by Arlene James
Given her height, he’d expected her to be all long limbs, but not even his fairly thorough physical examination the day before—which had revealed jutting, if narrow, hip bones, the ridges of her ribs and certain obvious scars—had prepared him for the neat lushness of her curves. Now, without all the fluttering scarves, he saw just how utterly feminine she was, especially given all that sleek, butter-yellow hair falling from a natural center part and the sheer perfection of her long, oval face. If her big cat’s eyes had been a more pure green, she’d have brought him to his knees. As it was, he found himself compelled to study their mottled green-gold-and-blue hazel depths.
Thank God she wouldn’t be staying long.
He managed some motion with his hands and croaked, “Get your shoes.”
She made a hopping motion and kicked up a foot, showing him that she’d stepped into her black, backless mules. “Ta-da!”
He couldn’t help smiling. “Okay. Get your coat, then.”
“Shawls,” she said, all but running for the door. “Give me one minute. Two,” she amended, rushing past him. “It’s a long staircase.”
He shook his head and bent forward to catch the title of the book she’d been reading before following her out into the foyer. It was a book of fairytales. That seemed somehow fitting and, at the same time, sad. She was halfway up the stairs by the time he brushed back his coat and leaned a forearm on the newel post at the bottom. Only when she turned the corner did he realize that he’d been staring at the sway of her neat backside. He spun away, only to find Odelia and Kent staring at him, their heads cocked like a pair of quizzical bluebirds, which seemed to be the day’s theme.
Bluebirds bobbed on tiny springs from Odelia’s earlobes, complimenting her blue pantsuit, and she wore a blue-feathered headband among her frothy white curls. Kent, meanwhile, wore a robin’s egg blue shirt beneath a royal blue suit and blue-on-blue striped bowtie.
“The bluebirds of happiness have arrived,” Brooks quipped. Magnolia wasn’t the only one Eva seemed to be influencing with her silly wit.
Odelia giggled, and that made Kent preen before he sobered and asked, “Are you quite well, dear boy?”
“Just fine. I’m here to take Eva to retrieve her personal belongings.”
“Oh, yesss,” Odelia hissed softly. “Poor girl.”
Thinking it safer not to be drawn into another conversation concerning her health, Brooks merely nodded, but Odelia had other concerns.
“What will she do now, do you think?”
“Um, well, she’ll stay here until her stitches are removed, and then...I assume she’ll move along.”
“How will she do that without transportation?” Kent asked.
Brooks had avoided thinking about that very thing. “I imagine she has a plan.”
“She doesn’t strike me as the planning sort,” Odelia confided softly. “She seems more a wanderer, flitting about from pillar to post, but without her vehicle, how will she get there?”
“I don’t know,” Brooks admitted, “but she seems pretty resourceful to me.”
Eva came tripping down the stairs just then, literally. She all but fell onto the foyer floor, clattered to a stop and whipped her layers of fringed shawls around her shoulders. “Ready!”
“Where’s your coat?” Odelia asked.
Eva tossed the corner of a silky shawl over one shoulder. “This is my coat.”
Dismayed, Odelia brought her hands up to cover her mouth, which had formed a perfect O.
Patting a bluebird so that it bounced on the end of its spring, Eva quipped, “Be happy, little bluebird. The doc won’t let the elements get me. Not yet, anyway.” She winked at Odelia then and clomped to the door in her fluttery, multicolored costume.
Brooks tried to give Odelia a reassuring smile and strode after Eva. Not yet, anyway. What was that supposed to mean? For some reason, he remembered that book of fairytales on the table back there in the library. What a dichotomy this woman was, one that he truly did not want to investigate. Now, if only he knew why God had brought her into his life at this particular moment, perhaps he could get her out of it again and put away thoughts of her once and for all.
* * *
“Thank you for stopping for the boxes,” she said, lifting the seat on the wood trunk she’d had bolted to the floorboard behind the driver’s seat of her van.
“No problem,” Brooks said, watching through the open tailgate of the van. He’d parked his car in the traffic lane behind the van and opened the trunk, as instructed by the attendant of the impound yard. Now he waited for her to hand him what needed to be transferred from her vehicle to his.
She lifted a stack of clothing from the trunk: two pairs of jeans, half a dozen T-shirts, a short cardigan, a long, slim knit skirt, all in solid colors. These she placed in one box. On top of them she placed a black beret, a pink baseball cap with a bejeweled brim and a handful of bandanas. In another box she stashed her favorite red high heels and a pair of turquoise cowboy boots, along with a pair of belts and a tan pocketbook, as well as her toiletries. The third box contained her art supplies, including the mini microwave oven that she used to cure some projects. She chewed her bottom lip over the few dishes, butane stove and folding cot that comprised the remainder of her portable worldly goods, but in the end decided to take them with her. The tiny refrigerator and sink would have to stay as they were fixed in place. That only left her personal papers.
