Back in Dr. Xenakis' Arms

by Amalie Berlin

  The cool, supple leather of the chair reached through her light linen trousers, giving another tactile wink of comfort, soothing against the heat she’d absorbed, enough for her to notice that her head ached in a way that said it had probably been throbbing for a while.

  The office door stood open and she swiveled the chair to watch through the aperture, silently counting breaths until the roar of memories she’d been trying to ignore since Theo’s call faded back a little.

  The will that had carried her through those first months after her banishment forced it into something closer to a buzz. No, not a buzz—though it was just as discordant. Like her head was a radio receiver.

  She stood as if at the edge of the signal for two overlapping stations—oldies and current hits. Annoying. Distorting. Confusing. Impossible to ignore. Because she knew the old song better, and it broke through the new one just enough that she wasn’t quite sure which song she was actually listening to. She could walk around in the present—she’d learned the lyrics—but the old song she knew by heart.

  During the first two years after she’d been gone, the balance had been different. Her days had been filled with the oldies station, but now and then something new had broken through. Eventually she’d forced herself to learn the new words, to sing the song of today, and the balance had gradually shifted. She’d studied harder, because a mind full of calculus and physics had less room to wallow in the terrible injustice and loss of what had happened to her.

  A corridor of bright light opened across the floor of the reception area, broken by a lumbering, misshapen shadow as the door swung closed, followed by the sounds of exertion. A call for help came from a rusty voice, and those she could see sitting in Reception turned worried eyes to her through the office door.

  No one was out there to help. And they did see her as a doctor, no matter her clumsy, inept, socially awkward arrival.

  Strength she’d been faking the whole day appeared, and Erianthe launched herself from the chair and out of the office. A man crouched on the floor beside a pregnant woman who leaned heavily on her left hip as she pressed at the right side of her swollen belly with her other hand. Six months? Seven? Less if it was multiples.

  She’d made her occupation treating and helping pregnant women in distress, but when childbirth came unnaturally there was another feeling—something that twisted her insides and made her second-guess her career choice. Just for a second.

  Erianthe knelt beside her, introducing herself and asking the man, “Did she fall onto the floor?”

  “No. I put her down. You’re the baby doctor?” the man asked, reaching for her arm as if touching her made her more real to him, more of a comfort, and that conveyed all the trust and hope he was putting into her by giving this woman into her care.

  The baby doctor. Theo must have told them she was coming.

  “Yes. I’m an obstetrician. Tell me what happened.”

  Just then Petra came out of somewhere with a mug of something steamy and a plate in her hand—but, seeing Erianthe kneeling beside a patient, she put them down on her reception desk and ran to get a wheelchair.

  God bless her, the woman really was the dynamo Theo had promised. How had she forgotten about Petra?

  The three of them got the patient transferred to the chair and Petra took control, steering them all toward the office Erianthe had just vacated and leaving them there to get files and supplies.

  “You’re having pain?” Erianthe asked the woman, who nodded and pressed on her right side.

  “Tell me about the pain. How did it start? Can you describe how it hurts?”

  Though it was difficult for the woman to talk, within a couple short sentences Erianthe was able to determine that she was likely not dealing with a normal—if premature—birth situation.

  “You were shifted to your left hip on the floor, so does it hurt more when you lie on your right?”

  She took the woman’s wrist to track her pulse rate, while listening to the patient describe symptoms she had already expected: increased nausea, but only after the onset of pain, which had coincided with the sudden onset of bowel issues...

  Petra returned with a familiar face in tow.

  “Cailey!”

  Erianthe hadn’t seen her onetime good friend since leaving the island, back when they’d become close because her mother had worked in the Nikolaides household. Cailey was someone Erianthe had always missed but had lost because she hadn’t been able to think of a way to talk to anyone and maintain her secrets back then.

  Still couldn’t—not really. The first thing she wanted to do upon seeing her was confess, clear the air, but that kind of confession would only throw more debris around. They’d all choke on it.

  It was hardly the time for even a proper greeting, let alone a confession, so Erianthe grabbed Cailey by the shoulders for a quick hug—she’d offer to help with the wedding when they had a few minutes to catch up. Then she got on with it, because that was what the moment demanded.

  “I need temperature and blood pressure. She’s presenting with symptoms of appendicitis. Do we have a proper examination room? What about imaging equipment? I’d like to do some tests. There’s a lab, right?”

  “Appendicitis?” the man asked, the wobble in his words conveying the worry of a husband and father, not just a friend. Which she should have expected if she’d given it a moment of thought. Mythelios was still quite traditional, even beyond the standards of the rest of Greek culture. And he was a good husband, if the deep furrow of his brows and the amount of lip sweat meant anything.

  “That means there is an inflammation in her appendix. We’re going to check it out very well. Then we’ll know more about what we need to do to treat her. How long has the pain been going on?”

  Over the next few minutes Cailey confirmed the low-grade fever that spoke of infection, and the husband spoke of having worn his wife down and made her come to the clinic after a night of increasingly unbearable pain.

