“He was an arrogant kid.”
“Doctor in the making,” she said.
* * *
LAUREN SCANNED THE list of doctors in the wing of the hospital where she and Jake waited. She sighed with relief when she didn’t see any name she knew. Jake looked stoic. She knew he didn’t want to be here and she tried to make jokes or talk to him to get him to relax. He was having none of it.
Finally, in the waiting room, she took his hand. While it didn’t respond to her touch, the action seemed to have a calming effect on him. It was short-lived. As soon as the nurse came out and called his name, he tensed. Taking a moment to breathe, he stood up.
“I’ll be right here when you come out,” she said.
“You’re going with me. This was your idea. You can see it through.”
Lauren stood and the two went through the door into the labyrinth of back corridors of the hospital. Jake was shuttled from room to room. Doctors and technicians massaged, probed and tested various levels of activity in his muscles. They moved his right arm and hand, rotating them up and down and opening and closing his fingers. They asked Jake to try to move both his hand and arm himself. Nothing happened.
In another room, Lauren watched as a technician slid Jake, who was lying on a large table, into the cylindrical scanner of an MRI machine. After that, he was taken for the electromyography. This was the test Lauren was most interested in. It could help diagnose or exclude muscle disorders, those that affected the motor neurons in the brain or spinal cord, and nerve roots.
The thing none of the tests could determine was Jake’s will to use his hand. While these tests would rule out any medical condition preventing his movement, they did nothing to explain any underlying psychological reasons preventing his movement.
Most people having medical tests considered it a slow process since it could take days or weeks for the results. It was stressful for the patient and, in Lauren’s case, the parents. Dr. Chase said he’d fast-track the results as much as he could and give Jake a call. After that, Jake couldn’t get out of the hospital fast enough.
Jake practically sprinted to the car. Good thing for Lauren, since she saw a colleague she knew and stopped to say hello. Her eyes darted back and forth to Jake to make sure he didn’t double back and ask to be introduced. Lauren finished her conversation and headed for the car. Jake was already in the passenger seat.
The trip back to the apartment was made in silence. Lauren searched for something to say, but not talking seemed the better decision. She kept quiet until they were inside the apartment.
“Are you going to sulk for the rest of the day?” she asked.
“I do not sulk,” he said.
“Then what is your definition for your attitude?”
“I told you it was a waste of time.”
“You don’t know that, at least not yet. Wait for the test results.”
“I’m a doctor. I know,” he said.
“If you’re a doctor, why haven’t you healed yourself?”
He turned away from her, offering his silent back. Inwardly, Lauren flinched. She could tell that she’d touched a live nerve and he didn’t like it.
* * *
THE SOUND FROM the television room was loud. What was Jake doing in there? He hadn’t come out in three hours. Lauren had the day off, but she’d come back early and hadn’t disturbed him. Now, she was getting worried. Going to the door, she listened for a moment. All she could hear was the booming sound of the television.
Slowly she opened the door, peering inside as if there was something she shouldn’t see. The huge television screen was covered by war tanks, advancing toward an unknown enemy. Jake sat on the sofa, his posture erect as the action on the screen played out before him. He seemed mesmerized by the program.
“Jake,” she called out to him. He didn’t move, didn’t look her way or react to her presence. She called out to him again, receiving the same nonreaction. Walking to the sofa, Lauren noticed the remote control next to Jake. Reaching over the back of the sofa, she picked it up and clicked the off button.
Jake whipped around.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He said nothing for a long moment.
“I was watching a movie.”
“You weren’t. The movie was watching you. You were staring at that screen as if it had control of you.”
“I was not.”
Lauren came around the sofa and took a seat in front of Jake.
“This is me, Jake. You can talk to me. Why are you watching this movie?”
“I wanted to see something, test something,” he said.
“The explosion,” Lauren answered for him. “You want to see if the TV explosion and your explosion produce the same emotional results in you?”
“How did you know?”
“I was holding your hand in the theater when the explosion happened on-screen. Are you trying to recreate the feelings you had during the explosion that paralyzed your arm?”
“I’m trying to deal with it.”
“Is this the best way? What would a psychologist or psychiatrist advise you to do?” Lauren asked. She wasn’t sure if his watching movies was a good idea.
“I haven’t consulted one.”
His tone told her he had no plans to do so.
“All right. I’ll watch with you.” She turned the television back on and slipped into the seat next to him. “I need you to tell me what you’re feeling.”
She hit the back button to a part long before the explosion would take place. Jake was tense next to her. She sat close. While they weren’t touching, she could feel his body heat and stay alert to changes in his demeanor.
“What is this about?” she asked.
“It’s a war story, set in World War II. The goal of the mission is to blow up a bridge to keep the enemy from being able to cross it.”
