Acute Reactions

by Ruby Lang

  “Let’s look at objective measures, then. I felt better. Kevin has improved.”

  Actually, he wasn’t sure how Kevin was with his allergies, but he couldn’t possibly be worse. Ian did feel guilty, though. He hated that he’d caused her to second-guess her abilities.

  “We could try to equalize the playing field. Tell me about your medical history.”

  She stood up.

  “Don’t mock me,” she said quietly. “You may think that I just hand out nasal sprays and I’m not someone who treats cancer or operates on the valves of your heart. These aren’t just scruples. Something unexpected could happen to you. Look at Sally Kerns. Her doc still isn’t sure what made her react that night. Don’t trivialize what I do.”

  “I’m sorry.” He stepped a little closer. “I’m not mocking you. I’m serious. I think I should learn as much about you as you know about me.”

  • • •

  She was furious and horny and her temples throbbed because no matter how much she was trying to control the situation, the reins seemed to slip out of her grasp. And he knew it.

  “Are you going to take my blood pressure?”

  “I’ll trust you on that. How is it?”

  “It’s fine.”

  It probably wasn’t. She could feel her heart drumming in her ears.

  “Is there anything significant in the family history?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He raised an eyebrow and she felt herself growing defensive. “I mean, no. Although I don’t know much about my dad’s side.”

  “That’s fine. I’ve already learned so much. Do you smoke, drink, do drugs?”

  “Does boxed wine count?”

  He was crowding her closer to the bar. And she was letting him. “Pervert,” he said, almost in her ear. “Are you sexually active?”

  “No.”

  But I’d like to be.

  She sat down on a barstool. Hard. “Are you sexually active?” she asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “But you had a girlfriend?” she persisted.

  “That ended months ago,” Ian said.

  “Why?”

  “I met you.”

  Danger, danger. Was this somehow her fault? He denied it, but had she been giving him signals? She had a crush on him and she’d tried to keep it tamped down for the sake of her practice and her sanity. But he knew and he’d come for her anyway. What’s the harm? her hormones whispered. He’s not your patient anymore.

  The pause was enough for him to seize control again.

  “Let’s get back on track. What are your allergies?”

  “I’m fine with aspirin and penicillin.”

  “So you’re an allergist with no allergies.”

  “Well, that question usually just means drugs. But I react to dust and cats.”

  “They match mine.”

  “Then clearly we belong together,” Petra said.

  She bit her lip and glanced up to see him smiling that half smile.

  “So, any other information you need?” she asked. “Insurance card?

  “I need to examine your arms.”

  “What?”

  But she knew what he meant. She looked down at the blouse she’d worn and tugged at the sleeves. As she rolled them over her elbows, the silk seams stretched. The openings squeezed her upper arms unattractively. “This is not the right outfit for this sort of thing,” Petra grumbled.

  “Hey, now you know how I felt.”

  “You knew coming in that I’d be sticking you. I didn’t know till ten minutes ago that you’d get the urge to play doctor.”

  He traced up her bare skin and the arm bulge caused by her tight cuff. Armfin top, Petra said to herself. Muffarm top. This is very definitely not sexy at all. But his nails continued to graze the curve of her elbow, and then he gently pushed two fingers under the edge of her sleeve and traced under her deltoid to the ridge of her latissimus dorsi. She felt a little breathless. The Latin wasn’t helping.

  “Well, that’s done,” he said, huskily. “Now I just have stick you with a bunch of needles.”

  His warm fingers still moved under her clothing.

  “Not a chance,” she said. Her own voice was a little hoarse.

  He dipped his head down and she closed her eyes. She had slid partway down the stool and his other hand had reached her waist brace her. He was near enough that she could feel his breath on her nape, so close she could almost feel his lips brushing against her. One of his knees touched the back of her leg. And he was tall, so tall that his body enveloped hers. She felt electrified.

  It was an awkward position to maintain.

