PART 3—THE DOCTOR’S WIFE DRIVING HER CAR
When I picked Ethan up after his shift, there was this girl at the bus stop stamping her feet in the cold. Ethan’s eyes fixed on her as we pulled out of the parking lot, and I asked him what was up. She was a student that had come into the infirmary, apparently, and he was not entirely comfortable with her leaving alone. She’ll be fine, I said, the busses are running on their regular schedule until Christmas Eve.
So off we go driving into the New Haven night. Fucking New Haven. It was fine when I was a graduate student, but outside of the false sense of security I felt back then on campus, this city has nothing to offer me.
Ethan and I met here, when he was in medical school and I was working on my PhD in economics. Yale Med meant he could write his own ticket. I was in love, and all that promise of a bright future was just the gravy. We were—are—terrifically in love. The only bond greater than love is the one forged through creation. I created a child with my boyfriend in college, and even though that relationship eventually failed, I’m afraid nothing will top that. It sounds cold to Ethan, but that’s just the way it is.
Back to reality, back to these earthly asphalt streets with their feral potholes, back to New Haven. Sixteen months ago we were living in a great section of Los Angeles, Silver Lake, and the proverbial sea was calm. Five months ago we were the living-dead in LA, and the proverbial sea threatened to rise up and murder us. The company that Ethan started right out of med school, with a partner who had a brand new patent for a test that would accurately detect prostate cancer markers even in subjects who take statins, ran into some problems. The initial success of the company was like a dream, the business plan was sound, the fundamentals looked good. Everything was in place and it was a model opportunity. Then, two years into the company’s existence, it came out that some supporting documents from the clinical trials sent to the FDA had been falsified. Criminal charges were only brought against Ethan’s partner because all that happened before the partnership was formed, but there was a civil suit too and Ethan was named as one of the defendants.
On the day we appeared before the judge, having finally gotten Ethan’s lawsuit unbundled from the rest of it, Ethan went off in the courtroom like a Roman Candle. This hearing should have been the end of the hostilities, we were five minutes from walking out the door, but Ethan must have needed to unload himself, and he just snapped. He went off on his partner, he went off on his partner’s lawyer, he went off on his own lawyer, and when the judge cited him for contempt of court for the third time in ten minutes, he went off on the judge. The only person to escape his rage was me, and that isn’t even entirely true. I got a couple of scratches and a bruise on my upper arm when I tried to restrain Ethan from ringing his lawyer’s neck.
Ethan was immediately sentenced and incarcerated, and he spent three months in jail. By the time he was released, we had settled his lawsuit, but Ethan was out of a job, and having never actually practiced medicine on patients outside of his residency at Yale-New Haven hospital, he had little prospect of finding one. An untenured economics lecturer in the employ of the Regents of the University of California cannot support two people in Silver Lake, so Ethan fell back on the good graces of old friends, old professors, old Yalies in his search for his next job. So we landed back here in New Haven, Ethan on the staff of Yale Student Health.
It was the most amazing change in a person’s outward disposition I’ve ever seen, that day in the LA courtroom. Ethan, who had normally been so composed, never confrontational, just losing it. I had no idea he was capable of it, and at first it kind of excited me, the fury of it, to think that such passion was hidden in my man. But as nights came and went, especially the nights I spent alone while Ethan was in jail, away from his warmth, I started to be afraid. In the dark, without his warm body beside me to give ground to my thoughts, my mind raced. A relationship needs a certain balance of predictability and spontaneity, and Ethan’s violent outburst had blown that balance away. Five months ago, when Ethan made the decision that we would return to Yale and New Haven, I wanted to resist the move, the huge step backward into the past, with every cell in my body. But at the same time, he was so relieved to have a job, something told me to just let sleeping dogs lie.
...to be continued in PART 4—THE GIRL WITH HER ARM IN A SLING WAITING FOR THE BUS
When I picked Ethan up after his shift, there was this girl at the bus stop stamping her feet in the cold. Ethan’s eyes fixed on her as we pulled out of the parking lot, and I asked him what was up. She was a student that had come into the infirmary, apparently, and he was not entirely comfortable with her leaving alone. She’ll be fine, I said, the busses are running on their regular schedule until Christmas Eve.
So off we go driving into the New Haven night. Fucking New Haven. It was fine when I was a graduate student, but outside of the false sense of security I felt back then on campus, this city has nothing to offer me.
Ethan and I met here, when he was in medical school and I was working on my PhD in economics. Yale Med meant he could write his own ticket. I was in love, and all that promise of a bright future was just the gravy. We were—are—terrifically in love. The only bond greater than love is the one forged through creation. I created a child with my boyfriend in college, and even though that relationship eventually failed, I’m afraid nothing will top that. It sounds cold to Ethan, but that’s just the way it is.
Back to reality, back to these earthly asphalt streets with their feral potholes, back to New Haven. Sixteen months ago we were living in a great section of Los Angeles, Silver Lake, and the proverbial sea was calm. Five months ago we were the living-dead in LA, and the proverbial sea threatened to rise up and murder us. The company that Ethan started right out of med school, with a partner who had a brand new patent for a test that would accurately detect prostate cancer markers even in subjects who take statins, ran into some problems. The initial success of the company was like a dream, the business plan was sound, the fundamentals looked good. Everything was in place and it was a model opportunity. Then, two years into the company’s existence, it came out that some supporting documents from the clinical trials sent to the FDA had been falsified. Criminal charges were only brought against Ethan’s partner because all that happened before the partnership was formed, but there was a civil suit too and Ethan was named as one of the defendants.
On the day we appeared before the judge, having finally gotten Ethan’s lawsuit unbundled from the rest of it, Ethan went off in the courtroom like a Roman Candle. This hearing should have been the end of the hostilities, we were five minutes from walking out the door, but Ethan must have needed to unload himself, and he just snapped. He went off on his partner, he went off on his partner’s lawyer, he went off on his own lawyer, and when the judge cited him for contempt of court for the third time in ten minutes, he went off on the judge. The only person to escape his rage was me, and that isn’t even entirely true. I got a couple of scratches and a bruise on my upper arm when I tried to restrain Ethan from ringing his lawyer’s neck.
Ethan was immediately sentenced and incarcerated, and he spent three months in jail. By the time he was released, we had settled his lawsuit, but Ethan was out of a job, and having never actually practiced medicine on patients outside of his residency at Yale-New Haven hospital, he had little prospect of finding one. An untenured economics lecturer in the employ of the Regents of the University of California cannot support two people in Silver Lake, so Ethan fell back on the good graces of old friends, old professors, old Yalies in his search for his next job. So we landed back here in New Haven, Ethan on the staff of Yale Student Health.
It was the most amazing change in a person’s outward disposition I’ve ever seen, that day in the LA courtroom. Ethan, who had normally been so composed, never confrontational, just losing it. I had no idea he was capable of it, and at first it kind of excited me, the fury of it, to think that such passion was hidden in my man. But as nights came and went, especially the nights I spent alone while Ethan was in jail, away from his warmth, I started to be afraid. In the dark, without his warm body beside me to give ground to my thoughts, my mind raced. A relationship needs a certain balance of predictability and spontaneity, and Ethan’s violent outburst had blown that balance away. Five months ago, when Ethan made the decision that we would return to Yale and New Haven, I wanted to resist the move, the huge step backward into the past, with every cell in my body. But at the same time, he was so relieved to have a job, something told me to just let sleeping dogs lie.
...to be continued in PART 4—THE GIRL WITH HER ARM IN A SLING WAITING FOR THE BUS
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