by Claire Adams
“You just ordered a watery martini,” I tell him. “When you shake a martini, the ice in the shaker chips apart and gets into the drink, making it watery.”
“Maybe I wanted a watery martini.”
“Well, in that case, it looks like you did just the thing,” I tell him. “So, are we fucking or what?”
“I think we should talk about what happened today,” he says.
“Nah, that’s all right,” I tell him. “I think I could do without that particular conversation right now.”
“Death isn’t an easy thing to deal with. It’s not easy for me, and I’m an oncologist, for Christ’s sake,” he says.
“Well, I think that was a good talk,” I tell him. “We covered all the bases and I don’t know about you, but I feel better now.”
“Grace,” he says, “are you backing out of the trial?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Can you just leave me alone about it so I can figure out what I want here?”
“Sure,” he says, “but if you don’t make a decision by tomorrow morning, you’re going to get kicked out of the trial anyway. I just wanted to make you aware of that.”
I can’t really explain why, but the idea of being kicked out of the trial sends a jolt of adrenaline through me. I have to put my hands in my lap to make sure Jace doesn’t see them shaking.
“Why would they kick me out so quickly?”
“People drop out,” he says. “This early, there are others on the waiting list who can still get in, but after tomorrow, the thing’s going to be closed to everyone but those who are already in it.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“I would have thought that was pretty clear,” he says. “I jumped through a lot of hoops to get you in there in the first place.”
“No pressure, then?” I snicker.
“I’m not trying to pressure you,” he says. “I’m really not. I was just trying to answer your question. Personally, I think it’s worth a shot, but if it’s not something you’re ready for, I’m sure there’ll be more trials down the road.”
“You wouldn’t be mad at me if I told you that I didn’t want to go through with it?” I ask him.
“No,” he says with a shrug. “I want you to have every opportunity to get better, but I’m not going to be pissed at you for backing out of a drug trial. If it was a known cure, I’d probably be pretty irate, but as it is, I don’t see anything to be gained by browbeating you over it.”
It’s strange that that’s what it’s taken to get me to make a solid decision since what happened in his office earlier today.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I’ll be there tomorrow. Same time?”
“You’ll want to show up about an hour earlier,” he says. “They did intake with almost all of the trial participants today, but since you missed that, they’re going to have to squeeze you in before everyone else starts showing up.”
“Okay,” I tell him.
“Grace,” he says, “I really do think we need to talk about-”
“Here are your drinks,” the waitress says, placing my ginger ale and Jace’s pathetic martini onto the table. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“I’m good,” Jace answers.
“Nope,” I tell the waitress.
She walks away and, before Jace can start in again, I preempt him. “What happened today is that a woman who had cancer died in your office,” I tell him. “Yeah, it was difficult, even though I didn’t actually see it happen, but that’s just something I’m going to have to deal with. She had something different than what I have, didn’t she?”
“I can’t really talk to you about other patients,” he says, “even deceased patients.”
“Okay,” I respond. “How about this: Am I going to need a wheelchair and an oxygen mask sometime down the road?”
“It’s hard to say,” he answers. “It depends on the progression of your-”
“Okay, I was trying to get you to tell me without actually telling me, but I don’t think it really matters. I’m going to assume that the woman either had a different diagnosis than what I do, or she was a lot farther advanced than I am.”
“Okay,” Jace says, taking a sip of his martini. He pulls a face and looks up at me. “I used to love shaken not stirred martinis, but now it just tastes like slightly alcoholic water,” he says.
“It’s always nice to know I can still ruin things for people,” I smile. “Anyway, what freaked me out wasn’t that I was seeing the ghost of brain tumor future. What freaked me out was the knowledge that there’s really nothing any of us can do about the day we die — once it’s there, I mean. I didn’t hear any of the conversation between the three of you before that guy started screaming, but I’m guessing — and no, I’m not asking for you to confirm or deny this — that when she woke up this morning, she didn’t say to herself, ‘huh, I think I’ll head to the doctor’s office and die today.’ Hell, maybe she did. I don’t know. What I do know is a slight but profound variation on something I’ve known most of my life.”
“Which is?”
“That we’re all going to die someday. Maybe it’s going to be the oligodendroglioma — I’m seriously getting good at saying that now, by the way — maybe it’s going to be a car accident, maybe it’s going to be something else entirely, but when you’re going to die, you’re going to die. I think people who think they ‘cheat death’ are just kidding themselves. I don’t believe in fate, but I also don’t believe that a person is going to see each and every thing coming. There’s no way.”
“What’s the variation?” he asks, “Or was that it?”
“The variation,” I tell him, “is that even if I go through this treatment, who’s to say I don’t go into your office one day for a checkup or an update or just to bother you while you’re working and something happens, maybe a reaction from the medication, maybe something else, and I end up falling to the ground dead?”
“Who’s to say you don’t?”
