David: Survival and Adventure

Inspiration for this story came from an article that I read on the internet. Of course, I've added a great deal to it. Sorry, but not much in the way of thrilling sex in this story; it's more of a human-interest piece. Maybe my next story will fill that need in you.

This is a story of a man who has a wife that is 'fucked in the head,' as the lyrics say, in a very popular song that I hear frequently on the streaming service that I listen to. It's about what he does and how he recovers. He takes a big risk, but wins in the end. Okay, I'm giving it away now, so, just go ahead and read.

Please, resist the temptation to personally insult me in your comments; I will delete them. I'm an amateur at this writing thing and still learning a lot. I use Word as my editor, so all mistakes are mine -- I'm sure many of you will be quick to point them out to me. Thank you for that. For the hyper-critical anons out there, please write something yourself, so that actual writers can critique you. Oh, what fun...

I hope that you enjoy.

**********

I was at the Hilton Hotel, in the downtown area of Albany, not far from the Capitol Building. It was about nine o'clock Thursday night and I was there, not as a guest, but to look for my wife. She was there with her boyfriend. She didn't know that I knew that she had a boyfriend, but I did. I had known it for a while now and it was eating away at me, a little bit each day, and I was about to do something about it.

I had thought long and hard about what I was going to do. There is only so much a man can take. I had looked the other way for several months in the hope that her affair was going to end. But it didn't. Diane kept up her affair with Darrin Ranger all the while she was pretending to be the loyal and caring wife to me. We would talk about our future plans and some of the things that we wanted to do. It was all bullshit. She meant none of it.

I tried to figure out what I had done to make her run to some other man and want to have sex with him. Clearly, I was lacking, in something. I, obviously, didn't do 'it' for her anymore. At least not in the quantity and frequency that she wanted. I tried to figure out a way to let her have her fun for now and then get her back to being a faithful wife, but that was all just nonsensical thinking on my part. Once she has a taste for other men it would be hard for her to go back to just me. I waited a fe months but she didn't give any indication that she was about to change what she was doing. No, I decided that it was best to just end it.

I have to admit that it took me a while to reconcile that decision. I work very long days, frequently as much as 18 hours a day for several days in a row. Was it that, that caused my wife to look at another man to meet her needs? Had I unconsciously ignored her? I didn't think that I did, but clearly something wasn't right. But, if I wasn't meeting her needs, why not talk to me about it. Why not just say 'I need to move on' and be done with it. Why have a boyfriend behind my back and all the while say useless things like 'I love you' to my face. Why not be an adult about it and tell me you want to separate and divorce? Too many questions and not enough answers. So, I made a plan. Maybe not a perfect one, but one I could live with.

I wasn't there at the hotel to be violent about it; hell, she wasn't worth it at that point. I wasn't going to do anything stupid and beat the shit out of her boyfriend. No, my lawyer had cautioned me about that and told me that it would only end poorly with me in jail and a criminal record. No, I was only there to end things. To put her out of my misery, and maybe cause her a few minutes of misery.

**********

You want to know a little about me, don't you. Okay, my name is David Walters. I'm 31 years old, born and brought up in the Albany area and I'm a doctor. I'm an ER doc and I practice at the main hospital in the city. Or at least I did.

I have a mother and father and a brother, all not far away. I also have a wife. I recently applied to take a sabbatical to recharge my batteries. I'm burned out. I admit it. I haven't told my wife about it because she could care less. My own doctor recommended I do it so that I can get my head screwed on right and don't end up dead from stress, well before my time. I've been burning the proverbial candle at both ends and by times, in the middle. I need a rest, desperately. Finding out that my wife was fucking-around with other men was the final thing to make me decide to take a break.

My wife is Diane Walters (nee Stapleton) and she's 30 years old and works for a national bank in the city. We live in a reasonably nice two-bedroom apartment not far from the hospital and we don't have any kids. Thank goodness for that.

