Radio Silence

by Alyssa Cole

  “I’ve actually always been told the opposite,” he said. “The patients during my ob-gyn rotation were especially grateful.”

  “Did you take a dose of overshare while you were grabbing the balm?” I asked, and then realized that he’d just cracked at least two jokes in a row that weren’t at my expense. Great. Of course, he had to go and be funny on top of being fine.

  I heard him unscrew the cap of the small jar, followed by the moist dip of his fingers into the salve. The sharp smells of camphor and menthol filled my nose, and then his hands were on my skin and, praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it was wonderful. His hands were indeed warm, but they were also skilled and gentle as they worked the balm into my aching muscles.

  I’d thought he was just going to slather it on and send me on my way, but he took his time, applying it with the technique of a pro masseur. His thumbs slid firmly along the column of my neck, and it felt so good that I let out the beginnings of a moan. I stifled the remainder of the sound, embarrassed that the contact affected me so. He smoothed his hands over my shoulders, applying a bit more pressure each time. He did this again and again until my back felt warmed through, the clenched muscles loosening as he worked. Gabriel’s palms were calloused, adding an extra layer of sensation to the massage, a friction that enhanced the already delicious heat of his hands against my skin.

  He worked his way down, kneading at my back with both his knuckles and the balls of his palms. His fingers slid under the ridges of my shoulder blades, which I hadn’t classified as an erogenous zone until that very moment. He dug in hard at first, and I cried out in pain, but as the knotted muscle broke down beneath his fingertips, the sharp torment faded and transformed into something edging on gratification.

  He eased up. “Sorry. I can be a little rough sometimes, but once I work out these knots, you’ll feel much better.”

  I bit back a whimper—I’d had massages before, and they’d felt damn good, but not like this. Even the painful kneading had strung garlands of excitement over my most sensitive parts. Gabriel’s impromptu rubdown was loosening the taut muscles in my back, but other areas of my body were tightening in response, aching for the same attention.

  As time stretched on, his hands began to move in a way that seemed exploratory rather than perfunctory. They glided slowly over each vertebra, as if there was some Braille message hidden in the indentation of bone and cartilage. They moved farther away from my shoulders, down to my lower back, which ached from days of walking and carrying a heavy pack. The pleasure of his touch built in such a way that it radiated from the point of contact, spreading over my skin in something akin to a ticklish sensation, except tickling didn’t make me quiver and silently beg for more of the same. I squirmed between his legs and released a shuddering breath, momentarily unable to hide my reaction to this onslaught of sensation as he alternated between deep kneading and feathery caresses.

  “Oh, right there,” I blurted out when he began to work out a tight knot near the base of my spine. The exquisite combination of pain and pleasure Gabriel was inflicting on me was making it hard to keep quiet. My nipples hardened and pressed into the material of the sweatshirt, and I regretted not searching for a bra after my bath.

  I willed myself to simply enjoy the comforting touch of another person, a professional person, but little by little the inappropriate thoughts began to rise, unbidden. Me slipping out of my shirt, Gabriel’s hands on my arms turning me to face him, his mouth pressing against mine...

  I felt like the ultimate perv—Gabriel was helping to ensure I wasn’t in pain, and I repaid him by acting like the jerk who went to a spa and asked for a happy ending. Horrified by my inability to control the desire flashing within me, I tried to think of anything that could stop the quickening of my pulse.

  Bugs, baseball, cow dung, England—get a hold of yourself, woman!

  “Did you pay your way through medical school by working as a masseuse, by any chance?” I asked. Maybe conversation could distract him from my rising temperature. The room was cool, but I felt as if I was sitting directly in the hearth and not in front of it. I knew my skin was hot to the touch. His touch.

  He barked out a short, bassy laugh that resonated in my stomach and various other parts of my anatomy. “No, I tutored football players, but it’s good to know I have an alternate career to fall back on,” he said as his fingers worked their magic on me. “It’s probably the Tiger Balm. People are addicted to this stuff. My parents swear by it.”

