“Are you all right? I heard you call out.”
“It was nothing. I had a bad dream,” he said. He knew Lauren would keep at him until he told her why he was out of bed in the middle of the night, but he didn’t want to give her the cold truth.
She came down the stairs, her robe flowing behind her.
“I was going to get a drink.”
Jake went in the kitchen, returning with two glasses of water.
“Tell me about it,” Lauren said.
She used her teacher’s voice. Yet Jake had no intention of giving her the details of the dream. He drank the bottle of water almost to the bottom. “It wasn’t about anything really. I hardly remember it.”
“Sit down,” Lauren said.
Following her instruction, he sat. She moved behind him. Soft music began to play from the concealed speakers in the wall. Without him asking, Lauren approached him and started to massage his arm. He hadn’t felt any pain in it in weeks. Tonight the hurt returned and she must have read the expression on his face or seen something in his walk that told her he needed the magic of her hands.
Jake let her work in silence. Her hands were warm as she found the exact place where the pain culminated and eased it away. Not for the first time, Jake wondered how she could be so intuitive and how she knew exactly where to work on his pain. Too bad she couldn’t make his nightmares vanish.
“You have a lot more muscle definition now,” she said.
“All that tennis and walking and picnicking,” he laughed, but it didn’t feel mirthful. Jake was still in the clutches of the nightmare, although Lauren’s hands were soothing.
“Talk to me, Jake,” she said.
He didn’t need to ask what she meant. Jake took a moment before beginning. He used the time to think of what he wanted to say. “The nightmare was about the tennis game we played.”
Her fingers stopped moving. “The one where I won?”
He didn’t want to take the pleasure he remembered her feeling away. “Not that one, another one.”
“What happened?” Lauren resumed her massage.
“A bomb went off.”
“Was I hurt?” she asked.
Jake jerked around to look at her, the pain in his back and shoulder forgotten. “I never said you were in it.”
“But I was, wasn’t I?”
He nodded.
“Was I hurt?” she asked again.
“Yes,” he stated.
“And you tried to save me.”
“I was too late,” Jake said. “The bomb went off while I was trying to get to you. The impact of the force pushed me back. That’s when I woke up.”
Jake realized that, with only a few alterations, Lauren had guessed what happened to him on that Paris street.
“How do you feel about it?”
He turned back and she again started to knead the tension out of his muscles.
“I was afraid for you.”
“Thank you for caring,” she said.
Lauren stopped and moved around to sit next to him. The music still played in the background, but he hadn’t been paying any attention to it. Now he heard the soft sounds of violins and horns. He knew the song, but couldn’t place the title just then.
“Dance with me?” he suddenly asked Lauren.
“What?”
Jake stood and looked down to see the confusion in her eyes. He offered his hand and she took it, standing up. Jake wasn’t wearing his sling. He didn’t sleep in it. Lauren took his right hand and placed it behind her back. They began swaying to the music.
Jake wanted to distract her from the dream, but he was being distracted now. One song ended, but he didn’t stop the dance. As another one began, they continued to move together.
“Your dancing has improved too,” Lauren said.
Her head reached his chin and Jake felt her smile. He drew her closer and they continued to circle the room. Two other songs ended while they danced in the darkened morning.
“Jake,” Lauren whispered. Her voice was soft and sexy. “Do you feel anything?”
He pushed her back and looked into her face. Her eyes were wide and bright and beautiful.
“Is that a trick question or just a loaded one?” he asked. “Of course I feel something.”
Jake kissed her. He liked holding her, even if she was aware of everything about him and wouldn’t allow him to hide behind his pain.
Lauren’s head rested on his shoulder after they kissed. He kept her close, savoring the moment.
“That’s not what I meant,” she told him, although her voice was thick with emotion. “Your arm is pressing me to you.”
Immediately, all the strength he’d been using was gone. His arm fell to his side as if it suddenly remembered it had no feeling. Jake released Lauren and looked at his limp arm.
Turning away from her, he took several steps. “Why do you do this to me?” he shouted, frustration clear in his voice.
“What?” Lauren asked.
“Not you. It’s...” He sat down on the sofa, tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Me, the universe, the forces that be.” His gaze landed on Lauren.
“Jake, it’s a sign. You’re getting feeling back in your arm. Eventually, it’s going to move. I’m sure of it.”
“You more than me.”
“Jake?” Lauren said quietly as if something had just occurred to her. “Has this happened before? You asked why this happens to you as if this wasn’t the first time you’ve gone through it.”
He sighed. “I didn’t want to tell you.”
“How many times?”
“Two, other than just now. It’s usually while I’m asleep. I wake up with a tingling in my hand.”
“That’s good. Why didn’t you want to tell me?”
“You’re so optimistic. You assume everything will work out for me. If I let you know I had a tingling in my finger, you’d have me back at a doctor’s office and I’m not going.”