Diane is about 5' 8" tall, has long thick brunette hair that comes down past her shoulders and she's very good looking. She attracts the attention of men very easily. Too easily. She is easy on the eyes.

We met at university. I was attracted to her right from the beginning. I met her in an English class that I took in second year. It was a requirement that science students be able to read things that weren't just technical and actually understand them. My main focus during that class was Diane. I asked her out on a date and the rest was history, as they say. Until now.

After university, Diane and I lived together for almost two years and married just after I finished medical school. I managed to get through school without the crushing debt that faces most medical students. I was financed by the bank of Mum and Dad. Yes, I know what you're thinking. Poor little rich kid complaining and crying about his great misfortune. That would be a bunch of horseshit. While I was in school, I worked damn hard every summer to earn as much as I could. My family stepped up and helped me, with a promise from me that I would repay my parents after I graduated and started earning some money.

Now, my family are reasonably well off. My dad has a construction and contracting business and does very well. He has over a hundred employees and a warehouse filled with materials and equipment that he uses in his business. I worked for him in the summers as a manual-laborer, earning minimum wage to come up with tuition for the next year. So, I do know a thing-or-two about hard work. Now I pull 18-hour shifts at the hospital and am on-call most other days when I'm off. But you don't really give-a-shit about that, do you?

What you want to know is what about my wife at the Hilton Hotel. You want to know what I'm going to do about her. Well, it's about to happen.

**********

I mentioned before that I was aware that she had a boyfriend for some time now. Why hadn't I done something about it until now? Well, that's a fair question. I have to say that I went through several of the stages of grieving for the loss of my marriage before I made up my mind what I wanted to do. Yes, I was initially stunned by the realization that Diane was cheating on me. I mean, I thought we were a team. I thought that we had the same wants and desires and plans. And then I find out that she's fucking this Darrin guy. What the fuck?

We had talked about starting a family. We had talked about the children that we wanted. We had even started thinking about names for them. Boys' names and girls' names and we were even looking at houses in the burbs, for fucks' sake.

We had talked about her taking maternity leave from her work to start with, once a baby was part of our family. We had discussed the pros and cons of her being a stay-at-home mother to take full-time care of the kids. Her own mother had done the same thing for her and her brother and sister. We had already started a savings account for a down payment on a house and to pay for the cost of a baby. My salary at the hospital was going up fast. Last year they paid me $120,000. I paid my taxes and I repaid my parents almost $10,000. Diane was paid well by the bank and she makes about $80,000. We were in great financial shape and my job as an ER doc has great earning potential. I would likely be earning almost $600,000 a year in about 5 years.

We had shared dreams. We made plans. We told each other that we loved the other person every day. I loved my wife and she loved me. At least I thought she loved me. Now, not so much. What happened?

I got wind of Diane's affair quite by coincidence. It seems that a nurse from the ER was in a restaurant downtown on a date night with her husband. She had met Diane the year before at the hospital Christmas party, and being very good with faces and names, remembered that she was my wife. She also recognized the guy she was with. We'll circle back to him shortly.

I watched as Diane and her boyfriend walked through the lobby of the hotel and made their way to the elevators. They went into one and he turned to press the button for the floor on which he had rented a room. I watched as the indicator over the elevator stopped at number 12. I sat down and looked at my watch and thought again about my plan. I knew in my heart that it was what I needed to do to set things right in my life. I can only stand for so much disrespect and tonight I rectify this little injustice. Tonight, I stir the pot. Let's see what boils over.

I went to the front desk and asked them to call the room occupied by one Mr. Darrin Ranger. Mr. Ranger is the owner of a local business that does landscaping and property maintenance. Mr. Ranger does very well for himself and his wife and two sons. So well in-fact, that he felt it necessary to strike up an affair with the loan officer at the bank that he does business with. That loan officer would be my wife.

Darrin and Diane had been enjoying each other's attentions now for almost two full years. Yes, I couldn't believe it when I found out the extent of her infidelity.

