Heart Trouble

by Jae

  When Ms. Samadi walked away, Hope’s gaze followed her until she disappeared into the restaurant. Before, when Ms. Samadi had been her patient, she hadn’t paid much attention to her physical appearance beyond checking whether she was flushed or pale, but now Hope couldn’t help noticing how good she looked in her crisp, white blouse, tucked into tailored black trousers.

  Jordan leaned across the table and punched Hope’s arm. “Now I know why you insisted on coming here! She’s hot!”

  “What? No!”

  “Oh, come on. A blind woman could see how steaming hot she is.”

  “Yeah, okay, she’s attractive. But she’s a patient.”

  Jordan blinked but then shrugged. “Was a patient. For all of what…? An hour?”

  “No. She was in the department for almost half a shift.”

  “So what? It’s not like you’re her family doctor who’ll treat her for years to come. She’s obviously been released, so you’re no longer her doctor.”

  “I’m here for the food,” Hope insisted.

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind nibbling on her,” Jordan said with a grin. “If you’re not interested, mind if I ask her out?”

  “Jesus, Jordan! Stop it. She’s not even gay.”

  “How do you know?” Jordan asked. “When I did my emergency medicine rotation, asking about a patient’s sexual orientation wasn’t part of taking their history.”

  “I didn’t say I asked her. I just… I just know, okay?” The same mysterious way she knew what herbs went into the sabzi polo, who the man asking her for directions to the CCU was, and what the Iranian family next to them was talking about, even though they were speaking Farsi—a language she had never learned.

  Suddenly, her appetite was gone. Something weird was going on with her. Something very weird and as much as she racked her scientific mind, she couldn’t come up with an explanation. All she knew was that somehow it had started the day Laleh Samadi had collapsed in the emergency department.

  * * *

  Laleh stepped into the restaurant’s kitchen, put her tray down, and leaned against the wall.

  She couldn’t believe it. Dr. Hope Finlay—the physician who had saved her life—was here, in her aunt and uncle’s restaurant, ordering food like a mere mortal!

  Well, she was a mere mortal, Laleh reminded herself, even though she had appeared larger than life that night in the emergency department. Without her scrubs and her white lab coat, she looked different. Her slightly ruffled brown hair, her husky voice, her athletic frame, and the energy she radiated made her appear like a rock star, not a physician.

  Aunt Nasrin rushed toward her. “Laleh joon! Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Laleh had to smile and shook herself out of her daze. “Not a ghost, Ammeh. The woman who saved my life.”

  “What?”

  Laleh pointed to the patio. “The doctor who treated me after I collapsed is sitting at table four.”

  “You told her about our restaurant?” Aunt Nasrin chuckled and patted Laleh’s arm. “Good girl. Promoting the restaurant, even when you’re in the hospital.”

  “No. I didn’t tell her. She’s just…here.” Maybe the woman sharing her table had told Dr. Finlay about the restaurant.

  “It’s qismat,” Aunt Nasrin declared. “This is your chance to say thank you.”

  “I already did.”

  Her aunt clicked her tongue. “You thanked her the American way. Now we’ll thank her like Persians.”

  Which meant Dr. Finlay wouldn’t get out of here without gaining at least a pound or two.

  Aunt Nasrin rushed to the stove, no doubt to help the rest of the staff prepare an assortment of appetizers and enough adas polo to feed a football team.

  Laleh knew she should jump into action and join them to show her gratefulness, but she stayed where she was, leaning against the wall. It shouldn’t feel so weird to have Dr. Finlay here, but it did. So much had changed since that day nearly three weeks ago, when Laleh had been her patient. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what exactly had changed—besides the fact that her heart problem had been fixed—but she felt that something had.

  “Laleh!” her aunt shouted. “Come and take the doogh and the tea out to them.”

  “They already have something to drink.”

  Ignoring Laleh’s protest, Aunt Nasrin shoved the tray at her.

  Nine years of working for her aunt had taught Laleh that resistance was futile. She marched outside to serve Dr. Finlay and her friend the beverages and to warn them that they were about to be buried beneath an avalanche of Persian gratefulness.

