Double Jeopardy

by Bobby Hutchinson

  Ordinarily, Sera would never have barged in with a scant ten minutes’ notice this late at night. But she had to settle this before she lost her nerve.

  “You’re running away from this Halsey guy, aren’t you?” Maisie narrowed her eyes at Sera. “What’s that bastard done to you?”

  “Nothing. I just need to go back to Los Angeles.”

  “He get too close? You start to care more than you want to?” Maisie wasn’t going to drop the matter, and Sera was too heartsick to put up much of a defense.

  “Something like that.”

  Maisie shook her head. “Damned men, they really screw up a gal’s life. And her career. You’re walking away from the chance to do the sets for those movies, remember. Now, there’s a cool career move if ever I saw one.”

  Sera knew. It hurt her to think about it. “I’m sure I can find something in L.A.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. Come in and sit down. We’ll have a cup of tea and figure this out.” Maisie led the way into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

  “I know this producer in San Diego, Pasquale Young. We had a thing together once in another lifetime. We keep in touch. He called me a couple weeks ago. He’s planning a pilot for a television drama set in the twenties and he thought maybe I’d like to do the sets. I would, too, if it didn’t mean working with him. We fight all the time when we’re not screwing our brains out. I can’t take it anymore. It’s too exhausting. He might have hired someone else by now, but if not, would you mind working in San Diego instead of L.A.?” She filled two mugs with hot water and dunked tea bags, then handed one cup to Sera.

  “Are you kidding? Of course I wouldn’t mind.” The farther she was from Vancouver the better.

  “It’ll be lots of responsibility and not much money. He’s working on a shoestring, what else is new. But it’ll be good on your resume, and in my opinion you’re more than ready to do a big project on your own. Look, I’ll give him a call early in the morning. I’ll tell him he’s damned lucky if he gets you. He’s a good guy, Pasquale. It’s just him and me together that doesn’t work.”

  “Thanks, Maisie.” Tears threatened. “By rights you oughta just leave me in the lurch for walking out on you this way.”

  “If this was the beginning of filming instead of the end, I would.” Maisie was matter-of-fact. “I wouldn’t have any choice. I just wish you’d level with me about what’s really going on with you. Yesterday the hunky doctor comes by the set, takes you out to lunch, everything looks like hearts and flowers. Today you’re leaving.” She sipped her tea, her blue eyes trained on Sera. “Does he know you’re skipping town?”

  Sera shook her head. She was going to be a coward about telling him. She’d leave a message on his machine. Or maybe she’d just fax him at the office.

  “You never did get his apartment decorated. He could sue you for breach of promise.”

  Sera managed a wan smile. ‘‘I don’t think there’s much danger of that.”

  “So you’re flying out sometime tomorrow?”

  Sera nodded. “Tomorrow night. There’s not much stuff to pack at the apartment. I’ll say good- bye to my family and then catch the next flight.” She got to her feet. “It’s late. I’ll let you go to bed.”

  Maisie saw her to the door and gave her a long hug. “This is ironic, you leaving Vancouver and me staying. I’ve made an offer on a town house on Richards Street. I should know by Monday whether I get it. If I do, it’ll be the first place I’ve ever owned by myself.”

  “Maisie, that’s wonderful. This is a great city to live in.”

  “But not for you.”

  Vancouver was home. It always hurt to leave it. It would always be home. “Not for me, no.” Sera opened the door to leave, but Maisie put a hand on her arm.

  “There’s a saying, Buddhist or something, that you take yourself with you wherever you go. Sometimes running away doesn’t solve anything, luv. If you want to come back, call me. We’ll work something out about the job.”

  “Thanks, Maisie.” Her generosity and kindness were overwhelming. “I don’t think that’ll happen, but I appreciate the offer.” Sera didn’t try to choke back the tears. “You’re such a good friend.”

  “Good ones are the only kind worth having.” But Maisie’s banter didn’t hide the fact that her eyes were as wet as Sera’s. “Godspeed, Cardano.”

