Captain Dr. Philip Eames, and Me
Michelle's husband dies in Iraq. His best friend dates her.
**
How many times do you meet the love of your life, the perfect man, the perfect husband? Once, would be my guess, and that's only if you're lucky. Thorsten was sent to me from the angels in heaven, of that I was sure. Yes, he was good looking, and that's always nice. Yes, he was smart as the dickens, and that always nice, too. Yes, he loved me to an extraordinary degree, and for me, that's essential.
We fell in love while in college, and I worked full time while going to graduate school myself, to put him through medical school. We postponed having children until we could have enough time to breathe, let alone take care of kids. When it came to sex, though, Thor was perfection itself. I hadn't known it before I met Thor, that fateful day in college, but I needed a man truly to take charge, to toss me about, to fuck me to his heart's content, to brutally use me. I loved it when Thor did that. I didn't just love it: I needed it. I even craved it.
How our lives turned to shit overnight happened suddenly. Thor's best friend from kindergarten through college, Gary, died in Iraq. The surgeon operating on Gary, out in the field, had botched a fairly routine lifesaving operation.
Shit happens. Doctors are operating under duress. Conditions are suboptimal at best. Thor and I knew it all, and we had heard it all before, it was a fact of life, but Thor fell apart. He had just finished his residency, and he enlisted. Off he went to the Middle East, fulfilling his patriotic duty. I waited for him, and got my PhD in Comparative Literature, while he was saving lives overseas.
He came home in a box. The details are sketchy, but he had been sent to the front to try to save a soldier who could not be moved. I don't even know if he saved the soldier, or not. What I do know is that nobody saved Thor. Some wounds are rather quickly fatal, and there's nothing one can do. Life is like that, sometimes.
I fell apart. I circled the drain for around six months before, with a lot of help from friends, therapists, and especially some fabulous serotonin uptake meds, I finally resurfaced, and screwing my courage to the sticking place, I faced the world. I had interviewed for jobs just before Thor died, and I was due to start teaching, out in Indiana, in the fall. I was just barely well enough to start my job.
I moved to Indiana. Indiana is quite a bit different from New York. People smile at each other, and for no reason at all. The smiles are meaningless, too. They smile at you, and then stab you in the back. They're nice on the street, and aggressive in their cars. Of course, there are precious few people on the street. In New York, who you are is defined by your coat. In Indiana, it's defined by your car. An old Subaru just doesn't cut it, unless you live in Lafayette, home to the Subaru factory. My job wasn't in Lafayette. Then there's hair style. I could not wrap my head around how some women, hell, most, wore their hair. Did they actually think that was attractive? Finally, there was food. Chinese food was foreign food. So was Italian. Middle Eastern food? Fuhgeddaboudit.
I had to make some adjustments. Except for the hair styles, I made them. I traded in my Subaru for a Ford F-150. I even bought a gun, just one without bullets. You know, to fit in? I went to Don's Guns over in Indy (why pay less?). I bought myself a 38-caliber single action revolver, which I was assured was a sexy "ladies' gun." The "sexy" part was essential. Why else would I want one, if not for the sexy part? Don Davis died in 2016, but he was an institution in Indiana. I learned these things so easily, it was frightening. Don Davis was named among the top five dealers who sell guns to criminals by the Federal Department of Justice. He was ranked at #4. Luckily for me, he also sold guns to people who were not criminals.
**
I began teaching. I was good at it, and the students loved me, and I loved them. I slowly, ever so slowly, began to heal. After around a year I was able to go through Thor's effects, that had come home, along with his body. There was one envelope I was afraid of. It was marked "Personal. Do NOT Open. PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL." I had always known Thor would make a good doctor, because his handwriting was only borderline legible. I giggled, as I deciphered it.
I smoked some weed, got a good bottle of a nice, full bodied Cotes du Rhone French red wine, I put a Xanax in a dish next to me, and I sat at my dining table, and stared at the envelope. I had a glass of wine, and stared some more. Next to me I had one of Thor's love letters. I had read it around a hundred times already, but I kept it there at hand, just in case I needed it. Finally, in a brief, fleeting, burst of courage, I opened the envelope for the first time. I was holding my breath. I saw what was in it.
I burst into laughter. Every picture Thor had ever taken of me, they were all there. There were sweet pictures, for example of me laughing in the park near his medical school, a picture of me when I came to pick him up after his first solo surgery, and many others at various meaningful times. I began to cry.
There were other pictures, too, however, and they were soiled and dogeared, from frequent use. Those were the risqué pictures. In one I was dressed, but you could see some side boob through my halter top; in a second my nipples were poking dramatically at my sweater top; and in a third I was dressed in Thor's favorite outfit of mine, which was a tight, clinging dress that showed off my hourglass figure. I was wearing it without a bra, and only a blind man would not have been able to discern that fact.
Then there were the pictures I knew he must have treasured. They weren't risqué, they were more like pornographic. In the first one, there I was, topless, and smiling. In another I was stark naked, with my artistically trimmed bush on full display, and in a third, I was sprawled on my bed, legs open, with everything on display, and a silly grin on my face, although I highly doubt Thor wasted a lot of time looking at my face in that particular picture! Those were the soft porn pictures. After them came the hard-core pictures.
There was one disturbing note, though. Behind the pictures of me, were pictures of another woman. She too was naked in some of her pictures. Those pictures, too, were worn with use. There were lots of possible explanations. One was that the men shared nasty pictures of their wives and girlfriends. I figured that probably happened a lot with men starved for female affection in faraway war zones. Naked, real women, whom your war buddies would talk about, had to be sexier than porn actresses on the Internet.
Maybe Thor had borrowed some pictures from a friend? Had he jerked off to pictures of this other little slut of a sexpot? I got jealous, and angry. Then I thought, hell, the man was in a war zone, trying to save soldiers' lives. Give him a break! I decided to forgive him, posthumously.
My next thought was, if he had these pictures of some other naked sexpot, did that mean he had lent the pictures of me to a friend? I shuddered at the thought! I just sat there, staring at the pictures of this woman. Four glasses of wine later I l chanced to look at the background of the pictures. Those taken outdoors (when the woman had her clothes on) were taken in a dessert. In one picture, she was in uniform. The other woman had been an army nurse! Did my sweet husband, my patriot who went to Iraq to save lives, the man whom I had sweated and toiled to put through medical school, had he enjoyed the bed of another woman, half a world away, off in the middle east?
Did it matter? He was dead. I could ask his best friend over there, a man named Captain Eames, but would he tell me the truth? He wouldn't want to hurt me, probably. He'd think, what did it matter now, anyway? It mattered, though. It mattered to me. I called my brother.
Facial recognition technology has become quite remarkable. Two days later my brother, who works for a government agency I shall not name, gave me the name, rank, and serial number of the bimbo slut inside of whom my beloved Thor had been wetting his dick, over in Iraq. I'll bet she was a screamer, too. Thor loved when he made me scream, sometimes from fear, sometimes from extreme pleasure, but usually from a mixture of the two. Thor's sexpot bimbo slut nurse had left the service, and she was now supporting herself as a surgical nurse at a hospital in New York City. I booked a ticket for my next vacation. I brought some of the pictures with me.
At least Thor had good taste. I rang her bell. She wasn't surprised to see me, I had let her know I was coming to see her, and when she did in fact see me, she burst into tears. The woman he had fucked over in that wasteland of a desert was totally gorgeous. I kind of knew that from the pictures, but seeing her in person drove it home like an icepick through my heart.
