by Rissa Brahm
“Oh, the kids? They’re fine. They came with me—24/7 fun for them. But it wasn’t the kids I was talking about, dummy.”
Silence. Where was this going?
“God, men are so stupid—I’m glad I don’t have one.” She laughed into the phone. “Preeya, Ben. She came to the house two hours after you left that morning, then stayed an hour more crying…that she needed to apologize and stop you from going. She was literally sick over it.”
More silence—earth-quaking, deafening quiet rocking his ears, his chest, his gut.
Too little, too late. Way too little, way too late.
“You there, Ben?”
“Yes. I’m…here.”
“And it sounds like she’s still worried sick—she left several frantic voice mails and texts after that. One from just last night, in fact. After I get off with you I’m gonna call her and—”
“No.”
“Whoa, there.”
Reel it in, buddy. “Please don’t, Stacy.”
“Why the heck not?”
“Because.” His pulse spiked. “That’s why.” He poured his coffee and shoved the pot back onto the burner, scalding himself in the process. “Damn it.”
“Hey!”
“No, it was the—never mind.” He stuck his burned hand under the tap.
“Look, Ben…I don’t know exactly what your fight was about, but she felt horrible. She deserves to know that you’re alive. That you’re okay.”
“I saw her,” he blurted, almost against his will.
“What do you mean, you saw her? Where?”
“For some reason she’s in Seattle. I mean, I know the reason…she’s with someone. In Seattle.”
“Not sure I follow?”
“Stace, she was with a man, in a coffeehouse. The point is, she can’t be too worried about me or my welfare. She’s got a new distraction now.”
“Benjamin Gregory Trainer, will you please grow the heck up?”
“Excuse me?” He slammed his coffee cup down hard; black water splashed up and out, pooling on the flecked granite countertop—not before burning his hand a second time. But he ignored the sting. Easily. “Did you just ask me to grow up?” Fumes shot from his nose—instigated, condescended. “Because I’m thirty-two years old, Stacy.” Who the hell did she think she was? “After all I’ve…what I’ve…seen—been through…grow up? Just…” Fuck! “Damn it, I want to handle this my way…that is, if it’s okay with you, Mom!”
He calmed his breathing while he heard long, purposeful, pensive breaths from the other end; maybe something she learned from her goddamn yoga retreat.
“Ben…” She paused, then sighed. “I get it. I’ll back off.” Deeper sigh. “But only after I call her back. Tell her you’re okay.”
“Stacy, Jesus.” He took off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose, a headache suddenly splitting his forehead in two.
His sister was so damn stubborn. He wanted to cut it, move on—like Preeya had already done. And his sister getting involved, dredging things up…damn it.
And damn his feelings for Preeya, continually dredging up, no matter how hard he shoved them down. Preeya. Who he had cared for—did…did care for. Independent of anything else, anything she’d said or done. In spite of himself, damn it, he didn’t want Preeya in pain—like Jamie didn’t want him in pain. “Love,” his wife had told him. Why wouldn’t he wish the same for the wistful woman—his no-longer-his Preeya—who’d helped him surface from the suffocating depths of the ocean?
Yes, contacting Preeya was the right thing to do—and God, he hated that his sister was right.
“I’ll do it, damn it. I’ll call her.” Even though the mere thought of her at that table, hand in hand, fingers entwined with that other man, made his guts knot. “I’ve got my first class which I’m already late for. I’ll call her this afternoon. And…I’ll talk to you…over the weekend.” He pulled the phone from his ear, needing to be done with the call. “Bye,” he mumbled as he hunted for, found, then hit the End button to his new goddamn smart phone and slammed the device down on the counter.
*
She waited for the hall to fill up first, students a couple to a few years younger than her filing inside. Her hiatus from school made for quite the age gap. She clutched her bag and her pride, then slipped into a seat in the very back row. At the front podium, no prof yet. She sighed—undetected, safe. And so far, Preeya hadn’t felt ill all morning, even got through her 8:00 a.m. class without a hiccup. If she could just hold it together through this, keep her nerves in check, she’d be okay.