  * * *

  “No, please.” Dr. Finlay held her belly with one hand while covering her plate with the other so Aunt Nasrin couldn’t deposit another diamond-shaped piece of baklava on it. Her skin looked pale in comparison to Ammeh Nasrin’s olive complexion. “I can’t eat another bite. Really.”

  Aunt Nasrin tried to put the baklava on her plate anyway. “Don’t be shy. Take some.”

  Dr. Finlay sent Laleh a beseeching look that made her chuckle.

  But she took mercy and decided to intervene anyway. “Ammeh Nasrin, leave her be. She’s not just taarofing.”

  “Taarofing?” Dr. Finlay’s friend cocked her head.

  Before Laleh could explain the concept, Dr. Finlay leaned forward. “It’s really complex, but to keep the explanation short, it’s the Persian way of being polite. If you’re being offered something, you don’t accept, even if you want it. You say no until it’s been offered repeatedly.”

  It was an oversimplification, but Laleh was surprised that the doctor would know about taarof at all.

  “Maybe that’s why I feel like I’m about to explode,” Dr. Finlay’s friend said. “I could never say no to a woman.”

  Aunt Nasrin’s brow furrowed for a moment, but then she returned the woman’s warm smile. Finally, she took the baklava and carried it over to the Farahanis, who were sitting at the next table.

  With a relieved sigh, Dr. Finlay took her hand away from her empty plate. “Could we have the check, please?”

  “You don’t need to pay,” Laleh said.

  Dr. Finlay studied her. “Are you taarofing?”

  So she knew that part of the tradition too. In Iran, restaurant and store owners would assure their customers that they didn’t need to pay, but the locals knew not to take them up on that generous offer because it wasn’t sincere. After arguing back and forth, both participants were aware that each of these episodes was expected to end with the customer paying.

  Laleh chuckled. “No. I mean it. My family and I want to treat you—as a small thank-you for saving my life.”

  Dr. Finlay ran a hand through her wavy hair, making it even more disheveled. “That’s not necessary. I was only doing my job.”

  “It was much more than that to me,” Laleh said. She was getting too emotional, so she quickly added, “Save yourself some time and just accept. Even if you could manage to convince me to let you pay, my aunt would never take your money.”

  “Well, I can pay for my food, can’t I?” the woman who had come with Dr. Finlay said. She held out her hand. “Jordan Williams, but please call me Jordan. I’m a friend of Ms. Just-doing-my-job over there.”

  Laleh wiped her fingers on her waitress apron and shook Jordan’s hand. “Laleh Samadi. And no, you can’t pay either. You’re included by extension. If you don’t accept, I’ll hold you responsible if my family disowns me.” She looked from Jordan to Dr. Finlay, who hesitated for a few seconds longer.

  Finally, Dr. Finlay nodded. “All right. Thank you very much for your generosity and for the excellent food.” She rose halfway, then sat back down and said to Jordan, “Would you give us a second?”

  Her friend shook her head. “That was what I was about to say.”

  “Jordan…” It sounded like a warning.

  “What? You said you didn’t mind.”

  “I never said that,” Dr. Finlay grumbled.

>   “So you want to…?” Jordan waved in Laleh’s direction.

  “No!”

  Laleh looked back and forth between them. What was going on?

  “Good.” Jordan rose and turned toward Laleh. “It’ll probably be too late by the time you get off work today, but how about you allow me to take you out for coffee on your next day off?”

  It could be a thank-you for the free meal, but Laleh sensed that it was more than that. She had no doubt that Jordan meant it as a date. Maybe being asked out by a woman should have caught her off guard, but for some reason, it didn’t. In fact, Dr. Finlay looked much more uncomfortable than Laleh was. Somehow, Laleh had sensed that Jordan was a lesbian. It seems I’ve been hanging out with Jill and Crash so much that I finally developed my own version of gaydar.

  “I’m flattered, Ms. Williams…”

  “It’s Jordan. And why do I have a feeling you’re about to give me the good old brush-off?” She sighed dramatically, but her brown eyes were twinkling.

