Abby Ellin - 15 Jan

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

Gloria Steinem (Maybe)

M y ex-fianc orchestrated the raid on Osama bin Laden.

He received a Purple Heart for his military service and a medal of honor from Golda Meir, which he tucked neatly away in a private vault. He thwarted a bioterrorism attack in New York City and saved the grandson of one of the worlds wealthiest men from an attempted kidnapping.

That I know all this is a privilege in itself. None of it was public. He wasnt in it for glory; he made guest appearances at major events but refused the acclaim or even a paycheck. He didnt write a book about his escapades, or sell his story to Hollywood. His goal wasnt to become rich and famous but to keep his childrenand all of Americasafe from the bad guys.

Im not going to sit by while people are in danger, hed often say as he packed his bags for a secret mission.

It was wonderfully noble, except for one minor detail: none of it was true.

B UT THATS GETTING ahead of the story.

Lets rewind to early 2006, when I was writing a newspaper article on detox diets, those lemon-and-hot-water cleanses said to eradicate toxins, inflammation, cellulite, and hangnails. I needed an expert to tell me if they were at all legitimate. Someone recommended a doctor with a posh Beverly Hills practice.

I am most comfortable interviewing people remotely, from behind the warm, safe glow of my computer screen. The roles are clear: I ask questions and the other person answers them. So it went with the doctor.

He told me that adherents of detox programs ran the risk of hypervitaminosis. These diets were, in essence, bullshit, he said.

He had me at hypervitaminosis.

The quote made it into the story, but the article was put on indefinite hold. Nearly a year later, when the piece was finally slated to run, I called the doctor to fact-check. Had anything changed? Was he still in Los Angeles?

No, he said. Im in the military now. A navy doc. He had quit his lucrative practice and moved to Jacksonville, Florida, to work at a naval hospital.

How can you be in the military? I teased. Youre Jewish!

He lobbed the ball right back at me. There are seven of us, he deadpanned.

Id never known anyone whod joined the military in later life. But then, Id never known anyone in the military. The doctor told me hed served years earlier and had reenlisted in order to open a hospital in Iraq for kids with cancer. He was a lieutenant commander. Soon, he would start a job at the Pentagon.

What a coincidence! I was planning on moving to the capital to attend graduate school at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, for what I half-jokingly dubbed my Second Useless Masters. I wanted to write about global human rights issues, and this hospital project was a story worth pursuing.

Keep me posted, I said.

And so he did, emailing every few months with snippets of information. His emails were laden with medical jargon and slightly odd; the language was indecipherable to me. But I was still interested in the story, so I responded enthusiastically.

In December 2009, the emails began picking up in frequency. By late January, they had blossomed into daily, almost hourly, telephone calls. Apparently he, too, had felt a connection during our initial call; he confessed to visiting my website and watching various television interviews Id done.

You looked great in that green dress, he said, referring to my appearance on a morning TV show. He waxed poetic on my sternal notch, the indentation in the middle of the clavicle.

We spoke deeply, honestly. The Commander, as I took to calling him, was fifty-eight, a former Navy SEAL, divorced a few years earlier. His two children, then five and twelve, lived on the West Coast with his ex-wife. It hadnt been an amicable split, but he spoke to his kids often and visited frequently.

I told him about my ambivalence toward relationships, how they were really not my area of expertise. Id just emerged from a brief and disappointing dalliance with a guy Id known at summer camp. Id been trying so hard to find a good man I hadnt even cared that he was a Wall Street Republican who played fantasy football.

Im not going to learn anything or grow spiritually from another failed romance, I told the Commander. Ive paid my dues. Its time for something good.

I understand, he said. Ive suffered enough, too.

The demise of his marriage had been excruciating, which was why hed fled LA. I couldnt stand the breakup of my family, he told me. I couldnt bear to live in the city of my failure. The navy saved me.

Moving across the country from your adored young children didnt seem like Father Knows Best behavior to me, but I dont have kids and have not endured a divorce. Were all so fragile in our own unique ways. Anyway, it seemed like a good sign that his ex-wife was open to him spending so much time with his kids.

And I was impressed that he was so loyal to the country. Such passion! Such dedication! He didnt care about money. He cared about people.

One of the main issues in his marriage, in fact, had been that he wasnt earning enough to placate his ex. She sounded like such a diva. Both she and the other doctors in his officehe was a partner therehad pressured him to refuse Medicaid patients, but he wouldnt. Im not going to turn people away just because they cant afford it, he said.

On our first date, in early February 2010, he took me to the Four Seasons in Manhattansomewhere celebratory, as hed put it. I wore a gray silk dress and thigh-high black suede boots; hed just come from addressing the United Nations and was in navy whites. We embraced as if he were returning from Iwo Jima. The bartender was so moved that he plied us with free drinks (red wine for me, vodka for him). As a present, the Commander brought me a white navy capa cover, in military parlance. I slipped it on, feeling like Debra Winger in