As Jill Saw It

************

To say I was upset when the hospital called would be a real understatement.

I was mostly upset because of what had happened to Danny -- I mean Daniel, nobody calls him Danny anymore except me -- but I was nearly as upset to realize that I was about to become involved in his life again.

I don't hate Daniel. That wasn't the problem. It's just that I'd thought he was out of my life for good, and that was the way I wanted it. What happened between us more than three years ago shattered my entire existence in a way I'd never even imagined could be.

A friend of mine put it best: When Daniel came out of the closet, I got slammed with the door.

I don't think I'd ever even suspected that Daniel was gay. He's always been mild-mannered and kind, not the least bit macho -- not even when he was an ROTC midshipman at Duke University -- but I'm not foolish enough to think that those characteristics are limited to women and gay men.

Of course, there'd never been much sex in our marriage, but I'd always told myself it didn't really matter. Daniel was my best friend, my companion, my emotional support -- really, he was everything to me. And he was so sweet to me, so loving and so gentle on those rare occasions when we did make love that I told myself it was worth waiting to have something so special.

And it was, you know. It really was. I mean, sometimes it didn't go well -- you know, nothing happened, for either of us -- but being close to him, being in his arms like that ... it was enough.

When Daniel finally told me the real reason he hadn't wanted sex with me, I didn't believe him. I laughed. I was so sure it had to be a bad joke.

It wasn't. And so I stopped laughing.

I never would have believed I would react the way I did. I knew several gay men, some of whom I thought of as friends. If someone had asked me, I probably would have said, with great confidence, that I would understand if something like that happened. I would have said that I had no problem with homosexuality, that it was just another way for consenting adults to love and enjoy each other.

And like most nurses, I'd always thought of myself as hard to shock.

But when Daniel told me he was gay, it was worse than a shock. It was more like a traumatic injury that's so bad and so deep that you can't even feel it at first; you look at the wound and you think, "Man, that's _really_ going to hurt in a few seconds."

And then it does hurt, and the hurt is worse than anything you can imagine.

In one afternoon, I stopped being a happily married woman with a wonderful, handsome, successful husband and a career I loved. What I became, against my will, was a woman whose husband wanted a divorce, whose husband had been unfaithful over and over.

And he hadnt just been cheating -- he'd been cheating with other men.

Finding out that Daniel had been having sex with men hurt in a way that I simply cannot describe. I felt inadequate, I felt sick, I felt bitter and furious and shocked and revolted ... and I felt ugly, sexless and unattractive in a way I'd never felt before. I wanted to die. I mean that literally. I remember thinking that this would be an excellent time to go into sudden cardiac arrest and never regain consciousness.

And I was furious to see how relieved he was to have it off his chest. I mean, I was crying my eyes out and he was already feeling better, although I knew even then that he was very upset to see how badly he had hurt me. Still, it seemed to me at the time that he was also in a hurry to get this over with so he could start living his new life.

How terribly _nice_ for you, Danny, I remember thinking. Now what about me? You've been my whole life since we were in high school. So what the hell am I supposed to do now?

Sure, I knew intellectually that this wasn't a choice he'd made. The fact that he'd married me could almost be taken as proof that gay wasn't what he'd wanted to be.

That was a purely intellectual reaction, though. In reality, I was furious at him for doing this to me.

So I argued with him, I pleaded, I cried, I hurled accusations at him ... anything I could think of so that I could try to hurt him as badly as he'd hurt me, although I was pretty sure that was impossible.

But it wasn't. Daniel himself handed me the weapon I needed. When he got up to leave, he tried to kiss me goodbye.

And I screamed and I shrank away from him. I did not want him to touch me. I slapped him right in the face, just as hard as I possibly could, and I told him never to touch me again as long as he lived, that just the sight of him made me sick.

He tried to hold my hands and calm me down, and I started kicking him. I screamed and screamed and called him all kinds of horrible names -- names that it shames me to remember -- until I just couldn't talk anymore, and I collapsed.

Danny didn't let me fall. He caught me, carried me to the couch and sat there with me on his lap. I think he was crying, but I was too out of it to be sure. He laid my head on his shoulder and stroked my hair and said he was sorry but he'd tried and tried and he just couldn't change things. He told me several times how sorry he was for hurting me and lying to me.

And he said he still loved me, and that he always would.

I couldn't take any of it in. I just cried and shook and held onto him for dear life, and I kissed him once or twice. He kissed me back, too, just as sweetly and lovingly as he ever had. I tried to ask him -- to beg him -- not to leave me, but I could hardly talk and I don't know if he understood me.

It wouldn't have made any difference if he had, anyway.

I don't know how long that went on. I just kept crying and crying until finally, I cried myself to sleep in his arms.

When I woke up, I was in my bed. My bed -- that sounded so wrong. Twenty-four hours earlier, it had been _our_ bed.

