Another Love: Fallout

Another Love: Fallout

I would like to start by thanking RichardGerald for giving me permission to write this sequel to his 2016 story, "Another Love."

I have read this story several times, along with the sequels and alternate endings written by others. For some reason, this story hit me on a level few others have. It is the story of a man who learns that his wife of 26 years has been engaged in a long-term physical and emotional affair with a painter from Canada. The affair started some time before he left to go to war in 1990 and only really ended when the other man, one Phillipe Du Monte, died.

The man, Rob McDonald, learned of the affair when Phillipe's wife, Avril, showed up one day with a portrait of his nude wife, set in his bedroom. Avril told Rob about the affair and how his wife, Karen, had become part of her extended family.

In the original story, Rob is somewhat of a shy, introverted man who mostly keeps his feelings to himself. He also suffers from high blood pressure.

In my opinion, RichardGerald did an excellent job telling this story, but I found myself wondering if any man could truly accept being hit with something like this.

Again, many thanks to RichardGerald for graciously allowing me to write this sequel. As always, many thanks to those who offered comments and constructive criticism on my previous stories. For those who want to say this or that would never happen, remember this is my universe, a place where nearly anything can, and often does, happen. At least on paper...

Please refer to my profile for more on my personal policy regarding comments, feedback, follows, etc. And please remember, this is a work of fiction, not a docu-drama...

A quick note on the timeline... Looking at the narrative of the original story, it appears the events took place a little more than 20 years after the end of the 1990 -- 1991 Gulf War. Using that as a guide, I determined that this story takes place in the latter half of 2012.

This story picks up at the end of "Another Love: Part 02," which was written from the perspective of Rob's wife, Karen. In this part, Rob has confined himself to a fourth-floor apartment in the Victorian row house he shares with Karen for two weeks. He has not confronted her about her infidelity at this point, so Karen decided to force the issue.

Ending of "Another Love, Pt. 02":

Knocking firmly on the fourth-floor apartment door, I say,

"Robert McDonald, this is your wife. The woman you have been married to for the last twenty-five years. I am the mother of your two sons and the person who loves you more than her own life. I always have and always will love you. But I have a love story to tell you that concerns me and someone else. After everything we have meant to each other all these years, you owe me the time to hear me out. I will be downstairs with dinner waiting. You can eat and then listen to my story," I say through a firmly closed door.

He comes down about an hour later for dinner. I have expensive steaks and a good bottle of Cabernet. We eat, and then I begin. I speak to him from my heart. I don't lie or withhold. Shielding Rob from the truth is over.

"I met a wonderful man who was there for me when I needed him. First, he helped me sexually when I was in a terrible situation, and then he took care of my children and me when I was left alone," I begin...

And now, my sequel, "Fallout":

Rob:

I sat there, saying nothing as Karen told me the whole story -- how she had become dead from the waist down after the birth of our second son, how she met Phillipe and how he had awakened her sexually. She left nothing to the imagination.

I recalled the night I came to bed and found a book -- "The Joy of Sex" -- that Karen had brought home. She told me she had not been all she could be as a lover after Oscar's birth and wanted to be proactive. Now I know that book was just a lie to cover her affair with Phillipe. The things she showed me in bed didn't come from that book. They were things Phillipe had taught her.

Then she told me about how she had brought him into our house -- into our bed -- the same day she dropped me off at the airport back in 1990. That was when I had been assigned to the USS Eisenhower to serve during Desert Shield, the operation which later became Desert Storm -- the war to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

The only thing that kept me going during that dark time was the knowledge that I had a loving wife and two boys at home. Now, two decades later, I learned that wasn't the case. And the bitch didn't even have the decency to wait until I was overseas.

Now I knew why Karen and the boys spent part of Christmas 1990 in Montreal, and I knew the real reason for her periodic trips there. I should have picked up on it before, but I trusted her. I also learned why my relationship with my two sons had soured -- she had apparently enlisted their silence, and used them to keep the affair from me.

