Freedom [199]
The storm of shit he’d taken from his dad for doing this was one of the reasons he couldn’t face telling his parents about his marriage, and one of the reasons he’d been trying, ever since, to see how ruthless he had it in him to be. He wanted to get rich enough and tough enough fast enough that he would never again have to take shit from his dad. To be able just to laugh and shrug and walk away: to be more like Jenna, who, for example, knew almost everything about Connie except the fact that Joey had married her, and who nevertheless considered Connie, at most, an adder of thrill and piquancy to the games she’d like to play with Joey. Jenna took special pleasure in asking him if his girlfriend knew how much he was talking to somebody else’s girlfriend, and in hearing him recount the lies he’d told. She was even worse news than her brother had made her out to be.
At the hospital, Joey saw why the surrounding streets had been so empty: the entire population of Alexandria had converged on the emergency room. It took him twenty minutes just to register, and the desk nurse was unimpressed with the severe stomach pain he feigned in hopes of moving to the head of the line. During the hour and a half that he then sat breathing in the coughings and sneezings of his fellow Alexandrians, watching the last half hour of ER on the waiting-room TV, and texting UVA friends who were still enjoying their winter break, he considered how much easier and cheaper it would be to simply buy a replacement wedding ring. It would cost no more than $300, and Connie would never know the difference. That he felt so romantically attached to an inanimate object—that he felt he owed it to Connie to retrieve this particular ring, which she’d helped him pick out on 47th Street one sweltering afternoon—did not bode well for his project of making himself bad news.
The ER doc who finally saw him was a watery-eyed young white guy with a nasty razor burn. “Nothing to worry about,” he assured Joey. “These things take care of themselves. The object should pass right through without you even noticing.”
“I’m not worried about my health,” Joey said. “I’m worried about getting the ring back tonight.”
“Hm,” the doctor said. “This is an object of actual value?”
“Great value. And I’m assuming there’s some—procedure?”
“If you must have the object, the procedure is to wait a day or two or three. And then . . .” The doctor smiled to himself. “There’s an old ER joke about the mother who comes in with a toddler who’s swallowed some pennies. She asks the doctor if the kid’s going to be OK, and the doctor tells her, ‘Just be sure to watch for any change in his stool.’ Really silly joke. But that’s your procedure, if you must have the object.”
“But I’m talking about a procedure you could do right now.”
“And I’m telling you there isn’t one.”
“Hey, your joke was really funny,” Joey said. “It really made me laugh. Ha ha. You really told it well.”
The charge for this consultation was $275. Being uninsured—the Commonwealth of Virginia considered insurance by one’s parents a form of financial support—he was obliged to present plastic for it on the spot. Unless he happened to become constipated, which was the opposite of the problem he associated