by Hannah Paige
“147 West 4th Street.”
“Lower Manhattan Hospital.”
They both answered at once and exchanged looks. Ian glanced at his watch. He would be late if they shared the cab and went to the hospital first, but on the other hand, he wasn’t too keen on testing the woman’s patience and demanding to be taken to the restaurant first.
Jacki would have to understand.
“Hospital first, then Volare on 4th,” he answered and the cab pulled out into traffic.
“Oh, thank you! You might actually be the exception to the horrible-New Yorker-rule,” the woman sighed, sinking back against the seat.
“Don’t mention it,” Ian answered.
She sat up again, having found some of her strength in Ian’s act of kindness, “I’m Jill, by the way.” She extended a hand and gave Ian a glowing smile.
“Ian. You’re not from around here, are you?” he asked, shaking her hand and noticing how soft and pliable her skin was; it felt satiny to the touch.
She let out a nervous laugh, “Am I that obvious?”
“Yes,” he bit his tongue for being so blunt towards the cheery woman, “It’s just that most people here, that I’ve met anyway, wouldn’t even share a cab, let alone make conversation with the other passenger. And when you get in a cab, you tell the driver the address, not the place that you want to go. A little tip.”
“Oh. I’ll remember that one. I guess I’ve always just been a friendly person, ever since I was a little girl. It’s what made me so good at my job, I think. I’m a teacher, an elementary school teacher, to be specific,” she showed her perfectly straight, milky-white teeth again and Ian had to stop himself from shaking his head in disbelief. New York was going to eat this woman alive.
“A teacher? That’s…admirable.”
“Thank you! I like to think so. Though, I’ll be taking some time off for a little while, from teaching. I’m starting my new job in a few days, a secretary job. That shouldn’t be too bad—answering phones, pasting stamps, saying ‘go on in, Mr. so-and-so is expecting you’. I can do that for a little while. My dad, he’s the reason I’m going to the hospital, he’s not doing so well. So, I moved up here for a bit, until he gets better.”
“You just uprooted your life for him? What if he doesn’t get better?” Ian asked, imagining all of the cases he’d overseen when grown children had watched their aging parents perish before their eyes; sometimes illnesses were more powerful than any hopeful loved one.
Jill was wounded by his all-too-practical statement and the brightness in her eyes faltered for a second. Ian found himself wishing he could take the words back just so he could light her eyes again.
“Oh…well, I suppose there’s always that possibility. But, there’s always the possibility that he could get better too. He’s getting great care and I’m here now, so he’s sure to improve.”
Ian frowned, “I thought you said you were a teacher? How are you going to help improve your dad’s health?”
She fidgeted in her seat, trying to maintain her shaky smile, and nudged up against Ian for a split second, “I am a teacher, and I don’t know anything about modern medicine, not beyond the body systems, that is. But I think that if his mood can improve by me being here with him, it could definitely help him. Don’t you agree?”
Ian absolutely did not agree. Physical illnesses were helped with medicine, not the presence of another person. No, that mental ‘help’ was his father’s territory, “Not really. But I’m sure he’ll appreciate having someone by him to help him out with anything he needs.”
Her jaw dropped and she leaned down at her feet, where a teal colored purse sat, “Wow. You are just something else. Leave it to me to hop in the cab with the most pessimistic person in the city. Thanks a lot for the encouragement. I think I’ll take your hint now and just disregard all conversation,” she snapped, jamming earbuds into her ears and clicking on the CD player in her lap.
The cab was silent. For a bit, all Ian could hear were horns honking outside of the window, the engine of the cab lurching and stopping as they crawled through lights. He heard the blended stampede of the hundreds of people walking outside. They reached yet another red light and Ian couldn’t take it.
“I’m sorry. Your dad…I’m sure he’ll improve from just you being here. What do I know?”
I just have eight years of medical school to support my opinion, Ian thought, but didn’t say.
Jill was bobbing her head to whatever song she was listening to and hadn’t heard Ian. He sat there for a minute more until the cab pulled up to the next red light and he tapped her elbow. She flinched, as if his touch had electrified the skin on her joint, and she tore one earbud out.
“Sorry. I’m sorry for what I said. You’re probably right, about your dad, I mean. And New Yorkers, we could be nicer in general.”
A softer, more timid, version of her smile returned and Ian exhaled, feeling his chest loosen up, and he realized that his hand was still on her arm. “What were you listening to?” he asked for the sake of conversation. He was so out of the loop when it came to popular music, he probably wouldn’t know the band or song she told him.
She didn’t move his hand off of her when she extended her other arm, holding out one of the earbuds to him, “Would you like to listen?”
He took the earbud, smiling at her—and at his own reckless behavior—and tried to plug into her music. The wire strained to reach his ear and he moved closer, careful to keep a little patch of black seat between them, and joined her.
‘When we danced I held her tight. Then I walked her home that night.’
Ian watched Jill mouth the words. He’d been right and had no idea who the band was, but he liked the upbeat tune. She caught him watching her and turned her head to face him. She laughed, then resumed her silent sing-along as the song continued,
‘And all the stars were shining bright. And then I kissed her.’
