In the Know

Ben was never tired.

Never, never. It was why women loved him. He could go on and on and on all night.

I love you, they would say.

That was the problem. He didn’t love them.

Wakefulness was his nature. It was why he originally became a doctor. His residency was a breeze, though they were required to work 36-hour-stretches. He didn't get tired. His supervisor became suspicious and made him take drug tests.

Honestly, no. No speed.

Eventually the other doctors got used to him. He was a very friendly guy. He didn’t mind covering for someone who was exhausted.

It’s nothing, he would say. Ms. Vail wants a sleeping pill. Mr. Dote had a heart attack, but he’s doing fine.

Ben left medicine when he got sick of it. The medicines didn’t come in when he worked for Doctors without Borders. He’d be in some godforsaken war-torn country treating patients without medicine. He did no good, he did no harm.

He became an attorney. Law was more straightforward the way he practiced it. He helped the poor. It was that simple. He needed no medicines.

Then there was Shakespeare. He genuinely enjoyed that.

As for Rose...she was his wife. He thought about her very little.

Rose insisted he take time off. Ben didn’t really need the days off after the play. Rose, who was tired from the party, went to bed at nine o’clock for four days after the play. Ben stayed up till 3 playing computer games and reading The Complete Short Stories of Somerset Maugham. Rose had volumes of them around the house and he had nothing else to do.

Rose forbade him to read Shakespeare.

He laughed at her.

Why was he reading Maugham? He could vaguely remember Rose’s reading Maugham, hair combed forward, her intense face eager, cross-legged on the couch, reading without stopping.

What are you reading?

Maugham. They’re such good stories.

He had always though Maugham was crap. He had tried to read a novel about a doctor with a club foot. The club foot was the equivalent of Maugham’s stammer.

The stories were better. He enjoyed them a lot. He hadn’t read short stories in a long time.

He was not a fiction man.

Four in the morning. He hadn’t been drinking caffeinated beverages. Why was he awake?

He didn’t know how Rose stood so many days at home. Whenever she took time off, she stayed home and read or watched movies. He had to work. He wanted to work all the time. When he wasn’t at his law office, he was directing plays or working the graveyard shift in the emergency room.

He had ADHD, people told him.

Everybody’s a psychiatrist.

He didn’t need Ritalin. He needed not to be still.

He liked the ER. It wasn’t exactly like the TV show. How he had despised the genial doctors.

The ER. There was a lot of sitting around. There was flirting, there was paperwork. Suddenly a guy with a gunshot wound would be brought in on a stretcher . The man had been shot behind a Mexican restaurant. The nurse, who heard the story from a cop, told him about it while he scrubbed up.

He might not have insurance.

Ben swore. I don’t give a damn.

As soon as he looked at the man, he knew he would die. It was three in the morning.

Since the man--What’s your name? Pedro?--didn’t have insurance, Ben tried to make him as comfortable as possible. He washed the wound and extracted the bullet.

Pedro’s wife showed up with her family. She was very quiet in the waiting room. When he told her the news, she cried.

What had happened? He didn't know the story. Two restaurant workers with a feud.

Maugham would write a story. That’s why he was fascinated by Maugham. Maugham always sounded as though he were in the know.