Because she had to be okay.
And she had to be okay if he brushed her off. If he’d already moved on, even. Just during those three weeks, maybe he’d met someone? Why not? Good-looking doctor, adventurous, giving. Passionate. Amazing. Yeah, none of the worries, the insecurities—the realistic possibilities, Pree—had left her. Why would they? Choosing to keep her feet on the ground, she needed to walk through the mud.
Her hands got clammy and her mouth dry, as if she’d eaten sawdust. She took a swig of water. It didn’t help.
God, he’s not gonna forgive me.
On that reverberating thought, Ben approached the podium from the left-side door. Her heart shifted into fifth gear from first. Seeing him alive, her breath halted, tears welled. Her Ben, tanned, lean, tall and calm, with hair—rich amber waves of it—and the start of a beard, neatly trimmed yet rugged. He stood just a hundred feet away from her. Still too far away. She could lose it and sprint down the aisle to him. Weeping, screaming, laughing past the hundreds of clueless souls and take him, hold him, kiss him, devour him. She worried she would. She gripped the chair arms and swallowed hard to gain control. Control like Ben’s steady display of cool, calm control—the only nervous giveaway, his Adam’s apple bobbing above the knot of his tie.
“Good morning, everyone. I’m Doctor Benjamin Trainer.” His voice, deep and rich, sparked her insides with hope. “Welcome to Pediatric Critical Care 201.”
CHAPTER 42
It went fine. Really fine. Some interaction and questions even, a few asking about his travels with DWB, one about the Jetta Air flight—it had apparently made local headlines—and a few questions on the course material. Ben felt in his element, and a new exhilaration drifted up his body. He tingled almost. Alive—in the right place, right context. Just, right.
But as the hall emptied, the world’s future doctors filing out to their next classes, that feeling began to leave him. These students would move on to a next class, like everyone moved on with everything. And like Jamie had moved on from this world, his world. And like Preeya had moved on, leaving him without a picture for himself. An unwritten future.
Jesus, Ben. Get a handle.
He put together his notes, tapping the sheets down on the podium. The noise, and his steady breath, echoed throughout the great hall.
Except for a clank in the far left corner of the massive amphitheater. The back of a female student lifting her computer bag to her shoulder. A jet-black ponytail down the length of her back. It reminded him of Preeya. Jesus, he couldn’t get away from the constant damn reminders of her.
He bent down to grab his bag from the podium, stood up, made sure the mic was off, and almost ready to leave the hall, he glanced up.
At the student in the farthest back row. Facing him…
*
His heart halted, frozen in his chest.
Not a reminder of Preeya Patel at all. It was the living-flesh pain, in person.
Fuck you, Stacy. She just had to call her.
He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. From nerves and fury and embarrassment and hurt. He forced them steady, shoved his papers in his bag, then targeted the side exit door.
“Ben, please.” Her voice crashed into him, a melodic and unwelcome tidal wave.
But he focused on zipping his bag, difficult with his shaking, betraying fingers. He yanked the zipper so hard that it caught midway. Fuck it. He hiked the strap up onto
his shoulder with the help of his opposite hand, and headed for the side door with attempted calm and confidence.
“Ben, please.”
Ignore and go.
Oh, so no “grown up,” Ben?
Shut the fuck up.
Only five more long strides to the door.
“Didn’t you get my messages? I went to stop you that morning.”
He stopped short but didn’t look at her. “I know you went to Stacy’s, Preeya,” he stated in an ice-cold rasp that surprised him. He sounded foreign to himself, cowardly. “She told me and, well…you see that I’m fine and alive. So”—he turned his head but made no eye contact—“good-bye and take care.” And two more steps got him to and through the exit door.
He walked up three steps. Then two at a time after that. Up to the front of the building toward his bike. Get to the bike, head home. His mind was blank but filled with scratchy white noise at the same time. Just get to your bike.
God, he could choke his sister. Unless Preeya had decided on a whim to reenter med school, and—what?—she coincidently got placed in his class? The thought made him laugh out loud.
