Sweet Dreams

I made myself smile...my stomach doing flops.

"We wanted another anyway, just not this soon, right? ...Please, tell me it'll be okay."

"No, it's great news, great news," I said finally, making a wide smile come "...Are you happy with it?"

"Yep," she said brightly and skipped over to hug me. I lowered my mouth into her short curly mop of hair and kissed her. And I knew the truth, knew the horrid fact of it.

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Epilogue

Eight months slid by, watching Kate's belly grow with another man's child. That glow about her in the afternoons—that miserable six weeks or so of morning sickness that reduced her repeatedly to tears.

I was home early from work that day and slipped into our house through the side door, stepping into the kitchen. A man sat at our table next to Kate, her back to me. His eyes met mine...he was squat and balding, Hispanic probably. I saw the second man come in from our living room then...taller, neat in a dark suit.

He held up a badge in an ID folder. I didn't hear him introduce himself, even as he gestured to the seated man. Kate's shoulders wracked with sobs, I took a step to her and the shorter man halted me with a flat palm.

...Dr. Cordova...Dr. Cordova...

I nodded numbly at the name...Tommy...the younger cop snapped his fingers to get my attention.

Bits of it registered, Kate burying her face in her hands as she wept "...your friend, right...arrested for sexual attacks on his female patients... cried like a baby when we hooked him up..."

"He's arrested," I stammered.

"Dr. Cordova is dead, sir. A Seconal overdose in our holding cell."

The seated one cut in. "The doctor was a sick ticket that he was. He actually had a video camera hidden in both his exam rooms. We have 38 different women being abused on neat little diskettes."

"Your wife was one of these..."

Kate lurched from her chair and leaned over the sink, retching, dry heaves as she tried to vomit.

"Only she was the only one who had her husband stand there and spread her legs for this sick pervert. Her own husband, sir. ...You!"

"Kate," I said.

"Keep away from her."

"She's my wi...aghhh..."

Kate stood in front of me eyes ablaze with hate—I looked down at her hand, a serrated bread knife buried to the hilt in my gut, my legs sagging as she jerked it upward through my abdomen, no sensation as I crashed to the floor, a blur as the cops pulled her away, gentle even then, her pregnancy so pronounced as to be almost comic.

"You let him... you let him..." she shrieked over and over, her visage darkening, darkening...

I jerked awake, breath ragged in the darkened bedroom. I fought down the panic, the urge to jump from the bed. Slowly I turned and saw my wife sleeping peacefully alongside me. My tee shirt was soaked through, the sheet wet with sweat. Kate's was on her side, hands reflexively on her swollen belly. She snored softly. I closed my eyes and tried to push the nightmare aside.

I had had variations of the dream dozens of times since she found she was pregnant, stabbed with bread knives and carving forks, a pot of boiling water scalding me once, the time she yanked the officer's Glock free of its holster and fired three rounds into my groin, pressing it in so hard that my trousers caught fire from the muzzle flash. I'd died dozens of times at her feet, staring up into her face...that abject expression of betrayal and hate disfiguring her beautiful face as my life bled away.

I turned on the reading light she kept at the headboard and slid close to her, easing her hand from her belly and slipping up her flannel nightshirt, her skin so taught, the bellybutton pushed outward, the thin cowl of bluish veins visible on her skin now. I watched and knew the baby was stirring. And then a small hand pressed against the inside of her womb, clear and perfect.

I kissed the hand, putting my cheek to her side and hoped to sleep in peace.

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