“Nobody,” I answer. “I was freaked out, and I can still hear that guy screaming at you, but I just knew that I didn’t want to be like her, still making every appointment even though I’m half a breath away from my last. I want to do something more. I’m not saying I want to start a charity or do the fun run thing — I’m not a masochist. I just don’t want to spend all my life in a hospital while the rest of the world just passes me by. Who knows, maybe when I’m supposed to be walking into oncoming traffic because I’m not paying attention, I’m in the hospital getting a needle stuck in my arm.”
“I think that would be the better option,” he says.
“Yeah, maybe,” I tell him. “At the same time, though, maybe I’m supposed to be out doing something that I’ve never done before, something that’s going to add a once-in-a-lifetime experience to this little world of mine and I’m just in there, again getting a needle stuck in my arm?”
“There’s no way to know that kind of thing,” he says.
“I get that,” I tell him, “and your saying that isn’t the first time the thought’s crossed my mind. Every time I get that far in my inner dialogue, though, I just think of that woman wheeling past me, her son walking behind her with his fingers gripping the handles of his mom’s wheelchair so tight his knuckles are white.”
“Like I said,” he explains, “I’m not going to fault you whatever you choose here. Obviously, I wish you’d go through with the trial because-”
“I know the reasons,” I interrupt. “We’ve talked about the reasons, I’ve read about the reasons, and I’ve thought about the reasons so much over the past while that I could jot them down with my eyes closed. And I know exactly what you wish I’d do; you made that pretty crystal when I was in your office this morning.”
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Does it not occur to you that you never really indicated that you would respect my choice before that woman died in your office today?” I ask. “I’m not saying that’s why I d
idn’t go to the first day of trials, but it’s not like it didn’t change anything.”
“What did it change?”
“It changed the way I felt about you,” I tell him. “I’m going to do what I’m going to do, just like you’re going to do what you’re going to do and everybody else is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but when it started to feel like you weren’t taking me seriously. When it started to feel like you were just discounting what I had to say because you thought it was just fear and nothing else — I didn’t like that. I don’t like that. It looks like you’ve come around, and I’m not saying this is a permanent mark on your record or anything, but — I don’t know. I guess I just thought you should know that.”
He looks down at the table and then back up at me, sipping his drink and making that same disgusted face he made a few minutes ago.
“You’re right,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” I tell him. “Now, is there any way we can move past this conversation?”
“Yeah,” he says. “If you want to talk more about it later we can; if not, that’s okay, too.”
“Sounds great,” I tell him. “So…”
“What?”
“You owe me no less than five minutes with your face between my legs,” I tell him. “What up?”
Chapter Fourteen
Wandering Star
Jace
Grace has been in the trial for almost two weeks now, and she seems to be doing all right with the new medication.
What she seems to be most excited about so far is that, as she’s not taking her normally scheduled round of chemo, her hair is starting to grow back to a point where she’s almost willing to ditch the wigs.
The last time she saw the inside of my office was the day she was originally supposed to start the trial, and I’m a little worried that she’s going to have a stress reaction when she comes in.
I’m not the one running her scans right now, and even if I wanted to access the scans the trial doctors have been taking, I wouldn’t be able to, but that’s not why she’s coming to the office.
Ever since that night in the jazz club where she and I found a dark corner behind the stage, she’s been really into having sex in situations where there’s some kind of possibility we might get caught.
I’m not a psychologist, but I did take enough courses during med school to know that we’re treading into dangerous territory. Eventually, if we keep upping the ante, we’re either going to get arrested or even worse, we’ll start to get sexually bored with one another.
You’d think that would be enough to dissuade me from giving her the green light about her coming in today when Yuri goes on her lunch break, but the truth is, I think this might actually be a good thing for both of us.
I haven’t told her this, although I can’t say exactly why, but I’ve had some trouble being in this office, myself.
It’s one of those things that eventually fades with every time I come into work, but for Grace that might never be the case.
If I’m to be totally honest here, though, I think I’m starting to get the same thrill out of doing the sort of thing that Grace does.
Yuri knocks on my office door to let me know that she’s headed out to lunch and I nod.
I thought she was going to be out of here as soon as my last appointment was over, but she must have had some paperwork to do.
When Yuri’s out the door, I pull my phone out of my pocket and send a text to Grace, saying, “The eagle has left the nest.”
I hit send, but as soon as I do, I just know that Grace is going to give me shit for using such a cliché code phrase.
The top drawer of my desk contains something at this moment that it’s never had in it before and, I imagine, never will have again.
My phone buzzes and I look down at it.
“You’re so fucking lame,” Grace writes. “I don’t know if I really want to fuck you anymore.”
I write back, “Oh, will you just shut up and get in here?”
It’s only a couple of minutes before the door to my office opens and Grace slinks in, wearing a black, asymmetrical skirt and a red scoop top. She’s been waiting on the next floor up to get the message that Yuri went out to lunch.
“How long do we have?” she asks.
