by Linda Seed
“That’s what I wanted to talk about.” He told her about his symptoms, about the tests that had been ordered, and about the fact that his doctor suspected there was something going on with his liver.
“His liver?” Penny’s voice rose. “But he’s only twelve.”
He explained the main reason he was calling: Owen’s doctor had wanted to know more about Beverly DeLuca’s diagnosis, in case her disorder was genetic and might be the same thing afflicting Owen.
“They’re saying it’s alcohol-related,” Penny said. “That’s what we all thought. She used to have a drinking problem, but she’s been sober for years.”
Her voice grew thick, and she stopped talking. TJ imagined her trying to gather her emotions.
“Did you tell them she’s sober?” he said.
“Of course I did. They said it doesn’t matter, that the damage was already done. Which is just what I need, you know? It’s all I can do to keep it together without them telling me it’s her fault.” She started to cry.
“Ah, Pen.” He wished he could be there to give her a hug. They hadn’t been good together as husband and wife, but he still cared about her. He still thought of her as a friend. He listened quietly while she pulled herself together.
“Who’s Owen’s doctor?” she asked when she’d composed herself. “I want to call and hear about everything myself.”
“Bianca Russo. I’ll give you the phone number. Do you have a pen?”
“Bianca Russo?”
“Yeah. The office is in Morro Bay.”
“Not the same Bianca Russo we went to high school with, though. Right?”
He cleared his throat. “Actually, it is the same one. She still lives in Cambria. She’s a pediatrician now.”
Penny was silent. That didn’t bode well.
“Pen?”
“You’re telling me that when our son needed a doctor, you chose someone who was mooney-eyed over you all through high school? Someone who looked like she wanted to strangle me with her bare hands when we started dating?”
“What? She did not.”
“She did.”
Had she? And why was TJ the only one who hadn’t realized all of this at the time?
“Well … she’s got the highest ratings on Yelp of any pediatrician in the area. So, yeah. That’s where I took him.”
“Give me the number.”
He did.
When they were getting ready to hang up, he said, “Penny? If they’re wrong about your mom and the drinking, and if Owen really does have something genetic … well. Maybe if we figure out what’s wrong with him, we’ll figure out what’s wrong with your mom.”
“He has to be okay,” she said in a small voice. “He just has to be.”
TJ was going to do everything in his power to make it so.
TJ’s mind was all over the place the next day at work. He’d taken Owen to get the latest blood work first thing, as soon as the place opened. Then he’d dropped his son off at school and had gotten to his first appointment of the day ten minutes late.
The homeowner didn’t seem to mind—time was a casual concept in Cambria, a fact he’d forgotten but was now being reminded about—and TJ had set to work adding a new outlet to the guy’s bathroom.
It was neither a big job nor a hard one, so it gave his mind room to wander—which wasn’t exactly a good thing when you were worried about your kid’s health.
What if Owen got sick the way Penny’s mother was sick? What if his life was at risk?
TJ wouldn’t even contemplate the next logical question: what if he dies? There were places he wouldn’t let his mind go, and that question was first on the list.
Thinking about Owen’s health made him feel sick, like a gaping, festering hole was opening in the center of his chest, so he forced himself to think about something else.
Bianca Russo was a nice distraction when he separated the idea of her from the thought of Owen’s liver function.
Why hadn’t he noticed that she’d been stuck on him in high school? She’d been pretty, she’d been nice to him—and to everyone, as he recalled. She’d been smart as hell.
Maybe that was why he hadn’t noticed her. She was one of the smart kids, the college-bound kids, the kids preoccupied with AP classes and SAT prep and extracurricular activities chosen to look good on a college application.
TJ had never been interested in college. He’d had little patience for sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher drone on and on about whatever it was he was supposed to care about but didn’t. He liked to work with his hands, and he’d known even then that he wanted to work right out of high school, doing something useful. Something that would bring a paycheck that would make him self-sufficient now, not in four years or longer.
Back then, kids like Bianca didn’t hang around with kids like him. She wasn’t in his orbit.
Except she was, now that he thought about it, because she’d put herself there. She had been around him, if not in his immediate circle, then adjacent to it. Thinking back on that night of the date-that-wasn’t-a-date, he realized there had been no earthly reason for Bianca Russo to be in the group that had gone out together that night.
No reason except him.
He must have known, on some level, that she was attracted to him. And if some part of him had known, why had he decided not to go there?
Probably because she was out of my league.
Even as the thought popped into his head, he knew it was right. TJ hadn’t been a guy who liked to lose, and as a result, he hadn’t taken a lot of chances. If he’d thought Bianca was too smart for him, too promising, well … he’d have set his sights elsewhere.
On someone like Penny DeLuca.
Penny had been like him: working-class family, mediocre grades, smart enough to make a life for herself but not smart enough for that life to include more study, more classrooms, more books.
Yeah, maybe he’d settled for Penny. Which seemed harsh and possibly a little cruel, but true. He’d settled for her because she’d seemed attainable, and marrying her had seemed like the logical thing to do.
