That Space In Your Heart
Chapter 4. Turncoat
He hadn’t been prepared to see Lizzie today. It was Sunday, too warm for late September, and he’d taken Gretel for a walk, the leash wrapped around his right hand, the dog padding wearily along beside him. She was slowing down; it wouldn’t be more than a year or two before she was gone.
In a fit of unaccountable idiocy, Robert had allowed himself to lead the dog over the bridge where he and Elizabeth had spoken before his surgery. It had always been a favorite place of his to wander, more so now that a certain spot emanated the memory of a pair of blue eyes filled with warmth, an auburn curl blowing in the wind.
That mass of red hair caught his eye from hundreds of feet away, but he always noticed red hair now, he couldn’t help it. Only by the blonde toddler trotting beside her did he recognize Elizabeth. For a full minute he watched the two wend their way through the crowd, approaching ever closer, readying himself for another bout with his weak side. When Elizabeth was close enough to catch sight of him, she halted and pointed him out to Ella, as Romano gently nudged Gretel along.
She approached with a cautious smile, holding Ella’s hand. Her hair was tied loosely back, a few curls still loose around her face, and her white halter top dipped distractingly low at the neck. There were sunglasses shading her eyes.
“Hi, Robert,” she said. Distant, cautious, polite.
He leaned against the railing, reminding himself to treat her like another hated colleague. After the kind of slip that he’d made all he could do was keep his distance, pretend it had been the morphine talking that day in the hospital. “Day off?”
“I have a shift tonight. Ella and I were just out enjoying the end of the Indian summer.”
They both looked down at Ella, who was reaching a dimpled little hand out to Gretel. With a slight return of her old gusto, Gretel sniffed at the hand, then proceeded to lick Ella all over her little face.
“Oh, God,” Robert muttered as Ella started whimpering and pushing the dog away. “She likes you, honey, she’s not trying to hurt you…”
Elizabeth seemed amused at his stuttering contrition. “It’s all right. Ella loves dogs, she just doesn’t really like being slobbered on.”
“I can fix that. Take this, will you?” He handed the leash over to Elizabeth and knelt down in front of Ella, who quieted down a bit and stared at him, frowning.
“Don’t tell me you carry a handkerchief.”
“Are you kidding? What are sleeves for?” He wore long-sleeved shirts everywhere now, no matter the weather. Pulling the cuff up over his hand with a deft twist of his thumb, he wiped Gretel’s affection off Ella’s cheeks. The little girl took the opportunity to blow her nose with great gusto into his sleeve.
Hastily he stood up, trying to contain his dismay. Lizzie was openly laughing. “Let me roll up that sleeve for you,” she said. “Don’t grimace like that, kids are supposed to be messy.”
Flushing at this new reminder that he couldn’t do things like roll up a sleeve for himself anymore, yet acquiescent as always when she talked kindly like that, Romano held out his hand. “You can drop the leash. Gretel’s not going anywhere fast.”
“She seems to have recovered nicely,” Elizabeth said, tucking his sleeve up to his elbow.
He sighed. “Sure. I guess.”
“Look, they’re friends again,” Elizabeth said, nodding to her daughter and the dog. Ella had knelt down and started petting the huge, grizzled head. She even accepted the dog’s kisses with equanimity.
Robert nodded. He’d been so distracted by the gentle hands on his arm, he hadn’t been paying attention to Gretel at all. “She’s mellowed out over the years. The dog, I mean.”
“Unlike her owner.”
His laugh, he knew, was not gracious. Ignoring his bad mood, Lizzie shook the hair out of her face and leaned back, facing Ella and the dog, her elbows propped on the railing behind her. Romano faced out at the water. His nostrils filled with the summery, greasy scent of warm sunscreen, mingled with the light perspiration shimmering on her neck.
“So, a night shift, huh?” he said. “That’s one thing I don’t miss about surgery, is the hours… When will you sleep?”
“Tomorrow morning, if I’m lucky. God knows, what with feeling so shitty already, and the Fish lawyer wanting to do a deposition. I just don’t want Ella to forget I exist.”
“You’re pretty tough to forget.”
She turned slightly, facing him. “How’s the arm?”