I saw the signs when I returned from Iraq, but didn't make the connection. Perhaps I had what some have called a "confirmation bias." I never would have imagined her cheating on me, so I dismissed the idea. Apparently Karen was right that I needed a guide-dog to get through a relationship.

She prattled on, reveling in her love affair with Phillipe, constantly telling me that it had nothing to do with her feelings toward me. Even though the physical part of their relationship ended years ago, she still had a strong emotional attachment to him, and to his family.

Her story opened my eyes to many things I had wondered about over the years. Now, everything was crystal clear.

As she talked, I could feel my blood pressure begin to spike. A part of me felt like wrapping my hands around her treacherous neck and squeezing until she was dead, but I knew that would gain me nothing but a trip to prison.

I listened as she went on, talking as though this was some kind of romantic love story. In her mind, she had done nothing wrong whatsoever and still considered herself a loyal, loving wife. Finally, she stopped.

"Now, it's time for us to pick up the pieces and move on with our life together," she said. "We can get past this, just as we've gotten past everything else." I looked at her, saying nothing. After what I just heard, there was nothing more to be said. "Say something, Rob," she begged. "Please. I still love you. I never stopped loving you."

I got up out of my chair and pushed it back under the table. I looked at her for a few moments before speaking.

"Thank you for dinner," I said quietly. "Good night." I headed back up the stairs to the fourth-floor apartment where I had been hiding out.

"Good night?" she asked. "Is that all you have to say? After I just poured out my heart to you?" I stopped and looked at her.

"For now," I said. "I have a lot to process." I headed back upstairs, closed the door to the apartment and put a chair against the door knob to keep her out. I sat on the bed and cried my eyes out. Life as I knew it was over. My marriage had been a lie for the last twenty years or more and my wife -- the one person I loved above all others -- expected me to simply accept her long-term infidelity.

She tapped on the door sometime later.

"Rob?" she asked. "Are you alright? We need to talk, honey."

"Go. Away," I said. I finally drifted off to sleep, but it wasn't easy. That's when the nightmares began again.

The F14 Tomcat I was riding in to Riyadh one day before the start of Desert Storm was sluggish and I could tell something wasn't quite right. One moment, we were flying at more than twenty thousand feet at Mach 2 -- twice the speed of sound. The next moment, we were without power, and dropping fast.

The pilot ran the restart, but nothing happened. He tried it again, with the same result. I told him to restart again, but nothing happened. Then I had a brainstorm and told him to shut off the fuel and try one more time.

"That's crazy," he said.

"DO IT, NOW!" I ordered.

In real life, the plane started and we barely escaped with our lives. The problem turned out to be contaminated fuel, and I happened to find out about it quite by accident. We corrected the problem, saving a number of lives in the process. Unfortunately, that didn't happen in my nightmare, and I woke with a start just as the plane hit the water. Did that have something to do with Karen, I wondered.

The next day, I woke up early and headed for work without saying anything to Karen. I was part of a team working on a new jet engine for the military. The university I worked for was given a one-year grant to develop a "Next-gen" engine to integrate into some of the newer aircraft being designed. If successful, the new engine could, theoretically, carry an aircraft into orbit.

Lisa, one of my assistants, pulled me off to the side during lunch and spoke to me.

"Okay, Rob," she said. "Spill it. What's going on with you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

"Bullshit, Rob," she said defiantly. "I've worked with you too long. Something's eating at you. What's going on?" She had me and I knew it, so I told her the whole story.

"My God," she said when I finished. "No wonder you've been like a zombie these last couple of weeks. What are you going to do?" I shook my head.

"I don't know," I said. "She said the physical part of their affair ended some time ago, but she's still emotionally tied to him, even though he's dead. Part of me wants to divorce her and move on, but another part of me says otherwise. I still love her, after all. Dammit, I hate this. What would you do?"

"If it were me, I would've kicked her ass out the moment she confessed it," Lisa said. "But that's just me. You need to get your head out of your ass and deal with this. Stop trying to over-analyze it like a jet engine and handle it."

"You think that's what I'm doing?" I asked. "Over-analyzing the situation?"

