Love Gone Mad

by Rubinstein, Mark

  The Led Zeppelin vocalist ends the song in a voice that conjures up angels.

  Two

  Adrian stands on the cafeteria line. It’s a hospital lunchtime madhouse. Pure bedlam. The expanse seems to swell like a roiling sea.

  A thunderous crash erupts amid the maelstrom. Adrian reflexively whirls and crouches. An electric surge rips through him. Shotgun!

  Adrian realizes a huge metal tray cart has overturned. The floor is piled with plastic trays and debris. The moment of shock evaporates. People help the cafeteria workers pull the cart upright and slide trays back into the racks.

  Last night’s shotgun blast tramples through Adrian’s thoughts. The air-sucking whoosh, the glass shards, the smoke, the sizzling ceiling wires, the pockmarked walls, all of it. It’s life and death—in the OR and at King’s Corner.

  “Adrian? Do I know you? You a faggot?”

  The words bubble through him like a hemorrhage—again and again—and each time, a sickening wave of dread washes through him. He feels his guts contract as he recalls that moment. Adrian tells himself to push the memory away; it’s an aberration, not part of his life. His life is here, at Eastport General, where lives can be saved. After all, that’s the business he’s in.

  Amid the oceanic roar of the cafeteria, Adrian slides his tray along the three-barred railing, picks up a container of chicken soup, a slice of carrot cake, and plastic utensils, and then fills a cup with diet soda from the dispenser. No ice.

  Adrian spies his surgical team at a table—six people in hospital greens and surgical caps, chomping sandwiches, guzzling mineral water or coffee, talking and laughing. No seat there. The place is a fluorescent-lit sea of white coats and surgical scrubs—doctors, nurses, attendants, technicians. EMS people and visitors in civilian clothes, too.

  Adrian looks about for a seat, catches snippets of conversation amid salvos of laughter and aromas of lunchtime fare—chicken soup, meat loaf, pizza, and tuna fish. He and Richie Moscatello see each other and smile. They’ve known each other since medical school at Cornell, where they did plenty of late-night drinking after exams. That ended when Richie got married and had a kid. Everyone, it seems, has kids.

  But not Adrian.

  Passing some scrub-suited orthopedic surgeons, Adrian sees a brawny guy with a stethoscope dangling around his neck. The guy’s arms bulge in the surgical greens; it reminds Adrian of that madman in King’s Corner last night. That face, the neck, those huge hands, the quivering nostrils—and those eyes—unforgettable.

  Adrian? That’s a girl’s name.

  You a faggot?

  Adrian knows he’s still spooked by that steely eyed psycho. The rawness of the encounter has begun fading, but the adrenaline needs time to burn off and dissipate the way a foul odor dissolves with time. But the jangling sensation peaks in an instant—shoots through him—like when the cart overturned. Or earlier this morning when a tire blew out in the hospital garage. Adrian’s insides jumped.

  I’ll be back.

  The fucking Terminator—a scene right out of the movie.

  And I’ll see you, too, faggot.

  Adrian scours the cafeteria. Not a single seat in sight. He wonders if it might be better to brown-bag it from now on; it would be easier, much less fuss, but he’d miss the connectedness of the cafeteria, the nearness of life around him.

  On the other hand, the camaraderie of the place just heightens his loneliness.

  As he passes a group of nurses, Mary Pearson, a tall blonde, winks at him. She’s been incredibly flirtatious since Adrian’s divorce from Peggy. He and Mary had had a brief, tempestuous fling at Yale, long before he and Peggy had met. Only a few months ago, a message arrived at his hospital e-mail. It said:

  Adrian, I’m around. Mary.

  He didn’t respond; he thought it would be unwise.

  Then another one popped up.

  We can still be friends, can’t we? Mary.

  For sure, it’s a small universe: Eastport, Yale, and Bridgeport Hospital. Everyone knows everyone—and they know everyone’s business, too. It’s a gossip mill. But Adrian doesn’t want to get into the casual friends-with-privileges thing. Stir up dead embers and you can ignite an unwanted fire—a shit storm of recriminations. And you don’t shit where you eat, he thinks. He throws Mary a tight-lipped smile, an unspoken Yes, we shared a moment of need and convenience back then, but not now.

