by Gina Kincade
“Let me give you a ride home,” he offered, and as he expected she looked up at him, her dark eyes glistening in the streetlights overhead, and shook her head.
“I’m okay, thank you, doctor,” she replied as she turned to open her door.
“Let me at least follow you home. Just to be sure you get there safe,” he interjected before she could step inside and pull the door closed on him.
Pam stopped, looked over his shoulder to Chad’s limp body lying face down in the snow, and shivered.
Remembering her words from their earlier session and how she found her husband, no doubt the sight of Chad’s body unnerved her.
Internally, he berated himself for his rash reaction.
“I don’t think he’ll be following me home. Thanks, though.”
As she slid behind the wheel, he stood in the way of her closing the door, fishing his brain for something to say.
“True,” he nodded, his voice cracked. “But I’m sure my mother would turn in her grave if I didn’t see to a damsel’s safe return home.”
The drain on her face lessened as a smile lifted on her lips. “Good one. Alright. No one wants to piss off Momma.”
Returning her smile, he stepped back, allowed her to close her door, listened for her engine to spring to life then moved at a lope to his own.
Several minutes later, she pulled into her drive and he pulled up to the curb out front, shut his engine off, and uncurled himself from behind the wheel.
They met several feet from the door.
“I’m home, safe. Thank you. I’ll be fine.”
But she wouldn’t be, that he knew. He caught the shake in her hands when she rummaged in her purse for her keys, and now as she flipped them over and over in her grasp, while avoiding eye contact. All the physical queues of someone in distress.
“At the chance of stepping out of bounds, I just want to say that you aren’t fine.”
Pam’s mouth dropped, but instead of fear glazing her eyes, it was anger. Throwing her hands in the air, she huffed, turned from him, and stomped through the snow to her front door.
“What the hell is wrong with men nowadays?” she hollered. “First, I had to deal with you yesterday,” she spat, and continued to stomp away, keys jingling in her hand as she waved them in the air between them. “And then tonight, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
When she reached the stoop, pivoted to face him, he caught the droop in her shoulders, felt her flame die. “Look, I thank you for what you did tonight. But please, go back to what you were doing before I ran into you.”
“What I was doing was finding you.”
Pam’s eyes thinned on him. “Why?”
Mike mulled over all the different ways he could come clean to her over the past twenty-four hours, but now, standing face to face with her, he was speechless.
Above them, thick snowflakes fell, covering everything it touched, including them.
Mike offered a genuine smile. “Can I possibly answer that just inside the door?” He shook some snow from his shoulders as more drifted down.
Pam looked from him, to the sky, then her own shoulders before nodding. “Okay.”
When he crossed the threshold, into the warmth, a heavy cloak of loneliness overwhelmed him.
Pam did not turn back to him, instead she removed her jacket, hung it in the entranceway closet.
“I’m sorry I intervened tonight. That was quite unprofessional of me.”
Pam turned to him then, studied him. “Unprofessional, maybe, but I still thank you. He was an asshole.”
Mike’s internal temperature rose at her words, yet he pushed forward, asked the question weighing on his mind since the moment he caught sight of the tears in her eyes.
“Did he hurt you?”
Pam wrapped her arms around herself. “No. Not physically.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
She cocked her head, as if only then remembering his earlier words. “You said you were looking for me. Why?”
“You didn’t answer my calls. I was worried.”
“It was you? No ID?”
“Yeah, I was calling from my personal line when you didn’t answer the office’s.” Mike glanced to his snow-covered boots on her doorstep, then back to her. “After your outburst, I wasn’t sure how badly off I left you.”
Pam laughed. “So, you just assumed after my visit with you, that I’d go off and kill myself.” She rolled her eyes. “Please. You weren’t that good or that bad.”
Silence filtered between them at her comment, the only sound was a distinct tick, tick, tick of a clock in the distance.
The clock.
“I’m not suicidal, Doctor,” Pam added when he did not reply to her. “And now that I was pleasant enough to let you inside to ease your mind, I’d appreciate it if you’d go now.”
“That’s not what I said,” he defended. “And not the whole reason I was looking for you.”
Pam studied him, opened her mouth for a retort, but he cut her off.
“I’m sorry for the way I behaved yesterday.” He shook his head. “I was out of line. You have every right to kick me out. I have been less of a ‘person’ for so long, I lost the ‘doctor’ in me. If that makes sense?” He threw his hands up in the air in surrender, then lowered them in defeat before turning back to her, pleading for understanding. “But something changed in me during our session.”
Pam scoffed, “Changed in you?”
“I know, it sounds crazy.”
She lifted a brow.
“I’ve been going through some things, personal things, and sadly it took its toll on my work. I didn’t see how much I not only was hurting you, but all my other clients with my careless actions. That was until you.”
Pam’s narrowed brow softened along with her features. “So, you want me to forgive you because you’re having a rough time in life? Is that it? You haven’t come here to apologize, but to give excuses for your behavior.”
Mike stumbled back at the bite in her words, albeit spoken softly.