Standing at the rear of the vehicle, she pulled back the carpet, poked a finger into a hole in the metal over the wheel well and pulled. A whole section the size of a cigar box came up. Reaching inside the resulting hole, she brought out the folded leather packet and tucked it into the small handbag where she’d placed the fifty bucks the doc had given her the day before. Then she paused to survey the small van that had been her home these past many weeks.
Shaking her head, she pulled the tailgate closed, saying, “I wouldn’t have spent the last of my cash repairing this thing if I’d known it was going to be repossessed so soon.”
“It was the right thing to do, though,” he pointed out. “I mean, you had the use of the vehicle all those months without paying for it.”
She gave him a droll look. “The van’s worth a lot more than the six hundred bucks I owe the bank, even when you figure in the penalties.”
“Six hundred dollars,” he exclaimed, eyes wide. “That’s all you owe? You ought to be able to earn that in a week as a medical transcriptionist.”
Parking a hand on her hip, she struck a pose. “Is that a job offer, Doc? I could work for you until my stitches come out, earn enough to redeem my van, and then I could be on my way with no worries.”
He opened his mouth only to close it again and clap a hand to the back of his neck.
“You know you want me out of your hair,” she pressed, fingers twirling about his head.
He didn’t so much as crack a smile, so she adopted another tack, promising, “I’m good and fast, with a keyboard, that is.” Still nothing. “I have a very high rate of transcription proficiency and, believe it or not, a gift for organization. Besides, it’s not like I’ve got anything else to do for the next week.” He just stared at her, so she folded her arms, challenging him. “Test me.”
Finally, he spoke. “How do I know you’re even physically able to work?”
She popped the tailgate again and crawled back into the van to open the trunk and remove a bag of prescription bottles. Tossing them to him, she slid back out onto the ground.
“I couldn’t afford to refill, so I went off my meds, but if you’ll help me, I’ll go back on them.”
He pulled apart the zipper closure and began quickly reading the prescription labels, glancing at her from time to time. “Half of these are redundant,” he said, sounding angry.
“I know. I was trading off,
seeing what worked best.”
“And?”
She plucked two bottles from the bag. “This one makes me sleepy. This one upsets my stomach.” She grabbed two more, holding up the first. “Sinus congestion.” She tossed the second back into the bag, saying, “Keeps me awake. Otherwise, I haven’t noticed many side effects or many effects, period.”
“That would be the point. What about your aphasia?”
“The only other time I’ve ever experienced aphasia was just before my initial diagnosis.”
“And then you were given intravenous drugs?”
“Yes. Just like this last time.”
“And that alleviated your symptoms?”
“Exactly.”
“Then, obviously you need an oral equivalent of the intravenous drug,” he said.
“But that’s not what you have in your hands?” she asked.
“No, not really. The intravenous medication is closely targeted. These are broader spectrum.”
She nodded. “I see.”
“I’ll write you a new prescription,” he said.
“You do that,” she replied, “but if you don’t give me a job, I won’t be able to fill it.”
He sighed, bowed his head and pressed his temples with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. “Don’t worry about the prescription. As for the job, we’ll go to my office now and see just what you can really do. If you’re as good as you say and if you pass a physical, I’ll redeem your van and let you work off the costs while your scalp is healing.”
Bouncing up on her tiptoes, she clapped her hands.
“If,” he reminded her. “I said ‘if,’ and I meant it.”
She snapped him a smart salute. “Yes, sir, Doctor, sir.” With that she turned and hugged her dirty, scruffy old van.
“Get in the car,” he grumbled.
Eva ran to do just that. Things were looking up, as up as they could look for a cheeky gal with a time bomb ticking inside her head, anyway.
Chapter Five
Maybe he was the one who needed his head examined, Brooks mused, unlocking the private entrance to his office, across the street from the hospital. He flipped on light switches as he shrugged out of his overcoat and reached into the cubbyhole that served as a closet for a hanger. As he hung his coat on the rod there, he gestured for Eva to do the same.
“Leave your—” He stopped and stared at her. “Do you even own a coat?” From what he had seen, she owned very little clothing at all.
“No,” she answered blithely, folding her shawls over a hanger.
“How on earth did you survive in Kansas City without a winter coat?”
She shrugged. “I worked at home.”
“You had to have had a coat at some point.”
A sly smile curved her luscious lips. “I did, a fine one.”
Shaking his head, he turned down the hall, beckoning her to follow, but when they got to the exam room, she balked.
“Sugar, I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. I want a job, not a physical, and I won’t be denied the job because of this thing in my head without first proving I can do the job. Transcription test first.”
Brooks sighed. “Fine. This way.”
She batted her eyelashes at him. “Why, thank you.”
He rolled his eyes, constantly torn between laughing and shaking her until her teeth rattled. Leading her to the office where what little on-site transcription was done, he flipped on the overhead light and gestured to the particular desk where the part-time transcriptionist sat. “I have a partner,” he explained, “but we keep separate staffs and operate in different parts of the building. Right now we share a transcriptionist. There’s a headset and—”
She lifted a hand to silence him as she lowered herself onto the chair. After a quick glance around, she turned on the computer, located the foot-operated player deck and fit the headset to her head. “Any file in particular that you’re needing?”