Lauren recognized the story. It was an old black-and-white movie, for which she was silently thankful. Watching the explosion would be hard enough for him without the realistic blood and gore and special effects of more modern films. As they got closer to the scene, she took his hand. He was no longer glued to the screen, but there was a tenseness in his arm.
As the bomb exploded and soldiers were flung and killed, Lauren was the one to jump. She jerked his arm with the movement.
“Sorry,” she said. For the rest of the movie, they remained silent. The Allies won and the world was set right.
“How do you feel?” she asked as the credits rolled.
“I’m wondering how you feel,” he said. “The explosion seemed to affect you more than it did me.”
“It’s that huge screen. Even in black and white it was way too realistic.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I felt none of the emotions that occurred that day.”
“Pardon me for disagreeing with you, but that’s not true. So tell me.”
“Before you came in, I thought the explosion would force me to relive the incident, but it didn’t.”
Lauren didn’t believe that it hadn’t, not for a moment. She felt the way his arm tensed. She could see the way he held his body. The explosion had an effect on him, but he was a guy and a doctor, the worst kind of people to accept that something might be wrong with them.
“Are you planning to watch more of these?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think I need to.”
“I agree with that,” she said.
“You’re skeptical about the value of me watching them?”
“More like concerned,” she said.
He smiled at her. “More than friends.”
Lauren nodded. “Friends don’t let friends watch explosions alone.”
The mood lightened, but Lauren was unconvinced Jake hadn’t been affected by the movie and she wanted to know now. Just as she
was about to ask, he lifted his left hand and brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. Waves of heat coursed from her face to her toes. She squeezed his hand harder and sought control.
Lauren fought to keep her plan in mind. Whenever he touched her or she touched him, all she could think of was how much she wanted to move closer to him.
“Tell me how you felt watching the explosion.”
Jake shifted. “I don’t suppose I can get you to drop this subject.”
“I could, but you need to understand your response more than I do.”
He thought about that for a moment, then spoke. “In the movie theater, the explosion was a surprise, just as it was in reality. Both times, it was the last thing I ever expected to happen. I tensed.”
“Go on.”
“For a moment, I relived the impact. I felt my body lifted from the ground and slammed against the building. I felt my arm bend under the pressure of my weight. Yet none of that happened in the theater, obviously. It was only in my mind.”
“And today? Watching the explosions here?”
“These were different. I was ready for them. I expected them to happen, and they didn’t affect me. I didn’t forget the impact or the feelings that came with my own experience, but I didn’t feel them as I watched.”
“Wonderful.” She smiled.
“You know I do this just for you.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re always so happy when I conquer something that I have told myself I can’t do and you force me to try, anyway.”
“Trying is what’s important. You’ll never succeed at anything if you don’t try it first. I like it that you’ve been trying so hard.”
“Thank you, teacher.”
“Indeed,” she said. “I’ll get a chalk board and a ruler to drive the point home.”
Jake laughed. “Don’t. I can imagine you at the front of the classroom already.”
He pulled her close, twisted his finger around loose strands of her hair. Lauren closed her eyes and stopped breathing.
“The next time you decide to watch a movie, invite me,” she told him.
“What about Naliani? Suppose I choose a movie about a mother who loses a child.”
Lauren visibly stiffened.
CHAPTER TWELVE
NO ONE KNEW better than Jake that we all have baggage we bring to every friendship or relationship. He certainly had his load to carry and Lauren had helped him lift it. As for him helping Lauren lift hers—he wished he could do something. But the one thing she had not done was forgive herself for the death of her daughter.
She hid it well. There was a glass shell around her that kept people out and held all her grief in. Just like those costumes she had worn, they made her someone else, even if just for a short while, someone who didn’t have to face the realities of the world.
They were a pair, Jake thought. He’d been like that, unable to see that a change might be necessary. Then Lauren had come into his life like a godsend. He couldn’t have ordered anyone better. She was both like him and different. She was starting over, but mostly by running away. He’d retreated into this apartment, while she planned to leave the city and go someplace new. The surroundings might help initially, but they wouldn’t displace the grief. It would go with her.
“Why did you name her Naliani?” Jake asked.
Lauren gave him a watery smile. “She was conceived while we were on a business vacation in Indonesia. It’s a surname there, but I loved it and we decided on it when she was born.”
“I like it,” he said. “Tell me about her.”
Lauren shifted in her seat, drawing her knee under her. “She was the most beautiful child in the world.”
“I had no doubt.”
“She was smart and happy. She liked to dance around whenever she heard music playing. There was one commercial that had a lot of drums as a background. She’d hear it and immediately start to dance.”
She smiled, but Jake saw her eyes begin to fill with water. She might cry, but she needed to revisit her daughter as much as he needed to revisit the explosion.