  He finally spies an empty seat and moves toward it. A woman sits alone at the table. She’s drop-dead gorgeous. Adrian feels his knees wobble; he’s riveted by her.

  “May I join you?” he asks. It’s the obligatory self-invitation—not overly friendly, just plain straight-talk—merely asking in a polite and casual way. Walking the social high wire—sending out carefully calibrated cues. Not too hot, not to cool … just right. The Goldilocks approach.

  She looks up briefly and nods indifferently; he sits down.

  Settling into the chair, Adrian realizes he’s been on his feet since six thirty. His arches ache and his feet feel leaden. Maybe he’s a candidate for orthotic inserts. No wonder most surgeons retire by age sixty. So … at forty, he’s got twenty more years of cracking chests and mending hearts. Plenty can happen in twenty years, he thinks.

  Twenty years … I can’t think that far ahead … and I don’t want to think of the past.

  Steam rises from his soup in a vaporous cloud. It’s too hot to slurp. The bowl, the soup’s aroma, and the plastic tray remind him of the dorm food at Cornell; they bring back the verdant rolling hills of the Finger Lakes, rowing on Cayuga Lake and playing center field on the varsity baseball team. It’s amazing—Ithaca, New York—merely a whiff away.

  He glances across the table—eyeballs the woman. She’s staring down at a book; an untouched egg salad sandwich sits on her plate. A container of coffee sits nearby. It’s obviously cooled down—there’s no vapor. She’s wearing green surgical scrubs and a long white coat. Her name tag says, “Megan Haggarty, RN.” Beneath it, “Neonatal Intensive Care.”

  Adrian … do I know you …?

  That shock-like sensation jolts through Adrian. His legs tighten. Forget last night, he tells himself. It was a few moments of craziness in an otherwise sane world.

  He peers at Megan Haggarty. God, she’s gorgeous. Her face has the look of unbroken Celtic lineage—beautiful Irish features—unattainable beauty, he thinks. She’s in her early thirties, Adrian guesses. She has fiery red hair with an iridescent hint of blond and a coppery undertone. It looks silken soft and shines under the fluorescent lighting. Pulled back, it flows into a hair clip, perfectly framing her oval face. He can almost smell it through the curling soup vapor infiltrating his nostrils.

  Is blood rushing to his cheeks? Or is it the steaming-hot soup? Either way, he feels flushed.

  Megan Haggarty’s forehead is high; her cheekbones are prominent. Her nose is delicately sculpted, while her jaw is square, firm. Auburn eyebrows accentuate her forehead. Her skin is bone-white and looks creamy, luscious. What would it taste like? he wonders. Staring at her, he knows he’s incapable of subtlety.

  Her eyes flick up—past him. They’re hazel with emerald-green rings around the irises. He’s never seen such eyes—so soulful and sad in a way. She’s seen hard times, he thinks. It’s in those eyes. He could fall into them.

  She turns a page. Adrian realizes he might as well be a vapor wafting in a wind.

  God … she’s a work of art.

  He scans the book upside down, a skill he refined riding on subway trains in Manhattan years ago. In Cold Blood. Oh, right—Truman Capote. Four poor souls murdered by two madmen using a shotgun in the Kansas night.

  A shotgun. It reminds him of that bastard at King’s Corner. “Stairway to Heaven,” the guy’s piercing, gray eyes, and his quivering nostrils.

  I’ll be back.

  You gotta put that out of your mind. That was then; this is now.

  Megan Haggarty’s fingers are long and graceful, with perfectly shaped nails—no
polish, just natural pink nail beds—with light half-moon crescents above the cuticles. And, the most important feature—the crucial one—no ring. Adrian wonders if it’s possible she’s not married, but he knows lots of nurses wear no jewelry while working in the hospital.

  Ring, no ring, married, living together, looking, hooking up, lost and found … it’s all complicated. Jesus, man … what’re you, Sherlock Holmes? Looking for clues, bits and pieces … trying to dope out this puzzle?

  Adrian waits for his soup to cool. He wonders if Megan Haggarty could possibly make him feel something—anything—because since the divorce from Peggy, he’s felt forever soured, emotionally mutilated, as though indifference runs thickly through him, slows his blood, and chills his heart. He knows he’s too young to feel this way; there’s too much to look forward to, yet life’s vividness seems drained, washed out.

