Coincidences Pt. 02

"You told her yet?" Gladholder asked Bic. Paula was confused. It was she who owed the explanation, after all.

"No," Bic responded. Paula's gut tensed, realizing the men shared some kind of secret. "I don't know how to do this," her husband mumbled.

Gladholder sighed and sat for at least 30 seconds with his eyes locked on Bic's. "Do you want me to start?" Bic nodded, then reached for his handkerchief to dab his own tears.

"Paula, your husband saved my life. Not 'might have' or 'could have' but 'did.' That creates a special bond. He felt like the son I never had. I wanted to watch out for him. And even a retired deputy chief has a lot of juice on the force. But I'm getting ahead of myself."

Gladholder paused and turned to Bic for permission to continue.

"After I was shot, I spent two weeks in the hospital. As you probably know, Bic visited every day at first, when my prognosis was uncertain. But even after my recovery was assured, he kept coming around. My wife quickly realized why. It was a floor nurse named Ellie. I didn't see it for myself till the doctors backed off my Oxycontin. Bic would stop by about 2:30 every afternoon and disappear when her shift ended at 3.

"I didn't know you, Paula, although I knew of you. Word in the department was that Bic was head-over-heels in love with you. But I've lived long enough to know that true love is not a vaccination against temptation. Nurse Ellie embodied temptation. Anyone could see that your husband was a little immature and a lot flattered."

Bic waved his hand and Gladholder stopped talking.

"We had sex, Paula. Ellie and me. One time. At one of those cheap motels down on the strip. I was in the news and full of myself and feeling entitled. She recognized me from the publicity and came on strong. I never gave you a thought; never figured you'd find out.

"On our first day together, just after a visit to Chief Gladholder's hospital room, Ellie and I shacked up. We'd barely gotten off once before my cellphone rang. My sergeant was ordering me to see investigators downtown right away, to answer some more questions about the Gladholder shooting. It was odd because I'd given a full statement already, and I never actually saw the attack in the first place. Weirder still, once I rushed down there, the detectives didn't have much to ask. But it sure spoiled my good time.

"Two days later, as I was pulling into the motel with Ellie for a repeat, two patrol units cut us off in the parking lot. One of the officers quickly recognized me and apologized, explaining that someone in a car just like mine had been reported as brandishing a pistol a few blocks away. Ellie was too shaken up to keep going. I just took her back to her car.

"Before we could try again, I helped the chief get home from the hospital. 'Do you love your wife?' he asked me, out of the blue, as we drove. He didn't wait for my answer before adding, 'Because you either give her all your love or you don't. And if you don't, your marriage is doomed. Real love may come only once. Don't waste it.'"

Upon hearing that, Paula moaned.

"The chief never told me that he knew I had strayed," Bic continued. "Never admitted that he had intervened, either. But I knew those interruptions weren't coincidences. I knew it and I loved him like a father for it."

Bic turned to Paula. "I have no excuse. It was one time, really, and now years ago. I never did it again. Never wanted to. To be completely honest, I don't know how long it would have continued if the chief hadn't stepped in. But I never stopped loving you, and never would have loved Ellie. I was so scared of losing you that I never confessed, although I came close a couple of times."

Spent and sobbing, Bic stopped. Gladholder picked up the tale.

"I saw you the first time Bart brought you to the Summit," he told Paula. "He was a regular for a couple of years with different women, so we always noticed him. We didn't like what he was doing but there wasn't much we could do about it. My heart sank when I recognized you."

Paula, shivering and hugging herself, wept as the chief went on.

"You were the Wednesday girl," he said. "Did you know there was also a Friday girl?" That brought a sharp sob.

The chief described waiting for a few weeks to see if the affair would stop. When it didn't, he finally did his duty to Bic. "I would rather have been shot again than tell this boy what you were up to." Now it was the chief's eyes turning glassy. "He was gone to the JTTF just one week later."

"I couldn't face you," Bic explained. "I hated you. I was angry enough to kill Bart. But I couldn't say anything, couldn't do anything, because I was no better than you were. I couldn't judge you without admitting my fling and letting you judge me. I was a coward. I didn't know what else to do, so I left for time to think. And for you to think. I didn't know if I could get past what you did, and whether you could get past what I did."

Paula wailed, moaning an apology that she hadn't recognized the warning signals. What would he have done, she asked, if she had heeded them and dumped Bart.

"What signals?" Bic asked. His blank expression caused her to realize that the tricks so obviously intended to derail her affair had started well before the chief told her husband about it.

She and Bic simultaneously turned to Gladholder, who pursed his lips and nodded.

Directing his eyes toward Paula, he said, "It worked on Bic. I thought it might work on you too." Glumly, he added, "I wish it had." Then he briefly summarized his moves to disrupt both illicit romances.

Paula asked why Gladholder left out the part about moving her car at the counselor's office. "I don't know what you're talking about there," he replied. Bic just shrugged.

The three sat quietly with their own thoughts for a minute or two before Gladholder stood and asked a one-word question: " Bic?" Accepting a nod for a reply, the older man strode out the door, pausing just long enough to say, "I wish you both the best."

Then silence again. It felt like an hour passed in just five minutes. Neither spouse dared to start. Paula was frozen by the reality that she was the greater transgressor. Bic struggled with an unfamiliar reality: While his work made him the veteran of uncounted hike-stakes confrontations, he always had the moral high ground. Until now.

He broke first, after remembering that Paula had apologized but he had not.

"I am so sorry," he said.

She studied his face. "You did nothing, compared to me. You strayed once. Me, maybe 10 times. I am 10 times worse than you." After sobbing, she added. "What are we going to do?"

"But I did it first," he countered. "Did you know?"

"No. No. I had no idea. I saw nothing."

"I felt so guilty I figured you'd read it right off my face," Bic said. "I started every day wondering when you'd throw me out. I lay awake every night, imagining how quickly I'd have thrown you out if you did what I had done."

Paula gasped. "Is that what you're going to do now? Throw me out?"

"Of course not. How could I? Paula, if Gladholder hadn't stopped me, who knows how many times I might have been with Ellie?"

"Did you love her?"

"No. Did you love him?"

"Of course not."

"Ego fuck?"

"Ego fuck and nothing more."

More silence as each searched the other's eyes for a map from here.

"Was he better than me, Paula? Bigger? Stronger?"

"No, no, no" she replied, thinking to herself that while she knew she had to say that, it also was true.

"What about her? Prettier? Tighter? Hotter?"

"No," he answered, looking down and shaking his head as if to show that he had no idea why he did what he had done.

Then both spoke at once, using the same words: "I love you." Their hug lasted forever, and their reconciliation kiss almost as long. Things were not completely fixed, they knew, but also not nearly as completely broken as they had feared.

Bic and Paula reconnected for a whole week at the Summit Inn, compliments of a wise old cop who was grateful for his own second chance at life and delighted at an opportunity to pay it back.