“Not excuses,” he argued. “An explanation. But also an apology for how unprofessional I was. After you gave me the switching I deserved, a window opened, brought light into how I was looking at everything, dealing with everything.” He paused, his eyes pleading. “I would like you to give me another chance.”
Silence fell between them once again, save the tick, tick, tick of the wall clock counting off the seconds it took for Pam to digest his words.
“I thank you for the apology and I’m glad I was able to help you, but…”
“Look,” he interrupted, unwilling to allow her to push him away. “I haven’t been able to think of anything but you since you tore into me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Give me the chance to make it up to you with dinner,” he blurted before he could fully understand the ramifications of his words. Saying the ones he wanted to, not the ones he should have.
“You want to make it up to me with dinner?” Her eyes rounded in shock. “You’re kidding me right? After the way my first date in years went, and our history.” She waved a hand between them. “I’m thinking that’s not such a good idea.”
Mike, realizing he was quickly losing the battle, switched gears. “Then give me one more chance to make it right,” he nodded towards her loveseat.
Pam turned to the direction he gestured, shook her head. “Nope, no.”
“I can grab a kitchen chair for myself,” he offered, fully willing to do whatever it took to make it up to her. And hopefully he could help her after all, because whether she wanted to admit it or not, she had yet to truly let her late husband go.
The tick, tick, tick of the clock resonating in the background was proof of that.
And after everything she’d done for him, pulling him from the trenches, whether she knew it or not, she deserved payment in kind.
Pam looked over her shoulder, her brown gaze studied him for several seconds before she nod
ded. “Okay.”
***
Seated just inches away from her, Mike watched Pam’s body language, noted how her legs weren’t as bone straight as the first time. Her feet were still crossed at the ankle yet one bobbed back and forth to its own melody. Her hands no longer fisted at her sides lay across her stomach, fingers linked.
“I have to admit, lying here with you behind me just like before, I don’t feel as burdened as I did then,” Pam admitted, her voice almost giddy.
“That’s good,” he replied, scribbling notes for later reference. “What do you think caused that shift in weight?”
“To be honest,” she laughed, as if she weren’t speaking to a man she’d screamed at only twenty-four hours earlier, but someone she’d known for a long time. “Ever since I lost it with you, calling you out,” she paused, her index tapped an adjacent knuckle, then stopped. “I guess I needed that release of emotions, a buildup two years in the making and long overdue.”
At her admission he understood the change in her since the first time they’d met. He actually helped her by not helping her. She was more assertive when she spoke, her voice no longer timid, but with meaning. The woman now had strength. And she found it by biting back at his indifference.
“I’m pleased to hear that you’ve made some headway since our first session, however rocky it was.”
“Shockingly, yeah, I have,” she admitted. “These past few days really helped reiterate to me that not all things we experience are bad. Some are really good, they’re fun-filled and exhilarating. Where you laugh with wild abandon, toes sunken into the warmest, silkiest bubble foot bath of your life.” She threw her hands in the air in exasperation. “And to think I experienced that for the first time in my life at forty, and those little girls were enjoying it at five.” She laughed whole-heartedly. “And then some are gonna be shitty, like my first date in twenty-years with the Chad,” she paused. “But all of them are memories of a life lived.”
Pam pushed herself up into a sitting position, turned her body so that she sat facing him.
Mike nodded, smiled. “You got it.”
The tension he’d felt since Pam Mason left his office the day before dwindled with her admission and the clear change in her aura.
Just then she pushed herself up off the couch, stood before him. This time her features were not emanating hatred, but relief.
“Thank you for coming back and for apologizing for your earlier behavior. I’m glad I let you in.” She gestured towards the couch. “Speaking it aloud really helped to solidify that everything Kate put in motion is working. I am getting better, healing, and soon enough I’ll be back to living my life fully, day after day, instead of fearing every second.”
Elation at her admission quickly waned as the realization of what it meant took hold. If she didn’t need him to help her, then after tonight he may not have any reason to be in her life. The thought had him grasp onto the only thing he could think of.
“So this only leaves one thing left to do.” He gestured towards the grapevine clock, the one she spoke of in their first session, the one still hanging above the television set.
He knew that bringing up the clock, one she spoke of with such emotion the day prior, was a big leap. The repercussions of the seed he planted, depending on how deep the root went, could throw Pam’s healing all the way back to square one.
Mike swallowed the lump in his throat.
Pam’s gaze followed to where he pointed and for several seconds she did not move, did not speak.
A niggle of apprehension at the chance he took and what her reaction would be tickled the hairs on the nape of his neck.
With a sigh, she turned back to him. But not with a tortured look in her deep gaze, as he expected. The knowledge of what that meant hammered the final nail in the coffin of his time with Pam Mason.
“You’re right.” Pivoting on her feet, she motioned towards the seat he sat on. “Up, up,” she ordered.
Doing as instructed, Mike stood from the chair, stepped to the side. Pam reached for it, dragged it across the floor until it was just below the hanging clock. Without hesitation, she climbed onto the seat, reached for the clock on tiptoes, and pulled it off the wall. Flipping it over in her hand, she yanked the battery out, stilling its tick, tick, tick.