  It occurs to Adrian that there could be something chemical in one’s attraction to another. It could be inborn, something beyond control, hormonal—maybe pheromones, some elemental attractant—that draws a man to a woman and makes someone irresistible. And he suddenly realizes he’s nearly leaning across the table, even trying to get a whiff of Megan Haggarty’s hair or her milky skin. And he’s aware at that moment that approaching women was always emotionally charged with some nascent fear he’d be spurned, or worse, he’d be laughed at.

  Megan Haggarty picks up her sandwich and bites into it, eyes still fixed on the page. He recalls first seeing Peggy devour a sandwich. He’d thought back then—nothing original, for sure—the heartier a woman’s appetite, the more robust her sexual hunger.

  It’s kid stuff, pure fantasy.

  She sets her sandwich back on the paper plate. A perfect half circle is gone. There’s scalloping where her teeth severed the bread. Her throat moves up and then down as she swallows. Adrian notices that she’s tall, maybe five ten, though he can’t tell for certain. Peggy was tall, too, as have been all the women he’s desired.

  “Your soup’s getting cold,” she says, her eyes still riveted on the book.

  His throat closes; it feels like a thicket of thorns forms deep inside.

  She looks up now, directly at him. Those eyes—emerald-green rings around hazel irises—are simply gorgeous. Be careful, Adrian tells himself. He grins—caught looking—and he sees a smile form on her bow-shaped lips. Her teeth are perfect, and dimples form on her cheeks as she smiles.

  And she closes In Cold Blood.

  He’s trumped Capote. Adrian wonders if it’s possible a connection is forming. Or will she simply toy with him because now she thinks he was copping glances like a teenager? Maybe she thinks he’s a flirt, a third-rate Casanova trying to score.

  “Are you new here?” he asks.

  “I’ve been here for two years.” Her head tilts.

  “Funny, I haven’t seen you around.”

  How lame. What a contrived opener … Adrian tells himself.

  “Well, Dr. Douglas,” she says, a smile filling her voice, “the neonatal ICU’s very far from the cardiac surgery center.”

  So she’s read his name tag. Small triumph, he thinks, but he’ll take it.

  “And I rarely come down to the cafeteria.”

  “How come?”

  “Oh, we’re very busy with the newbies. But we get a little time off.”

  And of all things, he finds himself wondering what she does with her time off. It could be spent with her husband and kids, he thinks. Or, if she’s single—which seems unlikely—she could hit the local bars with her girlfriends, go clubbing, drinking, and dancing, or maybe troll the Post Road gin mills, where lonely singles guzzle their nights away, often looking to hook up.

  Alone and single? Megan Haggarty? Not a chance.

  “I grew up on long shifts, too,” he says.

  “You must keep very busy fixing God’s mistakes.”

  He laughs, suddenly aware that she’s wise to the swaggering bravado of chest-cracking surgeons. “So, you’ve met cardiac surgeons,” he says, grinning self-consciously.

  “Oh, yes, but you don’t seem to be like the rest of them.”

  “You mean grandiose?”

  She nods and smiles with her eyes.

  “Just filled with themselves? Real gunslingers?”

  She laughs; her mouth opens. God, those perfect teeth.

  “Where were you before Eastport?” he asks.

  “At Yale-New Haven.”

  “Me too.”

  “Our six degrees of separation,” she says, canting her head. Her earrings tilt.

  “It’s a small world.”

  “When did you come here?” she asks.

  “Two years ago. Same time you did.”

  There’s a brief pause. The cafeteria noise hits a crescendo.

  “What made you leave the center of the medical universe?” he asks, hoping he doesn’t sound too cynical, even bitter about Yale.

  “Oh, lots of things …,” she says, her voice trailing off.

  She won’t talk about it; he’s certain of that.

  She must be very smart, Adrian decides. Yale—it’s the core processer of the nursing profession. And neonatal nursing—top-shelf credentials, right up there with OR and ICU work. It’s the most technical and demanding nursing work around.

  His stomach grumbles; he realizes he’s starved.

  “It’s much better in this little pond than the ocean at Yale,” she says.