“Tell about the day she got sick?” He expected a kneejerk reaction from Lauren and he got one. She’d shifted on the couch. Moving closer to her, he put his arm around her shoulders. “Tell me,” he whispered.
“She was fine when she went to bed that night. I read her a story. Her favorite book was about a dinosaur. Usually, she stayed awake until I finished reading, but that night she fell asleep. Still she felt perfectly well when I kissed her good-night.”
Lauren paused. Jake was sure she was coming to the terror a mother must feel when she realized something was seriously wrong.
“I woke up hearing her crying. She was holding her head. Tears ran down her face and she was hot. Her temperature was too high to get her to the hospital without aid. I wrapped her in a blanket soaked in tepid water while Richard called for an ambulance.”
Again, she paused. She took several long breaths as if she were drinking the air. Jake felt helpless. He wanted to do something, but there was nothing he could do, nothing he could say. It was a process and she had to go through it.
“We got her to the hospital.” She stopped.
“You don’t have to go on,” Jake told her. “You’re obviously in distress.”
She nodded against him, her head on his shoulder. She dragged the air in and out, her mouth open. Jake patted her back, rubbed his hand up and down, trying to calm her. He should never have asked about her daughter. It was too painful a subject.
“They rushed everything, all the tests,” she continued. “Because of how much pain she was in.”
Her voice came out in short staccato bursts.
“It wasn’t enough. By morning she was gone.”
The last was delivered calmly as if all the weight she carried had fallen away. Jake was smart enough to know that only part of it was gone. But the healing process she needed had begun. He didn’t push her off his shoulder. She stayed there until she fell asleep. He was comfortable holding her and she trusted him enough to open up to him. He would never forget that.
He felt useful, not useless. He’d helped her. A surge of pride went through him. The closest he could get to how it felt was when he saved a patient’s life for the first time. He was exhausted at the end of the ordeal, but the adrenaline flowing through his body could light up a small city.
He wasn’t exhausted holding Lauren. He was falling in love with her and that alone gave him a powerful rush.
* * *
CAL HAD CALLED weekly since he’d been gone. There wasn’t a routine. He didn’t always call on the same day at the same time, but he checked in regularly. Jake didn’t do the same and he was beginning to feel a little guilty about the one-way communication.
He picked up his phone and searched for his brother in the contacts list, then clicked on his number. Cal answered on the first ring.
“Jake, are you okay?”
His voice held concern. Jake could hear noise in the background, heavy trucks, men shouting.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I thought I’d give you a call for a change.”
Silence. Jake could almost see his brother’s shoulders slump in relief.
“I’m glad you called.”
“I won’t keep you long. I can hear you’re on a site.”
“Don’t bother about that,” Cal said.
The noisy background suddenly quieted. Jake pictured Cal stepping into a construction trailer.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Cal said.
“Not much. I am driving now. I’ve been taking the car out several times a week.”
“You’ve been doing what?” Cal asked, his voice rising.
“You heard me. I’ve been driving my car and I’m doing some consulting with the hospital.”
Jake listened to the silence on the other end of the phone. He wasn’t sure what Cal was thinking. He wanted him to be happy for him. He knew Cal was concerned about him, but he hadn’t been here for the last three months. Lauren was here and Jake knew she was the reason for his progress, for the change in how he felt about himself.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Jake heard the caution in his brother’s voice.
“It’s an excellent idea. And don’t worry, I’m a lot more conservative than I used to be.” Jake knew Cal was probably thinking of his wild days, his racing and participating in extreme sports. “Lauren is always in the car with me and I wouldn’t take a risk and possibly hurt her.”
“Do I hear a note of—”
“You do not.” Jake was quick to erase that thought. There was nothing going on between them. Despite their kiss and some feelings he didn’t want to take out of the box he’d stored them in, he didn’t want to have Cal thinking a romance was going on.
“She’s a beautiful woman. Most men would—”
“I’m not most men,” he cut his brother off.
“I doubt she’d be concerned about your arm.”
He knew she wouldn’t. “Drop it, Cal. There’s nothing going on there. What about you? Is there some female engineer you’ve discovered for more than her brain?”
Cal laughed. “Not yet, but I still look.”
He implied Jake didn’t. Since his fiancée had left him, Jake hadn’t thought of women, but with Lauren in the apartment it was hard not to think of her.
“I have to go,” Jake said. He wanted to end the call. It was getting too close to a subject he didn’t want to pursue. “I have a consult with the hospital.”
“At this hour?”
Jake checked the clock. It was ten o’clock in the evening. “You know doctors have crazy hours.”
The brothers hung up and Jake thought about how much their relationship had improved. He wondered about himself after the accident and how he’d treated those around him. If Cal hadn’t hired Lauren, would Jake still be sitting in a silent apartment watching the sun rise and set and doing nothing in between?
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