I figured it out quite by accident when one of the nurses at the ER was on the same shift as me and happened to mention that she saw Diane with her friend Darrin at a restaurant downtown. The nurse was there with her husband and some friends on the previous weekend. That same weekend I was pulling 18-hour shifts to manage the shootings and stabbings that we see all too frequently when alcohol and drugs are in full-swing. She knew Darrin because his company had done some work for her husband to put in a retaining wall in their backyard. Go figure.

So, the cat was out of the bag. When I was home a few days later I casually mentioned to Diane that Rhonda had spotted her at a restaurant the previous week with a friend. I didn't mention that I knew it was Darrin, but did ask about the menu and the quality of the food and maybe we should go there sometime. The pale looks on Diane's face quickly recovered as she said 'it's okay,' and left it at that.

I did a couple of things the next week. I talked to my dad about what I could do, or should do, if I suspected that my wife was being unfaithful. He was shocked that Diane could do something like that. I know that he really liked her and expected that we would have kids soon. I took away from our talk a basic plan of action to protect myself. We had a lengthy heart-to-heart talk and at the end of it we agreed that he wasn't going to share any information with my mother.

I went to my boss at the hospital and also shared some information with her. She agreed that I needed some time off to get my shit sorted out. She had met my wife and I could tell by her expression that she was disappointed that Diane would do something like that but she also realized that it happened all too frequently. We agreed that I could take a three-month leave and then we would revisit my work assignment. I even met with the staff psychiatrist to talk to him and she agreed that the stress of my family situation necessitated some time off to recover.

My next task was to visit with an Investigative agency and get them to work to find out just what Diane was up to. It only took them a week of digging and they pretty much had a clear picture of just what she and Mr. Ranger were doing, where they were doing it and how long they had been doing it. Hotels keep records and for a reasonable cash fee, paid to a willing clerk, will provide those records to any interested persons. It's not like there is a great hotel record confidentiality law in the state. A 100-dollar bill passed over to the desk clerk, known to the investigator, resulted in the business history of Mr. Ranger with the hotel for the last two years. Seems that he had been renting a room there almost every week, regular as clock-work. He almost always was there with the same woman. The clerk identified the woman in the photo as the person accompanying Mr. Ranger. The picture was of Diane.

The next thing I did was to go the bank (interestingly, not the one that my wife worked at) and withdrew every cent that I could without closing the account I had there. I have my own credit card so I didn't have to do anything about that.

So, armed with the knowledge that my loving wife was a cheating bitch, I decided that it was time to do something about it.

I knew that Diane would be meeting her boyfriend after work, for supper and a few hours in the hotel room. She thought that I was pulling a long shift at the ER that day and night. He would need to get home to his family so they wouldn't be staying too late.

That morning right after she left for work, I packed all of the things that I planned to take with me and then I went down to the parking garage and began loading up my motorcycle.

I loaded a few other things in my car, my well-used faithful Subaru Outback, and asked my dad to pick it up later in the day and store it at his place. I wasn't taking much, but I had everything that I figured that I would need for the next few months on the road. The rest of the day was spent sorting out the little things that I wanted to take or get rid of. That was a strange day. It felt like there was a death in my family; really, it was the death of my marriage.

My bike is a 2016 Honda Africa Twin equipped with panniers, fog lamps, heated grips, a navigation system, a crash bar and a few other pieces to make my bike perfect for long distance touring. All I needed to take with me was a couple of changes of clothing, a toothbrush, my rain gear and my iPad.

I planned to stay off the freeways and see the countryside. I figured that I would sleep in smaller budget hotels, motels and bed and breakfast places, and eat at local places off the beaten track. I would do rest stops from time-to-time in places that offered interesting things to see and do. My father always tells me that a change is as good as a rest, sometimes. Well, if there was a time for a change, this was the time.

