Passion In James County XI
Abby
By D.C. Roi
Chapter two
"I thought Rex was covering for you this weekend," Abby Marklin said. The minute they got home from the mountains, her husband announced he had to go to the hospital and check on a couple of his patients and Abby didn't understand why. Dr. Rex Wilson, her husband's partner, was supposed to be covering for Lee and was perfectly capable of caring for the patients. She had been looking forward to spending the evening with Lee once they got home and dropped his kids off at their mother's house.
"Abby, they're my patients, not Rex's," Lee insisted. "Remember, I'm the one who did their bypasses. They depend on me. I need to stop in, see how they're doing, and give them encouragement." Having said that, he left for the hospital, telling Abby he wasn't sure when he'd be home, but promising he'd try not to be too late.
After her husband left, Abby put away the things she'd packed for their trip and while she did, she pondered what seemed to be happening to her marriage. She'd hoped for at least a little of Lee's time and attention over the long weekend they spent at their mountain cabin, but in reality she got precious little of either. Her husband's two children from his previous marriage spent the weekend in the mountains with them, and Lee, a doting father who really did love his kids, spent most of the weekend doing things with the kids. Unfortunately, that left Abby feeling more neglected than usual.
"Actually," Abby mused, "I didn't see any less of him than I do when we're home, lately. I...I wonder if something's wrong."
Abby and Lee Marklin had been married for five years. A native of Jamestown, Abby had gone to work in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at University Medical Center in Jamestown seven years ago, shortly after she graduated from nursing school. Almost immediately, Lee Marklin, who was already head of Cardiac Surgery at the hospital, began paying a lot of attention to her.
Abby knew Dr. Marklin was married and had no intention of getting involved with a married man. Despite the fact that she found him attractive, she turned down his requests for dates for almost a year. Then he left his wife and filed for divorce.
Once Lee was divorced, Abby, no longer had an excuse to turn down the personable, successful surgeon's invitations to go out with him and finally agreed to go out to dinner with him one night. What followed was an intense, heady relationship. A year after his divorce was final, Abby accepted Lee's marriage proposal and became the second Mrs. Lee Marklin.
For the first three years, their marriage was blissful. Lee was an attentive and loving husband. Abby grew to love his kids, who eventually got over their disappointment at their parents' divorce and grew to have strong affection for their father's second wife. Abby even managed to work out a guarded friendship with Theresa Marklin, the kids' mother.
But, for the past two years, Abby had started to feel more and more as if her husband was drawing away from her. He was been spending more and more time at the hospital and in his office, and less and less time at home. It was true his workload had gotten much heavier when two of the other cardiac surgeons left town, but Abby had a nagging feeling - which she tried hard to ignore - that additional work wasn't the only reason her husband was growing more and more distant.
Lee Marklin, having seen his patients, stood at the nurse's station in University Medical Center, writing in their charts. Carol Burke, one of the nurses who'd been working in the CICU for a couple of years, walked up and stood next to him. He smiled at her, she smiled back.
Lee looked at the woman standing next to him wearing a snug-fitting white uniform. Carol was much more full-bodied than his wife, and had black hair that hung almost to her bottom when she let it down. Tonight that hair was done in a single, long braid.
"Did you have a nice time with your family in the mountains this weekend, Lee?" she asked.
"It would have been nicer if you and I had been there alone," Lee replied softly. He put the chart back in the rack. "Maybe sometime you and I could get up there for a day or two."
"I'd like that," Carol replied. She found the attention the tall, distinguished-looking doctor had been paying her for the past year extremely exciting. Like Lee, Carol was married, but what her husband and the doctor's wife didn't know wouldn't hurt either of them. And what neither Carol's husband or Abby Marklin knew was that Carol Burke and Lee Marklin had been having an affair for almost a years.
Carol wasn't happy being married to a mechanic who came home with greasy hands smelling of gasoline and motor oil every night and spent the evening drinking beer and watching professional wrestling on TV. She was thrilled when Dr. Marklin first let her know he was interested in her. She knew what kind of money he made - a helluva lot more than her husband did - and she figured she'd see what might develop if she went to bed with him. After all, he'd married the last nurse he dated, why couldn't the same thing happen to her?
Carol had been pleasantly surprised to learn that Dr. Marklin, in addition to being a skilled cardiac surgeon, was an equally skilled lover. That he had excellent love-making skills didn't really matter to her, though. Even if he'd been a total dud in bed, that wouldn't have stopped Carol from becoming his lover, or continuing their affair. The fact that he was good in bed was just an unexpected bonus.
She was glad when Lee showed up at the hospital tonight. She knew he was going off with his wife and kids for the weekend, something he did fairly often. Each time he did, Carol worried that, somehow, being in the midst of family and away from her would weaken her hold on him. But now, seeing the way he was looking at her, she knew she needn't have worried.