  “Who is our surgeon?” Erianthe would be happy when she got up to speed well enough to keep from alarming her patients by questioning the treatment options available here.

  “Dr. Xenakis has the most experience,” Cailey answered.

  As hard as Erianthe had worked to know as little as possible about Ares, she did at least know his specialty was emergency medicine, not surgery.

  She leaned in to speak quietly to Cailey. “No general surgeon on the staff right now?”

  “Ares has a great deal of experience. He got it in the field, with that unit he’s with. The one that travels to isolated areas to help people.”

  Something she hadn’t been aware of. Ares was with an outreach charity? That didn’t strike her as fitting his always larger-than-life personality.

  “Is he here?”

  As if she didn’t know...

  “He is. Let’s get Jacinda into a room,” Petra interjected, once again taking charge. “I’ll send him in. Dr. Nikolaides, do you want to change your clothes? We have extra scrubs in the corner cabinet there. Just close the door after us and change. We’ll be in the rear examination room.”

  Not exactly the way she’d pictured her first day back. She had planned to say hello and tell her brother that because she felt weird about interrupting his new love nest with Cailey she was going to stay elsewhere, all the while carefully avoiding seeing Ares with the ninja-like sneaking skills she possessed only in her delusional imagination.

  Now she was going into surgery with him. Another perfect point to her first day.

  “You’re going to get her into CT?” she asked, snapping back into motion before Cailey could escape.

  Cailey paused, the expression on her face reticent, regretful. “We don’t have a working CT scanner at the moment. Ours is on the fritz after the earthquake. I figured you’d want a CBC to check for infection?”

  She waited
for Erianthe to answer, but Petra kept going with Jacinda.

  The CT scan wasn’t absolutely necessary—doctors had been correctly diagnosing appendicitis decades before imaging became available—but it was like a safety net. And today they would be working without a net.

  “Yes to the blood panel,” she answered, weighing her options.

  Flying in and out of the island was still difficult, and time was of the essence with appendicitis. She’d consult with Ares, then make the call.

  Ares.

  She didn’t need the warning flares her body was sending up to remind her how emotionally loaded his name was. She couldn’t even think it without those feelings of outrage and heartbreak rushing into her mouth, metallic and bitter.

  Dr. Xenakis was safer. Easier on her fraying nerves.

  Having something to do would help her, as it had always helped her. And helping her first patient on Mythelios would be even better. Filling up the hole that had opened in her chest with honorable duty.

  The cabinet’s supply of extra scrubs needed restocking, and she made a mental note to see if an order had been made. They’d probably been hit hard in the days after the quake, when patient clothing had been ruined either in accidents or during emergency treatment and scrubs had been given out to wear instead.

  She found a set of bottoms she could wear, due to the horrors of a drawstring waist, paired it with a tentlike top, then hit her suitcase for better shoes, a hairband and a stethoscope. Scrubs weren’t meant to flatter a person, and she hadn’t come home to win some kind of fashion award.

  Later she’d let herself feel guilty for being glad someone needed her help. Having any kind of focus would let her meet Ares on a professional front, put all that personal stuff away—or at least make it clear to her brain what was important to the Erianthe of today: work. Personal emotional wounds, no matter how grievous, couldn’t bleed out or cause sepsis.

  She’d worked cordially and professionally with both lukewarm ex-boyfriends and jerks she’d rather kick in the face than speak to, and she had never lost her cool with them. Even when there had been good reason to lose her cool. This would be no different. He was no different from any other colleague.

  Closing the office door, she headed the way she’d been directed, grabbing her coffee and snack in transit, and practically inhaling half before she arrived at the patient’s room.

  She reached for the knob of the exam room door, but before her hand closed on it Theo appeared at her side and immediately grabbed her in a quick hug that required she hold her arms out in a wide V to avoid dousing him in coffee.

  Ever affectionate, even after the years of absence and neglect she’d forced on them both by staying so far away that his only choice in seeing her had been to come to her, this small display of affection when she was already worked up caused her throat to constrict. There was nothing she’d have liked better than to take shelter in the arms of someone she knew would always have her back. If she ever let herself ask.

  It galled her how close to the surface those old feelings had risen since she’d gotten off the boat.

  Turning her head, she kissed his cheek—something she could do—then stepped abruptly back. “Careful—you’ll end up with coffee down your back.”

  “Glad you’re here,” he said, in that laughing way of his. “We’ll catch up after, shall we? Are you up to seeing her? Do you need anything from me?”

  He was worried about her—and probably the patient too. Theo always worried about her, and one thing she hoped to accomplish by coming home was relieving that worry without burdening him with the secrets she’d hidden from everyone. Seeing this first patient to the best possible outcome would be a good start.

  She smiled, but then it wasn’t hard to smile at her almost inhumanly good-natured brother. “I didn’t walk here, or cross loads of time zones. I’m completely fine. I’m waiting for the blood work to get back to call it officially, but I’d be very shocked if there are no signs of infection. If she needs surgery, then I’m assisting.”

