SWIB: We Need to Talk

SWIB is a self-coined acronym; She Wanted It Bad. This is a dark tale of a woman, whose desire to be treated like a slut cost her everything.

Slowly, I became conscious. Usually, you just wake up. Somehow, I knew this was not usually. I knew that because of the pain in my chest. I heard beeping and something hard was in my mouth. I tried to swallow, there was something in my throat.

I developed the courage to open an eye. I was in a hospital. Something I did, consciously or not, alerted someone and a nurse came into my area, “Oh, great, Mr. Wilson, you’re awake. How do you feel?”

Wilson? My name is Wilson? I thought about it. I think she is right! My name is Ralph Wilson. That is beyond strange, I don’t think I’d have been able to come up with a name. It hadn’t occurred to me there was no way for me to answer with the tube in my throat.

“Oh, I am sorry Mr. Wilson, no wonder you look confused. You can’t speak with the ventilator in place. Your lung had collapsed, and it was touch and go for a while, but it looks like you are going to make it. I have called the doctor to see if we can get that tube out of your throat.”

I lay there, it was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I felt normal, well my chest hurt like hell. Maybe I’d had a heart attack? How did I know about heart attacks, when I didn’t know who I was beyond a name? Maybe this is just a brain fog, and it will come back to me.

A tall, slim man walked in the room. “Mr. Wilson, I am Doctor Atherton, I am going to have the nurse remove the ventilator. You can just shake or nod your head. Do you know why you are here?”

I shook my head. I didn’t have a clue. He nodded. “Not uncommon after a trauma. I am sure everything will come back quickly. You were shot in the chest, Mr. Wilson. You were brought here in the early hours of Saturday morning; it’s now, about Noon on Wednesday. Unlikely as it may seem, you are one lucky man.

“The bullet hit you right in the center of your chest. It should have gone into your heart and been the end of you. But it hit at an angle, was small caliber, and hit a rib. It diverted the path, pierced a lung, and allowed you to live. Fortunately, the EMTs got to you quickly, they got you here, and two surgeries later, I think you are going to make it.”

The nurse finished her work and now I could talk. Well, talk is a big word. I could rasp and squeak. She said, “I will get you some water, the doctor will complete his examination, and we will allow Detective Harmon to talk with you.”

The two of them fiddled, prodded, and made notes. They were talking to one another as they left the room. I thought to myself, they certainly got more points for efficiency than friendliness. Come to think of it, people who operate on gun-shot victims should have those traits in those quantities. No sooner were they out the door than a man in a well-worn, cheap suit walked in.

“Mr. Wilson, I am Detective Roland Harmon.” He was showing me a badge and ID, as he spoke. “Do you feel up to a few questions?”

I was surprised when I answered. My voice was returning. “The questions will be fine. It is the answers which may present a problem.”

He looked like that might be somehow meaningful. He didn’t say how. “There was a call to 911”, he checked his notes, “at 1:47 am, Saturday morning. It was from your cell phone. The fire department broke into your home because a gunshot had been heard on the call. Can you tell me who fired the shot?”

I sat and stared at nothing. I must know something. It seemed forever, nothing was coming to mind, nothing at all. Finally, I said, “Detective, can you describe what they found, where I was, something to maybe jar my memory.”

“Surely. The doctors told me you were having some memory issues. You were found on the floor of your bedroom, near your bed. The bed had been slept on on only one side, the side you were found laying beside. Just inside the bedroom door lay your wife, she was holding the gun.”

“My wife? Had she been shot?”

“No, Mr. Wilson, she had not been shot.”

“Did she shoot me?”

“Again, Mr. Wilson, we know she was not the shooter. If you can, try to focus on that night. Did you hear anything? See anything?”

I stared off into space, again. Suddenly I got an image. “Oh no! There is someone in the house!”

I sat straight up. I was shaking. I looked right at the detective, “My wife was out, with her lover. I was resigned to divorce. I went to bed, alone. I was asleep and I heard a deep man’s voice say, ‘Shit!’ It was like he’d stumbled on something. I had my cell phone in my hand in case she called. I called 911, put the phone on speaker. He came in just as the man on the phone said, ‘This is 911, state the nature of your emergency.’ He heard it. He shot.”

“He? Who?”