  Ben’s entire week had been frantically busy, and Friday promised more of the same. He’d agreed to do a slide presentation for the nursing staff at St. Joe’s at noon, but the surgery he’d scheduled for the morning had lasted much longer than anticipated. It was ten past twelve by the time he sprinted from the OR to the lecture room, buttoning on a clean shirt as he went.

  The room was full. He strode to the podium, found his notes and began immediately, pleased that early in the day Dana had dropped off the materials he needed and they were waiting when he arrived.

  He’d collected slides from some of his more interesting procedures, and after a short introduction, in which he explained the difference between grafts and flaps for cosmetic reconstruction, he turned on the projector to illustrate the methods he and his colleagues used to correct the problems presented.

  “This is a baby of eleven months whose head was run over by a car. Miraculously, there was no major brain injury, but the temporal bone was exposed here.” He pointed.

  “In a sense, plastic surgeons are body scavengers, in that we find tissue from a nearby site— leaving the blood vessels attached, in this instance—and transfer it to the necessary area. We used a rotation flap from the donor site here.” He indicated the baby’s abdomen. “This is how baby looks now, six months after the surgery.” The child appeared absolutely normal. He grinned at the camera, and the scar had all but vanished. A murmur of approval and admiration came from the audience.

  “This next patient is a thirty-two-year-old. The pile driver he was operating dropped on his foot, causing severe crush injuries. As you can see, damage to the soft tissue was extensive and the tendons were exposed. We used muscle from his thigh—” Ben pointed “—and grafted skin from the abdomen over the wound, thus avoiding amputation. The only problem is that this gentleman now has to shave his foot occasionally. The hair on the skin taken from the abdomen grows.”

  Everyone laughed. Ben was relaxed. He enjoyed talking to an audience, and he knew from the warm response that he was doing a good job.

  “Fifty percent of plastic surgery is artistic, fifty percent technical,” he explained. “A good plastic surgeon can visualize the final result before he begins the procedure. The ideal situation is when you’re able to take a physical problem and make it a nonissue.”

  He clicked to the next slide, a photo of Gemma Cardano after her accident. “For instance, this is a twenty-nine-year-old female who was struck in the face at a construction site by a two-by-four. She sustained a La Forte fracture, in which all the bones connecting the face to the skull were broken. Working through the nostrils and the soft palate, we reconstructed her face. We began by repairing the jaw right after the accident. The other operation took place eight days later.”

  He switched to a photo of Gemma immediately postop, and then one shot earlier this week.

  “The patient will be back to normal as soon as the swelling and bruising recede and we remove the wires from her jaw. This is her identical twin, whom we were able to use as a model for the computer imaging, a most unusual occurrence. We expect the patient’s features to replicate hers once healing is completed.”

  It pleased Ben to have Sera’s face on the screen. It was almost as if, for a few moments, she was with him in the room. To look at her face gave him a warm, happy feeling.

  He missed her so much it astonished him. He’d last seen her on Tuesday, when he’d visited the set of Dinah and taken her to lunch, and he’d intended to call the following day and take her somewhere nice for dinner, but he’d ended up working round the clock, instead.

  A huge fire had broken out in a d
owntown rooming house, and he’d spent untold hours treating burn patients. Then a child whose arm had been cut off in a farm accident was flown in, and the intricate procedure to reattach the limb required hours. An emergency with one of his own patients consumed another block of time, and he’d had more than the usual number of scheduled morning surgeries, as well as meetings in the evenings. He’d even had to call on the dog-walking agency he used in times of dire emergency to feed and exercise Grendel.

  He vowed to himself he’d phone Sera the moment this presentation was finished.

  As soon as the question period was over he found a phone and dialed her cell number.

  “The customer you are trying to reach is not available at this time.”

  He swore under his breath and called her apartment number, instead, marveling that he’d somehow committed both numbers to memory.

  “The number you have reached is not in service."

