by Ruth Wind
In her office, she leaned back in her chair and looked out the window toward Mount Gordon. Noontime sunlight cast a harsh brightness over the landscape, washing away details and giving the scene the slightly unreal look of a postcard.
Ramona’s conflict was growing. Besides the ethics of the situation with Jake, there was genuine risk to him if she could not keep herself emotionally unattached as his physician. By necessity, she knew many of her patients—she was even good friends with some of them.
But she had never doubted her ability to make objective, clear decisions about their care. It had always been easy to keep her personal life and professional life separate.
With Jake, the line had blurred. And sitting in her quiet office, she had to admit it was because she was sexually attracted to him. He was not simply a friend or a colleague or an acquaintance. Of all the things he aroused in her, the strongest was pure, undiluted sexual desire.
No, even that wasn’t quite accurate. The truth was, she felt a dizzying combination of things with him. Desire was certainly a major ingredient, but so was respect and genuine pleasure in his company. Curiosity, admiration, even a pleasant feeling of challenge went into the mix. She liked his mind and his irony and his sense of humor.
Idly, she doodled on a scratch pad. The bottom line. She had to remove herself from treating him. Her objectivity as a physician was compromised and she couldn’t trust herself to treat him properly.
Before she could change her mind, she called Dr. Richards at the VA hospital, then stood up and took a deep breath before she marched down the hall to deliver the news to Jake. He appeared to be sleeping. Knowing what a precious commodity it was to him, Ramona hated to wake him, but given the concussion, he had to stay awake. Ironic.
As she entered the room, he stirred and opened his eyes. “If you’re planning to deliver another lecture, please save it till later. I’m sure I’ve already heard it at least three times this morning.”
Ramona shook her head. “No lecture. I just want you to know I’m not going to be your physician—I’ve referred your case to Dr. Richards at the VA hospital. You know him?”
“Big black guy?”
“Yes.”
“Do you mind if I ask why?”
She hesitated, folding her hands in front of her. Then she simply spilled out the truth. “I’m having trouble being objective about you and your care.”
He lowered his gaze. “I see.” As if weighing the switch, he nodded. “If I remember, this Richards is a Vietnam vet, right?”
“Yes. He lost a leg in one of the major battles—I forget which one.”
Again Jake nodded, his face closed tight. “Is that why you’re resigning from my case—because you think some vet might have a better chance at getting me into some kind of treatment program?”
“Partly,” she admitted. “Maybe a man who’s experienced some of the same pain you’re feeling will be able to help you drain that boil better than I can.”
The blue of his eyes—that rich, deep, incredible color—intensified, as if the blue had been heated by some internal and very hot flame. “It won’t work, Ramona. All those guys, the World War II veterans, and the ones who fought in Korea and Vietnam—they’re real soldiers. Some of them spent years in the field.”
“Jake, that doesn’t have anything to do with—”
“Listen to me, Ramona!” he broke in, sitting forward in the bed, wincing even as he did it. He put a hand to his bruised temple and held it there as he spoke. “You know how many soldiers we lost the summer of 1944?”
She wanted to make him lie back down, wanted to get him a cool cloth for his headache. But she only shook her head in answer to his question. “How many?”
“Almost one hundred thousand. In three months. There wasn’t a town or a family in America that wasn’t affected. In Vietnam, we lost nearly fifty thousand over nine years or more, and those poor bastards had to come home to a country that spit on them. It was a hellhole, Vietnam.” His voice roughened with emotion. “In the Gulf War, we went in, kicked butt and got out. It was over in minutes, practically—and we were heroes when we came out. Parades and the whole nine yards for some stupid two-bit conflict with a petty dictator who didn’t even get captured.”
Ramona didn’t dare move, and she barely breathed, so as not to interfere with this sudden, unexpected disclosure. He almost seemed to forget she was there.