Danny was gone.

I saw Daniel only once more after that, at the lawyer's office when we signed the papers. He tried to talk to me, but I wouldn't answer him. I addressed him through his lawyer. As soon as we were finished with the formalities, I left.

Over the next few weeks, when he tried to call to see how I was doing, I wouldn't pick up the phone. I let the machine get it and I never called back, no matter what message he left or how many times he called. I already knew what he wanted to say, but knowing it didn't help one damn bit.

After a while, he stopped calling.

For the next two months, I walked around in a fog. I did what I had to do at work, and then I went home and hid myself under my blanket and cried, or I curled up on the couch and stared blankly into space. I kept thinking there was something I should do, like make funeral arrangements, but there was no corpse -- just this huge, unbelievable agony.

I tried to understand how it could be that the man I'd loved and wanted since I was 16 years old, the only man I'd ever been with, turned out to be such a complete stranger to me. I felt really stupid for not having seen it, and then I felt angry at Daniel for being such a liar and a cheat, and then I cried because I was so lonely for him.

I got angry all over again when it came time to sweat out the waiting on the HIV tests, which prudence dictated I should have even though Daniel had told me, emphatically, that he was negative and he hadn't exposed me to anything.

He had told me the truth, it seemed -- about that, anyway. My tests were negative. But it was a bad, bad time while I waited to find out.

Daniel's parents came by to see me not long after he left. Mom -- Mrs. Reilly -- was very kind to me, and told me how sorry she was that Daniel had done this to me. She blamed herself, she blamed Daniel, she even blamed the Navy, but she said not one word of blame against me. It meant a lot to me that she was there; I needed emotional support so desperately during those days.

The Captain, on the other hand, told me he was going to get Daniel to straighten up -- bad pun, Dad -- and remember his responsibilities, but that I was also going to have to live up to mine, too. He told me, several times, that if I really loved Daniel, I'd stay with him no matter what. Sex wasn't all there was to marriage, he said.

I told him I knew that, and I reminded him that Daniel was the one who'd left me. He didn't seem to hear me. He asked me some really intrusive questions about our sex life, implying that if I'd been better in bed, or more available, or something, this wouldn't have happened.

Ha. Don't I just wish.

I tried to defend Daniel. I told his father that it wasn't his fault, that he had to have been born that way, that he really had no choice about this. He wasn't having any of that. Mom tried to calm him down, but he got very angry at me and they left. The Captain's last shot was to tell me that I'd better talk to a priest, and soon.

I guess I could have done a better job of explaining the current theories about the development of sexual orientation, but really, my heart wasn't in it. What was I doing defending him when he'd just devastated me and destroyed my life? Why was I still playing supportive little wifey?

When I got the call from Bethesda, I actually had to think about it before I decided to spend the money for an airline ticket to Washington, D.C., to go see about him. I did it only because it was the right thing to do.

But I was so afraid. I was afraid that I would still be angry, and that seeing him would send me back into that terrible downward spiral of emotions.

And most of all, I was afraid he would die before I got there.

But I was also afraid of who else might be there -- some man in purple pants and a pink Lycra shirt, who would be holding Danny's hand or kissing him or fluttering around the room speaking in a high-pitched voice, calling Danny "sweetie" or something ... his boyfriend.

Oh, God, I am a closet homophobe, after all.

Please believe me, I know better, really I do. If it were anyone else, I wouldn't react with such prejudice and stereotyping.

But try to understand: Daniel was my husband for 12 years. I helped put him through medical school, I waited for him when he was at sea and when he was home, I made his coffee every morning. I took his uniforms to the cleaners and he sent me flowers on Valentine's Day. He took out the trash and kept my car full of gas. I looked up to him, and he listened to me. I even had sex with him sometimes.

I loved him and he loved me.

I miss him every day of my life.

My feelings about Daniel's sexuality are all tied up with my anger and hurt and this terrible sense of loss that never goes away.

For more than three years now, I'd been struggling to put my life back together. I'd moved to San Diego -- always my favorite of all the places Daniel had been stationed -- and I'd gone back to working in labor and delivery, trying, I guess, to make up for the babies I'd never have myself.

I wanted to meet someone and start over again, but every time I met a man, I'd start eyeing him suspiciously for signs that he might be gay. I didn't trust my own judgment anymore, and anyway, most of them were doctors and I'd had all I wanted of being a doctor's wife.

I wanted to have someone in my life, but I just couldn't bring myself to trust anyone.

And I knew now that I only thought I'd been dealing with all this before. The real acid test -- with or without the purple pants -- was waiting for me at the other end of the line.

************

When I got to Bethesda, Mom was waiting for me outside the surgical ICU. She started crying as soon as she saw me, so I gave her a big hug. I could see that she was worried to death.