  “Yes,” he says, wondering if some upheaval drove her from Yale. Something personal, meaning marital trouble—separation or divorce.

  Like what happened to half the people in this cafeteria, a congregation of troubled souls, each with a personal tragedy.

  “You live here in Eastport?” he asks.

  “Yes. I’ve rented a condo.”

  Near the hospital. And she used “I,” not “we.”

  Adrian realizes he’s sifting through her every word, each nuance, making inferences. It’s fucking Sherlockian.

  “And you?” she asks, those hazel eyes questioning him. God, how he could stare at them forever and how he wishes time could slow so this conversation could last longer.

  “I have a rental too … in Simpson.”

  “Simpson?”

  “Yes.”

  Adrian’s certain she knows Simpson’s a bedroom community; so, maybe she thinks he’s married, just game-playing. She may feel he’s doing the big flirt, that he’s ready for a casual fling, a fuck-buddy thing, nothing more.

  “The rental market in Eastport’s impossible,” he adds quickly. “I took a place in Simpson so I didn’t have to buy a condo.” He purposely used “I,” hinting at his single status.

  She nods, and he wonders what she’s thinking.

  The conversation shifts—comfortably for Adrian—to their work. She loves the neonatal ICU and working with newborns. The only shame is when a crack baby is born. The nurses know its mothering will be awful. “It’s terrible when a mother doesn’t want a child,” she says, a tinge of sadness in her voice.

  Staring into those eyes, Adrian knows he can’t get enough of her.

  “But then a fragile little preemie comes along. If we save the baby, it’s great, because we know the parents want this child more than anything else.”

  “So it’s more than just a job?”

  “Yes, much more. And I imagine it’s the same feeling for you with surgery.”

  “Absolutely. It makes my day.”

  There’s a pause in the conversation. The cafeteria hum seems louder in his ears.

  Then she says with a smile, “Now your soup’s really cold.”

  “And you’ve taken only one bite of your sandwich.”

  They laugh. He notices how her lips spread into a smile and the way her eyes brighten and become lively. The sadness he saw is gone, evaporated. He feels somehow they’ve shared something as inconsequential as a brief, self-conscious laugh amid the din of this cafeteria, and he feels close to her in a way he doesn’t quite understand. I
t’s very strange, and Adrian wonders if she can possibly know he’s insanely glad he couldn’t find a seat and finally plopped down at this table.

  He wonders, too, if Megan Haggarty has any idea—even a seminal notion—of the effect she has on him. Can she tell that he’s hanging over the table, edging closer to her? He realizes he’s engrossed by her. He’s looking into her luminous eyes, making intimate and earnest contact, and it feels so terribly comfortable. It occurs to Adrian that if another surgeon could take over his afternoon surgeries, he’d stay right here with Megan Haggarty.

  He asks himself if she can even imagine—with the tumult of sound and patina of lights—that years from now he’ll try desperately to recapture the memory of the moment he first saw her, surrounded by an ocean of doctors and nurses and aides and hospital workers and porters and cafeteria workers, amid hospital greens and white coats and hairnets and name tags and stethoscopes and the smells and sights and sounds of this stadium-sized cafeteria in Eastport Hospital, and all the while, she was completely oblivious to his existence.

  Adrian thinks there’s something unadorned, even earthy about Megan Haggarty. He’s quite certain she’s very different from Peggy, who thought nothing of buying herself a $100,000 Mercedes SL roadster, who shopped tirelessly at Betteridge Jewelers in Greenwich for Van Cleef & Arpels bracelets or Paolo Costagli earrings, or rummaged through the Ralph Lauren Collection at the store, and pushed relentlessly for them to buy a Manhattan pied-à-terre (which he resisted, much to her chagrin) so on weekends they could eat Kobe beef or world-class sushi at Nobu or the latest culinary constructions at Daniel and then take a taxi back to the apartment rather than drive back to Connecticut.

  But that was then and this is now, and Adrian wonders if there’s a remote possibility this chance encounter with Megan Haggarty could lead to something exciting—a relationship with substance, one that might endure—even though he barely knows her. He questions why he’s suddenly thinking this way because until twenty minutes ago, he thought he was limping through his life—steeped in a sour marinade of pessimism—forever brooding, feeling emotionally crippled because of what Peggy did.