Coming in from the Cold

by Sarina Bowen

  It gutted him. Willow stood before him, shaking with unhappiness. And yet she never backed down. A lesser woman would throw the first heavy object she could find right at his head. But she just stared him down, vulnerable but real.

  It was all he could do to keep from reaching for her as she put the box down a few feet away from him. Then she turned toward the door.

  “Wait.” His voice was thick. “You said your friend is a doctor. What’s her specialty?”

  Willow’s eyes darted around to his face, disbelief shining in them. “Internal medicine.”

  “Can I have her number, please?”

  “God, why?”

  “I’m not sure I have the right specialist, and I want her opinion.”

  Willow sucked in air. He could see her trying to hold herself together. It hurt to watch. It hurt to have her so close and hating him. She scraped her phone from her pocket and looked up the number. With shaking hands she jotted it down on the edge of the newspaper on the coffee table. Then she threw it on his chest. “Her name is Callie Anders,” she said. “But I doubt she’ll talk to you.”

  Willow stormed out and slammed the door.

  Dane listened to the sound of her footsteps retreating. Then he took the brand-new phone in his hand. He’d managed to put this off his entire adult life. But no more.

  He dialed Callie’s office, but of course, she didn’t answer. A perky receptionist took the call. And when he asked for Callie, he was told she was with a patient. “Would you like to leave a message?”

  “I would,” he said. “My name is Dane, and I’m calling with regard to Willow Reade. Dr. Anders will want to speak with me. It’s urgent.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later the phone rang. “Hello, this is Dane,” he answered.

  “This is Callie Anders.” Her voice was curt. “You left me a message. About Willow?”

  He cleared his throat. “Callie, I asked Willow for your number. I suppose you know who I am?”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “I need to ask for a favor,” he said slowly. “But it’s really a favor for Willow.”

  “What, then?” her voice was strained.

  “First of all,” he said, “it’s highly confidential.”

  She sighed. “Go on.”

  “Could you…” she was not going to like this one bit. “I’d come to your office, but I can’t drive…”

  “…I heard.”

  “Okay. I would like you to come out here, preferably when Willow’s not around. I need you to draw my blood. You won’t need more than a couple of vials.”

  There was a loaded silence on her end while the good doctor did the math. She would know that there was only one reason he’d ask her to draw blood. To test him for a disease—a disease that she would now assume could infect Willow. “Dane, I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re scaring the shit out of me right now.”

  “And I wouldn’t be doing that,” he kept his voice level. “If it wasn’t important.”

  She paused again. “What am I testing you for?”

  “I’ll tell you when you come.”

  She whistled. “You really are an asshole.”

  “Yes, doctor, I am.”

  There was another long silence, and he thought she might hang up. “There’s a yoga class that Willow goes to at seven. I’ll come then.” She hung up on him.

  * * *

  Willow fed chips of beeswax into the wide-open mouth of the jar, where the gorgeous yellow substance melted into a pretty swirl. She turned the saucepan of water down to a simmer and used an old knife to cut through yet another old candle stub. Her kitchen was perfumed with the honeyed smell of melting wax.

  Even as she worked—melting down old candle stubs into precious beeswax—she could feel Dane’s presence. As much as she tried to forget about him, he was like a hum in her head. When she sat reading on her sofa or stood scrubbing out a pot at her sink, he was mere yards away. The Dane who had wormed his way into her heart had bright eyes and an easy laugh. That one had clung to her, as if he never wanted to let her go. What you do to me, he’d sighed.

  She wished she could stop thinking about that man. Because the one around back in the apartment was the one whose eyes darkened at the sight of her and who said ugly things meant to hurt her. That man was afraid of something, and she didn’t know what. Willow wished she could stop thinking about him. She had her own needs to consider and a big decision to make. But it needled at her. If she knew why he was so angry, maybe she’d be better able to identify her own feelings under the jumble of wreckage in her heart.

  Or maybe that was just a cop out.

  The decision was plenty difficult even without Dane’s acidic disapproval. Willow wanted a baby. That part was easy. But she never thought she’d do it alone. Yet waiting around for the right partner didn’t seem to be working. They would be a tiny family of two. It wouldn’t be easy, but nothing good ever was.

  Willow turned off the stove’s heat and stirred her candle wax with a chopstick.

  There was only one hurdle she really couldn’t see how to get over. Someday, the baby would ask her. “Who is my father?”

  And Willow feared the only answer she could give the child would be: “a man who won’t even look at us.” It just didn’t seem fair. Willow herself had grown up knowing that her parents didn’t want her enough to keep her. And now she would inflict at least a portion of that same doubt on her child, from the moment of his or her birth.

  Which decision was more selfish? To keep the baby, knowing it would be shadowed by its father’s animosity forever? Or to take another way out, and never have to try to explain?

  She just didn’t know.

  * * *

  Dane heard the gravel under Willow’s wheels just after six thirty. By seven, Coach was sitting on the end of his bed, and they were watching a boxing match. The knock came a few minutes later.

  “Are you expecting anyone?” Coach asked, getting up to answer it.

  “Actually I am.”

  Coach’s eyebrows went up, and he opened the door. “Hello, there!”