I took her back to the waiting room, got her a cup of water and made her sit down. I was shocked to see how she'd changed. There were lines around her eyes and mouth that hadn't been there the last time I saw her, and the streaks of gray in her hair had gotten more noticeable.

This had been a huge strain on her; not just the shooting, but the years of living with a shattered family and the -- to her -- shameful knowledge that her firstborn son was, as Mom would have put it, a homosexual.

She looked exhausted -- said she hadn't left the hospital since she got there two days earlier.

"They keep telling me he's going to get better, Jill," Mom said, wiping away the tears along with all her carefully applied makeup. "But he looks just terrible, with all those machines and wires and tubes. This has just been so difficult."

"Where's Dad?" I said, looking around. When I looked back at Mom, though, I knew. "Oh," I said. "He's not coming."

Mom shook her head. "No," she said. "And really, Jilly, I'm glad he's not here. The first day I got here, there was a man who said he was Daniel's ... friend. I wouldn't want the Captain to have to be confronted with that."

Daniel's friend. I took a deep breath, praying I'd have the composure to deal with this. "Where's his friend now?" I said.

"I have no idea," Mom said, her jaw tightening. "I told the doctors not to let anyone outside the family in to see Daniel, and I haven't seen him or his lady friend since."

Lady friend? Maybe Mom was mistaken about this guy. But whoever he was, there was a good chance that what she was doing now, however well- intentioned, wasn't what Daniel needed.

"Mom," I said, slowly, trying to choose my words carefully, "it may be that this man is someone very special to Daniel ..."

"I could not possibly care less," Mom said, in a harsh stage whisper. "Do you know what it could do to Daniel's Navy career if that man were to come in here and ... engage in public displays of affection? I simply cannot risk it, Jill."

She had a point there. I thought for a moment. "All right," I said. "If you think it's best, we'll leave it at just family for now."

Mom smiled then, and patted my hand. "I'm sure it's best," she said. "Oh, Jilly, it is so good to see you again."

************

When the next scheduled visiting time came up, Mom suggested that I go in to see him since she'd already seen him several times.

I did want to see him. Under any other circumstances I might have declined, but from what I knew of his injuries, it was going to be touch-and-go for a few days, and I didn't want to pass up what might be my last chance to see him on this earth.

When I went in, there were several people gathered around his bed. "Dr. Reilly, you've got to breathe for me now," one of the nurses was saying. "Come on, Dr. Reilly, breathe. You've got to breathe now."

For a moment, I was terrified. Surely I'd have heard if they'd called a code, wouldn't I? I was so frightened that it took me a minute to realize what was going on -- they were trying, apparently without success, to wean Daniel from the ventilator.

"Hook him back up," the doctor said, straightening up. "Cut the Demerol to 25 milligrams q4 IM and try again in a few hours."

Then he turned around and saw me. "May I help you?" he said.

"I'm Jill Reilly," I said. "Dr. Reilly's wife -- ex-wife, I mean. Is there a problem?"

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Reilly," the doctor said, pulling off his glove and extending his hand. I took it. "I'm Dr. Montgomery, I performed the surgery. If you'd care to step outside, I'll fill you in on the details."

"I'd like that, doctor, but I'd like to see Daniel first," I said. "May I?"

"Yes, of course," he said, nodding briskly. "Just let the waiting room volunteer know when you're back out there and she'll call me."

I nodded and stepped over to the bed where Daniel was lying.

Daniel was far from being the first person I'd ever seen unconscious and ventilated, but it was still startling. I knew what Daniel was supposed to look like, and this wasn't it.

Without thinking, I reached out and took his hand -- his left hand, the hand where he'd worn my ring for so many years. His hand was bare now; not even the "married man's tan line" was left.

The nurses used to joke about that tan line when I was finishing my studies at Johns Hopkins, and we learned to look for it, too. You'd be surprised how many doctors try to pass themselves off as single men when there are nursing students around.

But not Daniel. He was at sea a good part of that time, but even on shore,he had always seemed utterly oblivious to all of them: the nurses, the young officers and enlisted women, the female dependents. I used to think it was because he was incapable of being unfaithful to me; but then, I used to think a lot of things about him that weren't true.

And in that moment, I realized that I really didn't know the man lying in that ICU bed in front of me. It wasn't just that he looked different; in so very many ways, Daniel Reilly was a complete stranger to me, and always had been.

I never really knew him at all.

I let go of his hand, turned and walked away.

************

Dr. Montgomery told me they were going to let Daniel wake up a little and then reset his ventilator to trigger a mechanical breath if Daniel made even the least bit of effort to breathe on his own. I was familiar with the process; it's a step on the road to being weaned off the ventilator.

"What's the prognosis, doctor?" I asked. I was feeling strangely detached from all this; not at all the way I'd expected to feel, but then, I don't really know _what_ I'd expected to feel.

