposal,” she said.

  “Don’t burn yourself out.”

  “I won’t. Are you coming home?”

  “I have to check the post-op report in a few hours.”

  “Okay. I know you’re tired.”

  “I am.”

  “We have tickets to a play tonight.”

  Shit. How long would it take to starve this Thing? The room was dark, but I covered my eyes with my wrist to block it out. “What time?”

  “Seating’s at eight.”

  I could fake a surgery. I could fake being tired. I could take a trip. Starve it out. I didn’t know if that was even an option, but it was the only idea I had.

  Tell her you have to be in the OR.

  No words came. I couldn’t lie. I could make the words in my head but couldn’t get them out.

  It wasn’t that I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t lie. And I knew, as sure as I knew the boundaries of the dark room I’d gotten up to pace across, that I couldn’t lie because my emotions were stuffed in a bag and sealed away. Lying meant I had to fear the truth, which I didn’t, and it meant I had to create fake vocal nuance, which I couldn’t.

  Hiding my emotions had been intentional, but easier than ever. The process of detachment had become greased. Frictionless. I barely had to think about it. I wasn’t nervous. Wasn’t panicky. I was curious about my feelings, what they’d been and how they drove me to lie. Why would a person lie unless there was a reward for it?

  “Okay. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Barring unforseens.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Barring unforseens.”

  “I love you, Caden.”

  “I love you too.”

  I hung up, and with the separation, the Thing became clear in my mind. Very loud. And for the first time, it had a well-defined thought I could read.

  You don’t love her. I do.

  The front desk had a vertical whiteboard with the rooms, procedures, and the doctors performing. I scanned it as Wilhelmina picked up the eraser.

  “Looking for something, doctor?” she asked, getting up on a stool to reach the top.

  “Not yet.”

  Checking her clipboard, she erased Dr. Everett’s name.

  “What happened to Everett?” I asked.

  “Strep.”

  Nurse Bergstrom picked up the phone. “Samuelson’s on call.”

  “I have it,” I cut in.

  Wil looked at me as if I’d just clucked like a chicken. “It’s an assist.”

  “I know. It’s fine. I got it.”

  Wil shrugged and wrote St. John in the empty space.

  Chapter Nine

  GREYSON

  Caden wasn’t going to make it to the play. My answering service picked up the message, and delivered it as I was putting on my shoes. He’d taken on another patient, and the patient needed pre-op monitoring.

  I should have gone myself, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to go with him.

  He’d been worried I was going to burn out, but maybe he was the one who needed to snuff one end of the candle. And maybe this was why he’d been so distant and preoccupied.

  Maybe.

  People weren’t always predictable. They didn’t react the same exact way even when in very similar situations.

  The last time I’d seen Caden under tremendous stress was during the war, and he hadn’t been rigid and distant. On the contrary, even when he was closest to his breaking point, he’d been funny, even charming, as day three of his hands in men’s bodies crested into day four without relief. I was giving him vitamin shots and an uncomfortable amount of amphetamine. He seemed to thrive, and yet… no one thrives when someone loses an arm or a leg on the table and you have to move to the next without a break.

  He was like a carnival wheel spinning long after the barker’s hand had left the rail. Spiraling on his own juice and energy, ball bearings lubricated to go on and on, he couldn’t calm himself. Even after I’d given him a sedative, he couldn’t sleep. I’d crawled onto the mattress with him, and finally, relieved of a single thing to do but sleep, he held me in his bed.

  I knew how to be detached. My job required it. But I couldn’t be. Not with him. At first, he hadn’t been more to me than the next overworked army doc. But he was the only one I’d ever let pull me onto his cot fully clothed. He wasn’t the only one who had wept with me, but he was the only one I’d wept with.

  Was this what it was to love someone? To have that wall of detachment crumble and be rebuilt into a bridge?

  I thought so. I swore it to myself because after those hours, we were so real together no one had to ask what was going on. Caden and I were an incurable condition.

  Dispassion had a place in our lives, but not with each other.

  The situation was different now. We were civilians living in New York City, not soldiers trying to save people in a war zone. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised or concerned by his distance. He might be far away for a reason that had nothing to do with me or our marriage. Maybe it was him, just him.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked after I’d beeped him twice. His voice was flat, as if he was asking a patient if they were in any pain and could they please describe it.

  “You’re not home,” I said, meaning something completely different.

  There’s a nagging ache in the center of my chest.

  “I had rounds.” He had a different meaning under his answer.

  On a scale of one to ten, with ten being unbearable, how would you rate your pain?

  “I missed you at dinner,” I said.

  I want to say it’s a three, but it’s closer to a seven.

  “I missed you too.”

  Here’s an aspirin.

  “When are you coming home?”

  Maybe I can have something stronger?

  “Samuelson’s got strep. I have to fill in for him again.”

  No.

  “Okay.”

  I’ll manage then.

  “I love you.”

  Maybe try acupuncture.

  “Yeah.” I hung up the phone.

  Shove it.

  Mid-afternoon.

  I’d been in session all morning. I heard Caden upstairs while I was with a patient, heard the old pipes rattle in the walls when the shower went on, then saw his feet come down the front steps. I was seeing a patient in and couldn’t catch Caden without disrupting the gentle flow that was part of my job.

  “How were you this week?” I asked Specialist Leslie Yarrow, who liked to sit in the chair with the high cushions. She still wore her dog tags under her polo T-shirt and kept her hair very short. She’d been sent home with a shoulder injury that was healing better than her mind.

  “Fine. Good.” She shifted in her seat. She’d had a hard time sitting still since she got back.

  “Did you sleep?”

  “Some. The pills helped. Thank you.”

  “But not entirely?”

  “Nah.” She flipped it off as if it wasn’t a big deal, but her eyes were ringed in pink and purple.

  “Did you have the dream again?”

  “Yeah.”

  The dream was a recounting of a child torn apart by an IED. She’d been eight and screaming in pain. When Leslie recalled the memory, she said she screamed for hours while she tried to find a medic, but on further investigation, it had been a minute and a half before the girl died in her arms.