  He considered her for the swiftest second, then nodded. “Whatever you say. You’re the only obstetrician on the island since last spring, so you’re automatically picking up a full load of patients. We stay pretty busy, and we’re always looking for more people, but you’re going to need to hire a midwife and nurses. We’ll talk about that later.”

  More bits of information to file away for later. Good. All good things. Fill her head with work—best thing for her.

  Work had always saved her—or had done since the convent. The shock to her system from being sent away from everything and everyone she knew had helped kill the rebellious bent of her teenage years, but it had been the desire to provide for her child that had turned her life and her attitude around. And afterward study had been the only thing she’d had to cling to. She’d developed steady hands, a steady voice and eventually steady thoughts.

  But seeing Ares again would hurt, and even walking into a room he might already be in felt like reaching into an oven without gloves on—stupid, dangerous, damaging...

  She knocked and entered. Her eyes sought every corner of the room, and when they failed to find Ares anywhere, they found their focus instead.

  Cailey had peeled the paper backing off a bandage and applied it to the crook of Jacinda’s arm; the blood was already drawn.

  The husband hovered, tears in his eyes.

  Her patient, now in a hospital gown, lay curled on her left side. When she moved, and another pang hit her, her face crumpled in a way that drew attention to how young she was—just on the other side of twenty. But she didn’t cry out. She was not giving an inch to her pain, with the will of someone who’d already survived more than this could amount to in her life.

  Five minutes later Erianthe had double-checked for signs of early labor, gotten up to speed on her patient’s medical history, and was gingerly palpating her right side in the waist region when Ares burst in.

  She’d almost started to relax, but that ended the second he arrived. He said nothing, and she didn’t look over at him, but she felt him there—like the tingle of power in the air after a lightning strike.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see his height, knew him to be taller than he’d been before, but couldn’t bring herself to look at him directly yet.

  “I’m Dr. Xenakis.”

  A pang vibrated in her belly, like a gong calling every cell in her body to attention.

  That voice wasn’t the voice that had whispered in her ear, murmured the sweet, artless words of a lust-drunk teenager, it was deeper and more resonant. Different. But the way he spoke...

  She’d never have mistaken his voice for another. There was a sort of roundness to his speech, an almost magical way of making simple words luxurious, like things you wanted to touch, to wrap yourself up in.

  It took her aback, and if she was going to function at all, she had to stay in the present, not go back to when she’d believed him to be the very essence of warmth, love and safety. Better to stay here, where she knew his promises had been knit with strands of bitter lies and had shattered under the weight of a few firm words.

  No protection. No safety. No love.

  It was different, because she knew better now.

  The others—Theo, Chris, Deakin and all the professional organizations who had licensed him—trusted Ares with patients, and so would she. Because she had no choice. And it wasn’t as if she had to count on him tomorrow. Just today. She wouldn’t fall into that well of longing if she looked at him.

  That little reminder made it possible, even a little easy, to finally look at him.

  “Dr. Nikolaides said we had a—” His words came to a sudden, jarring halt when he focused on her.

  Different, her mind reminded her simplistically. Hairy was the next descriptor. He’d always been polished, with his dark hair cut every three weeks t
o keep the curls from taking over. Now his hair was long. Long enough to wear in a ponytail at the back of his head. But it was the beard that really brought the difference into focus. She’d never seen a doctor, let alone a surgeon, with such thick facial hair.

  The air around him still said Ares, and his eyes—those vibrant green eyes that made her hate the first leaves of spring—were the same. But nothing else matched the Wildman in Scrubs she saw now.

  Still, her hands shook. Her breath shook. Her heart and belly and all parts in the middle... For a second she even thought it might be a late aftershock hitting the island, but no one else looked alarmed or off-kilter. Just her. And him—staring at her with cavernous silence.

  “Appendicitis.” Erianthe forced the word out, then took Jacinda’s hand, turning her attention back to her patient.

  He’s just another doctor. Just another colleague. Pretend he’s Dr. Stevenson, the brilliant jerk from your last hospital.

  What would she say to Stevenson?

  She’d be bold. Certain. She was certain.

  “It’ll take another ten minutes for the leukocyte count to come back, but it’s a formality. We should start prepping the surgical suite.”

  Another glance confirmed he’d gotten stuck in...what? The past? A desire to run? Dealing with the juxtaposition of seeing her again over a heavily pregnant belly when the last time he’d seen her she’d been carrying his own child?

  “Dr. Nikolaides?” Jacinda’s voice contained enough alarm to reclaim all Eri’s focus. “Your hand is shaking.”

  Damn. She smiled at Jacinda, even if it was a dodge in order to keep from talking about the fact that her focus was split. It shouldn’t be split. And it wouldn’t be. This event would pass—she’d force it down and contain it.

  “It’s just a need for coffee.”