“Lower Manhattan Hospital,” someone called out. Their voice seemed so far away from where Ian sat. Jill didn’t move either.
“Hey, you two! We’re here! Get out or tell me your next stop, the clock’s running!”
Ian realized it was the cabi, yelling at him and Jill. The two of them shot apart, and Jill yanked both of her earbuds back, cramming them, along with the CD player, back into her purse. Ian kept his eyes on her as she opened the taxi door, pulled out a couple of bills from her bag and handed them to the driver.
“Thank you for the ride,” she offered, showing her out-of-town-colors like a neon sign. She turned her attention back to Ian, lingering outside the taxi door, “It was really nice meeting you, Ian.”
“I’m glad I met you too, Jill,” he surprised himself with the sudden urge to get out of the cab…to do what, he wasn’t sure.
Jill was about to shut the car door when she opened it again, poking her head inside once more, “Hey, Ian. Don’t forget to look up every so often, there’s a lot of good things in this world. You just have to be okay with bumping into them.” She gave him one last sunny smile and then she was gone.
“Half an hour late? Are you okay? You freak out when you’re on time to places, let alone late! What happened?” Jackie demanded, jumping up from her seat as Ian found their table at the restaurant.
He didn’t remember the cab ride back over here from the hospital. His mind had been on Jill, on the unnervingly bright woman who seemed to have had a limitless heart and eyes without doubt; and Ian had been with her all of twenty minutes.
“Ian? Ian? Are you okay? We were worried,” Jackie asked again.
Ian shook his head, then understood what she had asked him and how he was supposed to answer, “I mean, yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Sorry I kept you waiting, I—I lost track of time.”
Jackie’s hazelnut eyes were dissecting him with their leery gaze as he came closer to the table, doing his best to bring his attention to the people in front of him, not the woman he had left at a hospital. Ian nodded to Jackie’s friends
seated at the table, holding far less concern for why Ian had shown up late.
“Justin, Kimmy, nice to see you again,” he greeted politely, then saw his dad. He was wearing a sweater vest, he’d recently gotten a haircut and a new gold watch, Ian noticed.
“Dad,” he stated and his father stood up.
He extended his own wrinkled hand to shake Ian’s then sat back down, “Ian. Jackie, why don’t you come back and sit down? Your brother’s fine, just late.”
Jackie obeyed and sat down, gesturing for Ian to take the empty seat next to her and across from their father at the circular table. “We’ve just put our order in. I ordered you the lasagna and the bottle of merlot is for the whole table, so help yourself. Is that okay?”
Ian nodded, still looking at his father. He hadn’t made eye contact with Ian. It shouldn’t have surprised Ian this much, how distant his father still was, but it did all the same.
“So, Jackie, any big plans before you start in the winter semester for law school?” their father asked after taking a pull from his drink: rum and tonic, Ian guessed.
Jackie laughed, tucking her hair behind her ear, “Well, Kimmy and I were reading about these cooking classes that are being held somewhere downtown, I can’t remember the name of the place. We were thinking of maybe taking some. They look like a lot of fun.” She grinned, looking between Ian and her father.
“I think that sounds like a fantastic idea. I’m sure you ladies will have fun.”
“Yeah, if we don’t burn the kitchen down, that is,” Jackie joked, and their father let out a hearty laugh.
A pause itched those at the table until Jackie jumped in again, “So, Ian, how is work going?”
Ian glanced between her eager look and his father’s eyes. The minute Jackie shifted the discussion on to Ian, their father’s attention wandered away from the table and he flagged down a waitress. He pointed at his drink, even though it was only a quarter-low.
Ian cleared his throat, “It’s going fine. Keeping busy, but actually just yesterday I got invited to join in on a cardiac surgery. Of course, I just observed for the most part, but I was still invited into the OR.”
Jackie’s whole face lit up, “That’s great, Ian.” And her eyes darted to their dad for any acknowledgment that he had heard Ian. When he gave no physical response other than to swirl the ice in his glass, Jackie tried once more, “Oh, hey, Dad?”
He raised his eyebrows at his daughter, instantly heightening his attention, “Yes?”
Ian felt his fists clench under the table.
“Did you tell Ian about your promotion?” She looked to Ian, “Dad was made head psychiatrist at the hospital.”
Ian looked to his father, “That’s great, Dad. When—”
“A few weeks ago. You would know that if you ever checked in or even picked up the phone and called.”
Ian took a deep breath, trying to get his fists to uncurl under the table. He counted to three—a technique he’d been instituting to deal with his father for years now. “Dad, I’m busy at the hospital, you know—”
“What I know is that you traded a superior job with your own father for eighteen-hour days where you play around with needles and scalpels and you learn to pass out pills like Halloween candy. You chose to cut into people’s bodies, dissect them like frogs, instead of helping them.”
Ian looked up at the ceiling and caught Jackie’s look of utter disappointment out of the corner of his eye. He let his neck roll around to face front again and leaned forward in his seat to pluck the bottle of wine from the middle of the table. He poured himself a generous glass and counted to three again before going on.
