“She’s been stabbed!” I wasn’t sure why a smarmy celebrity doctor would be moonlighting as a paramedic, but surely he could help her.
“Do something! She’s been stabbed!”
He didn’t seem particularly shocked. He put his hand on her chin and turned her face left and right. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about that. I’m a dermatologist. Her skin looks amazing, doesn’t it?”
“You mean except for the gaping hole in her stomach, right?”
“What gaping hole? She’s magnificent!”
The wad of towels had drooped while I was trying to wrestle with the front door. I looked at Marilyn’s stomach, and he was right. It was magnificent. No knife wound. No gaping hole. Not even a scab.
It had been a rough few days. In light of what I’d already been through, I don’t think I can be held accountable for what happened next, and I already had a knife in my hand.
“Yes, simply better than I had even hoped,” said the doctor, stroking my wife’s face with professional appreciation.
“AAAARRRGHHH.” The primal scream of a man protecting his mate. “Get your hands off my wife! What did you do to her?”
He seemed perplexed that I was upset. “I helped her, son.”
“Tell me. What you did to her?” It seemed natural to punctuate that question by poking the knife in his face a little.
“DROP THE WEAPON. GET ON THE GROUND.” Standing in the open door, the first responders had their sidearms trained at my head. I groaned, not again. I should have known that calling in a knife wound from my neighborhood would bring in the cops. They had probably been down the block dealing with a break-in.
While they were pressing my face into the linoleum, I tried to explain what had happened. “My wife! She was stabbed!” I remembered that there didn’t seem to still be a knife wound “—And then she wasn’t stabbed! That doctor—make him say what he did to her!”
“Son, are you on drugs?” Those weren’t unusual in our neighborhood either. “Your wife doesn’t have a scratch on her really amazing skin.”
“Why, thank you. I’m her dermatologist,” said the smarmy doctor.
“Oh yeah. I’ve seen your commercials on TV,” said the cop. He pulled out a radio and gave some code into the static. “It means false alarm,” he said helpfully to Dr. Chatsworth. The smarmy doctor sure was good at charming police officers, while I just ended up in handcuffs.
“He did something to my wife!” I told the linoleum because no one else seemed to be paying attention to me.
“Do you want us to press charges against your husband, ma’am? Was he threatening you with that knife?” The younger cop, who didn’t look like he could have been out of high school, asked.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Marilyn had been nodding her head slowly, like she’d been doing all day.
The officer put a hand on her shoulder and added not at all helpfully, “If you are scared of him, ma’am, we can help you with the paperwork for the restraining order.”
“Order,” my wife said. “Order.”
“MMMMMMMMMMWRAAAH.” I surged up, totally flipping out. I reached for Marilyn, thinking to pull her away from baby cop. His partner charged me, and I was cuffed and in the back of the cop car (for the second time in less than a week) before I could say “Ow. That elbow in the face really hurt.”
I guess I’m lucky that I didn’t get shot. But I didn’t feel lucky as I watched Dr. Chatsworth standing on my front steps, with his arm around my wife, holding my sushi knife. I couldn’t hear her from inside the car, but I could see Marilyn’s lips still mumbling, “Order, order.” Why didn’t anyone else think that was weird?