My plan was to make one lap of North America. I mapped out a route to take me up the New England coast to Maine and then Canada, into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, then take the ferry to Newfoundland, landing in Port-aux-Basque. I'd tour the island and leave via Argentia and then make my way back through New Brunswick to Quebec, Ontario and then westward over the prairies and the Rocky Mountains to British Columbia.

From BC, I planned to take the coastal highway south to San Diego and then pick a route up through the mountains to the Midwest and meander my way back through the mid-west to Albany. I figured that this would take me three months, maybe four, and by then I might have exorcised the demons sufficiently, to be able to get on with my life and go back to work. I was seriously thinking of applying to Doctors Without Borders for a year or two, just as a change of scenery. I figured that there had to be better places to do good work other than the ER in Albany on a Saturday night. The GSWs and the stabbings were starting to wear thin. You can only tolerate so much stupid.

Right now, first things first. I had a cheating wife to deal with.

**********

I went to the desk and asked to speak with Darrin Ranger. The clerk picked up the phone and called his room. After a few rings, he answered it. I took the phone from the clerk.

I exhaled, here we go, "Could I speak with Diane Walters, please."

He stumbled, "Ah, there's no one here by that name, you, you must have a wrong number."

"Just tell her that there has been a death in her family."

"What, ah, oh fuck!"

I powered on, raising my voice, "Just tell her that her husband is dead. He died today. Tell her that David Walters died today!"

There were no voices on the phone but I could hear lots of noise in the background and muffled speech. I repeated, raising my voice a bit, "Just tell her, her husband is dead!" And then I hung up.

The desk clerk was wide-eyed as I handed her back the phone handset. I looked at her, smiled and thanked her and then turned and walked out of the hotel.

My motorcycle was parked out front. I put on my riding gear and helmet and waited a few minutes.

Sure enough, Diane came running from the hotel out to the street. It was dark enough that she wouldn't see me or the motorcycle in her rush to get away from there. She quickly jumped in a taxi; I figured that she was heading to our apartment. Now her apartment. I was heading to freedom.

**********

Diane

Oh my God. Someone called and told Darrin that David was dead. What the fuck! I got to get the hell home, now. I got dressed as fast as I could and ran to the elevator. I was outside in seconds and took a taxi home.

I got to the apartment building and ran inside. The elevator took forever to get to our floor. As soon as the doors started to open, I ran down the hall and fumbled to get my key in the lock. I ran inside and called Davids name. I searched every room but he wasn't there.

I sat at the table to get my breath and I could feel my heart pounding. I fumbled in my bag for my cell phone to call his father. It was then that I saw an envelope on the table. It had my name printed on the front. I picked it up and opened it and it contained a single sheet of paper and David's wedding ring. Fuck! He knows.

I unfolded the piece of paper and read it:

Diane

You can now consider me as being dead. Our marriage is obviously dead, by all accounts for a while now and so, I have left.

I have taken everything that I want, the rest is all yours and you can do whatever you want with it. I've notified the apartment management company that I'm no longer living here, so you can decide to stay here or move; your choice.

Don't bother looking for me; I'm on the road taking a much-needed break from work, life and your screwing Darrin Ranger. It's clear, to me, that you are no longer interested in being married to me.

Enjoy your life and I wish you well.

David

One last thing - My lawyer will contact you shortly with some information that you may, or may not, want to use. Your choice as well.

Oh, my fuck. What am I going to do now. I never thought that David would find out about Darrin. Shit! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! God Damn!

The thing with Darrin wasn't even anything serious. It was just recreational. David works brutal hours and even when we get to spend time together it seems that lots of things get in the way of intimacy between us. Frankly, I was lonely for the touch of a man. I knew that David would slow down at work and when we had a predictable schedule, we would get our act together and be just like every other married couple. I thought that eventually we would have a couple of kids, buy a house and be a normal family. That plan has gone to hell.

Darrin is a very charming guy and it was easy to be attracted to him. The more I thought about being with him the easier it was to think that I could have him once or twice a week and not have it interfere with my marriage.