“All I ever wanted to do was be a soldier, like Harry and your dad. It seemed like the ultimate—to fight for your country and keep it safe, and protect all the women and children.” Another man in such obvious pain might have wept. Not Jake. His eyes only grew hotter, more vivid, until Ramona thought they would turn into pure blue flames. “One tiny little battle. I couldn’t hack it, Ramona. I didn’t have the balls.”
She didn’t believe it. Not for one single, tiny second. He might have been sickened by things he had seen, or felt he hadn’t measured up to some heroic standard in his mind, but she felt certain he had never lacked for courage. She kept silent.
“So, you see, I’m not in that class of soldiers you want me to spill my guts to. I can’t do it.”
“I understand,” she said quietly. “I won’t ask anymore. Just let Dr. Richards treat your physical ills, then. He’s a good guy. You’ll like him.”
He nodded wearily:
“You look like hell,” she said. “I wish I could let you sleep. You want me to call one of your brothers to come sit with you, maybe play cards or something to help pass the time?”
A voice came from behind her. “Not necessary, Doc. A brother has come to the rescue.”
Ramona turned. Lance Forrest, hair streaked even blonder than usual, his skin a rugged tan from his honeymoon trip, stood in the door. “Hi, Lance!” Ramona said, moving forward to give his cheek a kiss. “How was the honeymoon?”
He wiggled his eyebrows wickedly. “Just fine, thank you.”
Lance looked at Jake. “What, you couldn’t wait for me to come kick your butt, so you let your car do it instead?”
Jake gave his brother a wan, reluctant smile. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“He can’t sleep for another six hours,” Ramona said. “Jake, Dr. Richards will be around sometime this afternoon.”
“Gotcha, Doc,” Lance said with a salute.
Ramona spared one last glance at Jake, but he didn’t meet her gaze. With a strange hollow feeling in her chest, she left the brothers alone.
Chapter 11
Ironically, because they said he couldn’t sleep, Jake wanted nothing more than to slip into oblivion. All day, his eyes felt grainy and dry, and a thudding headache pulsed at the base of his skull. By evening, he was so exhausted he could barely focus on anything, a state that was not unfamiliar. He’d had maybe four hours sleep in the past forty-eight. In that time, he’d gone dancing, got drunk, gone sailing, been burned and crashed his car.
Dr. Richards came in just before dinner, a tall black man with a half-moon of head showing between wings of salt-and-pepper hair. Jake didn’t miss the slightly awkward gait of a man with a false limb, and he wondered which battle had claimed the real one.
“Hello, Jake,” the older man said, holding out an enormous hand. “I guess Dr. Hardy has told you she referred you to me.”
“She told me.” Jake shook the offered hand and tried to struggle into a more dignified sitting position. It was hard. Every damned muscle in his body screamed a protest over any kind of movement.
As if he understood Jake’s need to be more than an invalid, the doctor smoothly bent and cranked up the bed. “Better?”
“Thanks.”
“Nasty accident, I hear.”
“Yeah.” Jake looked away from the knowing eyes behind sturdy glasses. He wanted to add something, but couldn’t think of what it might be.
“How does the car look?”
“Haven’t seen it yet.” He lifted a shoulder. “It’s probably totaled.”
Dr. Richards pointed to a chair. �
��You mind if I sit down a minute?”
“Go ahead.”
“I won’t keep you long, but I want to get an idea where you are, so when you’re feeling better we can figure out how to treat you.”
Jake grimaced. “I’m not sick or anything.”
“No, Ramona said the trouble is insomnia, which she believes is related to posttraumatic stress.”
“That’s what she says.”
“You disagree?”
The man had a great voice, Jake thought idly. James Earl Jones deep. That made it easy to listen to him. With great effort, Jake swam unsteadily through the fog of his exhaustion to consider whether he thought Ramona was right. The effort was too much. He felt a rising irritation and a piercing kind of pain through the middle of his solar plexus. “Look, Doc, I have no idea. I only agreed to take the sleeping pills because my mother was fussing over me day and night. I thought it would get her off my back.”
“Did they help?”
He nodded. “For a while.”
