Arnold instinctively closed his fingers tighter around it. “Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you give it to me?”
“Because I wasn’t sure I should.”
I held out my hand, my palm flat and demanding. “Give it to me, Arnold.”
He hesitated for a long, agonizing moment before slowly placing the envelope in my palm. My fingers were trembling so badly the paper rustled. I recognized Ben’s handwriting immediately—the sharp loops, the hurried slants. There was no stamp, no postal mark, no date. Just three simple, devastating words written across the back flap: Please forgive me.
I looked up at Arnold, my heart hammering against my ribs. “What did he do?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why on earth does he need forgiveness?”
Arnold’s face crumpled entirely. “I don’t know how to say this.”
“Try,” I urged, my voice cracking.
He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Ben has been coming here after his shifts.”
“I know that. He works here.”
“No,” Arnold shook his head, looking miserable. “I mean long after everyone else thinks he’s gone home for the night. Almost a year.”
Uncovering the Secret
A year. The exact same amount of time Ben had been emotionally drifting away from me. The same year he had missed our daughter’s birthday and our wedding anniversary, offering vague excuses about surgical emergencies.
“What has he been doing here all this time?” I whispered.
“He’s been helping patients nobody else wants. People without insurance, people who can’t pay a dime, people who have been turned away by every other corporate hospital in the city. He’s been treating them for free.”
I stared at him, my mind struggling to process the words. “That sounds like something Ben would do. He’s a good man. Then why is everyone acting like he committed a crime?”
Arnold’s silence frightened me infinitely more than his words. Finally, in a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “Because one of those patients died.”
“Who?”