“Big. Wearing a ball cap, I didn’t see his face.”

“White? Black? Hispanic?”

“Sorry, no idea. It was a flash. I think I looked at the phone, wanting the voice to quiet down. I heard the shot. Then everything went black.”

“You were shot, center mass and fell back against your night table. It hit you in the back of the head and knocked you unconscious. The shooter probably thought you were dead.”

“I don’t know this guy. Ask my slut of a wife. She knows every inch of him, or so I’ve been told.”

He actually turned and walked out of the room. He returned in less than a minute, accompanied by a nurse. She had a syringe and walked toward the IV bottle dripping down into my arm. Detective Harmon started talking, which distracted me from whatever the nurse was doing.

“Mr. Wilson, I am afraid I have some bad news. When the EMTs entered your bedroom, the first thing they saw was your wife, laying on the floor with the gun in her hand. They were understandably cautious. She was not moving.

“One of the EMTs stepped on the gun, still no movement. He knelt down and found no pulse. She was dead. The room was set up to appear you had beaten her and she had shot you.”

“I swear, I…”

“No, we know. We don’t know much about your wife’s murderer, other than a criminal master mind, he is not. Though your wife was beaten and bloody, there was none of her blood in your home. She had stopped bleeding before he or they brought her home. The gun was placed in her lifeless hand. There was no gunshot residue on her skin and her time of death was at least two hours before the shooting.”

I felt tears. I was not as said as you’d think, but the announcement that my wife had been murdered was too much to take in. I saw the nurse pushing the syringe into my IV and everything went black.

++++++++++++++

I awoke. I was starving. I searched around the bed and found a call button. I pushed it. A nurse appeared. “I am so hungry. Is there any way I can get something to eat?”

“We have your breakfast tray right here. We knew you’d be hungry.”

Hospital food doesn’t have a good reputation. But as hungry as I was it tasted like the finest cuisine available anywhere. I ate and felt better. It was time to do some thinking, to see if I could put together a life out of the mess, I was currently in.

My first thought was Grace and Jimmy. I had an 8 year-old daughter and a 6 year-old son. How could I have been so far out of it I didn’t know? I hit the call button, again.

“Yes, Mr. Wilson. How may I help?’ said a very pleasant nurse.

“My children?”

“Your children are with your mother, at your home. She calls frequently but being alone she can’t get here.”

Well, thank God for that. Mother had moved to live near us after Dad died a couple of years ago. I am an only child, and she absolutely loves her grandchildren. Doreen, suddenly I remembered my wife’s name, it was Doreen. Her parents lived a thousand miles away, in Florida. I wondered if they had been told. Surely.

“Can you get me my cell phone? I need to talk to Mother.”

Needless to say, it was a difficult conversation.

“Hi, Mom. How are they?”

“It has been a tough few days. Both of them want to know where their mommy and daddy are. I have not told them about Doreen.”

“There is no reason for you to go through that. It will just upset them more. I hate to say it, but there is no good time for a child to learn their mother is dead. Whatever else she was, she was a great mother.”

“What else was she? I had no idea, Ralph.”

“I didn’t, either, Mom. Not until a couple of weeks ago. It’s too painful to talk about right now.”

“Oh no, don’t go into it. I wasn’t prying, just fretting. Listen, Ralph, a Mr. Jordan called and said your salary would continue for at least six months. I can stay here and hold the fort, until you get home.”

“Mom let’s think about moving you into our, well, my home.”

“Ralph, it would be my fondest wish, but let’s get you home and then back to work. The future will take care of itself.”

My mother was a wise woman.

Well, my children were at least with their grandmother and my income was secure. Things could be worse. I had been up for only an hour. Eating and a short conversation tired me out, I took a nap.

++++++++++++++

I woke up and wanted lunch. That appeared right away. I felt better than I did this morning. I was settling in to ponder my next move when, at the door, who appeared but Detective Harmon. More questions were in my future.

“How are you doing, today?”

“Better, I remembered I am twice a father this morning. I talked to my mother, I am starting to remember my life, even if I don’t yet have control of it.”

“I want to catch the murder of you wife. I assume you do, too?”

“I can say this honestly. Right now, I am very interested in bringing to justice the man who took my children’s mother from them. I lost my wife before that woman was killed.”