“She’s never taken a lunch break shorter than half an hour,” I tell her. “We’re going to have to be kind of quick, but I think we should be fine.”
“Great,” she says and turns back to the door. “It doesn’t lock?”
“No,” I tell her. “We just lock the outer office when we go. That’s not a problem, is it? If you’re chickening out-”
“Hold on there, cowboy,” she says.
“Cowboy?”
“I think we both know that I have nerves of steel, and besides, I’m wearing my favorite pair of underwear,” she says. “I wore it special for this very occasion.”
“You told me that you didn’t have a favorite pair of underwear,” I tell her, “although exactly how that ever came up in conversation, I’m having a hard time imagining.”
“You’ll see,” she says. “I think you’re going to like it.”
Grace comes over to me and sits on my desk. She scoots over so one leg is on one side of me, the other leg is on the other side.
She parts her knees and says, “Go on and take a look.”
I run my hands from her knees up her thighs, lifting the front of her skirt in the process.
She leans back, supporting herself with her hands behind her on the desk.
I kiss her thighs as I continue to pull her skirt up and, when I see her “special underwear,” I’m simultaneously amused and aroused.
“You’re not wearing any underwear,” I tell her.
“Shh…” she says. “They’re invisible.”
“You, my dear, are a dork.”
“Whatever,” she says. “Put your mouth on me and let’s get this party started. I didn’t come here to chat.”
“You’re really demanding,” I tell her, kissing her innermost thigh, close enough to tease her center. “It’s a turnoff.”
“You’ll get over it,” she breathes, and I put my arms around her butt as her legs come to rest over my shoulders.
Her scent is intoxicating as I work my way closer and closer to her pussy, and when I lay my tongue over the edge of her labia, her taste fills my senses just as strong as it ever has.
Our relationship is a strange one, but there’s not a thing I would change about it.
Okay, maybe I’d change the fact that I always seem to be risking my medical license being with her, but Grace is worth that possibility.
She takes a sharp breath in as my lips graze her clit.
I could go down on her for days.
Her fingers are running through my hair, and I’m kissing and licking her clit, her labia, and the curve of her upper thigh.
“You’re getting pretty good at that,” she says with a decadent moan.
“I love how you always pretend like I haven’t always been good at it.”
“We don’t have that much time,” she says, “and I want to come at least a couple of times before Yuri gets back here.”
At the Academy Awards, when someone’s giving too long a speech, they start playing music to let the winner know it’s time to wrap it up. That’s what Grace is doing right now to get me to stop talking and focus.
I’m fine with that.
She’s so warm against my tongue and my mouth, and when I slip a finger inside of her, I can hardly believe the heat of her.
“That’s it,” she says. “Keep doing that and we might just hit my goal for the afternoon.”
She lies down completely on my desk and I can see her arms stretching above her head as I massage her clit with my tongue and work another finger inside of her.
“How quiet do I have to be?” she asks.
“Pretty quiet,” I tell her. “Yuri won’t be back for a while, but this office isn’t sound proo
f.”
“Good to know,” she says, and I can’t be sure she’s not planning on yelling something like “Fuck me harder, doc,” when my guard is down.
Still, I persist.
Grace lifts her legs and puts her feet on my desk, spreading her thighs open a little further.
Her lower lips are glistening with a mixture of my saliva and her wetness, and as my fingers find and rub her g-spot, I take her clit between my lips, licking and sucking her.
Grace’s legs start going, but I have to lean back for a moment to remove my tie with my dry hand.
“What are you doing?” she asks, lifting her head to look at me. When she sees me pulling the tie from around my neck, she just says, “Oh,” and lays her head back down.
I set the tie on my desk next to Grace, and I’m starting to wonder if my office is going to smell like sex when my next appointment arrives.
It’s only a fleeting concern.
With my mouth back on her and my fingers having never left her crease, Grace’s legs start shaking again and this time, I can take her all the way. She is rocking her hips against my mouth, and I’m delighting in how quickly I can bring her to ecstasy.
Out of nowhere, one of Grace’s hands shoots down to her side and she grabs my tie. She’s so close, I don’t lift my head, but in a moment, her reasoning becomes clear enough as I can hear the muffled sounds of her building climax.
It’s a good thing I have a spare tie in my bottom desk drawer, although this particular scenario never crossed my mind when I decided to bring it in.
Grace’s hips are lifting and dropping with even more intensity now and, with a shudder, I can feel her wetness grow as her stomach tightens in front of me and her legs close in against the side of my head.
I run my free hand under her skirt and up her smooth stomach and play with one of her nipples as her body spasms on my desk.
A few seconds later, I can hear her spitting my tie out of her mouth, and I’m wondering what her plans are for when I put myself inside her. Maybe she’s not thinking that far ahead at the moment.
“Now,” she says. “You brought them, right?”
“Yeah,” I tell her and I pull my fingers out of her to massage her clit as I open the top drawer and pull out the box of condoms and the dairy-free whipped cream can.