  Ben cursed the vagaries of the telephone company and redialed. The message was the same. There must be something wrong with the line.

  It took fourteen minutes to reach a living person at the telephone company, and by that time he was both impatient and angry. He had patients waiting at his office, and inefficiency of this sort infuriated him.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” an operator told him, “that number is no longer in service. The subscriber notified us to stop service.”

  “That’s ridiculous. That can’t be. When exactly did she call you?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t release that information.”

  Ben slammed down the receiver. It was a mistake. It had to be a mistake. Sera wouldn’t just take off without telling him.

  He hurried out of the hospital and across the street to his office, frantically trying to come up with a logical explanation. As he strode through the waiting room, he was barely aware of his patients. Dana said something as he passed her desk, but he didn’t respond.

  Inside the office, he glowered at the soft coffee- with-cream leather chairs Sera had picked out and tried to figure out what to do next.

  Dana bustled in. “These are urgent phone messages, this is today’s mail and these are faxes you haven’t read yet. I’ll send you your first patient in five minutes, all right, Doctor?”

  He grunted, sorting through the messages and then the envelopes, searching for something from Sera, but there was nothing. He flipped through the faxes and there on the bottom was the one he was looking for:

  Ben, Sorry for not getting in touch with you in person. Something’s come up and I’m going back to L.A. Sorry, also, for not getting the loft done as I promised. I enjoyed our time together, and thanks for all you’ve done for Gemma.

  Sera

  He scowled at the terse wording. “Sorry for not getting in touch in person? Something’s come up in L.A.”? That was it?

  What had possessed her to leave in such a hurry? And to say goodbye by fax was a slap in his face.

  A wave of absolute frustration and anger shot through him, and he used language he’d forgotten he knew. Viciously, he punched the button on the office intercom that would connect to Dana.

  “Get Maisie Jones on the phone for me. She works on the set of Dinah over at False Creek Productions on West Second. Tell her it’s urgent. As soon as she’s on the line I want to speak to her.”

  Two patients later, Dana stuck her head in the door.

  “Your caller is on line two, Doctor.”

  Ben excused himself and went into the inner office to take the call.

  “Maisie? Ben Halsey here. Listen, what the hell’s going on with Sera? I got this cryptic message saying she’s gone back to L.A., and I’m worried about her.”

  He listened and then scowled at the receiver.

  “We didn’t have a fight. We didn’t even have an argument, for cripes sake. The last time I saw her was lunch on Tuesday, the day I came over to the set. Everything was fine then. What happened to make her run off this way?”

  He listened again. Maisie was insisting she didn’t know the reasons for Sera’s departure any more than he did.

  “Well, give me a phone number where I can reach her. I need to talk to her.”

  But Maisie refused, saying that if Sera wanted to get in touch with him, she’d do it on her own.

  An overwhelming urge to holler at Maisie almost overcame him, but somehow he managed to be marginally polite as the conversation ended. Summoning up every ounce of self-discipline he could muster, Ben returned to his patient. The moment the consultation was over, he called Dana in.

  “How many patients are out there waiting?”

  “Two. Your one o’clock hasn’t shown up yet.”

  “Phone all the afternoon patients and reschedule. I’ll see whoever’s here, but after that I’m taking the afternoon off.” He’d never before felt that his office was a prison, but he did today.

  “All right, Doctor.” Dana looked concerned. “You aren’t sick, I hope.”

  Ben snapped, “I’m just fine. Can’t I take a couple of hours off without being sick?”

  “I only asked, Doctor.” Dana gave him an injured look and marched out.

  Somehow, Ben made it through the next two patients. When the second one finally ambled out the door, he let out a sigh and picked up the phone, dialing the Brulottes’ number and hoping against hope that Greg wasn’t on shift at St. Joe’s.

  Here, at least, Ben’s luck was good. Greg answered on the third ring, and he had no objections at all to Ben dropping by. Lily was having a massage; the nanny, Judith, was at an English class; and Stanley was sleeping.