“I want to say I wouldn’t have done that. But I know I’d have insisted that you try to find out if anything was happening. You’re a doctor. You know that it’s better to listen to your body than to allow it to make decisions for you.”
“I am a doctor and I know that they won’t find anything this time, exactly like they found nothing the last time. If feeling is going to return, it will do it when it’s ready.”
“But you don’t put much store in that.”
He dropped his shoulders and shook his head.
“Well, I do,” Lauren said. “All the signs are there and they are happening more often.”
“Stop!” Jake shouted so loud Lauren jumped back. He relaxed a moment and spoke in a lower voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.”
“All right, Jake, no doctors for now. But would you think about it? We’ve gone to the doctor before. If these episodes keep happening, something is either working or getting worse. You need to find out which.”
“I promise to think about it.” He would, but he no longer wanted to discuss this now.
“Thanks,” Lauren said. “Would you at least let me check your arm?”
“No,” he said, witnessing the expected surprise on her face. “If you touch me, I’m going to kiss you again.”
“And neither one of us wants that kind of complication,” she finished for him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DAYS PAST AND Jake still hadn’t called a doctor. He’d tried every day, several times a day, to move his arm, but nothing happened. He didn’t doubt that Lauren thought she had felt the pressure at her back while they danced, and yet... Had she imagined it, wanted to see him get better? He felt her heart was in the right place, that she truly wanted him to regain the use of his arm and hand, but she also forced him to see that he had another avenue to go to if plan
A failed.
Jake spoke to the hospital every day. He hadn’t mentioned Lauren’s observation to anyone. Once he’d been tempted at the end of the call, but at the last minute he decided against it. Fear and the possibility of hopelessness paralyzed him as much as the inability to use his arm. There was one point when he thought he could move it, the first time Lauren took his arm. He was sure he could pull away from her. But it didn’t happen.
“Good morning,” Lauren said as she entered the kitchen. “I could smell the coffee.” After pouring herself a cup, she sat opposite him and slid a piece of paper across the table.
“What’s this?”
“These are the tests you’re about to have for your arm and hand. You didn’t make an appointment, so I talked to Dr. Chase and made one for you.”
“You had no right.”
“I’m more than a friend, so I gave myself the right. I wouldn’t let you drive drunk, so I won’t let you atrophy if you don’t need to.”
Jake looked at the list. CT scan, MRI, myelography and electromyography.
“Since you already have a baseline, they can compare the new tests and see if there is a change.”
“I just went to a doctor not that long ago. I don’t need to go again.”
“Haven’t we already had this conversation?” she asked. “You agreed to go if I’d go with you. So, we’re going.”
She made it sound final. Jake wasn’t convinced. He’d been through this before and nothing good ever came of it.
“When is this appointment?”
“Tomorrow morning, nine o’clock.”
“How’d you get one so quickly? These usually take months if it isn’t an emergency.”
“You underestimate your status in the medical community. They were glad to fit you in.”
Jake knew fighting with her was a waste of time. If she had to, she’d hire orderlies to strong-arm him and carry him to the doctor’s office. He may as well go. What could one more appointment reveal, tests or no tests? And then Lauren would know that her efforts were fruitless. He had to give her credit for trying. For someone who’d never been a companion, she took very good care of him. He almost laughed when he saw the list of tests. Dr. Chase must have explained the terms myelography and electromyography. Lauren had even pronounced them correctly.
“All right, Doctor.” He said the word sarcastically. She was acting like she knew what she was talking about. “I’ll go, but don’t expect anything new to come from this.”
“At least it’ll keep your mind from gnawing at you that something might be happening. You’ll keep trying to move your arm every day and if still nothing happens, it’ll eat at you until you retreat to that bed again.”
Jake had tried to move his arm and hand, that was true. He’d spoken to both out loud and willed either to move just a centimeter. He wanted some sort of validation that what Lauren had seen and felt was real. But nothing happened.
Jake stood up, taking his coffee cup with him. He leaned against the refrigerator and stared at Lauren.
“What?” she finally asked.
“Your ex called you Lori,” he stated.
“It’s a shortened version of Lauren,” she admitted.
“How about Graves? Is that a shortened version of Peterson?”
Lauren’s cup stopped halfway to the table.
“You’re Lori Graves. We went to college together.”
“I didn’t think you even knew my name back then,” she said.
“I didn’t. But the night your ex-husband called you Lori, I remembered why I thought you looked familiar. But you’ve changed. You wore your hair in a long ponytail back then. And you hardly ever said a word.”
“It was a bad hair year,” she said.
“My yearbooks are in storage, but I accessed one online and found a photo of you. Under the without-a-smile face was the name Lauren Graves.”
“I was Lauren Graves. When I married I took Richard’s last name.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew who I was when you first came?” Jake asked.
“Do you remember our first encounter in this apartment?”
He nodded. “I hardly gave you time to say much.”