“Well, the Magruder notes need to go to the cardiologist before Friday, but—”
Again, she lifted that hand, even as she operated the computer mouse with the other. Then she began typing. Her fingers fairly flew. He stood there in the doorway, waiting for her to finish, but it soon became obvious that she wasn’t just planning an exercise. She meant to finish the entire report. Brooks went to power up his own computer, then he jotted down how she was to send the file for him to proof and laid the note on the corner of the desk she was using before taking himself off to make a pot of coffee. Looked as though they were going to be there for a while. The pot was still brewing when she showed up in the break room door.
“Got a question?”
She shook her head.
“Taking a break?”
Putting her back to the doorjamb, she polished her fingernails on her shoulder and said, “I am done.”
“What?”
“Done. Finished. It’s all over but the proofreading.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“As a brain tumor,” she deadpanned. “Sweetie, I told you. I’m good and fast. Go see for yourself.”
He pushed past her and went to his office. The message New File blinked in the corner of his computer screen. Clicking on it, he watched the file unfold, nine single-spaced pages jammed with medical acronyms and terms. Every word read correctly. She’d even fixed his grammar. He tried to speak in perfect syntax, but he was always rushed and always made mistakes. Usually, his transcriptionist typed the first draft exactly as he spoke it into the recorder, then he corrected the grammar himself during the proofreading and sent it back. Most transcription was done off-site by a service hired to handle the proofreading and corrections, including grammar and syntax. The turnaround often took weeks, however, and some cases were too time-sensitive to wait. Eva had produced the transcription as quickly as he’d recorded it, almost as quickly as he could read it.
She handed him a cup of coffee, then sat down across the desk from him to sip her own brew while he finished. He sent the file on its way, two days early, and that was a fine feeling! When he logged on to the office work chart, he checked off the transcription with his initials and hers. Afterward, he sat back and drank his coffee, contemplating the woman in front of him.
“You are good, the best I’ve ever seen.”
She smiled. “So do I get the job?”
He just looked at her. After a moment she sighed and set her disposable coffee cup on his desk. “On to the examination room.”
She got up and left the room. Smiling, he rose and followed to find her frowning at the examination table.
Hands on hips, she asked, “So should I disrobe?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. With us here alone, that would be unethical.”
She lifted her eyebrows at him. “Spoilsport.”
“You like to be outrageous, don’t you?”
“Not very.”
He worked hard at not rolling his eyes. Again. “On the table.”
She hopped up and dropped her shoes. He slid them out of his way with one foot and reached for the blood pressure cuff. Five minutes later, he’d examined everything he logically and ethically could under the circumstances, and if he hadn’t known she had a brain tumor, he wouldn’t have guessed it.
“Turn to the wall, I want to look at your stitches.”
Pivoting on her hip, she swung her legs from one side of the table to another. Carefully, he parted her hair. She had skeins and skeins of the stuff, all of it silky and straight, though the closer he got to her wound the more it could use a shampooing. Still, the stitches looked surprisingly healthy, all things considered.
“I’m glad this didn’t happen in the summertime,” he told her. “I’d have had to shave a significantly larger section just to try to keep the
se stitches cooler. Perspiration has a nasty way of causing infection, and you have a thick blanket of hair here.”
“Don’t I know it,” she told him. “Something else I can thank my mom for.” She looked toward the ceiling, waved a hand and chirped, “Thanks, Mom! Thanks a million.”
“Something else?” Brooks parroted.
She grabbed a hank and tugged. “The hair.” Fluttering her lashes, she added, “The eyes.” Pointing toward her temple with her forefinger, her hand shaped like a cocked gun, she said, “The tumor. She died of the same thing.”
Brooks clasped her wrist with his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
For once, she sobered. “It was awful. They tried everything. The chemo made her hair come out in chunks. She threw up for months, speaking gibberish half the time. She was bones in a bag of gray skin filled with agony by the time she died. When my sister got cancer, too, I wanted to die for her just to spare her the treatment.”
Brooks mentally reeled. “Oh, Eva. I can’t imagine. How awful for your family—three women with brain cancer.”
“No, not brain cancer,” she said impatiently. “Ava had breast cancer, and by the time she found the lump, it was too far gone. We were so young that Ava just didn’t pay attention until it was too late.”
“How old was she?”
“We were twenty-two,” Eva said.
We. Twins. Eva and Ava. Suddenly, everything clicked into place. “You didn’t have breast implants. You had prophylactic double mastectomy and reconstruction.”
“Yep. No breast cancer for me. Should’ve gone for the brain implant,” she quipped. “But, hey, you know what they say. Die young, leave a good-looking corpse. Well, a shapely one, anyway.”
Appalled, Brooks didn’t know what to do other than to lean a hip against the table and wrap an arm about her shoulders. “Eva,” he said, “this is not your mother’s brain tumor. Things are different now. You haven’t even had a biopsy, have you?”
“I don’t need one. The same doctor who diagnosed Mom diagnosed me.”