  “If you hurry, we can have a quiet beer before the kid wakes up.”

  Ben hurried. Much as he loved Stanley, he hoped he’d nap for the rest of the afternoon so there’d be a chance to talk to Greg uninterrupted.

  Within half an hour, Ben was seated on the Brulottes’ deck in the sunshine, but neither sun nor the cold beer at his elbow was helping his disposition.

  “Why the hell would she do a thing like that, Greg? Just take off without so much as an explanation?”

  Greg shrugged. “You got me. I’m no expert on female psychology.”

  “You oughta be. You’re married,” Ben said accusingly.

  Greg laughed. “Spoken like a true bachelor. Any married guy’ll tell you there isn’t a man alive who really understands what goes on in a woman’s mind. And that includes the male shrinks at St. Joe’s.”

  “I’ve never had a woman I liked do this before, just turn her back and desert me.”

  Greg grinned without a trace of sympathy.” Tough on the old ego, huh?”

  Was that all it was? Ben thought it over, trying his best to be objective.

  “Some,” he admitted grudgingly. There was more to it than that, though, and he struggled to pinpoint what it was. “Something about Sera’s different, and I really wanted to get to know her better.”

  Greg gave him an appraising look. “You in love with her, old buddy?”

  “Of course not.” The forceful denial was immediate, but Greg’s questions had made him feel as if someone had punched him in the stomach, and after a moment Ben added, "How the hell do you ever know, anyway? How did you know with Lily?”

  Greg locked his hands behind his head and squinted up at the sky. “I was pretty thick about it. It took a while before I caught on. Then I figured I’d lost her, and that did it. You know, deep in your gut, when the right woman comes along. And you know you’d be a bloody fool to let her get away.”

  Ben thought that over and decided it wasn’t very helpful. “I’m just not much good at this emotional intimacy stuff,” he finally blurted. “I’m better if it’s just physical.”

  Greg eyed him quizzically. “That’s not exactly late breaking news, my friend.” Greg knew about Vera, knew the reasons Ben kept relationships casual.

  “The thing is, this wasn’t.”

  Greg frowned. “Wasn’t what?”

  “Wasn’t, uhhh, physical. Which is why I don�
��t know why the hell I’m feeling this way.”

  “Feeling what way?”

  “What’re you doing, psychoanalyzing me?” The probing was starting to get under his skin. Ben scowled and finished off his beer, realizing he was being an asshole and not caring.

  “Hell, no.” Greg reached in the cooler he’d conveniently placed under the table and handed him another. “I’m trying to figure out why you’re so ticked off. It’s not the first time in your life you’ve gotten dumped. You say you’re not in love with her, and you’ve just admitted you weren’t even having sex with her, and you don’t do the emotional stuff, which means there couldn’t have been much of a connection, am I right?”

  Ben refused to answer.

  “By the way, Lily really liked Sera. She said, and I quote, ‘It’s about time you found yourself a grown-up lady.’”

  Ben grunted. If Greg was trying to make him feel better, he wasn’t doing much of a job of it. “It wasn’t anything serious. I guess I just wanted some time to get to know her better,” he finally concluded in a sulky tone.

  “So, what’s stopping you? It’s Friday, which means you can take off if you want to, and the last I heard, there were still several flights a day heading south.”

  Ben opened his mouth to protest and then thought it over. He couldn’t remember what was scheduled for Monday, but at least the weekend was free.

  “I don’t know where the hell she is,” he griped. “Her boss wouldn’t tell me. I can’t ask her parents. They’ll be just like her boss, wondering why she didn’t give me the address herself.”

  “Where’s your imagination, Halsey? You’re not gonna let a little thing like an address stop you, are you?”

  No, by God, he wasn’t. “Could you keep Grendel for me for a couple days?”

  Having Stanley maul him would be hard on the dog, but it was for an excellent cause.

  “Absolutely. Just drop him off on your way to the airport, Romeo.” Greg was laughing at him again, but this time Ben didn’t give a damn.