“Are you witting to try something else?”
“I guess.” At the moment, he felt like he could sleep a couple of million years with no problem.
“All right, then.” The doctor stood up. “When you get to feeling a little better, call me at the VA home and make an appointment, and we’ll see what we can work out.”
Jake nodded wearily. Couldn’t hurt. Suddenly, he remembered Harry and swore aloud. “Doc, is Harry Goodman one of your patients?”
“No, but I see him nearly every day. Is there a problem.”
“Yeah.” Jake couldn’t very well ask the man to smuggle in beer and cigarettes. “Would you just let him know what happened? I’m usually in to see him every other day and I don’t want him worrying.”
“No problem. Get some rest and I’ll see you in a few days.”
After dinner, they finally let Jake sleep. And sleep he did: a deep sleep. Dreamless and quiet. No ghosts screaming.
When he awoke, he was parched and achy, but the blurring fog over his mind was gone, and he knew he’d genuinely slept for a good long time. Groggily, he reached for his watch on the nightstand. Five a.m.—which meant he’d slept for almost ten hours.
When he moved, he could feel the strain of the accident in every muscle of his body—across muscles in his shoulders and down his back, in his neck and stomach. He couldn’t be sure, but he suspected the soreness came from trying to keep control of the car.
His car. Damn. They’d hauled him out of the wreck and into the ambulance so fast, he hadn’t had a look at it, but he was fairly certain there wouldn’t be much left of it. It pained him. Aside from the inconvenience of not having anything to drive until he bought something new, he’d never had a car he’d liked as well.
With slow, painful movements, he sat up until his legs were hanging over the side of the bed and rested while the black dots in front of his eyes slowly disappeared, then put his bare feet on the cold, clean linoleum and hobbled into the bathroom.
The greenish fluorescent light did him no favors. One eye was purple and red from the eyebrow all the way down to the middle of his cheek where it ended in a raw scrape. It was puffy and sore. Together with the cut lip and two-day beard, he looked like a skid-row burn.
“Nice, man,” he told his reflection, then leaned forward and lifted his hair in order to look at the stitches along his scalp. They were as neat and tidy as he would have expected of Ramona. The mirror reflected the cut on his knuckles and he lowered his hands to look at them, unable to remember how those particular injuries had happened. He flexed his fingers. A little stiff, but not bad. “Frankenstein’s the name,” he said wryly. “Self-destruction is my game.”
There was a small shower cubicle and Jake chanced it, careful not to get his head wet. Wasn’t there some rule about keeping stitches dry for a day or two? He couldn’t remember—better not to risk it. The water stung the burn on his thigh, and he had to grit his teeth until he got used to it. Weird that the most painful injury was not from the accident, but from a spilled cup of coffee.
In spite of the stinging burn, however, the hot water and soap made him feel marginally more human. He found his clothes in the small closet. The sweats were dotted with blood, the T-shirt soaked with it. He was stuck with the hospital-issue gown, but he’d be damned if he’d go wandering through the clinic with his rear end hanging out—and he desperately wanted some coffee. He smelled some brewing somewhere. Probably too much to hope for that it was French roast, but a man could dream. Actually, a cup of instant would probably be ambrosia at the moment.
Taking the blanket from the bed, he wrapped it around his waist and tucked in the edges. Maybe some kindly nurse would lend him some scrubs to wear home. Surely they’d let him go this morning.
Thus attired, Jake wandered down the hall, following the scent of the coffee. It was quiet in the clinic, but he knew they kept a nurse on when there were patients overnight. His feet made no sound on the linoleum, and he kept a hand on the blanket to make sure it didn’t slip off.
The smell of brewing coffee became stronger at the desk. “Hello?” Jake called. No answer.
He rounded the counter and followed his nose into a small room in the back. Or it looked like a small room from the desk, When he got inside, various little rooms unfolded like a maze. Storerooms with locked cabinets and different kinds of equipment, a shadowy room with a bed, another with lockers along one wall. In the middle of everything was a room with a kitchenette. The coffeemaker sat on the counter near a sink and the pot was full. It had just been brewed, going by the sound of the slowing gurgles and the steam coming from the basket. Heaven. Jake hastily opened cupboard doors in search of a cup.