  Dane recognized Callie from that night at the bar. Her eyes flickered between Coach and Dane. “Hi, I’m Willow’s friend Callie.”

  “Nice to meet you, Callie!” Coach said. “Can I get you a drink?”

  She shook her head.

  “Coach,” Dane said. “I’m sorry, but could you give us ten minutes?”

  His face went straight to serious. “Sure, kid. I’m going to run out for beer.” He shrugged his jacket on and went outside, closing the door behind him.

  Callie carried a small blue cooler with her. He knew she would show up and do this thing for him, because he’d really left her no other choice. She sat down on a wooden dining chair. “I brought the stuff, but first you have to tell me what this is about.” Her eyes were wide and questioning.

  “Did Willow have an abortion?” he asked.

  Callie’s jaw dropped. “I’m not going to tell you that. You dragged me out here for that? To invade her privacy?”

  Dane pointed at her cooler. “I’m just trying to figure out if we need that.”

  The doctor’s face creased with confusion. “Well, don’t we? If you’re infected with…”

  “With what, Callie? I’m sure you came up with a few theories on the trip over here. Let’s hear them.”

  She blinked. “I won’t play games with you. You tell me right now what the danger is, or I’m leaving.”

  Dane swallowed, reading on her face that she meant it. The trouble was that Dane had never said it aloud. Never. Not once. I probably have… The words stuck in his throat as she stared at him.

  “Enough.” She stood up.

  He coughed once. “My mother died from Huntington’s disease.” He watched her face.

  Callie sucked in her breath and dropped back onto the chair. Slowly, her eyes filled with tears.

  Dane chuckled. “That’s what everyone says. Everyone w
ho’s been to medical school.” He shifted in the bed. “You were thinking HIV, right? That would have been a bummer, but controllable with drugs.” He rolled up the sleeve of his flannel shirt. “Or maybe you thought about hepatitis C. Now there’s a nasty disease. But look on the bright side, Dr. Callie. Even if you’re clumsy with that needle, you can’t catch what I’ve got. And neither did Willow, obviously.”

  “But the baby might have it,” Callie whispered, wiping her tears away with the palms of her hands. “And you’ve never had the genetic test? And now you have to. For Willow.”

  He looked up at the ceiling. “If she already had an abortion, then I don’t need it at all.” He waited.

  She gaped at him. “You’re putting me in an impossible situation.”

  “Really? Would you like to trade places with me?” She didn’t say anything, so he continued. “When I was a kid, waiting outside my mother’s hospital room, this whole crowd of medical students files out. The attending brought them all in to see the Huntington’s patient. Because they’d probably never see another one again, right? Too weird, too rare. So one of these students says to his friend, ‘That’s the disease that makes me say, whatever happens to me, I’ll be fine. Because I don’t have to die of Huntington’s.’”

  He looked at Callie, but she just stared at him, fear in her face. And then, very slowly, she leaned over and picked up the cooler. “Willow hasn’t…” she stopped herself. “I think you do need the test. Have you considered that knowing might be a relief?”

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her hands, which were unwrapping the sterile tube. His stomach knotted. “No way. I would never have done the test. But Willow’s forcing me.”

  “This isn’t Willow’s fault.”

  “Yeah, it kind of is,” he said as his hands began to sweat. Liar. You broke your own rule. He took in a shaky breath. “At least I got a little something out of it. Willow was a good lay.”

  The look on Callie’s face could have been bottled and sold as repellent. “Here’s a tip, Dane. Don’t say things like that to a woman who’s about to stab you.” She snapped on a pair of latex gloves, and then ripped open an alcohol wipe.

  He thrust his arm toward her. “I have a broken leg and a fatal disease. You couldn’t hurt me with that thing worse than I hurt already.” It should have sounded tough, but his throat caught on the words.

  She scraped his arm with the disinfectant. “If my memory is correct, your odds of inheriting Huntington’s are fifty percent,” she said. “What if you’re in the clear and a total asshole for nothing?”

  Dane shook his head. “In my family, we don’t do fifty percent,” he explained.

  She hooked the tube to the vial and uncapped the syringe. “You’ll feel a—”

  “Do it,” he cut her off. “I get blood drawn every fucking month for drug tests.”

  He felt the tug of his blood into the syringe, where it would flow through the tube and into the vial.

  “Other people have troubles, too, you know,” the doctor said softly.

  “Cry me a river,” he said.

  She sighed. “I don’t suppose you know that Willow lived in six different foster homes before she turned eighteen.”

  “No shit?” he whispered.

  “No shit,” the doctor answered. In the silence she changed vials.

  “Well. I guess her bad luck hadn’t run out yet, then,” he said.

  “I guess not,” Callie said, her voice shaking with fury.

  And then it was done. She put the vials on ice, and slapped a bandage on his arm. “What name am I putting on these?”

  “Daffy Duck,” he said. “If you put my own name on it, you might as well kill me right now.”

  She took two steps toward the door.

  “I’ll pay in cash,” he said. “Just tell me where to send it.”

  She sighed and turned around. “You know, it can probably be tested in utero, too. Even if you are positive…”

  “You won’t be telling Willow. Doctor-patient privilege.”

