Stop.
“We get any exciting mail?” She moved to the heap of letters on the floor. Juggling cat from one shoulder to the other, she scooped it all up, settled them both on the couch with the mail beside them. “Hmm, Victoria’s Secret, you going to order that red silk teddy you’ve been drooling over for three catalogs now? Ohhhh, don’t think I didn’t notice. I saw you’d marked the page.”
Cattoo wasn’t telling. Her paws were spread on Jessica’s chest, the claws lightly hooked in the lapels of Jessica’s suit. Limp, Cattoo gazed up at her, lids half-mast, pupils expanded to pools of darkness, purr midtempo.
Red silk teddies…He’d given her a dark green one their first Christmas together, though he’d addressed the giftwrapped package to himself, opened it with oohs and ahhs of astonishment, then generously offered to share it with her.
Jess tossed the catalog aside, sat staring into space like her cat for a moment, then shook herself and went back to the mail. She flipped past a bill or two, then paused as she noted a return address. “Grenada.”
She’d half forgotten. Last month, after she’d phoned Toby and found only more mystery, she’d written the dean of the med school in Grenada.
“Fast response.” But whatever it was, she couldn’t deal with it, not tonight. Intellectual puzzles were the farthest thing from her mind. Raye Talbot would have to wait.
In fact, everything could wait. Right now she needed— A laughing image rose in her mind’s eye. She shoved it back into the farthest cupboard of her mind, slammed the door, locked it, nailed a board across it and stood. She needed obliteration. “Let’s go to bed.”
Lights off below, they padded upstairs, Cattoo half a step in the lead, tail primly erect, ears cocked back to monitor Jessica’s progress.
“Move your fuzzy butt. Do you want to trip us both?”
Cattoo stopped midstair to consider that. Jessica made a frantic sidestep, clutched at the banister. “Blast!” She shook her head, laughed under her breath and went on-almost tripped again when Cattoo shot past, ears rakishly flattened, to skid around the bedroom door.
She was sitting demurely on the bed when Jess arrived, with a “What took you so long?” look on her face. On the bedside table, the answering machine blinked its tiny red eye.
One or the other of Jessica’s new partners had taken her calls while she’d been gone, and would continue doing so until morning. Barring a full-scale emergency, any messages from that quarter should be waiting for her at the office.
And, new as she was to the city, her social life was minimal, close to nonexistent. Not that it was ever—
“Mother?” she guessed, while she rewound the tape. Jessica had told her last week she’d be out of town. But, senior partner with one of the hottest corporate law firms in Chicago, Eleanor Myles always had a thousand things on her mind at any given moment. Remembering Jessica’s itinerary would hardly be top priority.
“Raye?” Jessica hoped not. The psychiatrist had suggested they go out for supper twice since that first time two weeks ago, and Jess was running out of plausible excuses.
The tape turned, and his voice, with all its heart-tugging memories, leapt out at her. “Jess…Jess, you’ve got to listen to—”
Her finger mashed down on the stop button—pressed it till her fingertip turned white. Eyes spilling tears, she shook her head. No…No, Sam, no, I don’t.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE DREAMED ALL NIGHT, but could barely recall her dreams at dawn—something about falling.
Nothing unusual there. Since her fall from a tree at age eight, she’d feared heights, and it often showed in her dreams. Besides, as a therapy-minded friend had once pointed out, falls symbolize loss of control, something she dreaded.
Whatever, this time she didn’t fall alone. Sam was there, or at least his voice was, wordless, warning, chasing her down into rushing darkness. Colors and images streamed past as she fell, her hair like a comet’s tail rising above her.
But if her dreams were all black and rushing colors, her mood on waking was gray. She dressed in gray sweats, fed the yawning cat, then went out into a gray dawn to run her depression off. Five brisk miles through the misty, sleeping streets of the East Side and her gloom gradually withdrew, like a tide ebbing out to sea.
And like a tide, it would return. But meanwhile she had morning rounds to make at the hospital, then a full day of appointments scheduled. Work had saved her before. It would save her this time. All she had to do was give herself to its incessant demands, heart, body and soul. There’d be nothing left of her to grieve or even think about what might have been.