  She shook his hand out of her clothing and almost fell off the stool.

  “Well,” she said, standing up, “I should probably get going.”

  She did not meet his eyes.

  “I’ll walk you home.”

  “Don’t you have a restaurant to run or something?”

  “They’ll muddle through.”

  He held up her coat and buttoned her up snugly. The walk was silent, but too short. They stopped in front of her building.

  “Thank you. For another dinner. And I’m sorry about Kevin and Penny. And Marsalis.”

  “Next time, we’ll try just the two of us.”

  “I don’t think there should be a next time.”

  “I disagree,” he said.

  Then he kissed her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  He hadn’t given her any warning, so his lips hit the corner of her mouth and her astonished eyes were still open. They froze, faces mashed together asymmetrically. His glasses were smudged and askew. Petra had stuck her arms out when he grabbed her and they were still flapping in the air.

  She began to laugh.

  “I can’t believe that I had you built up in my mind as some sort of sex god.”

  His arms were still around her and he could feel the vibrations from her giggles all the way up and down his body. The exhalations of her laughter blew over his face. He felt silly, embarrassed, turned on, and crazed, all at once.

  “Maybe this is stupendous and you have no idea what good is,” he said gruffly.

  “You missed. How can you be any good if you can’t even aim properly?”

  He kissed her sloppy and lopsided on the other side of her mouth and she laughed again.

  He made a move as if to kiss her mouth, then he bit her chin very gently. Her eyes fluttered shut. He started backing her into the side of her apartment building and he smoothed his lips over the point of her jaw, over the smooth cheekbone. Her fingers pressed restlessly against him and he squeezed the thick fabric over her camel coat wishing that he could find the narrow hips underneath. Her skin had felt like butterfly wings. He licked the corner of her eye and nosed her gently. He pretended to go for her mouth, then kissed her ear and her throat.

  She sighed. And like that, she let him go and pushed away from him.

  “Nice seeing you again,” she said hoarsely.

  She disappeared behind the door.

  • • •

  Inner Hippocrates was strangely silent as Petra stood in front of her mailbox and willed herself to calm down. He’d probably fainted dead away when Ian started his sacrilegious examination of her arms.

  Maybe it was okay because she hadn’t kissed him full on the lips. Maybe it was okay if there was no tongue involved. Maybe she could go through a whole relationship with Ian, including sharing forks, nakedness, and DVR remotes, as long as they didn’t kiss.

  Loophole! Loophole! her hormones chanted.

  She trundled herself up to her apartment. She felt elated and miserable at the same time. Was this the kind of confusion that came from lust and bad decisions? Had she given in irrevocably to impulse? Was she turning into her mother—a neurotic, worried creature whose pent-up itches led to terrible boyfriends and husbands?

  The answer, of course, was no. The husbands and boyfriends had their good points. And Petra had shut Ian down, after all
. She could practically see him panting against the glass as she’d closed the door.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror. A warm haze surrounded her. Same curly hair, same thin nose, but everything about her seemed duskier and dewier. Her skin felt sensitive. She was still slightly breathless. If she hadn’t known what it was, she’d think she were having an allergic reaction. A man with soft lips and dexterous hands had put himself against her and tunneled his fingers under her clothing. His eyes came alive when he saw her and he groaned when she left him. He wanted her. She definitely wanted him. It felt wonderful and delicious and corrupt.

  And she had put a stop to it and done the right thing. She should be proud of her self-control.

  She fell onto her couch, kicked her shoes to the floor, and shimmied out of her coat. As she did, her phone fell out of her pocket. She had a message from Helen.

  Were you drunk texting me yesterday evening?

  No, Petra thumbed back.

  A few minutes later, a reply pinged back.

  OK. I agree we’re both awesome.

  • • •

  Ian felt terrible. He felt restless. He felt energized. He felt wonderful. He was all over the place.

  He didn’t even have her number.