  Her eyes were wet. “If it weren’t for Willow, I would tell you to go right to hell.”

  Dane adjusted his pillow. “Everyone else does.” He picked up the TV remote. “We need the results before the end of her first trimester,” he said. “The abortion will be easier on her.”

  The door slammed shut after Callie went out.

  Coach came back a few minutes later. “You okay?” he asked.

  Dane turned the volume of the fight up. “Good as I ever was,” he said over the noise.

  Chapter Nineteen

  On a very cold night the following week, Willow made homemade gnocchi for dinner. She was still craving carbs. And her dinner guest—Callie—was a willing accomplice. She made a long-simmered sauce Bolognese as well.

  “So, how goes it with your surly neighbor?” Callie asked.

  Willow shook her head. “I’ve seen him once since his episode. And the only thing he wanted to talk about was your phone number. He wanted to ask you about specialists at the hospital. Did he call?”

  Callie looked pained. “I didn’t return the call.”

  “I told him you wouldn’t.” They ate in silence for a few minutes, but there was something weighing on Willow. “Callie,” she asked. “I want to ask you something. But don’t assume…” she trailed off.

  “What is it, sweetie?”

  Willow put down her fork. “I just want to make sure I’ve weighed every single option, okay? So I’m curious about what doctors think of abortion. How does medical school, well, inform your opinion about it?”

  Her friend paled. “Willow…I thought you wanted…”

  “I’m not sure what I want yet,” her friend said. “I’m just curious, okay? After med school, are most doctors pro-choice?”

  Callie looked caught. “Well…in med school you learn a lot about horrible birth defects, so…” Her friend drew in a deep breath.

  “Callie?” Willow asked. “Are you okay?”

  Her friend shook her head. “I just really can’t talk about this right now,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  She had never seen Callie tongue-tied before. Willow wondered if she had inadvertently asked her friend a question that was more personal than she would have guessed.

  “Okay,” Willow said quietly. “I’ve made a lot of irresponsible decisions the past few years. I’m trying on this idea, because I don’t want to make any more of them.”

  “Willow, how many weeks are you?”

  She watched Callie’s face, which was curiously ashen. “I’m six weeks. Why?”

  “You have more time to think about this, then,” Callie said. “Take some more time.”

  “I will.” Willow ate another bite. But Callie only pushed the food around on her plate. “Are you okay, Callie? You look really tired.”

  “I haven’t been sleeping,” her friend admitted. “It’s been a really hard week.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Willow said. “Have a glass of wine? One of us should.”

  * * *

  When Willow drove home from work the next Monday, she found herself following a green Jeep down the road, and then up her own driveway. They parked side by side, and Willow glanced into the vehicle, feeling great relief when she saw that Coach was in there alone.

  “Hi, Coach,” she said, getting out.

  “Willow!” he said. “How are you?”

  “Good,” she said brightly, though it was a lie. Willow still doubted that Coach knew her scary little secret. And she sure as hell didn’t want to involve him.

  “Willow, I hate to ask…” he tilted his head to the side.

  “Do you need something?”

  He opened the trunk of his car with an exasperated sigh. “Is there a chance I could run a load of laundry through your machine? I had no idea that the Laundromat would be closed today.” He pulled out a laundry bag and a bottle of detergent.

  “Oh, sure!” she said. If only all of life’s problems were so e
asily fixed. “Follow me.”

  * * *

  “I really appreciate this,” Coach said, emerging from Willow’s laundry room, his bottle of detergent hooked over her thumb. “I’m a little overwhelmed taking care of Mr. Grumpy. There’s nobody so miserable as a laid-up skier during racing season.”

  Willow did not want to land on the topic of Dane. “The wash cycle takes about forty-five minutes,” she said. “If you play your cards right, you’ll be a few minutes late. And just in time to eat one of these, hot out of the oven.” She’d left a batch of bread dough rising on the counter top while she was away at work, and now she stood at the counter, shaping them into rolls.

  “Well that is something to look forward to,” he said. “In the meantime, I’ll check on his lordship.”

  She couldn’t help it. Willow laughed.

  Coach winked at her on his way out the door.

  * * *

  When he tapped on the door again, Willow was just removing the first batch of rolls from the oven. “Come in,” she called.

  “Lordy, it smells good in here,” Coach said.

  “Toss your laundry in the dryer, and I’ll butter one for you,” she offered.

  When he reappeared, she pushed a plate toward him, the roll steaming and butter oozing across the torn surface. “Coffee?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to be any trouble,” he said.

  She waved a hand. “I’m having one.”

  “I’d love one.” Coach sat down on a stool and beamed at her. He had a very kind face, and the sort of demeanor that made it easy to feel comfortable in his presence.

  Willow turned toward the espresso machine and began to tamp down a shot. She would make herself a tiny coffee with a lot of milk in it. It was strange, but lately she’d found herself behaving like a pregnant lady. She’d cut down her coffee consumption to almost nothing. And she didn’t take anything for the headache she’d had over the weekend. Her mind might run in an endless loop of indecision, but she took good care of her pregnant body. Her subconscious clearly wanted in on the decision.