by K A Moll
“Your cat’s in his carrier,” Phyllis responded, shuffling back to allow entrance. “Been there since I expected you.”
“I’ll get him,” Willow answered, darting in and out quickly. “I really appreciate you keeping him,” she added, setting down the carrier.
“Yeah, sure,” the woman responded, watching her reach into her purse for her billfold for one-dollar bills to pay her.
With as much restraint as Keegan could muster, she resisted the urge to reach for her wallet, not wanting to embarrass her. “I’ve got him,” she said, picking up the carrier, and noticing its weight as she climbed the paint-chipped stairwell.
“Almost there,” Willow called out from the third landing.
“Good,” Keegan answered, her load shifting as the tubby tabby moved. After the top step, they made their way through a rusty fire door that opened on a creaky hinge, traversing a hallway that smelled of must and mildew. She set the carrier down, waiting for Willow to find her keys at the bottom of her purse.
“Home sweet home,” Willow announced, pushing the door open.
Keegan smiled, stepping into the tiny living room—with cigarette burns in the carpet, peeling laminate furniture, a TV with rabbit ears, and a cat box odor that wrapped its warm air in a blanket of ammonia. “It’s nice,” she said, “I don’t know what you were so worried about.” White lies, when told to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, weren’t the same as real ones. At least that’s what her paternal grandpa used to tell her. He was a kind man, much kinder than her father.
“Right,” Willow responded, opening the carrier, kissing the tabby on his mouth, and freeing him. When he meowed—long and loud—she prepared food that smelled of rotten fish for him. “It’s your favorite,” she cooed, setting his saucer on the carpet. Then, with their reunion complete, she offered a grand tour of the apartment. It started in the tiny living room, moved through the kitchen, went down a hallway so short that it could hardly be called one, and ended in the bedroom—a bedroom with a double bed, a mid-century headboard that someone had painted an awful shade of avocado, a dresser with drawers that didn’t shut properly, and a fan in one window. “You can put your bag in my closet if you want,” she offered.
“Good idea,” Keegan responded, opening the door, and finding herself surrounded by all things Willow—her dresses, her shoes, her purses, the intoxicating scent of her cologne. She stood in the center of the tiny room longer than would be considered normal.
Willow peeked in. “Are you okay?” she asked softly.
“Better than okay,” Keegan answered, taking her hand, and with one forward motion, pulling her into her arms. Kissing her, she lowered them to the floor. “I want you.”
“Here? In the closet?”
“Yes—right here—right now—in the closet,” Keegan responded, already unbuttoning her blouse, and slipping her hand inside her bra. The unusual setting—the hard floor—the small, packed space—the smoldering flame in her eyes—made her heart pound against her chest wall. “God, you’re beautiful,” she growled, her lips brushing Willow’s nipple as her hand unzipped her pants. And as fiery passion raced through her veins, she knew with certainty that she loved her like she could never love another, knew with certainty that there was nothing more important than their miracle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Size matters, especially when it comes to beds. Keegan tossed and turned, her feet dangling over the end, unable to find a comfortable sleeping position on the hard, lumpy mattress. Thank God, she’d be back in her own king size bed tomorrow night. The inadequate sleep she’d gotten at home was looking better by the minute. She rolled to her side, spooning Willow, molding her body to her soft curves. Even in a crap bed, life couldn’t get much better than this. But within minutes, she changed her position to avoid the gully that ran down the middle of the worn-out mattress. With her arm dangling between it and the headboard, she closed her eyes, willing sleep to make its appearance. Maybe once Willow saw the condo—hopefully—she’d realize how much better they’d have it there. Maybe once she experienced comfort and convenience, she’d miss it on the nights they were here. And, maybe—if she was lucky—she’d want to move sooner rather than later. As it stood, because of her lease, six months was the soonest she was willing to do it. Why she wouldn’t allow her to just buy it out was beyond her. It was nothing, spare change in her checkbook, less than what she’d collect for one additional surgery. For that pittance, they’d be free to live comfortably. With a resolve to revisit the topic, her eyes closed, her muscles twitched—and the shark made her appearance, nosing through the wooden gate and taking her seat at the counsel table. “Good afternoon, Dr. Wade,” the shark greeted, her grotesque smile spreading between her gill slits. “Please, state your full name for the jury.”