  Laleh smiled. “I appreciate the offer. Really. But I don’t date women. So if you really want to have coffee with me, it would be just that—coffee.”

  “Just coffee,” Jordan repeated. For a moment, she looked as if that was an entirely foreign concept to her, but then she nodded. “All right. May I?” At Laleh’s nod, she took Laleh’s waitress notepad, scribbled something on it, and then handed it back.

  Laleh stared at the cell phone number on the top page. Now I’m accepting phone numbers from women… Good thing her aunt had gone back inside. Laleh wasn’t sure Nasrin would have liked it.

  Dr. Finlay didn’t look too enthusiastic either. Her brows bunched together as she glanced from Jordan to Laleh and then to the notepad with Jordan’s cell phone number.

  “Laleh joon,” Mr. Farahani called. “Could we have another round of tea?”

  “Of course.” Time to go back to work. She nodded at Dr. Finlay and Jordan. “It was nice to see you…outside of the hospital, I mean…and get a chance to say thank you.”

  Dr. Finlay shuffled her feet. As confident as she had come across in the emergency department, now she seemed a little self-conscious.

  Laleh remembered that Dr. Finlay had asked to speak to her alone. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”

  Dr. Finlay hesitated. She looked from Jordan to the Farahanis waiting for their tea at the next table, as if whatever she wanted to say couldn’t be said in front of witnesses.

  Was she trying to ask her out too? Laleh immediately discarded the thought. No, that wasn’t it. Her heartbeat sped up, and this time, it had nothing to do with the Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome she’d been diagnosed with. Something scratched at the edges of her consciousness, as if she was close to figuring out what Dr. Finlay wanted to talk about, but she couldn’t quite grasp it.

  “Uh, no. That’s okay,” Dr. Finlay finally said. “Please tell your family thank you for dinner.” With that, she stepped off the patio and was gone.

  “Don’t worry,” Jordan said with an encouraging smile. “It’s not you. She’s been behaving weird all day. Well, even longer than that, really.”

  A shiver of intuition went through Laleh. For a moment, she imagined she knew exactly why Dr. Finlay behaved so strangely. Was it possible that she was experiencing weird coincidences and inexplicable happenings, similar to what Laleh had been through in the last few weeks?

  But then she shoved the thought away. Oh, come on. Why would she?

  “Thanks for dinner. And don’t forget to call.” Jordan waved and then hurried after her friend.

  Laleh stared after them.

  “Laleh joon!” Mr. Farahani called. “The tea!”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course.” She rushed inside to get them their chai.

  CHAPTER 6

  Before the start of her shift at seven the next day, Hope stuck her head into the control room next to the MRI suite. “Hey, Rob,” she said over the hum of the MRI machine next door. “Do you have a minute? I need a favor.”

  The radiologist turned away from the computer screen. “Yes?”

  The MRI tech next to Rob gave her a curious look.

  “Um, can we talk outside?” Hope said.

  Rob followed her. “Let me guess.” He put his fingertips on his temples as if that would help him focus so he could read her thoughts.

  Hope grimaced. That was so not funny to her at the moment.

  “You want me to order an MRI for a patient, but it can’t wait, so you want me to squeeze him or her in today.”

  “Yeah. I thought you could get the MRI tech to do it tonight. Then you could take a look at the scans before you leave.”

  Rob shook his head. “I’d like to get out of here on time for once.”

  Damn. She had hoped it would be easier. She hated begging for a favor, but this couldn’t wait. If she didn’t find out soon what the hell was wrong with her, she’d go crazy. Well, maybe that was the problem. She could be having an acute psychosis.

  That thought had haunted her after she had come home from the restaurant last night. Finally, even though it was close to ten o’clock, she had called a psychologist friend of hers. But Melinda hadn’t picked up, so Hope hadn’t been able to lay that fear to rest. She’d try reaching her later, but first she wanted to look for physical causes. Finding an abnormality in her brain scan would give her medical proof that she wasn’t losing her mind.