Penny deserved better than someone who had been settling. And Owen deserved better than to live in a house with parents who knew they didn’t belong together.
So, the divorce had been the right thing. It sucked for Owen, though. When you were twelve, you didn’t see the bigger picture. You only knew your life had been run through a blender and had spilled out looking like something completely unrecognizable to you.
And then this—the thing with his liver.
TJ felt like his mind was spinning around in circles, always coming back to Owen’s health. Because that was the only thing that really mattered, wasn’t it? If Owen was okay, then TJ was okay.
He really needed Owen to be okay.
The homeowner peeked around the corner into the room where TJ was down on his knees installing the outlet. The job was taking longer than it should, mostly because TJ’s mind was wandering.
“Almost done?” the guy asked. He was retired, in his sixties, with a balding head and a paunch spilling over his beltline.
“Yeah, almost. Sorry it’s taking so long. I guess I’m a little distracted.”
“Oh.” The man’s forehead wrinkled even more than usual. “Is that safe? I mean, with electricity and all …”
TJ paused with his tools in his hand and looked at the guy. “The breaker’s off. The only way anybody’s getting electrocuted is if lightning strikes us.”
“Oh. Well. Ha, ha.” The guy rocked back and forth on his loafers.
“Five minutes,” TJ told him. “Can you hand me that wall plate?”
10
A couple of days went by, and TJ still hadn’t heard from Bianca.
She’d said the test results could take a week to come in, but that was bullshit. When you had a kid’s health to worry about, who wanted to wait a week?
He told himself not to call her office and ask if, by some unforeseen miracle, th
e results had come earlier than expected. They were just going to say no, and on top of that, they’d be annoyed. It wasn’t going to do anyone any good.
And yet, during a break between jobs around midafternoon, he found himself picking up the phone and calling anyway.
Sofia was the one who took the call. After checking to see if the results were in—they weren’t—she held her hand over the big black office phone and caught Bianca as she was passing by behind the reception desk.
“Psst!”
Bianca didn’t seem to hear her, so she did it louder.
“PSST!”
Bianca stopped and blinked a few times. “Sofia, have you sprung a leak?”
“It’s TJ Davenport,” she mouthed, pointing at the phone in her hand.
“Oh.” Bianca forgot what she’d been doing.
Sofia hit the hold button and said, “He wants to know if Owen’s test results are in yet. They’re not, but … I thought maybe you wanted to tell him yourself.” She grinned and bounced a little on her toes.
“I’ve got patients. I’m already behind schedule.”
Sofia’s shoulders sagged. “Oh. Okay. I’ll tell him to call back in a couple of days and check again.” She moved to hit a button on the phone, but Bianca stopped her.
“No, no. Um … I’ll tell him.”
“Line two,” Sofia said.
“TJ,” Bianca said as she picked up the call. “It’s Dr. Russo. Bianca.”
“Oh. Oh, crap. They only have the doctor talk to you when it’s bad, right? Is it bad? Shit.”
“No. I mean … We don’t have the results yet.”
He exhaled audibly, either in frustration or relief. “Ah. I figured you didn’t, but … I’m kinda driving myself crazy worrying about it, so I thought I’d try.”
“I understand.” She tucked her hair behind one ear, then recognized that as a flirting gesture—which was stupid, since he couldn’t even see her. She put the hair back where it had been. “Look—TJ. I know you’re worried, but there’s no reason to panic. We don’t know what this is yet.”
“That’s why I’m panicking. If I knew what it was, I could make some kind of plan. I could figure out what to do. But this? This not knowing?” He let out a puff of air.
“As soon as we have some answers, we will make a plan. We will figure out what to do. We’ll do whatever’s best for Owen,” she said. “I promise.”
“Yeah.”
She heard the skepticism in his voice.
“TJ? What?”
“Well … doctors always say that, don’t they? They say they’re there for you. They say they’re going to help you, but when it comes down to it, you’re just a name on a chart. And I can deal with that when it’s me. But when it’s my son …” His voice had grown thick.
“I’m not like other doctors,” Bianca said.
After Bianca got off the phone, she thought about what she’d just said to TJ. She’d told him she wasn’t like other doctors.
But, was that true?
She thought about her average day: the crush of appointments, the pressure not to let herself get behind schedule, the red tape she and her staff had to wade through to appease the insurance companies.
She knew she didn’t give all of her young patients the attention and time they deserved. She did her best, yes. And she did genuinely care. But if she’d been accused of getting her patients in and out quickly, dispensing prescriptions and doing the minimum in order to keep things moving, could she really deny it?
Every doctor she knew was on the edge of burnout because of the demands of the job—not to mention the emotional toll it took when the worst-case scenario happened with a patient.
Was Bianca really any different?
TJ was right to worry that Owen would fall through the cracks. Every parent—and every patient—was right to worry.
But Bianca vowed that she wasn’t going to let it happen—not this time.
TJ knew it was probably bullshit when Bianca had said she wasn’t like other doctors. Yeah, okay, so TJ knew her a little. That didn’t mean Owen was any different to her than any of the other kids who came in and out of her office every day.