  In the weighted pause after his statement, I felt my heat cool down to a simmer, even though he continued massaging, moving his hands back to my shoulders and kneading the muscles there.

  “They look so happy in their wedding photo,” I said.

  “They were happy people.” The even rhythm of his hands jolted to a stop. “They are happy people.” He paused, but then the frustration he’d been bottling up spilled out. “This is such bullshit. My parents came here and built themselves from the ground up. They gave us everything. And how did I repay them? I let them go out there by themselves. I should have been the one to make the delivery to Darlene. And since I didn’t, I should have gone after them when they didn’t come back.”

  I was surprised by his admission. Not by what he was saying—that part made sense. More by the fact that he’d opened up to me of all people. Then I remembered that I was the only one here who wasn’t feeling the absence of his parents so acutely that talking about it would be unbearably painful.

  “From everything I’ve heard, your parents are two competent adults who know how to take care of themselves,” I said.

  “I should have taken care of them,” he replied, unmoved.

  I tried a different tack. “Would you have left Maggie by herself to go look for them, not knowing for sure that John was going to show up?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, his voice a bit too sharp. “I just wish I knew they were okay.”

  I didn’t say anything, but glanced at the picture of his parents from the corner of my eye. He resumed the massage, but there was no heat this time, only the mechanical movements of his hands working my muscles.

  “You don’t know if your parents are okay, either,” he stated.

  “No, I don’t.” I swallowed against the tightness that had returned to my throat, trying to stick to my vow not to shed any more tears. It occurred to me then that Gabriel might be able to answer the question that had been plaguing me since the blackout had started. “Do you know how long it takes someone to die if they can’t get access to a dialysis machine?” I rushed through the terrible words. I should have known the answer already, but I’d spent the past year pretending everything was fine. Avoiding knowledge of the thing I feared was part of that pretending.

  “Is one of your parents on dialysis?” he asked. There was concern in his tone, and an unexpected compassion. The lump in my throat grew a little harder to swallow around.

  “My mom has hep C. She doesn’t go to dialysis every day, but if she can’t get treatment...I just wonder if...” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the thought.

  I noticed his hands were soothing more than massaging now. I couldn’t tell if he was aware of the change or simply lost in thought, but I took comfort from it nonetheless.

  “Well, even people who need dialysis every day and can barely function without it have been known to live for months or even up to a year without treatment. I don’t have her chart so I can’t make a diagnosis, but I think your mom will be okay. Most hospitals have generators, so she may even still be getting treatments. You never know.”

  Relief flooded through me, and my throat tightened instead of loosening. There was a chance that she could survive this particular aspect of the blackout, and I was going to cling to it. It was a moment before I was able to speak again. “They’re out in California. I don’t know if they’re even affected by whatever’s going on here, but it’s good to have one less thing to worry about.”

  “Man, I feel like an ass. Her
e I am complaining, and you have all that on your shoulders,” he said.

  “My parents’ situation doesn’t make your problems less important,” I said. I tried to keep the misplaced annoyance out of my voice. I didn’t deserve pity, and I didn’t want it. He wouldn’t give it to me so freely if he knew what a coward I’d been and the pain I’d caused my folks.

  “I know,” he said. “But at least I have my brother and sister with me.” There was silence, and then he added, “And you.”

  “I thought I was a pain in your ass.”

  “You are,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate having you around. You make John and Maggie happy for some reason.”

  Oh. I was annoyed at myself again for the pang of disappointment I felt, but grudging acceptance was better than the veiled threats from earlier, so I’d take it.

  He gave my shoulders a final squeeze, and abruptly tugged my shirt back over my head to signal the massage was over.

  “Wow, it doesn’t feel like elves are shooting flaming arrows into my back anymore,” I said as I stood up, bouncing my shoulders to show the improvement. I could move them without wincing in pain, which was pretty sweet. “Nice work, Doc Seong.”