As he poured the steaming liquid, he heard footsteps approaching and suddenly felt guilty. Making sure his thin blanket was still tucked tightly around his waist, he turned.
Ramona came through the door, her hair caught up in a loose knot at the top of her head, a lab coat draped around her lush figure, her glasses perched on her little nose. She had a lollipop in her mouth and a chart in her hands, and she didn’t see him right away. Jake felt the strangest twist in his gut at the sight of her—she looked healthy and comfortable and solid. Everything he wasn’t.
She didn’t look up until she was nearly upon him. “Jake!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing out of bed?”
He lifted his mug. “The coffee coaxed me out here. Hope I’m not breaking any rules by helping myself.”
She chuckled, and putting her chart in a rolling file, she poured herself a cup. “I’ll let you slide, just this once.” She sipped a little and eyed him carefully. “How are you feeling?”
Was she being a doctor this morning, or asking as a friend? Jake wondered if it was possible for her to separate the two, really. “I got the best night’s sleep I’ve had in several months. Makes a big difference in a person’s attitude.”
She grinned. “You look like you’ve been brawling with a biker gang.”
“Kinda feels like it, too.” He rotated his shoulders. “I’m pretty stiff, but it’s the kind that will go away in a few days.”
“Good. You should be able to go home this morning, then.”
Jake nodded idly, then somehow found himself adrift in those velvety brown eyes. So much compassion in those eyes, in that face. He thought of his behavior the day before when they’d brought him in. “Ramona,” he said suddenly, reaching unconsciously for her hand, “I’m sorry about yesterday. Said some things I shouldn’t.”
Her fingers lay in his, and for a moment, he thought she’d draw them away. Instead, she curled them around his lightly. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, Jake.”
“Yeah, there is. Bad manners, at the very least. Adolescent sulking. Embarrassed by the accident, I suppose. I was a fool on that road.” As he pictured what might have happened, his stomach clenched painfully, then eased. “When I think of what I might have done to some innocent person on the road, I feel sick.”
“The same thought crossed my mind, but I also thought of your being smashed into bits in that little car.” She took a breath and smiled wryly. “I’m glad to hear that you recognize the error of your ways. It might be too little, too late, however. Considering the violations, you might very well lose your license.”
He scowled. “I hadn’t thought about that. Damn.” Still, he followed her lead. “What a fool I am sometimes.”
“Jake,” she said quietly, moving closer, “look how much clearer things are for you after one good night’s sleep. If you can get to sleep on a regular basis, I think everything else might be fixable.”
He kept his head down, feeling the familiar, almost panicky resistance rise in his chest. “Don’t, Ramona,” he growled. “Please.”
She gently touched his unmarked cheek, just a soft brush of her fingertips over his face, then away. “Okay. But you have to promise to try whatever Dr. Richards suggests, or—” .
“Or what?” He looked at her with a smile, knowing she would not offer any real ultimatums. “You’ll beat me up?”
Her expression sobered. “Or I won’t be able to stand watching you kill yourself, and I’ll just have to avoid you.”
He narrowed his eyes, stung. What made her think she was so important that a threat like that would make any difference to him? That plump little wren figure in her plain white lab coat, spectacles perched on her nose, her hair all piled up on her head, she was hardly the kind of woman that could launch a thousand ships. It annoyed him.
But in his hand, her small fingers curled with trust and curious strength, and he knew she did mean something to him. Without Ramona to hang on to, he thought he might drift off into the ether completely. He swallowed. “Deal,” he said.
A vulnerable expression crossed her eyes then, a softness Jake should have seen before this. In a flash, the past few days replayed themselves in his mind—the moments in her kitchen with his hands on her breasts, in the sloop and on the shore, kissing like kids.