Within silence, Mike watched Pam’s shoulders rise, felt the final thread the secured her past to her snap in half.
Pam looked up from the clock to him, her dark eyes lit with the wide smile on her lips.
Mike’s heart skittered at the sight. She positively glowed.
“Done,” she nodded, her features brightening. “I guess Kate was right. I did need this ‘New Year, New You’ experience. It’s time to make some happy memories again.”
With that, she jumped down off the chair, crossed the living room to the kitchen, disappearing inside while he stood back, his mind clicking pieces together.
‘Kate’s been helping a friend out, some New Year something.’
Mike’s heart skipped.
From where he stood, he heard the squeak of a tin lid lifting, followed by the clang of the clock being thrown in, and another squeak as the lid closed with a thud.
When she returned to the room, Mike was standing in the entranceway, pulling his jacket from the closet.
“Thank you, Doctor Thorpe.”
The sound of her voice had him jump, his attention back on her and not the thoughts running rampant in his head.
Shouldering into his jacket, he nodded in her direction, threw her a smile. “Well, it seems my work here is done. Please do keep in touch, fill me in on all the living you’ve been doing.”
Before she could respond Mike turned in place and disappeared out the front door into a winter wonderland, his brain as numb as his fingers.
Chapter Six
February 13th
And that was the last time he saw Pam Mason, or heard her voice.
For over a month.
Of course, it hadn’t taken him long to fill Brad in on how close he and Kate were to the client who’d changed his life. Nor did a day go by where he didn’t hint about her well-being to either of them.
Many times he stopped himself from dialing her number, unsure what to even say. Their connection was based solely on the doctor/patient code. Nothing more. No matter how hard he’d fallen for the dark-haired, fierce-eyed Pam Mason, she owed him nothing. And clearly since she’d yet to reach out to him, the feelings he felt weren’t mutual.
With a sigh he watched Brad rinsing mushrooms in his sink, dropping clean ones to the cutting board.
“So, Kate and me,” he glanced at Mike, a sly grin lifting his lips. “We’re thinking about starting a family.” He shifted his gaze back to the mushrooms. “I’m loving all the practice, but I’m damn scared.”
Mike reached up to pat Brad’s shoulder, give it a squeeze. “Wow, congratulations, buddy. That’s awesome. And Kate’s a nurse, so even better. Those kids get the sniffles and she’ll be on it.”
Brad looked up from the mushrooms. “Thanks, Mike. You’re right. I shouldn’t be scared, we’ll make amazing parents.”
“Definitely. Plus, you know I’m up for the godfather part.”
Mike’s smile slid back as he reached for a hand towel to dry his hands. “About that. Kate’s been talking about it and she has already chosen a godmother.” Mike scratched at his head. “I mean, I’m sure you can still be the godfather though.”
“She has?”
And once again Pam Mason popped into his head, not for the first time that day.
In the month since he walked out of her house, there had yet to be a day where her dark eyes didn’t pop up in the back of his mind. Not an hour passed since he recalled the look of pure bliss travel up from her smile to light those same eyes.
Since then, he’d devoted his days to rectifying his past failures, ones Pam Mason helped him see, even in just a short time. Now, his practice was finally back on track. Patients not only were
leaving feeling refreshed, but many started referring others to him. And, for him, he’d finally let go of the anger Becky left sizzling inside him.
He no longer listened to his client’s, seeing them as a burden. Instead he cared again, offered words of advice, and consoled those who needed it. Of course, this meant his schedule was full daily, sometimes even to the point of thirteen hour days in the office. But he welcomed it, because the busier he made himself, the less he thought of Pam Mason.
In the past few weeks he’d come to understand that he felt this pull towards her because she’d been the fire to his ice. Just what he needed at the time, and he to her. Both of them had siphoned off the other at a time when they needed it the most, and they’d ended up happier for that brief moment in time where their lives crossed.
Clearing his throat, Mike leaned against the counter. He didn’t have to ask to know who Kate would have chosen.
“How is she?”
Brad looked up from the mushrooms, cocked a brow. “Who? Kate? I already told you. She’s on hyper-drive. Women’s hormones,” he rolled his eyes, returned his attention to the mushrooms. “I’ll never understand.”
Mike shook his head. “No, Pam.”
Silence filtered between them for several seconds before Brad spoke.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to mention her name.”
Mike lifted a brow, crossed his arms over his chest. “Why?”
“Because I know how hard you fell and how fast.” Before Mike could interject, Brad continued. “You did a complete one-eighty in a matter of forty-eight hours. And there was only one change in your life during that time, and that was Pam.”
Mike opened his mouth to reply, but Brad cut him off with a finger in the air. “I watched the way you paced your office that night when I found you knee-deep in Jack. I knew it then.”
“So you decided to avoid mentioning her altogether?” He shook his head, sighed. “Trust me, it wouldn’t have mattered.”
Brad shrugged, turned back to the mushrooms. “The truth is, Kate and I made a pact to not interfere in either of your lives.”