“What do you know about her boyfriend, or lover. Whoever he is.”

“About two weeks ago I was mowing the lawn. I have a bottle holder on my mower. My beer was empty, I stopped, left the engine running and was going to run into the kitchen for another beer. I got to the house and could hear my wife talking on the phone. She was talking to her friend Susan Martin. The first sentence I heard was, ‘Susie, he fucks me like nothing I thought possible.’ That got my attention.”

“Did you know to whom she referred?”

“No. I still don’t. Why do you ask?”

“Sorry, you know where you are going. I don’t. It could be this was one of many lovers. Or someone known to you. I need to ask to make sure I know what you are telling me.”

“OK, I get it. Until that moment I had no idea my wife ever had been unfaithful. As we talk, I don’t know if she had one or more lovers. I only know I turned off the mower when I heard what she said and confronted her.”

“Oh? How did that go?”

“Well, it ended my marriage. After the who is he, which she wouldn’t say, I asked – why? Her answer was that she got caught up in the thrill of it. He thought she was a slut to be used, and he did. The wickedness, her word, of it was too much for her to resist. I asked how long, she said only once. She looked at me, told me she loved only me, and would try to quit.Try to fucking quit!”

“What about your striking her?”

“A few nights later, on a Tuesday, she came home with a badly split lip. It looked bad enough that if she didn’t get a couple of stitches, she’d have a scar. I took her to the emergency room. We didn’t say two words to one another. I guess she must have been interviewed while they were stitching her lip.”

“Yes, she told the officer, it was more an accident than anything. You would never do anything to harm her. But you did hit her, were full of remorse, and she was not about to press charges. If the officer insisted, she would swear she fell in the shower.”

“Wasn’t she sweet.” I said as sarcastically as I could. “The officer basically told me what you just said. He said if I would just corroborate her story, he’d not write it up. I told him she was a liar, I never hit any woman in my life. She was hit by someone before she got home. He shook his head and wrote up the conflicting stories.”

“You wanted it written up?”

“I guess. What I was thinking at the time is she is lying. I want records.”

“Were you planning on divorcing her?”

“I knew I would, but I still was trying to love her and oddly, I think she was trying to love me. That next morning, she thanked me. She was I don’t know, wistful. She said she hoped she could get this out of her system, it was going to take a terrible toll, and she knew it. I asked why she said I hit her. Her answer astounded me. She thought she’d screwed things up so bad I was going to divorce her, and she’d lose the children. She wanted to build a case to keep her children!”

“Wouldn’t behaving well do a better job?”

“Duh! That’s exactly what I asked. She said she hoped to do that, too. The look on her face told me bad behavior and lying was higher on her list than honesty and toeing the line.”

Then, the Friday I got home, and she wasn’t there.

“Well, I can talk to this Susan Martin and see what she knows. I may have more questions.”

++++++++++++++

I was in the hospital forever and released before I was ready. I had to go home and take on the task of which I’d spared my mother. Telling our two young ones that only Daddy was coming home. I’d thought about little else and had a plan. Whether it was a good plan remained to be seen.

I walked in the front door and Mom held both of my beautiful children for just a moment. They were standing in front of her and she had her arm around the chest of each. She told them I was hurt and they should be careful. They were almost afraid to come hug me.

We all got seated on the couch and hugged and kissed and cried because it had been so long. They told me all about their world, what had happened since I had been gone. It was a great, few minutes. Shortly, Grace asked when her mom was coming home.

I was prepared. “I’m sorry, but she is not coming back. Mom did a very bad thing and brought the man here who shot me. That is not what she wanted, she knew she made a mistake, but he killed her and shot me. Your mom paid a very high price for her mistake.”

“You’re not sad, Daddy?”

“That is a hard question. I am sad, I loved your mother very much. But she brought that man to our home. He sneaked in and shot me. She didn’t want him to do that, but he did. So, you see I am sad and I am mad, all at the same time. Can you understand that?”

“Mommy was bad?”

“No! You must never think that. She was not bad. She was your mom and she was a great Mother. She made a mistake. She did one bad thing. It cost all of us. But we must learn to go on. She can’t help us, anymore.”

