There he would be given a multivitamin, stool softener, Vicodin for pain control. He was profoundly aware of the med times. He didn’t need a watch. His body had betrayed him with the tumor, but its clockworks for pain were precise and as unforgiving as the enemy gravity. If he missed the pills by even a few minutes, the pain would break through again. It was a creature living inside him, pinned up in the fragile pharmaceutical cage. The pain frightened him.
After the morning physical therapy and lunch, he was on his own. No one told him how long he might be in the rehab unit. It was the way he imagined jail time. If he hadn’t been free to roam the hospital he was sure he would go mad. But he could come and go as he pleased from the neuro-rehab ward and now, after so many days, had just become part of the landscape. Some people said hello. Most ignored him. So he wheeled himself through the halls, watching people, trying to keep dark thoughts outside. He ended up in the corridor leading to the old entrance to the hospital. It was a quiet place because the outside doors were sealed now, the main entrance moved. But the grand arched ceiling remained, along with a display of historic photographs from the hospital’s history. The entrance to the hospital chapel was nearby, the chapel itself empty. Outside, the light was somber and wintry. A woman walked by, her hair bouncing on her shoulders at every step, reminding him of Cindy when he had first met her. He put the thought in a box, put the box on an imaginary shelf holding thoughts about his wife. He wouldn’t be the first cop with a busted marriage.
He played a game of thinking about all the women he had crushes on or had lusted after while he had been married. One was a pretty young yellow-haired cadet with flawless fair skin. She had followed him around with a doe-eyed interest that was both innocent and knowing, and once, when he had seen her in a skirt, he had realized how attracted he was to her. Karen was his partner before Dodds, a woman going through a divorce, who said Will was her best friend. One night in the car they had started kissing, until he had stopped it. There was the assistant DA with the violet eyes, the writer who was working on a profile of the homicide detectives-in all those cases, he had felt the attraction, known it was mutual, and each time he had pushed it away. Only once did he slip, nothing compared with Cindy’s serial infidelities. He pushed that thought away. He thought of the others.