This again. “Still gone,” he said shortly.
“Yes, Robert, I
know that. I was asking about the pain. But I guess you don’t want me to ask about it.”
“Not particularly.”
“Fine. I won’t.”
Good, he wanted to say, like a bratty second-grader.
“Here’s a question,” Elizabeth said after a moment. “Why have you been calling me Dr. Corday?”
Romano couldn’t have this discussion with her eyes hidden. It put him at a disadvantage, like he was the only one vulnerable to examination. Before speaking, he reached out and flipped the sunglasses up off her eyes, nestling them on top of her head. A slight, puzzled frown wrinkled Elizabeth’s eyebrows. Her face was too expressive; it betrayed her when she was hurt or unsure.
Romano swallowed back whatever foolishness had overtaken his mind when her fingers brushed his arm a few minutes ago. “Now I can see your face,” he said. “Ask me again.”
Her voice was low-toned, husky, as she repeated the question. “Why have you been calling me Dr. Corday?”
With her voice throaty and full like that, he could manage only mild sarcasm. “Isn’t that your name?”
“I’ve always been Lizzie to you. You’ve never bothered to call me anything else, even in front of patients.”
“I’m trying to turn over a new leaf and show greater respect for my colleagues,” he quipped.
“There’s always an ulterior motive with you, Robert.”
“I didn’t think you liked being called Lizzie.”
She hesitated. “Right. I don’t.” Then, after another pause that reduced him to breathless suspense, “I called you twice this summer.”
Again that low voice, conjuring up gleeful imaginings in his sun-saturated mind. He wanted to slide his tongue inside that slight opening of her mouth – crush her against the splintered railing, her body bent backwards under his – tangle rough fingers in her hair—
He wrenched his gaze away and stared moodily out at the horizon. “I know,” he said phlegmatically. “I got your messages.”
“You stopped coming to the hospital for physical therapy. You disappeared.”
“You didn’t expect me to keep coming back to
County for medical care, I hope,” he said. “I’ve seen the way this place works. Look at the mess they made of the reattachment in the first place. I found a therapist I could trust over at Mercy.”
She tried to laugh. “Turncoat.”
He grinned roguishly. “I’m shameless.” And there he was, letting down his guard again, practically flirting. He’d never learn.
She scarcely noticed the smile. “You never called back. I had no idea where you were.”
“Well, now you know,” he said simply.
A minute passed in brooding, ugly silence before Lizzie said, “I could have helped you.”
He refused to meet her eyes.
“I came by the hospital while you were in recovery, but the nurses said you didn’t want any visitors, even your sister. All I could do was send flowers.”
He remembered: a dozen white daisies, which, still fresh and earthily fragrant, he had discarded in disgust when the temptation to press them and keep them forever became too great. Then, later, had come another, sweeter delivery, without a note because who else would have sent it? He reminded her: “And ice cream.” Cherry Garcia. A trifling little signal, nearly forgotten.
She nodded, but looked down at her hands. “I could have been there. I could have helped you the other night, with your arm.”
Romano seized the opportunity to be cruel, although it gave him no pleasure: “Thanks for this parade of dutiful concern, Lizzie, but you’re not my doctor anymore. It’s over, the arm is gone.”
Her eyes darted over to him, then away, then back. Good. She was off-balance again.
“Your help is no longer necessary,” he continued. “Or appreciated. So bestow it on someone who needs it, all right?”
Elizabeth expelled a quick breath, as if he’d punched her, but after a second she was tossing her head, regaining her inimitable composure. She flipped her sunglasses down over her eyes, and her voice had a cold, smooth hardness to it. “Okay, Robert, I’ll leave you alone. I’ll stand back as far as you want, as long as you want, until you go crazy from the pain in your arm. Whatever makes you happy.”
Some contrarian voice inside of him remarked with approval,
Nice recovery, even as something else reeled back in blinding hurt. Before kneeling down to play with Ella, Romano telegraphed wry, caustic approval with a raised eyebrow, a smirking smile, to salute her last-minute resurgence. No one could squash Lizzie; her superb, brilliant spirit was her loveliest charm and his greatest undoing.
Chapter 5: Drops of Water, Rivers of Blood