  He gave the nonchalant shrug of a man who’d heard praise for his skills often before his gaze moved to my face. “That bruise on your jaw is pretty nasty. Let me check it out, too, while we’re here. It looked fine in the clearing yesterday, but I was distracted, what with my brother bleeding out and all.”

  He was aiming for dark comedy, but his eyes dulled and shuttered after he spoke. Some emotions couldn’t be hidden behind jokes. He was hard to figure out, this man who could be a hard-ass one minute and moved by his feelings for his family the next. I was disturbed by the fact that I wanted to figure him out. After our initial encounters, I’d figured we’d just live in détente until the crisis passed and I made my way home. One good massage later, and I was trying to get my Dr. Phil on with him. Not cool.

  He stepped in front of me and cupped my chin in his hand, gingerly poking at my jaw. His face was close to mine, how it had been in the clearing. I remembered the way his gaze had lingered on me then. Now, he was all business, his gaze focused. His lips were moist and slightly parted, the scent of mint showing he’d had the decency to try to cover his kimchi breath before invading my personal space.

  He grasped my jaw and gently pulled, forcing my mouth open. Although it wasn’t the technique I was used to, I couldn’t help but observe this was the perfect position for him to kiss me deep and hard. I closed my eyes so he couldn’t read the lusty thoughts that now plagued me in his presence, but that made it all the easier to imagine him gripping my face as his mouth slanted over mine. I wished I’d had the foresight to get rid of my kimchi breath too.

  “Does it hurt to open your mouth wide?” he asked, releasing his hold.

  I don’t know, why don’t we do a little experiment? Unzip your pants. I kept that horrible pickup line to myself.

  “Yeah, but I guess that’s normal, considering how hard he hit me. I still can’t believe he punched me. Twice,” I said, trying to fix on something, anything, that wasn’t the weird sensation Gabriel was evoking in me. Anger at Blue Hat would serve that purpose. “Asshole.”

  “Why did you fight them instead of just giving up your stuff?” Gabriel asked. “They were both at least double your size.”

  “Because they tried to kill my best friend.” Bile rose in my throat when I remembered the way John had flailed as Blue Hat pulled off his pack. “I mean, I told them to just take our stuff and go, but they said no. The guy who hit me said John and I were considered provisions too. They were going to take us and do God knows what to us.”

  I shuddered as I remembered the sharky smile Blue Hat had given me. I knew what they would have done—to me, at least. I had teetered on the very edge of becoming a statistic, and no one would have ever known. But Gabriel had prevented that.

  “So they were going to take you and John somewhere?” Gabriel asked. I could tell by the way he cocked his head to the side that something was up. He glanced at the picture of his parents and then back at me. I was already shaking my head, my thoughts aligning with his.

  “No. If they had your parents, they wouldn’t have been after me and John.”

  “You can’t know that,” he said. “And your jaw is fine.”

  I grabbed Gabriel’s wrist as he started to twist away from me, releasing it when I had his attention. There was so much emotion in his golden gaze: anger and hope, bound in frustration. I wished I’d kept my stupid mouth shut.

  “Listen, I talked to those guys. I interacted with them. They were gross and smelly and hungry as hell,” I said. “If they had intercepted your parents with a van full of supplies, they would have been a bit better off, don’t you think?”

  Gabriel made a dismissive noise. “I need to check—they could have gotten my parents on their way back, after they’d already dropped the stuff off with Darlene. I should run their pockets to see if I find any clues,” he said, staring blankly across the room now as if he was already planning what he’d need for his trip back into the woods.

  “No, what you should do is stay here and look after the family members you can account for instead of possibly getting yourself killed,” I said and, with that, our brief truce was over. His eyes darkened to a heated bronze as he glared at me. I wanted to recoil, but never flinching was a point of pride. I met his gaze, no small part of me wishing the circumstances behind this tense staring match were entirely different.