“Keegan Harper Wade.”
“And you normally practice at New York General, but on the night in question you’d been granted privileges at a rural hospital in Utah, Afton Memorial. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you operated on a man who’d been hit by a train, amputating his good leg. You amputated the wrong limb because you were drunk. Isn’t that also correct?”
“No, absolutely not,” Keegan shouted, her arms flailing as she flipped to her back, awakening with sweat rolling down her temples.
“Hey there, sweetie,” Willow cooed, closing the distance between them. “Shhh, you’re okay.”
Panting, Keegan reached for the bottle that she’d set on the nightstand, unscrewing the cap.
“You don’t need that,” Willow said firmly. “Come here, baby.”
Keegan sighed, setting it back down, and moving closer. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered, her eyes holding concern as she smoothed her hair, stroking her. “What are we gonna do about this? I mean, how long can you go on, on no sleep?”
“I’m okay. And I get sleep.”
“No,” Willow countered gently, “you’re not okay.” She brushed her cheek with her fingertips. “And, you don’t get sleep, at least not restful sleep. I’m afraid you’re gonna get sick.” She tilted her head. “How about seeing a doctor? I get why you don’t want to see a counselor, but maybe the medical profession has something to offer.”
“I’ve self-prescribed medications. So far, nothing has worked.”
“That’s not the same, and you know it.”
“Maybe not, but it’s my only option. Seeing someone, especially for something like this, is too risky.”
“Physicians being expected to heal themselves is wrong on so many levels.”
“It is what it is.”
A garbage truck stopped, banging and bumping and crushing its load.
Ripple jumped to the foot of the bed, purring as he curled into a ball.
A man yelled at a woman in a downstairs apartment.
“There for a while,” Willow said quietly, “you were sleeping better.”
“Not for long,” Keegan answered.
“No, but at least you were sleeping. Maybe the nightmares are back because you’re returning to work.”
“I’ve always worked. The nightmares are a recent phenomenon.”
“And, how about the drinking, especially the drinking during the night and early morning, is it also a recent phenomenon?”
Keegan nodded. “Pretty much the same time period.”
Willow lifted her head, making eye contact. “So, what else occurred during that time period?”
“I was named Chief of Trauma Surgery,” Keegan answered, “two months prior.”
“Hmmm…two months prior,” Willow responded, her eyes narrowing. “Interesting that two months passed before you had your first nightmare. The job is a piece of what’s going on, but it’s not all of it.” She bit her lip, thoughtfully. “So, what happened right before the nightmares started?”
Keegan took a breath, held it, and let it go. “Mark happened,” she said quietly, explaining t
hat her friend had unknowingly pierced his patient’s bile duct after becoming distracted by a malfunctioning alarm in the OR. She went on to share that his error had resulted in a wrongful death malpractice lawsuit. “It took less than one hour for the jury to award a forty-five-million-dollar settlement to the widower—a career destroyer. One hour, that’s all. How could they possibly have considered a week’s worth of medical testimony in one lousy hour?”
“I don’t know,” Willow responded, “not well; that’s for sure.”
“I get pissed off just thinking about it,” Keegan went on, a muscle in her jaw quivering, “that a jury of his peers could buy into the shark’s argument hook, line, and sinker without reading and discussing the testimony.” She fell silent, swallowing before she continued. “And, that night,” she said somberly, “Mark committed suicide.”
“Oh my God,” Willow responded, holding her close, “baby, I’m so sorry.”