  “Listen.” She took a deep breath. “This isn’t really about a patient.”

  “Why ask for an MRI, then?”

  Hope sighed. “It’s about me. I’m the patient, okay? I keep getting these splitting headaches.” Now she was the one touching her temples. “And when I played squash yesterday, my motor skills weren’t up to par. To tell you the truth, I’m a little worried about having a brain tumor, and I’d like to rule it out.”

  That part, at least, wasn’t a lie. A brain tumor was one of the possibilities that had kept her up, pacing her condo for most of last night. It might explain why her sense of taste had changed so she no longer liked olives but craved foods that she had never tried before. And if the tumor was located in the temporal lobe of her brain, it could cause strange hallucinations. Maybe she was just imagining that she was able to understand Farsi.

  “Oh,” Rob said, but he didn’t seem too surprised.

  Hope knew she wasn’t the first physician who asked for his help. One of her colleagues was even downright phobic about developing a brain tumor. If Rob let him, he would get an MRI every month.

  Finally, he sighed. “All right. Come back here at the end of your shift, and I’ll have one of the techs run you through the MRI.”

  “Thanks, Rob.” She clapped his shoulder and went to change into her scrubs to start her shift.

  A few minutes later, just as she was about to close her locker, her cell phone rang. She fished it out of her jeans pocket.

  Melinda’s name flashed across the screen, so she quickly accepted the call.

  “Hi, stranger. I only now realized I missed a call from you,” Melinda said. “I shut off my phone last night because Sam and I… Uh, it was our anniversary.”

  Hope laughed. “No details, please.”

  “Is something wrong?” Melinda asked instead of reacting to the teasing. “You usually don’t call that late.”

  Hope hesitated. If anyone was worthy of her trust, it was Melinda. Even though they hadn’t seen each other in over a year, she knew she could confide in her. But Hope had never been one to share personal problems with anyone, and she wasn’t about to start now. “I had a question that I thought you could help me with.”

  “A psychological question?” Melinda asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you ask for a psych consult?”

  “It’s not about a patient. I’m asking for…an acquaintance of mine. She’s having these weird symptoms, and I thought you might be able to tell me what it is.”

  Melinda cleared her throat. “You know I can’t dia
gnose someone long-distance.”

  “I’m not asking for a diagnosis,” Hope said quickly. “I want your opinion because I value it.”

  “All right. So, that acquaintance of yours, what’s up with her?”

  “I wish I knew. It started very suddenly, three weeks ago. She keeps having these…well, it’s almost like a sense of déjà vu. You know, the feeling that she’s familiar with places and people she’s never seen before. And she suddenly understands Persian—or at least she thinks she does.” She couldn’t be sure unless she actually talked to someone in Farsi. “She also knows things about the Persian culture that she didn’t know before.”

  “You mean like thought insertion?” Melinda asked. “Does she feel like someone—an outside force—has implanted certain thoughts or knowledge into her mind?”

  Hope thought about it. An outside force… No, that new knowledge didn’t feel foreign; it felt as if she’d known these things all along. “No. I don’t think so. But she keeps having these…delusions. Even her sense of taste has changed. Does that sound like a psychotic episode to you?”

  “Does she hear voices?” Melinda asked.

  “Only when someone is speaking,” Hope quipped to lighten the mood.

  “You know what I mean. Does she have hallucinations?”

  “No.”

  “Paranoia?”

  Hope said “no” again.

  “Other mental health issues…depression or maybe substance abuse?” Melinda asked.

  “None.”

  “Does she have any close relatives with schizophrenia or psychosis?”

  Not on her mother’s side, at least as far as she knew. But Hope had never known who her father was, and her mother had died when Hope had been eight, so she didn’t know too much about that side of the family either. “I’m not sure,” she finally said. “So, what do you think? Could it be psychosis?”

  Melinda audibly inhaled and exhaled. “Like I said, it’s impossible to say without seeing the patient, but it doesn’t sound typical. Even though many people think psychosis starts out of the blue, it actually doesn’t. There are always warning signs that start months—sometimes years—before the first psychotic episode.”