“Between trying to get me to leave and ignoring me, how could I say, ‘By the way, I sat a couple of rows behind you in physics class during college’?”
“Physics.” Jake returned to the table and sat down. “How did you become a kindergarten teacher when you were in physics?”
“That wasn’t my major.”
“Then why did you take it?”
She looked down and up again. “I was interested in someone in the class. He was enrolled, so I enrolled too.”
Jake smiled. “I suppose we’ve all done something like that. What happened? Did you two date?”
She shook her head. “I lost track of him after graduation.”
“But you met someone else.”
“And you will too,” she answered.
Jake almost blurted that he wouldn’t. He’d gone down that road once and while he’d truly like to get to know Lauren better, he wasn’t thinking of ever marrying. Not after his last fiasco with Jennifer.
“Someone I can call by a pet name?” he asked.
She smiled. Jake didn’t like it. Was she thinking of her ex?
“You’re not planning to call me Lori, right?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He didn’t tell her the name he would dream of.
* * *
“JAKE, I’M BACK,” Lauren called. She’d been out running errands. Jake didn’t respond. She checked the kitchen, then the media room. Jake wasn’t in either, but there was a book lying on the sofa.
She dropped her packages and stepped over to look at it. Catholic University’s yearbook lay closed on the sofa. Feelings of loyalty and past friendships during her college years flooded her memory. Her alma mater. Hers and Jake’s. Sitting down, she picked up the heavy tome and laid it across her lap. The book was from her junior year. Jake would have been a senior. She started to flip the pages, curious to see his younger face. She noticed a card acting as a bookmark. Opening to that page, she gazed at the two-page spread and smiled.
“You found it,” Jake said, coming into the room.
“You went to the trouble of getting this out of storage?” she asked, glancing up at him and then down at the book, opened to an arrangement of color photos and students’ names under each one.
Jake took a seat, but said nothing.
Lauren giggled. She saw the picture of herself with a group of students from the biology club. Lauren thought about that girl, tall, lanky, all arms and legs. While other girls walked as if they’d had modeling classes, Lauren was a fish in a jungle; lost, out of place, trying to find where she fit in the scheme of things. Thankfully, she found it with the biology club.
“Look how young and pretty you are.” His shoulder brushed hers as he leaned forward to point at her sitting in the center of the photo.
“I haven’t seen pictures like this in years.”
“We were talking the other morning about being at the same college. So I went to find the actual yearbook. I couldn’t remember us being in a class together.”
“You wouldn’t,” Lauren teased.
“And why is that?”
“You were a BMOC. Everyone knows a big man on campus. You excelled in everything. You were handsome, intelligent, great at sports and always surrounded by beautiful women. Do you think with all that glamour you’d even notice her?”
She pointed to her own photo. Her bangs were too long, although her flyaway hair had been brushed and sprayed for the photo.
Jake didn’t answer her question, but posed another one. “What was your major? This is a biology club. Weren’t you in education?”
She shook her head. “Biology w
as my major.”
“Did you plan to teach it?”
Lauren turned the pages, looking for a photo that had Jake in it.
“I planned to go to medical school,” she said. Lauren knew it was better to stick to as much of the truth as she could.
“What happened?”
She looked down again at the pages of the yearbook. She turned several of them intent on finding photos of Jake.
“Lauren?” he prompted.
“Tuition and fees,” she said. “I thought I’d work for a while, earn the money and apply later. Then I was married and I had Naliani.”
She left it at that. The sequence was wrong, but she couldn’t tell Jake that.
Not yet.
She found a photo. “Look at you.” She knew she sounded a little excited. Jake was on the track field, totally airborne as he cleared a hurdle. Lauren compared the younger Jake with the man he was now. He’d gotten more handsome with age. The nineteen-year-old was still angular. While Jake had mellowed over the years, he had a worldliness about him in the photo. His experience and maturity showed.
And Lauren liked it. The first time she saw him, she thought he was the most striking guy she’d ever seen. The years between college and now had been more than kind to him. He was even better-looking today than he was back in college.
Jake frowned at another photo of himself, this one in a classroom. “I should have had a haircut.”
“You didn’t know they were going to take a photo that day.” Jake was in the third desk closest to the windows. Lauren didn’t know what the subject was since there was no board. Books were open on desks, but she couldn’t tell what subject they covered.
The photography club often took photos for their classes, the school paper or the yearbook. This looked like one of those. As a rule, they snapped a disproportionate number of photos of the popular campus students, Jake being one.
“What was it like for you in college?”
Lauren smiled. “I had my share of parties, dances and being too tired to go to class after a long night. For the most part, I enjoyed it.”
“You were the loved-to-learn type, I bet.”
“As were you,” she threw at him. Flipping the pages back to the beginning, she again looked at the photo of a nineteen-year-old Jake. “Remember him?” Lauren pointed to the picture.
Healing the Doctor's Heart Page 14