THERE’D BEEN TWO new admissions while she’d attended the conference, bringing her patients in hospital up to five. “Next guy is a twenty-five-year-old white male, adultonset diabetic, not complying with his regimen,” med student Chris Carson reported as they strode along the corridor. “Came into ER last night in a coma, then admitted. He’s come around nicely. His mother’s still upset.”
She was. “Another one!” she exclaimed when Jessica and Chris entered the room. “How many people are going to poke and prod him? And where’s my son’s doctor—Dr. Neuman?”
“Dr. Neuman moved to Hawaii. I’m Dr. Myles. I’ve been hired by his partners at Diagnostics to take over his practice.”
But why did Neuman abandon the practice? Jessica wondered not for the first time. After twelve years of building it up, that wasn’t something a doctor did lightly. It was too hard to pull up stakes, then try to start over from zero somewhere else. And Hawaii…That was as far from Rhode Island as a doctor could travel and still practice medicine.
“You’re a doctor? A real one, not just a student like…” The woman jerked her chin at Chris, who stood at the foot of the bed.
“Yes, I’m a real doctor. A general internist like Dr. Neuman, board certified.” She moved to the bed and lifted the young man’s wrist. “How are you feeling this morning, Richard?”
He gave her an embarrassed grin. “I’m feeling better. Much better.”
“Good.” She made a notation on the chart Chris handed her, then sat down at bedside. “So let’s talk about how we can keep you feeling that way.” He was old enough to accept that he had a chronic disease and cope accordingly. Or maybe he isn’t, she thought, as his mother hovered, trying to read his chart over Jessica’s shoulder.
Perhaps a session with Raye’s in order? Raye Talbot was the attending psychiatrist for RI Gen, after all, there to help doctors answer just such questions. Because to cure the body, sometimes you had to start with the mind. But after the Coffman case Jessica had referred to her…Not just yet, she decided. “So tell me about yesterday. What did you eat?”
Once she’d made her rounds, Jessica had almost an hour to spare before her first appointment. Breakfast, then, she decided, though she had no appetite. But that was another thing she’d learned during residency, when opportunities for food and sleep had been sporadic at best. How did that rule for interns go? When you see a chair, sit on it. When you see a bed, lie on it. And when you found a chance to eat, you ate. If you lived like a machine, then you must refuel like one, appetite or no.
In the doctors’ dining room, she took her tray to a table near the windows. She sat with her back to the center table, where several residents and attending physicians were carrying on an animated debate about the latest episode of a hospital soap opera that was currently the rage.
She could have joined in. She’d be welcome at their table, and she’d seen the episode they were shredding one of the nights she’d spent hidden away in her room at the conference.
“Does anyone besides me know that you’re shy?” she remembered Sam asking that first week they’d met. They’d been lying on a blanket down by the river, their shoulders touching, her organic chem book spread before them. Another kind of chemistry on their minds. “Does anyone else know you’re shy, or do they all think you’re snooty Ms. Perfect Princess, too busy scoring straight A’s to stop and p
lay with the po’ folks?”
Stung, she’d rolled away from him and thrown an arm over her eyes. “Is that what I seem like?”
“To those who can’t look past the wrappings, I imagine it is,” he’d drawled, reaching for a lock of her hair. “And it’s a pretty slick package. All that poise and brains, you scare people, I bet.” He pulled, and she felt the tug down to her toes. They’d made love perhaps a dozen times by then, and he could melt her with just a look now that she understood what his looks promised. He tugged again and her back arched in lazy, inevitable reflex. With a rueful groan he rolled over on top of her, his weight braced on his forearms.
“Not that I’m complaining,” he murmured, brushing her eyebrows with the tip of his nose. “Not since I’m in on the secret. Ms. Jessica Myles, shy…proud as the devil…and hot.“ Laughter quivered in his voice as she arched up against him and moaned a little wordless plea. “No, babe, I’m not complaining at all.”