He sure as hell was different to TJ, though.
As he went about the rest of his day—picking up Owen from school, figuring out what to cook for dinner, putting a load of laundry into the washing machine—TJ nursed a thought that was nagging at him.
He wanted Bianca to get to know Owen as a person, to see how sweet and goofy and smart he was. He wanted her to be personally invested in Owen’s care. He wanted her to see Owen as an individual, not as a name on a chart.
As he considered it, there was more going on in his head than that. He was also feeling guilty about breaking her heart back in school. True, he hadn’t known that was what he’d done. But he’d done it, nonetheless, and knowing that made him feel like an ass.
He didn’t like feeling that way, and he couldn’t help thinking that talking to her about it would help. He could tell her that he hadn’t known about her feelings for him. He could tell her that he hadn’t realized their outing had been a date.
He could plead that he’d been a clueless male—because, hell, it was the truth.
TJ could kill two birds with one stone if he invited her over for dinner. That was something people did, wasn’t it? People had other people over for civilized evenings of food and conversation.
She could get to know Owen a little, and TJ could explain that he hadn’t intended to hurt her when she was an impressionable teenager and he was a big lunk of a guy just trying to get through each day until graduation.
He knew she was a professional, but he couldn’t help worrying that her feelings about him—whatever lingering resentment she might hold toward him—would color her treatment of his son.
Plus, he’d forgotten to tell her what he’d learned about Penny’s mom’s condition.
There were a lot of reasons to invite her, and very few not to.
That settled it. He resolved to call her—just as soon as he could get up the nerve.
The next day was a Saturday, and Bianca was home cleaning out the refrigerator when TJ called.
She had taken everything out of the refrigerator and was cleaning the shelves and surfaces with hot, soapy water. Her head was in the refrigerator, her butt sticking out the door, yellow rubber gloves on her hands, when her cell phone buzzed with an incoming call.
“Can somebody get that for me?” she called into the room. The phone was all the way across the living room, and anyway, it was the least the others could do for her, considering that she was possibly saving their lives by discarding any questionable food.
Benny, who was sitting on the sofa typing something into her laptop, snatched up Bianca’s phone from the coffee table. “Bianca’s phone,” she said to the caller. “She can’t take your call right now because she’s removing biohazards from the refrigerator. May I help you?”
After a moment, she said, “Oh. Hi, TJ. It’s Bianca’s sister Benny. I was Benedetta in high school. I doubt you remember me, though, because I was a couple of years behind you, and I hung out with the kids who played D&D in the library.”
Another pause.
“I’ll see if she’s available.”
Benny lowered the phone from her ear and looked at Bianca, who was staring at her, frozen, the big rubber gloves still on her hands.
“He doesn’t remember me,” Benny said. “Shocker, right? The guys he hung out with didn’t know my crowd existed unless they needed to shake somebody down for lunch money.”
Bianca whipped the gloves off her hands and rushed across the room to take the phone.
“TJ?”
“I heard that,” he said. “I never shook down anyone for their lunch money. Although some of my dipshit friends might have. I wasn’t very discriminating when it came to friends.”
Bianca couldn’t help grinning.
“He says he never shook anyone down for their lunch mon
ey,” she said to Benny.
Then, to TJ: “I was just doing some cleaning. But I checked on Owen’s test results before I left the office yesterday, and they’re not in yet. I’m really sorry, but I’m afraid the lab—”
“That’s not why I called.”
That stopped her. “It’s not?”
She heard him exhale in either nervousness or frustration. “I called because I wondered … I wanted to ask you to have dinner with me and Owen one night next week. At our house.”
“Oh.” Was he asking her out? On a date? Because one thing Bianca had learned in life was that a date with Troy Davenport could only lead to heartbreak. “That’s very nice of you, but—”
He pressed on before she could get the no out of her mouth.
“I just thought … Well. My mother tells me you had a crush on me in high school, and I was an insensitive jerk about it, and I felt bad. Thought maybe we could clear the air, since you’re Owen’s doctor and all.”
He didn’t want a date—he wanted to offer her a pity dinner. As much as she generally enjoyed being humiliated, the idea was less than appealing.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’m busy.”
That night at Ted’s—a dive bar a block off Main Street where the locals gathered to get away from the constant flow of tourists—Benny brought up the issue of the pity dinner. And the conversation wasn’t going in Bianca’s favor.
“I say you should go.” Benny popped a handful of bar peanuts into her mouth. “So what if it’s a pity dinner? It’s still a dinner you don’t have to cook, with a hot guy to look at. It’s a win-win.”
Ted’s was half-full that night, with groups of people around a few of the round wooden tables and a couple more playing pool. The dark bar smelled like spilled beer and old grease, and the sound system was playing a selection of hits from the eighties. Bianca and her sisters were sitting near the back of the room with a glass of Chardonnay for her, mugs of beer for Benny and Sofia, and a club soda with a wedge of lime for Martina, who was the designated driver.