I had rehearsed in my mind so many times, I was able to hold it together. They held it together, pretty well. Tears started and I told them to go ahead and cry, it was okay. It was a sad evening, but not a devastating one. From the beginning, we had a context. It was good to love her, it was bad to do wrong things.

I guess if losing a mother can have a purpose, this was the example. We started our new life. It is marvelous to watch children adapt. They were doing far better than I was. They buoyed me. Mom was great, too. But 67 is an age to be Grandma, not Momma. I had many more duties than I’d had before.

I was also unsettled. There was no clue as to who murdered my wife. Explaining it to the children made me believe she was a good person who got caught in a stupid game and paid too high a price. Whatever her failings, she deserved justice. But the only person who’d ever seen this mystery man was me, and I couldn’t even give his race, let alone a description, other than — big.

There were months of physical therapy. I was in better shape, by far, than I had been before being shot. Mom was after me to start dating, again. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t trust women, I didn’t feel confident about myself, there was no hurry.

When she could not get me to date, she started harping on clearing out all of my wife’s possessions. That was the topic nightly, after the kids were asleep, until I was sick of it.

“Mom! Leave it alone! I have been thinking maybe my new wife might want some of these things. Some of it has never been worn.”

“Son, if you believe another woman is going to want your deceased wife’s clothing, whatever brought you to that belief was not thinking. A woman who gets to your bedroom and sees it filled with a dead woman’s clothes will be out of there and out of your life in less time than it takes to say it.”

Reluctantly, I conceded she might have a point. It pissed me off that she kept saying she raised a moron. We decided our church might be a good place to donate the clothes, some could be sold to church members, and others given to the poor. One Saturday afternoon, five or six women, their husbands and vehicles showed up. They started going through the closet, the dresser, and gathering all they found.

One of them came to me with a jewelry box. “It looks like there is some nice jewelry in here. Maybe you want to save it for your daughter. There was also this note.” She handed me an envelope with my name on it.

I set the note aside. We kept the jewelry and everything else was packed up and gone in less than two hours.

I looked at the envelope. Something told me it was significant. I called Detective Harmon. Five months had passed, he barely remembered my name. It did come back to him quickly.

“I can’t see any reason you should not open it. Her killer can’t have left it, maybe she said something of use. Open it and read it to me.”

I did.

Dear Ralph,

I hope you never see this note. Hopefully, when I get home I can burn it and this will be behind me. Donnie just called me. That’s his name, Don Gardner. He lives at 14253 River Road, here in town. I am not going to say much about him. I really don’t know much.

Like I told you, I met him by chance, he treated me like a slut, and sorry as I am to say it — I loved it. Again, I will spare you the detail, but I went back for a second time. The fact I went back must have said to him, he wasn’t rough enough and we (you and I) ended up in the emergency room, as you know.

It’s Friday, I’ve taken the kids to your mother’s, saying you and I are going out. But he called. He said he has something special planned, and I can get my ass over to his house or forget ever seeing him again. If I were smart, I’d have used that to get rid of him. But smart has nothing to do with this. I am crazed, and on my way.

He may be planning some sort of gang bang. I don’t think I can stoop to that. I fear what may happen if I say no. I also fear I might just say, yes. So, just in case, I want you to find this and come rescue me, even if you don’t want to keep me after this betrayal.

Know I love you with all my heart and cannot even rationalize to myself why this behavior is so compelling, but it is. My wish is you never see it. Never know about this last time, and we can go back to a fairy-tale marriage. You certainly deserve it. Don’t ever think you failed to do something which led to my irrational behavior. You did not. This is all on me.

Hoping to see you late tonight, your loving wife,

Doreen

“Well, that is a big deal, as deals go.” Detective Harmon sounded really excited. “Do you have a freezer bag you can put the note in? I want it sealed, so it doesn’t get wet. It will help us catch this guy and put him away.”

“But so much time has passed.”

“Yes, Mr. Wilson, it has, but there is every chance this will lead to an arrest. I will have someone there within the hour to pick it up, we will get a warrant, and see what we learn.”

A couple of days later, the detective called. “You will not believe the news I have for you.”

“That sounds promising. I am all ears.”

“I led a team of six to execute a warrant on Mr. Gardner’s home last evening. He greeted us at the door. He sees himself as an intimidating, tough-guy. He told me there was no way I was entering his home. I had nothing on him.”