  Ian briefly considered heading back to Field after seeing Petra home. He imagined getting his mind off of the press of her small body by totaling receipts, glaring at his employees, and drying piles of white dishes. For some reason, that didn’t appeal. He had split another full day between Field and Stream. He decided to return to his apartment and have a shower. He carted an armful of mail upstairs, dropped it on the mantel, and looked around at his apartment.

  He had only brought girlfriends here a couple of times, and then, it was usually only a stop to pick up a shirt that didn’t smell like a deep fryer, or to change into sneakers. He wondered if any of those ex-girlfriends had even sat on the couch. He seemed to remember offering someone a glass of water, and not finding any clean cups.

  What was Petra’s apartment like? Would he be invited in? She still knew much more about him than he knew about her. He had planned to draw her out with questions, but instead of taking his time, he’d shoved his fingers under her blouse. Of course, he’d only managed to feel up her arm. It was a nice arm.

  He made his way to the shower, dropping clothes and shoes along the way. He looked in the mirror at his bare chest and shoulders. The bones stuck out more than they used to. He had lost weight over the last couple of months and it made him look older. Had she noticed? Of course she had. Her bright glance missed nothing; when it sparked over his body he wanted to crush her to him to see if he would burn up.

  He had it bad.

  He took a cool shower and emerged rubbing a towel in his hair. He surveyed his apartment. He thought about hiring a cleaning lady, but he always reasoned that there was nothing to clean with no one actually living at his apartment. Boy, he was wrong. He picked up an armful of discarded clothing and stood in his living room. A leather couch, a glass coffee table. A TV that he had never bothered to attach properly to the wall. And the dust. How did a place manage to accumulate dust when no one stayed there? He swiped absently at the surface of his coffee table. It made him sneeze. No wonder he hated it here.

  For the first time in a long time, he found himself wandering around his apartment, opening cabinets and peering behind doors. The interior of his linen closet didn’t look familiar. He hardly remembered if there was anything in his refrigerator. What did he even have to offer Petra if she stayed there overnight? Sure, he had scoffed at Marsalis’s roommates and loft earlier. The kid probably skateboarded around his loft with his college buddies and had a bathroom with no door. But could Ian argue that this emptiness was any better? Did he have any clean cups? Could he offer Petra anything to drink? At his businesses, he could present three different kinds of water. But his businesses weren’t his life. He had never planned his life around work. That had been his father’s way, and despite the fact that Ian had loved the man, he didn’t want to be anything like him.

  He walked into the living room and picked up, one by one, the rocks his dad had helped him collect. The collection was almost all he had of his parents, aside from his photographs. He knew that his mother’s silver wedding band was somewhere. It had some sort of filigree, but no stones. He didn’t want reminders of their terrible marriage. Even before his mother died, his father, a mining geologist, had carted his family to towns around the world. Luckily, Ian picked up languages fairly well, and he played soccer, smiled easily, and ate everything people put in front of him. This guaranteed that he made friends in Australia and Chile and the other places that Tomás Zamora had dragged them.

  His mother had not adjusted as well.

  He was restless and he had to do something. He was after a woman who refused to date him, even though she liked him. She had her principles. He was supposed to respect them, because he liked her, and he trusted her to know what was best.

  But he wasn’t really her patient anymore.

  The only way he could really stop being her patient was if he started being someone else’s.

  Dammit. As if he’d already begun, his arm started to itch.

  But he had never shied away from work. He started gathering his dirty laundry and wiping down the empty surfaces.

  His time with Petra wouldn’t end this way.

  He had a new project.

  • • •

  “I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t see him again,” Sarah said.

  “I didn’t actually see him. I had a date with someone else.”

  “But you ended up wrapping your lips around Ian’s.”

  “Those parts didn’t really touch.”

  Well, they had a little, at the corners. The very sensitive corners. And there had been the hands. She rubbed her thighs with her sweaty palms and shifted a little in the back seat of the car.