Stop! She turned her face to the window and stared out at the garden, not taking in the view. Oh, he’d ripped open the wounds, all right. She hadn’t let herself think this way in years. Not in the daytime, anyway. Think of something else. She picked up her coffee, drank it black and grimaced, then remembered the letter. From Grenada. She’d tucked it into her briefcase to read sometime during the day. And now was the time.
Addressed to the dean of the School of Medicine, St. George’s University, Grenada, her question had been simple. Had either a Ms. Anne Talbot or a Ms. Raye Talbot attended the school roughly twelve years ago?
The dean’s answer was equally simple.
Miss Anne R. Talbot of Decatur, Alabama, USA, had graduated from the School of Medicine, with honors, class of ’84. If the dean could be of further assistance, she was welcome to call him. His number was—
So that’s that, Jessica thought, folding the letter and tucking it back into its envelope. You were worried about nothing. “R” stood for Raye of course. Anne Raye Talbot, of Alabama. She frowned. But Toby’s Anne R. was a blonde…
So he’d confused some other student, some poor little mousy blonde, with Anne Raye Talbot. It had been years ago, and Toby probably staggered through med school with a bottle of rum under one arm. And no doubt it was bodies Toby remembered best, not the names attached to them. So forget it. Mind your own business. Just because the woman made her…uneasy, that didn’t mean—
Someone sat down heavily at the next table, and Jessica glanced over. Jon Cooper. The first-year resident sat staring into space, his big hands clenched around a cup of coffee.
Jessica waited. Had he truly not noticed her? Or did he want to be alone? But if so, why come and sit near her? “Jon?”
“Huh!” He jerked around. The cup of coffee tipped over. He stared at her wildly, then looked down at his mess and started to curse.
Jessica stood and handed him her napkin. “I’ll get you another.”
Leave him alone, or try to make him talk? she wondered, waiting in the serving line for his coffee. She didn’t really know Jon that well, though he was as close to a friend as she’d made in her month at RI Gen.
When Jessica had first arrived, Jon was nearly through his six-week rotation on Med-2, the ward to which her patients were generally assigned. The night they’d sat out a death watch together, Jon had talked and she had listened. And listening, she’d found they had much in common.
Like many who entered the profession, both of them were doctors’ kids. Both of them had thought they’d be surgeons—Jon still thought he might be. Both of them wondered if they should be doctors at all.
And neither of them was happy, though neither had admitted that.
It had made for a strong bond of sympathy. “There’s no law that says you have to be a doctor!” Jessica had insisted. “Just because your father wants you to be…” She’d paused, shocked to hear the echo of Sam in her words. He’d said precisely this—how many times? But she hadn’t listened.
As Jon couldn’t listen. He’d gone too far down the road—four years of premed, four years of med school, a year of internship, now four months into his residency. After all that time spent, all that tuition—all financed by his father of course—how could he walk away now?
“You just do it!” Jessica had cried. “This is the only life you’ve got, Jon. If this isn’t what you want to do with it…” She’d wanted to shake him, make him see somehow before it truly was too late. He thought he’d gone too far down that road? Then where was she, five years ahead of him on the same path?
But he hadn’t listened. His talk had swerved to his wife and what was happening to their marriage under the pressure of the hundred-hour work weeks. He was terrified she’d leave him.
It was no empty fear. Between them they could have named a dozen wrecked marriages. My own, Jessica had thought, though she and Sam hadn’t even survived med school.
“Sometimes, after nights on call, I’m too tired to love her,” Jon had confessed, staring down at his hands. “And she understands, but…”
But it was hard to ask one partner to forgo all his or her needs for the other year after year. The essence of love was that you were there for the other. And it wasn’t simply physical exhaustion. What if you felt and felt and felt till you shut down all of your emotions in self-defense? Sorry, dear, but I already gave at the office.
Perhaps the wonder was that any of them stayed married. And looking at the older doctors, Jessica had to wonder what some of the surviving marriages were like. Look at her own father’s marriage—she’d shied away from that thought.