Just not this ... nothingness.

"I'd say fair at this point, Mrs. Reilly," Dr. Montgomery said. "But I admit, I'd be more optimistic if he were breathing unassisted. I had hoped for more response, given how far back we've cut his meds."

"He's not responsive?" I said, feeling a touch of fear.

"Not as much as I'd hoped," Dr. Montgomery said. "It's early yet, Mrs. Reilly; we'll be better able to assess his progress when he's been on a lower medication dose for a while." He rose and extended his hand to me. I took it. "Give the volunteer a phone number where you can be reached, and we'll make sure to contact you if there's any change in Dr. Reilly's condition."

"Thank you, doctor, I'll do that," I said, dropping the handshake.

Dr. Montgomery started to walk away, but the he stopped, raising one hand to his mouth as though there was something he wasn't sure he should say.

"Mrs. Reilly," he said, hesitantly, dropping his hand to his side, "there's a young woman who's been asking to see Dr. Reilly. She was l listed as his emergency contact; I know this is a difficult situation, since Dr. Reilly was your husband, but this woman wanted to know if she could continue to visit the ICU."

A woman? That had to be the "lady friend" Mom had referred to, but who the hell was she? "Do you know where I might reach her, Dr. Montgomery?" I said.

"I'll tell the volunteers to give you her telephone number, although I think you could reach her through the FBI," he said. "Her name is Scully, Dana Scully -- she's a physician and an FBI agent. Quite a combination," he added, with a smile.

An FBI agent, a doctor and my gay ex-husband's lady friend, I thought. This was getting very confusing. "Thank you, doctor," I said. "I'll call her and see what we can work out."

He nodded, and walked away, down the hall. I turned and headed back toward the waiting room.

I really wasn't entirely sure what I should do. If this was indeed the same woman, then she sure hadn't made a very good impression on Mom. It could be that Mom had a very good reason for not wanting this woman to go into the ICU.

On the other hand, if the woman was -- what do you call it, a beard? -- a beard that Daniel and his boyfriend were hiding behind, then maybe I should let her in.

Mom was asleep on the waiting room sofa when I got there. She looked completely exhausted. As gently as I could, I woke her.

"Oh, dear," she said, with an apologetic smile. "I guess I fell asleep."

"Yes, you did," I said, smiling back. Mom's always been so good to me, always helped to take care of me. Now it was my turn to take care of her.

"Come on," I said. "Let's go find a hotel somewhere and we can both take a nap and freshen up. We can call the ICU from there and tell them where to reach us."

"I think that might be best," Mom said, with that same little smile, as she put her arm around my waist and gave me a little hug. "You've always been as much a daughter to me as my own children," she whispered. "I'm so glad you're still part of our family."

I hugged her back, feeling again the urge to shed a few tears. "I'll always be your daughter, Mom," I said, in a choked voice. "Always."

************

After a bite to eat, a shower and a two-hour nap, I was ready to go back to the hospital, but Mom was still sleeping -- I was pretty sure she'd be asleep for a while, because at her age it takes a lot longer to get over missing a night's sleep.

I decided I would wait until she woke up, and then maybe we'd go back, although I really wasn't sure what I planned to do when I got there. I was resting on the bed, watching Vanna sell vowels and spin consonants, when the telephone rang. It scared me; no one knew I was here except the hospital, and they wouldn't call to give me good news.

My hand shook as I picked up the receiver. "Hello?" I said, in what I hoped was a steady voice.

"Is this Jill Reilly?" said a cool female voice on the other end.

"Yes, this is she," I said, swallowing hard and trying to brace myself.

"Mrs. Reilly, my name is Dana Scully," the woman said. "I was wondering if I might talk to you for a few minutes."

It took a few seconds for the name to register. "You're the FBI doctor," I said, sinking back against the pillows with a strange sense of relief. "Dr. Montgomery told me about you."

"Then you probably know why I'm calling," she said. "Could we meet somewhere and talk about it?"

Sure, I wanted to say -- when hell freezes over. But that wasn't fair, and I knew it. If Daniel had listed her as his emergency contact, she must mean something to him. That meant that whatever she wanted to tell me, I needed to listen.

I sighed -- and I'm sure she must have heard it. "Where would you like to meet, Dr. Scully?" I said.

She gave me the name of a restaurant near the hospital. "Can you be there in half an hour?" she asked.

"I think so, unless I need to dress up," I said. "No, it's quite casual," she said. "I'll see you there."

"Wait," I said. "How will I recognize you?"

"I've seen photographs of you, Mrs. Reilly," she said, still quite coolly. "I'll recognize you -- and I will have identification, if that will reassure you."

"I don't think that'll be necessary," I said, trying to sound just as cool as she did. "I'll see you there."