There are many things I don’t tell my wife of ten years: Because she has asked me not to. Because she carries her own burdens. Because she has told me mine are too much.
But then, when the kids are in bed and the kitchen counters are clean and we’re settling in for the evening, she asks about my day. What am I supposed to say?
Overdoses are usually OK to talk about. I tell her how last night at 11 PM, after a long day in the ER, I pulled an unresponsive man from a car. He wore nothing but socks and was slippery and somehow wedged into the back-seat floor of his friend’s SUV. He had a pulse but wasn’t breathing. Three of us wrestled him onto a cot and then wheeled him, naked, through a full waiting room. Everyone sitting there was suddenly struck quiet, and the complaints about the wait let up for an hour. I tell my wife this story because he survived. He’s on a ventilator, but he’s alive.