“He was a good man,” Keegan said, bottling emotion, “a good friend, and a good doctor, a better doctor than I am.” She pressed her lips to Willow’s forehead, sharing that she and Mark had become friends in medical school and that he’d joined the NYC General staff on her recommendation. “Had that alarm not malfunctioned; had that patient not died, he’d have been named Chief of Trauma Surgery, and I’d have been proud to work under him.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” Willow cooed, kissing her temple. “I’m so sorry that you lost your dear friend. Losing someone is never easy, but losing them to suicide, that’s awful. So, how did you deal with it? I mean, what did you do that next day, and in the days that followed?”
Keegan stared at the leak-stained ceiling, holding tears in check.
Willow’s eyes narrowed, a dog catching the scent of a buried bone. “And, what about sitting in the chair that would’ve been his? How did you do with that? How are you doing with that?”
Keegan’s voice broke with emotion. “Please, Willow, please don’t do this.”
“Grief can be overwhelming,” Willow continued, gently ignoring her plea, “and each of us deals with it in our own way. I’m guessing that a surgeon, cool and calm under pressure, might do her best to contain that roller coaster of emotion that comes with a significant loss; might do her best to bottle that wave of profound sadness, shock, anger, and guilt. Is that what you did? Did you do your best to ignore that you’d lost someone that meant a lot to you? Did you carry on that next day as if nothing happened? Did you do a surgery, maybe more than one, that next day?”
“Please, Willow, please don’t do this, not tonight.”
“If not tonight, when?” Willow asked softly.
“I don’t know. Maybe never.”
They locked teary gazes.
“Oh, I don’t think it’ll be that long. Grief has a way of demanding your attention. It’s a wound that won’t heal unless it meets the air. It won’t let you ignore it, not without problems, insomnia and drinking being two of them.” And with the skill of someone born to do therapy, she used her ability to help her, not as a therapist, but as her lover. “You miss him,” she said quietly, holding and stroking her, “what do you miss about him?”
“I miss his sense of humor,” Keegan responded, “sharp and witty, at the perfect time and in the perfect way. I miss having dinner with him on Friday nights. I miss saying his name, talking about him. It wasn’t that I didn’t think about him, you know? I just couldn’t talk about him.”
“Because you’d cry.”
“Because I’d lose control.”
*
Keegan stared at Willow’s leak-stained ceiling, remembering another leak-stained ceiling, the ceiling in her childhood bedroom, recalling a time when her family had lived in a place no better than this one. And with those memories came the twist of an old knife—transporting her back to a stormy night in Alabama, a night when raindrops fell in a bucket and tears fell on her pillow, a night when her injured shoulder and heart throbbed in unison.
“What time is it?” Willow asked, stretching and yawning.
“A little before five,” Keegan answered, brushing a loose tendril of hair from her eyes, her fingers trailing over Willow’s bare shoulder, and down her arm. “Time for me to get up,” she added, kissing her.
“We’re you able to fall back to sleep after we talked?”
“For a little while.”
“I think you’d have slept better at home.”
“Maybe a little,” Keegan admitted, dropping her bare feet to the floor, “but not enough to make much difference.”
“I’ll start a pot of coffee,” Willow said, slipping on her robe.
“You don’t have to get up with me,” Keegan answered, pulling up her boxers. “I can see myself out.” She smiled a slow smile, noticing that she was watching her.
“Sorry,” Willow responded, her cheeks flushing.
“Don’t be. The merchandise is yours.”
Willow licked her lips seductively. “Mmm…boxers, breasts, and muscles.”
And with that, Keegan went to her, slipping her hands inside her robe, and claiming her lips hungrily. Thirty minutes later, running late and sweaty, she ran for the shower. When she stepped out, she squished a clump of wet cat litter between her toes. “Dagnabbit!” she snarled, kicking the cat box to the wall.
“You okay in there?” Willow called out.
“I’m fine,” Keegan responded. “I just stubbed my toe.” She stepped back into the tub, rinsed off, and got back out—careful to miss the scattering of cat mess on the floor. Then, she dried, dressed in navy pants and a blue shirt, and joined Willow in the kitchen.