Quick-paced footsteps grew louder behind him. But he wasn’t stopping.
How inappropriate, Preeya showing up at his work. To tell him to his face that she’s moved on? Why didn’t she make an announcement during the lecture, for Christ’s sake?
As if he’d blacked out several steps in time and place, he was at his bike. His trembling hands—damn it, get it together—took on the challenge of unlocking his bike lock. Jamie’s birthday, 0506—God, he should really change the code already.
And at attempt number three, Preeya Patel was now panting over him, unable to talk but standing close. Too goddamn close. He couldn’t help but inhale her scent of sweet coconut and lime. Damn it.
Just move the hell away from me—you’ve already moved on. Now let me!
“Damn it, Ben.” She bent forward, hands on knees, even closer to him now. He stood up, giving up for the moment on the bike lock. He just needed to gain some space—Jesus Christ, he needed her away from him.
Then he turned his back to her, and he walked. He didn’t know where to, exactly, but he needed to. He had to gain more than space but real distance. A stone bench, fifty paces away. That became his focus.
“I am in love with you, Ben Trainer!” she called out across the courtyard.
He stopped midstride. And from his peripheral, he was very aware of the others who’d heard. Lingering students, a few faculty members, a gardener, and a custodian mid-sweep on a winding garden side path. They all appeared frozen in time.
He spun around, still fuming. What fucking game is this? What the hell was she doing?
“I am. I am madly in love with you. I want to be better because of you. I reenrolled in med school because of you, because of your influence, Ben.” She looked at her hands, then up at him again. “I mean, I want to be better for me…and for you. It’s the truth.” She began to walk toward him, and whether he was mad, moved, melting, or just feeling insane, his feet wouldn’t take him anywhere.
She got to him, there in the center of the swirled cement courtyard in front of the triumphant entrance of the medical school’s lecture hall, and placed her hands on his chest. Her right hand directly over his heart, which she must have felt pounding its way out of his rib cage.
“I saw you. Preeya, I saw you yesterday.” He glared into her eyes—those bewitching goddamn eyes.
“At registration? You knew I’d be in your class? God, Ben, I called your cell so many times, and Stacy’s, too. I was so worried…and I am so sorry for attacking you, that morning in Vallarta. What you did for her, for Jamie…you are the bravest person I—”
“No, Preeya.” His chest heaved. “I didn’t see you here on campus. I saw you with a man. At a coffeehouse.” He tried to clear the thick knot of disgust lodged in his throat, but it wasn’t budging. “Holding hands. The man who had texted you?”
He watched her visibly swallow and hold her stomach at the same time. Like she was going to be ill. She had been called out by him, and now? Now she had to take this entire melodramatic grand gesture back. Because he was sure that it meant nothing.
He shook his head at her. “Good-bye, Preeya.”
“Ben…that was Evan. I was confronting him. So he’d stop trying. I had ended it with him when he’d proposed almost two months ago…but he wouldn’t let up. Instead of running like I always do, I met him face-to-face to tell him again that it was never going to be between us. Because I had found someone. Whether you ever returned my calls, Ben, you were—you are—the one. There is no other.”
He stared in disbelief while his head spun. A rush of what he knew, as a doctor, to be dopamine mixed with adrenaline, shot from his head to his heart, down to his gut, then exploded through his entire body. He pictured it all happening in an instant. An emotional MRI.
Her hand went to his face, slid up his cheek, then his jaw—
But he caught and paused her hand, then glared at her.
“Ben, there is no one but you. For me.”
Her hand still held in his against his clenched jaw, his eyes still narrowed, unsure—unclear if this any of this was real.
“Only you. And me.” She brought her other hand up to his face, raked it through his hair. “Ben, I’m not going anywhere.”
He shook his head…and the next instant he took her. In his grasp. And devoured her mouth like nobody and nothing else existed but Preeya and him, locked together after too many seconds and minutes and days and fucking weeks apart.
He was whole, an entire man once again.
*
Applause finally slowed their kiss. And he let her vibration resonate on his lips, unable to let her slip from his embrace.