  “There’s a word for what you’re doing here,” Helen said. “It’s called equivocation.”

  “I think the word is bullshitting,” Sarah stated flatly.

  “Do you get your mothers to push by terrifying them? Because let me tell you, you are making my ass tense up,” Helen said.

  “I don’t terrify pregnant women,” Sarah said, gripping the wheel more firmly. “I don’t terrify anyone.”

  Petra surreptitiously tightened her seat belt.

  They were headed to a wedding. Sarah always insisted on taking her car because that meant she could drive. Helen brought a Rand McNally road atlas and argued with the GPS as if it were a real person. This, of course, made Sarah nuts, and it caused her to adhere even more strictly to the speed limit than Helen could stand.

  Two more hours until Seattle, Petra thought.

  She slid further down into the back seat. At least they were at each other’s throats rather than hers. She felt no need to be involved in discussions about her love life, her lack thereof, or that gray no-woman’s land which she now inhabited.

  “I have never, ever in my life been attracted to a patient,” Sarah said.

  Helen snorted. “First of all, you are a heterosexual obstetrician, so no kidding your patients don’t buzz you. Second, never? Like, not even when you were doing your clerkships? There were no smoldering delinquents with hungry eyes during your psych rotation? No cute dads dandling cherubic children on their knees—”

  “Technically, those aren’t patients,” Petra couldn’t help interrupting.

  “No nerdy-yet-cute scientists with chemical burns to their fingers? No sweaty Muay Thai boxers with possible concussions?”

  Jesus, what had Helen’s ER rotations been like?

  “No hunky foreign diplomats with mysterious fevers? No square-jawed soldiers with PTSD? No stoic firefighters?”

  Sarah pressed her lips together.

  “A-ha! I knew it!”

  Petra breathed a sigh of relief, partly because Sarah had admitted it, and partly because the litany of imagina
ry males was making the car seem unbearably warm.

  “That does not count. I treated him for, like, five minutes in the ER and the chief resident was breathing down my neck the whole time.”

  “So you like to be watched while you commit moral crimes in your heart,” Helen said, poker-faced.

  “Shut up! Shut up! Why am I even friends with you?”

  Right on schedule, Petra thought. Last time, it had been over Justin Timberlake, and the time before, argument erupted over the composition of the Supreme Court. In another half an hour, they’d forgive each other and start singing show tunes at the top of their lungs. It was hard to decide what was worse.

  “My point is, Sarah, it happens. We’re human. Sometimes, we become attracted to our patients.”

  “When were you ever swayed by a patient?” Sarah asked. “Petra told us and I spilled. Now it’s your turn.”

  “I’m called on consults in the ER all the time. It’s entirely possible that I’ve dated someone I’ve looked at. I don’t remember everyone.”

  “Seeing as you haven’t gone out with anyone since Terrible Mike, I don’t see how that would be possible,” Petra said.

  Sarah and Helen ignored her. “My dad was one of two GPs in our town,” Helen said. “My mother came in for a tetanus shot because she’d stepped on a rusty nail while visiting a friend. My dad ran into her again at the grocery store, and then at church later that week. They got married two weeks later. Should my dad’s license have been revoked?”

  Sarah sped up and changed lanes. She looked uncomfortable but stubborn. “It’s a nice story, but the reason we do have these rules in place is to protect patients. A woman who has just been diagnosed with stage III breast cancer is vulnerable. A depressed man with suicidal thoughts is at risk. Some terrible person, some horrible doctor, could come in and make that cancer patient think he’s God. An unscrupulous shrink could cause a total emotional crash.”

  Helen shook her head. “The question is, Sarah, do you think my dad is horrible? He gave my mom, who didn’t even live in town, a tetanus shot. And after they got married, he’d check her throat when she was sick, and he even delivered my brother. Technically, he was practicing medicine on her. She was his patient. Was that unethical? Was he exploiting her?”