“Do you have time for breakfast?” Willow asked, folding into her arms.
“No, I don’t think so,” Keegan responded, “not if I want to get to Nikki’s by seven.”
Willow reached up, straightening her collar. “So, what’s our plan for tonight?”
“At this point, and you’ll learn fairly quickly that a surgeon’s plans are always subject to change, my plan is to pick you up at six, go to dinner, and then head for my place. Sound okay?”
“Sounds great. I need to go to the bank this morning to see if they’ll re-negotiate the date for the initial payments on my student loans, but after that, I should be home. So, whenever you get here will be fine.”
“Do you need a ride?”
“To the bank? No, I’ll take the bus. Thanks, though.”
“Because I can probably free up for an hour or so around eleven.” Keegan continued, wanting to pay for a taxi, but opting not to mention it, concerned that doing so might cause embarrassment. She knew that people rode the buses all the time, and she knew that for the most part, it was safe enough—but safe enough wasn’t good enough—not for Willow.
“You’re so sweet,” Willow said, raising up to kiss her lips, “but I take the bus everywhere. It picks up at my corner and stops right in front of my bank. I really do appreciate the offer, though.”
“Okay, whatever you say,” Keegan responded, considering how in the long run she’d tackle the issue of Willow not driving.
“Call once you get Nikki delivered.”
“I will,” Keegan promised, taking off at a fast clip, shock giving way to fury between the porch and the sidewalk. “What the hell?”
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Un-fucking-believable!” Keegan snarled, loudly enough to be heard down the block. She stomped to and around her car, her nostrils flared with fury, and her pulse climbing. Her beautiful BMW sat on bricks without wheels. “Un-fucking-believable!” When the curtain parted, she looked up, glaring. “So, did you see anything?” she shouted, her eyes wide, and her palms turned upward. In answer, Phyllis shrugged, closing the curtain. “Un-fucking-believable!” She glanced at her watch, her eyes darting up to what she believed to be Willow’s bedroom window. It’d been open all night, with no breeze to speak of. No doubt she’d heard her. She took a breath, allowing her pulse to drop below peak cardio, then re-circled the vehicle. Perched
on three bricks, the driver’s corner sat on the pavement with the rotor brake mashed in the ground. The windows were intact, and the doors were secure. You should’ve had wheel locks installed. She’d considered having it done when she’d had her alarm put in, but thought, ‘who steels wheels?’
“Keegan,” Willow called out, raising the screen, her hair tumbling carelessly out the window. “What’s wrong?”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Keegan muttered, willing herself to calm down. “Can you call Nikki?” she responded. “See if she can take a taxi to the hospital. Tell her I’ll meet her in the atrium at eight o’clock.” As a beer can clattered down the sidewalk, she gave it a swift kick. “That’s assuming I can get this taken care of in a timely manner.”
“Sure, I’ll call her right now,” Willow answered, her tone calm and helpful, “get dressed, and come down.”
“Fine,” Keegan answered, noticing a brick under her engine, and dropping to the pavement to see if it had caused damage. Then, she called 9-1-1, advising that her car had been vandalized. A police car turned the corner as Willow came down the stairway.
“I’m sorry,” she said, handing her a mug of coffee.
“You have nothing to be sorry about. Just a case of my own stupidity.”
Willow took a seat on the porch as the officer exited his vehicle,
“You Dr. Wade?” he asked, checking out the vandal’s handiwork.
“Yes,” Keegan answered, handing him her driver’s license, and providing a history. She explained that she hadn’t seen or heard anything, tossing in that the woman in the lower apartment may have. “Seems to me she spends a lot of time keeping an eye on the neighborhood.”
“We’ll talk to her,” he promised, adding that he had a couple more questions before he let her go.
Keegan glanced at her watch. “Whatever you need.”
“It won’t take long. I know you doctors are kinda busy.”
Keegan smiled. You think?