  “Look, you might know John, but you don’t know me. You can save your opinions on the matter because they mean nothing to me,” he said, his voice scathing. “If my parents are out there suffering and I don’t try to help them, what kind of son am I? Would you leave your own parents to chance just because it wasn’t easy?”

  His words shocked me into silence. I pictured my mom connected to her dialysis machine but still smiling as we video-chatted. I remembered my last words to her, delivered over the phone because I’d been too much of a coward to see her reaction. I’m sorry, I’m busy, I’ll come in February instead. I’d told myself it would be too hard to see her sick and defenseless, the woman who’d always been larger than life for me, but now I might never see her or my dad again. Thinking of how I’d treated them made me feel as if I was caught in the riptide of a crushing wave of regret, especially in the face of Gabriel’s willingness to do anything for his parents, even revisiting that grisly scene. Pain and anger and helplessness coiled up inside me, twisting in my guts, and I lashed out at the closest target.

  “You think you know better than everyone, but while you’ve been tucked away safely in the middle of nowhere, I’ve walked over a hundred miles. Let me tell you—things are fucked up out there, okay? No one knows what’s going on, and people are doing crazy things. To flounce out of here on some knight-in-shining-armor quest to save your parents is stupid.”

  “It wasn’t so stupid when I saved you and John yesterday, was it?” he countered.

  “What you did was amazing, but it was a lucky accident,” I said. “You weren’t out in the woods pretending to be Rambo.” I thought of how I’d first seen him, prowling through the trees with a rifle...”Wait. Is that what you were doing yesterday? Were you searching for your parents even though Maggie was alone?”

  “That’s none of your business,” he growled, letting me know that I was right on the money.

  “Actually, it is my business. What about the whole ‘I would do anything to protect my family’ line you gave me earlier?” I didn’t understand how I could be so angry at him, this guy I hardly knew, but there was no denying it. My face was hot, my breath was coming fast. “Going out and getting yourself killed is not going to help John and Maggie. You need to think this through. Your parents are already gone, and if you don’t come back, I’ll be the one left to deal with the fallout.”

  “Well, you’re always welcome to leave if you don’t f
eel like dealing with it,” he sneered.

  “That’s not my point and you know it.” I was ready to burst with frustration. I didn’t understand why we were arguing when, in the end, we both wanted what was best for John and Maggie.

  “Right now, I don’t care what your point is. I only care that, no matter how small the possibility, there may be something out there that leads to my parents,” he said and stormed out of the room.

  “Fine!” I yelled after him, my hands clenched into fists and, I’m fairly certain, steam coming out of my ears. I flopped down on the chair he’d abandoned and stared up at the picture of his parents. Given what I knew now, the guilt that threatened to overtake me at every thought of my parents, would I be able to stay put, knowing there was even the slightest chance I might be able to reach them? Probably not, but I also didn’t have siblings to take into account.

  He was right though. It wasn’t my business what he did, even if some idiotic part of me seemed to care if he got hurt. Since when was I concerned about the actions of random doctors with attitude problems?

  Stockholm syndrome, I thought bitterly.

  Chapter Six

  I’d been stewing in my own juices for a little while when Maggie walked into the room, holding an acoustic guitar by its neck.

  “Everything okay?” she asked with practiced lightheartedness as she sat on the arm of the sofa and began to strum. “We heard you and Gabriel arguing. Again.”

  “Gabriel and I appear to have many differences in opinion,” I said diplomatically. It wasn’t my place to tell her the cause of the argument.

  “John has nicknamed you two Mr. and Mrs. Contentious,” she said. “Like those children’s books.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Where is John?”

  “He’s searching for something in his room,” she said, and then looked at me for a long moment. Right as her stare was bordering on creepy, she spoke. “It’s good to finally meet someone who can get under Gabriel’s skin. I love him, but he’s way older than me and he’s been so busy with med school that most of the time he just feels like another parent. But less fun than a parent, because he thinks he has to be serious with me all the time.”