you gave him. Well, I started working through it on Wednesday and came across this invoice this morning. I debated about whether I should send it to you now or wait until you got back in a few weeks. But I decided that â as this was something of an ethical/moral call â I should err on the side of immediate transparency
.
I clicked on the attached file and found myself staring at an invoice from a Dr Brian Boyards, MD, Urologist. The invoice was for a patient named Leuen, Paul Edward. His date of birth â 04-11-56 â was the same as my husbandâs. So too was the home address. And the Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance policy that he used to defray 80 per cent of the $2,031.78 charges for the procedure listed on the invoice.
Outpatient Non-Scalpel Deferentectomy
.
What is a deferentectomy?
I switched over to Google and typed in that exact word.
And discovered that a deferentectomy is the clinical term for a very common bit of urological surgery . . . also known as a vasectomy.
And the date on which this Outpatient Non-Scalpel Deferentectomy was performed on my husband? September 7th of last year. Around the same time that we both agreed we should start trying for a child.
Nine
I SAT IN front of my computer screen, trying to convince myself that what I had just read was somehow false. A fabrication; an invention dispatched by a malevolent individual who wanted to see my marriage thrown completely off course.
The problem with hard-and-fast evidence â and an invoice from a doctor in the wake of a surgical procedure is about as irrefutable as it comes â is that you canât negotiate with its black-and-white veracity. Itâs a bit like a client of mine who had run up around $10k of Internet porn charges on his MasterCard one year. All the transactions were marked Fantasy Promotions Inc., and the time codes showed they were all late in the evening. His wife had seen the MasterCard statements and was just a little appalled. My client entreated me to provide him with an alibi for these purchases. As I told him at the time: âHow do you explain over one hundred and fifty dealings after midnight with an online company called Fantasy Promotions Inc.? Thereâs no wiggle room here. Itâs the smoking gun.â
Strange how that client â who was divorced with extreme prejudice by his wife thereafter â popped into my head as I found myself staring at the document from Dr Brian Boyards, MD, Urologist. All the facts in front of me. Facts which I must have reread a dozen times, trying to find a way of reinterpreting the irrefutable:
Patient: Leuen, Paul Edward.
Date of birth: 04-11-56
Home Address: 5165 Albany Avenue, Buffalo, NY 10699
Insurance: Blue Cross/Blue Shield A566902566
Procedure: Outpatient Non-Scalpel Deferentectomy
Date of Procedure: 09-07-14
The seventh of September last year. Around ten months ago. A few days after the Labor Day weekend, which we spent in a friendâs cottage in the woods fronting Lake Placid. My husband and I making love twice a day. And me, after a candlelit dinner at some nearby inn, stating that, after two years together, and with my fortieth birthday looming, I wanted to come off the pill . . . though it would be, as my gynaecologist told me, at least two weeks until I would be moving into a fertile cycle.
Paul did not blanch or talk about joining the merchant marine when I brought this up. On the contrary, he told me that having a child together was âthe essential bonding of a couple in loveâ or some such rhapsodic line. Back in Buffalo a few days later he returned from the gym one evening limping slightly, telling me how heâd pulled a muscle in his groin and was worried that heâd given himself a hernia. With my complete understanding, he absented himself from sex for several days, saying that heâd be going to the university infirmary the next day to get himself a medical opinion. Then when he got
.
I clicked on the attached file and found myself staring at an invoice from a Dr Brian Boyards, MD, Urologist. The invoice was for a patient named Leuen, Paul Edward. His date of birth â 04-11-56 â was the same as my husbandâs. So too was the home address. And the Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance policy that he used to defray 80 per cent of the $2,031.78 charges for the procedure listed on the invoice.
Outpatient Non-Scalpel Deferentectomy
.
What is a deferentectomy?
I switched over to Google and typed in that exact word.
And discovered that a deferentectomy is the clinical term for a very common bit of urological surgery . . . also known as a vasectomy.
And the date on which this Outpatient Non-Scalpel Deferentectomy was performed on my husband? September 7th of last year. Around the same time that we both agreed we should start trying for a child.
Nine
I SAT IN front of my computer screen, trying to convince myself that what I had just read was somehow false. A fabrication; an invention dispatched by a malevolent individual who wanted to see my marriage thrown completely off course.
The problem with hard-and-fast evidence â and an invoice from a doctor in the wake of a surgical procedure is about as irrefutable as it comes â is that you canât negotiate with its black-and-white veracity. Itâs a bit like a client of mine who had run up around $10k of Internet porn charges on his MasterCard one year. All the transactions were marked Fantasy Promotions Inc., and the time codes showed they were all late in the evening. His wife had seen the MasterCard statements and was just a little appalled. My client entreated me to provide him with an alibi for these purchases. As I told him at the time: âHow do you explain over one hundred and fifty dealings after midnight with an online company called Fantasy Promotions Inc.? Thereâs no wiggle room here. Itâs the smoking gun.â
Strange how that client â who was divorced with extreme prejudice by his wife thereafter â popped into my head as I found myself staring at the document from Dr Brian Boyards, MD, Urologist. All the facts in front of me. Facts which I must have reread a dozen times, trying to find a way of reinterpreting the irrefutable:
Patient: Leuen, Paul Edward.
Date of birth: 04-11-56
Home Address: 5165 Albany Avenue, Buffalo, NY 10699
Insurance: Blue Cross/Blue Shield A566902566
Procedure: Outpatient Non-Scalpel Deferentectomy
Date of Procedure: 09-07-14
The seventh of September last year. Around ten months ago. A few days after the Labor Day weekend, which we spent in a friendâs cottage in the woods fronting Lake Placid. My husband and I making love twice a day. And me, after a candlelit dinner at some nearby inn, stating that, after two years together, and with my fortieth birthday looming, I wanted to come off the pill . . . though it would be, as my gynaecologist told me, at least two weeks until I would be moving into a fertile cycle.
Paul did not blanch or talk about joining the merchant marine when I brought this up. On the contrary, he told me that having a child together was âthe essential bonding of a couple in loveâ or some such rhapsodic line. Back in Buffalo a few days later he returned from the gym one evening limping slightly, telling me how heâd pulled a muscle in his groin and was worried that heâd given himself a hernia. With my complete understanding, he absented himself from sex for several days, saying that heâd be going to the university infirmary the next day to get himself a medical opinion. Then when he got
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