But even if she could have—should have—taken another path and had lacked the courage to do so, still, it wasn’t too late for Jon. Jessica had urged him to talk with Raye, whom she hadn’t met at that point. But the consulting psychiatrist was available to house staff, as well as patients. “Just a session to help you sort out if you’re doing what you really should be doing,” Jessica had suggested. Might not help, but how could it hurt?
Jon had gone to see Raye the day before he’d rotated up to surgery, and Jessica hadn’t seen him since. A chat with a shrink couldn’t hurt him, but perhaps Jessica’s pushing him into that chat had hurt their friendship.
She bought a fresh coffee for herself, as well, checked her watch, then returned to his table. “So how have you been? How’s surgery?”
“Fine.”
Maybe it was, but something wasn’t fine. Seeing him full face for the first time, Jessica looked quickly down at her cup. Those rings under his eyes hadn’t been there two weeks ago. His cheeks had hollowed. Lost a good five to ten pounds, she figured, and his eyes… Surgery was that bad? Or his marriage?
“We miss you on Med-2,” she said lightly, and proceeded to tell him about the ninety-year-old woman who’d tired of the med students’ attempts to insert an IV last week. Jessica was just reaching the point where the chief resident had entered the fray and the woman was threatening to insert the needle herself, when—
Beep, beep!
They both glanced down at their beepers. Jess looked up with relief—it wasn’t hers—to catch an expression of— what?—loathing?—on Jon’s face as he slapped a hand to his belt. “Mine.” He stood, then gazed down at her.
Surgery was that bad it could make him look like this? So the talk with Raye hadn’t helped. “Come see me sometime, Jon? My office is on third in the professional building, if you don’t catch me on the wards.”
He nodded absently, tried to smile. “Be well, Jessica.” He strode out of the room, a big, good-looking, miserable young man.
“Be well, Jon,” she whispered after him. He wouldn’t come for that visit. Whatever was going on with him, their friendship was clearly over. She wouldn’t see him again, except by accident.
That accident happened less than twenty minutes later. Jessica had stayed to finish her coffee; sometimes caffeine helped with the blues. With minutes to go before her first appointment, she took a shortcut through Med-1, on the third floor. An elev
ated, glass-sided walkway connected the end of that wing to the professional building across the street.
Hurrying down the deserted hall, she was approaching the intersection where the wing met the walkway in a T when, ahead of her, a door slammed open with startling violence. Its knob hit the wall, then the door rebounded. Jessica stopped short. A tall figure in white lunged into view. Without looking her way, the man—Jon Cooperlurched off in the opposite direction. He turned right when he reached the T, a route that would take him back toward another wing of the hospital.
What in heavens? If Jessica wasn’t mistaken, the door led to a supply closet.
The door moved again—someone inside the closet was pushing it open. Reacting without thought, Jessica stepped backward into one of the recessed window bays that lit the hall.
Out in the corridor, the door shut softly. Then footsteps—not stunned and lurching like Jon’s, but smooth, deliberate…a woman’s. Moving away. Jessica stood still as the tick-tick-tick of high heels grew fainter, then died. Whoever it was had turned the corner into the passage.
Jessica gave her a minute more, then followed, frowning. She’d have sworn, from the way he’d talked, that Jon Cooper loved his young wife. She stopped by the door he’d burst out of, hesitated, then opened it.
It was a closet all right, not even deep enough to merit a light inside. Her nostrils flared at the scent within—a hint of perfume, a whiff of something earthier—She shut the door hastily. So maybe Jon loved his wife, but that didn’t stop him from loving someone else in a linen closet.
Back in New York, Basso Profundo would’ve argued that there was no paradox here. Men were instinctively polygamous. It had nothing to do with love.
But why follow your instincts if it made you unhappy? The way Jon had moved, like something wounded. Something trying to escape…Jessica turned the corner into the walkway, and stopped again.
Far down the passage, moving with the sliding grace of a tiger, a tall, slender woman strode on high heels. Raye Talbot…
You Again Page 4
