PRETENSE [ER Fanfic]

PRETENSE

IT SHOULD BE easier than this. All the right words were being said, the right things were being done, he knew when to smile and how to do it just the way expected of him; he knew how to make his voice fall into a husky rasp when nuzzling his wife's silken hair. He knew just how to make his son laugh so he wouldn't be crying when Daddy went out the door. After all the years of practice, it should be easier by now to pretend he was in the land of the living.

The thick aroma of coffee woke him from a confused, haphazard dream. All he could remember was looking for something; searching an unfamiliar house filled with clutter so that he had to move piles of clothing and knock aside endless books and half filled coffee mugs and inexplicable piles of paper to look for this unknown item for reasons he didn't have any clue about. Had there ever been good dreams? Had he ever been reluctant to wake because he'd wanted to remain in the heaven of a dream? He couldn't remember.

It didn't matter anyway; it was time to get up, to shower and dress and pretend the coffee was good and the breakfast was wanted, to smile and maybe even laugh a little, and drop his voice down just before he was kissed when on his way out the door. Yes, he would try to remember to pick up her sweater from work so she could have it dry cleaned. Yes, salmon sounded good for dinner.

With any luck, he would be too swamped at work to come home in time for dinner.

The traffic was the same; making him wish he had just taken the El, but he rather enjoyed being confined alone within the glass and metal of the SUV as he weaved in and out of the flow of traffic. He punched buttons on the radio for a moment or two before giving up finding a station playing some decent music for a change, instead of having that damn hard rock blasting out his eardrums every time he started the engine. How could she listen to this shit? The talk show was vapid and somewhat droning, but he left that station on anyway; when had he last heard the lyrical falls and rises of the language of his first home? Would he sound 'Americanized' now to those still living in the land of his birth? The thought of having a foreign accent in his native tongue sent a shiver down his back; he turned the radio off.

Salmon for dinner, she had said. No doubt with the damn asparagus spears and garlic potatoes; or worse yet, with herbed pasta, bland and dry on the plate. Dill would be used to season the fish; he could taste it already, and Christ, it made him grimace at just the thought. He knew she tried to make dishes he enjoyed, it wasn't her fault that he lied over and over, telling her something was good, that yes, he would like her to make it again, please. She didn't like to cook, she did it to please him, worked hard at it in fact, and all he could do was lie to her instead of confessing that everything he ate tasted vaguely like sawdust, no matter who prepared it or how hungry he may be when taking the first few forkfuls.

Beer was good at least. He could always wash everything down with that, and often did. Pizza also. It was a slab of grease and heartburn on bread, but at least he could taste that sometimes, if the meat was spicy enough, if the cheese was thick enough.

But now he was parked, and it was time to put on his professional mien, the mask he wore to show he was dedicated and responsible and cared about the patients he treated at breakneck speed for the 8 or 10 or possibly 16 (if he were lucky) hours he would be on duty. The med students and residents liked him; they liked the way he would patiently and calmly lead them through the traumas that came in; explaining and asking questions without losing his temper or snapping. Teach, he was there to also teach, and maybe with any luck he would do it right, so the patients wouldn't be endangered, and he wouldn't be burdened with the death or serious injury of one more person to weigh his conscience and sap away the vestiges of any enjoyment over his chosen career.

One of the med students had an obvious crush on him; he could never understand their inability to see past his height and build and face and voice; could never understand why they found his accent so captivating, why they watched his hands and mouth with such avid fascination. He was faithful now, was monogamous, a good and loyal husband whose days of indiscriminate f*cking were over. Everyone knew it, everyone was told this when asked; yet they still watched him as if believing he would suddenly bury his fingers in their hair and pull them in for a heated kiss, and more.

The day sped by and damn it, he wasn't needed to stay for extra hours, leaving him with no choice but to retrieve the requested sweater and stow away his stethoscope in his mostly empty locker before going out to brief the night shift Attending on the current status of the patients, all of whom were stabilized at the moment. Oddly enough, there had been no rush of traumas, no overflowing waiting room; no mad rushes at top speed to go from one critical emergency to the other while answering questions and trying to teach when saving lives. There had been the boy who had managed to get an iron spike through his chest; but even that injury had somehow missed vital organs. He would have to try to remember to tell about it when he went home, so he would have a safe topic of conversation to dredge up when things became too personal.

The drive home was only a little less hectic than the one to work had been. He left the radio off again, reciting Hamlet in his home language instead to keep himself company on the drive. It had rained at some point when he'd been at work; there was something satisfying about hearing the tires splash through the shallow puddles and pools on the road; he rolled down the window a bit to hear the water better. Funny, he thought, how life goes on all around you even when your attention and awareness is focused on your own little environment and the noise in your own head.

Think of better things, think of warm skin and perfumed hair and the little sighs and soft moans of his wife when he made love to her. Think of how for just a few seconds, he would reach nirvana and forget the reality of his bleak life, how tasting her and moving within her pliant body would temporarily wash away everything, even though her hair was wrong in it's long straight style, even though she could only murmur to him in English.

He would greet his wife and play with his son before eating the tasteless dinner and lying about it; would watch TV after reading his son a bedtime story so the little boy would fall asleep feeling loved, feeling safe, and secure. Watching his son's sleeping face, he would almost believe that he was enough, that there wasn't supposed to be two more children here, instead of this single child. He could pretend it didn't matter there was no possibility of having more.

No, he would read aloud and then take his wife to bed, and pretend he was happy, pretend this was his real life, instead of the one long dead and gone.

He just wished that after all this practice, pretending could be easier.

END