"Of course," she said. "That's how you always handle things. But this isn't something you can break down into a series of equations. What is your gut telling you to do? When you figure that out, deal with it and move on." She got up and threw her trash away. "Feel free to talk to me any time you need to, Rob, but do something, and fast. We need your head back in the game here." She walked out, leaving me with my thoughts. Lisa was right, and I knew it.

I worked late that day, mostly to avoid going home. I ate a small piece of leftover meatloaf I brought from the house and kept going over everything Karen had told me. Finally, about 11:00 pm, I headed home. When I walked in, I saw Karen and Avril sitting on the couch.

"About time you got home," Karen said.

"I was busy," I said as I began to head up the stairs to my apartment.

"Avril's staying here with us this week to work on the exhibition," Karen said. She told me the night before that they had planned on putting together an exhibition of Phillipe's works at one of the major art galleries in town. The exhibit was scheduled to start sometime early next year and they had planned to take it world-wide.

"Whatever," I said.

"And just so you know, we intend to make my portrait the centerpiece of the exhibition," she said. I stopped and looked down at her.

"What?" I asked. "It's not enough that you cuckolded me with that asshole while I'm off fighting a war, in front of our children, no less, but now you're going to rub my nose in it by showing that... thing off to the whole world?"

"It is a beautiful piece of work," Avril said. "Your wife is a beautiful woman, no? You should be proud to show her off to the world." I shook my head.

"Proud?" I asked her, trying to keep my voice neutral. I could feel my blood pressure begin to spike. "I should be proud that my wife fucked another man IN MY BED with MY CHILDREN just down the hall? And now I should proudly let her rub her infidelity in my nose for the whole world to see? Are you out of your mind?"

"Please, Rob," Karen began.

"Get away from me, both of you," I said. "You make me sick to my stomach. Just leave me alone."

"Please do not be upset," Avril begged as I walked upstairs. I had heard enough and had no desire to hear any more from either of them. I closed the door to my apartment, locked it and put a chair against the door knob. The women followed me up and tried to talk to me through the door.

"Rob," Karen begged. "Please come out and talk to us. Please?"

"What part of 'leave me alone' do you not understand?" I asked.

"Rob, let us love the pain and hurt away," Avril said.

"GO AWAY, GODDAMMIT!" I shouted, my chest hurting. I could hear them walking away, crying softly. Cursing was something I rarely did, and I had always tried to never curse in front of Karen, so I knew my outburst had upset her. Too bad, I thought.

I sat on the bed and took a deep breath, hoping to ease the pain. After a few minutes, the physical pain let up a bit, but the emotional pain was still there. I laid back on the bed, still in my clothes, and thought about my options.

Divorce was my first option, although it was something I didn't want to contemplate. I knew New York was a "no-fault" state and I also knew that marital assets would be split evenly. I decided if it came to that, I would give Karen the house since it no longer meant anything to me, not after her screwing Phillipe in our bedroom while I was overseas. All those years of working to remodel this place was wasted -- gone.

But I had to make Karen understand just what it was she had done to me. In her mind, she was completely in the right, and felt no guilt whatsoever about fucking Phillipe.

Then it hit me. I still had my old 12-gauge pump shotgun in the back of the closet. I went and found it, still in the carrying case where I had stored it. It had sat there, unused, for the better part of a decade. I pulled it out along with the box of shells in the case. It was still slick from the last time I oiled it. I tested the pump action and found it still worked well, so I sat down and considered my next action.

For a moment, I actually considered blowing my own brains out. In my mind, I was basically a dead man walking already, thanks to Karen. I discarded that notion, however, as I always thought suicide was a cowardly act. I could, of course, shoot Karen, but that would only put me behind bars and I had no desire to be Bubba's bitch for the rest of my life.

Then it hit me. The picture -- the one Karen and Avril loved so much. The picture painted by HIM -- the asshole who fucked my wife in my bed. The asshole who wormed his way into Karen's heart with his slick seductive ways. Fortunately, Karen had the good sense to put the abomination in the back closet, but it was still there, taunting me. And now, Karen planned to make a fool out of me in front of the whole world with that thing. That would be my objective.

