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?”
“A little girl. Seven years old.”
The hallway seemed to tilt sideways. “What happened?”
“There’s an active investigation.”
“Into Ben? Was it his fault?”
Arnold looked directly into my eyes, unblinking. “No.”
“Then why is he hiding?”
“He isn’t hiding from the investigation,” Arnold paused, choosing his words with care. “He’s hiding from you. I think he was terrified you would leave him.”
Ben’s Letter
My thumb slipped beneath the paper flap, tearing it open. Inside was a single folded sheet of paper covered in Ben’s messy handwriting:
My love, If you are reading this, then I wasn’t brave enough to tell you myself. You have spent eleven years believing I was working too much because I loved my job more than our family. The truth is much worse. For the past eleven months, I have been trying to save someone who cannot be saved.
