When They Found Out
Elaine Nichols
By Elena Ridgeway
spunkie_2003@yahoo.com

Europe is beautiful in the winter, but it's almost depressing when you have no one to share it with. Douglas still sends the alimony check every month with the Carter Family Foundation Update newsletter so I can't escape totally from my life back in the states. Like I escaped from John Carter. It wasn't him that was the problem, just the way things are in my life right now. He was so loving, so gentle, so compassionate. I needed to be independent, face the world all by myself after my surgery. He would never understand, and I hated to leave him, but I had to. I thought it best at time.

The alimony check came on the last day of the month, as always. I read the newsletter half-heartedly, for it was filled with fundraisers and other happenings from which my current location excluded me. Pity. However, the February edition of the newsletter had a section that I was shocked and disturbed to read.

On a sadder note, John Truman Carter III (Roland's son) a doctor at Cook County General Hospital, was stabbed by a psychotic patient on Valentine's Day. He has surgery to repair the damage and is currently living at his grandparents residence. Physical therapy is said to be going well. However, he still plans on returning to work rather than joining the flourishing family business.

Stabbed. Surgery. Physical therapy. I re-read and re-read that section, hoping that it was wrong and that I misread it. But I hadn't. John must have been seriously hurt in the attack, at least hurt enough to require surgery. And no one called me. But then again, no one knew of our affair. I wish we had told someone, so that I would have been made aware of this. I could have helped him, maybe. Tears slid down my cheek, for I knew how he felt. He had to go back into the world all by himself, after a senseless act of violence nearly ended his life. No one to help him. I sat in my room and sobbed, knowing his pain and knowing that I should have been there, like he was there for me.

But I wasn't.