I loaded the shotgun and listened to make sure the two women were asleep. Hearing nothing, I crept downstairs and made my way to the back closet. I opened the door and saw it, leaning against the back wall, covered by a quilt. I lifted the quilt and took one last look at it.

Yes, Karen was beautiful in the picture, I thought. As I told Avril when she first showed it to me, a beautiful whore. But it was clear Karen's smile was intended for her lover, not for me. My anger rose and with it, my blood pressure. I pumped the first round and taking careful aim, I blew a hole right through the image of her face.

I kept pumping rounds into the chamber and kept firing, taking out the rest of her image, piece by piece. By now, the two women were in the hallway, screaming at me to stop, but I ignored them. By the time I was out of ammunition, her image was completely gone from the picture.

I tossed the empty gun to the floor and began beating the portrait, tearing it from the frame, which I had somehow managed to kick into pieces. Even though my chest hurt like hell, I picked up the pieces and headed for the large gas fireplace in the front room, Karen and Avril hot on my heels.

As the women sobbed and screamed for me to stop, I tossed the destroyed portrait in the fireplace and hit the wall switch, starting the fire. The canvas caught on fire right away and I stood back to admire my own work. I pulled at my wedding ring and managed to get it off.

I threw the ring into the fireplace, but it bounced off the brickwork and landed somewhere in the living room. I really didn't care where it went. I turned to see Karen and Avril sobbing uncontrollably but their cries fell on deaf ears.

I wanted to say, "now you know how I feel," but I never got past the first word. My vision blurred, and pain shot down my left arm. I began to feel nauseous, and I had a hard time catching my breath. As I fell to the floor, I silently prayed for death to take me away from this hell.

...

I woke up to see a man in a doctor's smock standing over me, clipboard in hand. He looked down at me and smiled.

"Mr. McDonald, good to see you back with us," he said. "We nearly lost you a few times." I tried to speak, but my mouth was dry and my lips seemed to be glued shut. My cheat also hurt like hell. "That's okay," the doctor said. "Just relax. Don't try to speak just yet." He motioned to someone out of my field of vision and I fell back to sleep.

I woke up later to find a nurse in my room. I got her attention and tried to explain that my mouth was dry. She gave me an ice chip to suck on and I was finally able to say something.

"My chest hurts like hell," I tried to say. She nodded her head to let me know she understood what I was trying to say.

"It's okay, Mr. McDonald," she said. "They had to do CPR on you so your chest is going to hurt for a while." She gave me another ice chip and I savored it as long as I could. She put something in my IV and I began to get drowsy again.

I woke up again to find the doctor in my room, looking over my vital signs. Karen and Avril were also in the room, sitting on a couch underneath the window that looked out over the city. The doctor examined me before he spoke.

"How are you feeling, Mr. McDonald?" he asked.

"My chest hurts like hell," I said as I sucked on an ice chip, trying to moisten the inside of my mouth. The doctor nodded his head.

"That's normal," he said. "The paramedics had to perform CPR on you and hit you a few times with a defibrillator. Your chest may hurt for a while." He checked my blood pressure and my heart rate before sitting down next to me. "How are things going with you?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, for starters, we couldn't find any sign of a blockage," he said. "But we noticed your heart has changed shape." He put an X-Ray on the viewing device in the room, then put another one next to it. He pointed to the second image.

"That's an X-Ray of a normal heart," he said. "This one is yours," he added pointing to the second. I had to admit, they looked quite different. Mine appeared to resemble some kind of a pot laying on its side with one half appearing to bulge.

"I've read about this and to be honest, I've only seen it with a couple of other patients," he said. "This is what's called a 'takotsubo cardiomyopathy,' or a weakening of the heart's main pumping chamber, which usually comes about as the result of severe emotional or physical stress. It's also been called a 'broken-heart' syndrome. Tell me, Mr. McDonald, has there been something extremely stressful happen in your life recently? The loss of a loved one, perhaps?" Karen began sobbing when the doctor said that. He looked at her for a moment, then looked back at me.