“Preeya Patel, you drive me mad. And I want you to do that to me for the rest of my goddamn life. Do you hear me? The rest of my life.”
She nodded, her eyes glistening wet, happy—glowing. He wiped away one tear and licked it off his thumb. Salty and real. Not an illusion, not a dream. He sighed a relief he’d never felt before.
Her cell phone rang loud and wide and startled him out of their real-life fantasy.
*
Her heartbeat echoed so loud that her phone hadn’t registered until the second round.
SafeHaven. It rang through her do-not-disturb setting, which she turned on for her morning classes.
She hesitated. Just froze in place.
Why? It’s probably just Prana, the nurse connecting her through. To chat. On a Friday, late morning?
Their new schedule was every Saturday at nine. Before breakfast.
“Breathe, Preeya, and answer the call.”
She wasn’t breathing?
“Go on…” Ben urged, his hand thankfully on her back. A firm, strong support. Without it, she thought she’d whither like a leaf down to the hard concrete.
She took a deep breath in, then worked to breathe out that mysterious hovering fear. The exhale lodged in her throat as she accepted the call.
“Hello, this is Preeya Patel.” Her voice—it sounded like her, but not. She shuddered again and her shoulders hit her ears. Seven-year-old Preeya. That’s whose voice she’d just heard.
CHAPTER 43
She was silent and shaking, and he was honestly worried that she’d pass out like she’d done in Vallarta. Ben took her car keys and got her into the passenger’s seat.
“Nononono. Please, God,” she muttered to herself, eyes closed tight like she was stuck in a nightmare. He took her hand, locked their fingers, and tried to infuse her with all his strength. He felt her pain so sharply; all he could do then was squeeze the fear out of her hand. And she let him.
“We’ll get there, Preeya. We will,” he said, merging onto the highway. Through traffic, luckily not rush hour, but still. Thirty minutes if no accidents. Then to grab a flight. Jesus. Just drive, Ben, and get her there.
Then her phone beeped. Preeya opened her ey
es slowly and glanced down at the screen.
“News?”
“A text from Gigi…” She gulped loud. “Oh God, Ben. Oh God.”
“What, Preeya? What does it say?”
“Gigi wants me to call her and…to stay calm. Oh Jesus.” Sobs erupted.
“What? I don’t understand—”
“I told you about Gigi, remember?” Preeya’s whisper sounded almost irritated for his confusion. “She sees things…two things as clear as crystal. Oh God, Ben. Please drive faster. Just go as fast as you possibly can.”
He still didn’t quite follow but wouldn’t dare add another questioning word to her obvious panic. “Just hang on for me.” He got over to the far left and hit ninety in a matter of seconds.
“Please, Lord, just not yet. Not yet,” she whispered as she took her hand from his and raked her fingers through her hair, her entire body rocking forward and back. Lulling herself while he weaved in and out of traffic. He’d get her there. He’d get her to Sea-Tac then to SafeHaven—God willing, in one piece.
He watched her rocking begin to slow and he slid his right hand to her back. She leaned forward then—her hands moving to cover her face, her face in her knees—and just shook her head from side to side. Side to side. Like a young child denying a horrible adult-world truth, not letting it enter or settle in her head.
Then she wailed.
He swerved and the blue sedan to his right slammed on his horn. He recovered and straightened out, white-knuckling the steering wheel.
“She’s gone. My baby sister’s gone.”
“You don’t know that…” He glanced at her for a millisecond, then back on the road. “You don’t know anything until we hear—”
“I do. In my marrow, I know.”
CHAPTER 44
She opened the door before Ben could actually bring the rental to a complete stop. Her father was in the lobby. Blinking too slowly. Too damn slowly.
Stop that! And say something, damn it.
Say something instead of just standing there blinking your fucking eyes.
“Bitay, come.” She ran into her father’s arms and screamed her sobs into his chest. Wailing her sorrow so Prana could hear her. To come back. To come back to the world. “She was in no pain, my love. She was in no pain.”