“Look at you, speaking to me. And here I thought our only exchanges would be ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. Really going the extra mile with me tonight, aren’t you, Dad?” Ian muttered, returning the bottle to its place on the spotless, white tablecloth.
“Ian, I don’t understand why you have to be so difficult all the time. We had a relationship, but you turned your back on me. That is not my fault.”
Ian let out a bitter laugh, “We didn’t have a relationship. As I remember, there was a dictatorship. There were orders and expectations and there was one option for an acceptable response: ‘yes, dad’. Oh, oh wait, maybe there was a second choice: ‘of course, dad, I’d love to.’ Sorry, I forgot that one. My bad, but you’ll have to excuse me since I guess all of your training failed on me anyway. Consider my brain plebian since I didn’t grow up to become a perfectly groomed shrink.”
From across the table, Ian could see his father grind his jaw with disgust at the word Ian used just to set him on edge, “Ian, this is your sister’s night. Let’s not do this.”
He shook his head and downed a healthy gulp of wine. “Fine, Dad. Whatever you say, Dr. Chase. So sorry if I ruined your evening. It must be so hard, only having one child. My god, trying to keep in touch with your daughter all while juggling the patients down at the hospital. How many have you helped this year? Hundreds? Thousands? Have the reporters been after you too? Well, it’s certainly a blessing you only had one kid. How could you do it all if you had, I daresay, two kids to try and control?”
“Ian, please—” Jackie started, sounding like a little girl again.
“You know what? I’ll just leave you two. How about that? Better? I thought so. Enjoy your time with your daughter,” Ian said and left a twenty on the table.
“How can you say that I’m the one that doesn’t want a relationship? You won’t even sit down and share a meal with me.”
Ian pressed the heels of his palms against his forehead.
“You’re impossible, you know that? You never take any credit for this, never! You’re so goddamn selfish that you just put this on me! Fine, fine, Dr. Chase, it’s all my fault. All of it. Happy? Do I get a clean bill of health now? Somebody snap a picture, Dr. Chase has cured another patient!” Ian had attracted the attention of the entire restaurant now and he shook his head as he stormed out of the building.
He heard Jackie’s heels click out of the restaurant and onto the sidewalk after him.
“Ian! Ian, wait!” she called and almost skidded into him as he stopped, turning around to face her, “I’m sorry I invited him, I really am. I never should have, I know how you two can get…I just thought, maybe…I don’t know.”
He closed his eyes, unable to see his sister like this: looking so small and defeated. He wrapped his arms around her, “No. I’m sorry I ruined your evening. He just—”
She nodded, frowning up at him, “I know. I know, Ian.”
He sat down on the bench outside the restaurant and she joined him, letting her head rest against his shoulder.
“So, you want to talk about the real reason why you were half an hour late?”
Ian rolled his eyes, “I told you, I lost track of time.”
“Ian,” she pressed.
“I had to share a cab.”
“Gross.”
He chuckled at her response and ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it out again.
“Actually, it wasn’t so bad. It was…fun, surprisingly.”
Jackie sat upright, “Fun? I didn’t know you knew what that was.”
He glared at her and she snickered, bumping up against him, “So tell me about this ‘fun’ cab ride.”
“I guess I owe you that much for blowing up at your dinner party.”
“I’d say so.”
Ian stared down at his hands in his lap, picturing the young woman—Jill—sitting so close to him. Somehow, she’d seemed miles away, in someplace better, happier. He’d wanted to be there with her. “There was a woman, her name was Jill. She was…she was different. Jovial. Kind of naive, but in a good way.”
“Pretty?”
It had never occurred to him while he was in the cab with her, but Jackie was right, and he nodded, “Beautiful. She smiled a lot, laughed easily. She…I don’t know, she said thank you to the cab driver, grinned at him.” Jackie raised her eyebrows in
shock and Ian nodded, “That’s exactly what I did,” he chuckled, “She’s a teacher.”
“I’ll bet you could stand to take a few lessons from her,” Jackie murmured.
Ian turned to look at her, getting ready to defend himself, but he just shook his head and sighed, “Yeah. Yeah, you’re probably right about that.”
“Did you get her number?”
“No. I should have, but I didn’t. I was kind of a jerk to her, but then—I don’t know, I just felt this…” He shrugged, feeling ridiculous recounting this story to his sister on a public bench as people strolled by, “Connection? That sounds so stupid, I don’t know.”
“Jeez, I have to meet this woman! She’s making my brother squirm.”
“Stop.”
“No, really. I thought you were all stone on the inside, but this, this could change things. You have to find her.”
“Jackie,” he stopped, not really wanting to argue about this.
“You obviously felt something with her, you had this ‘connection’, you say. I’ve never heard you use that word, let alone the words ‘fun’ or ‘feelings’. Hello, this woman is perfect for you!”
Ian stood up from the bench, having had enough of this for one night, “Okay, Jackie, whatever you say.”
“Ian, come on. I know you don’t believe in that kind of stuff, but I do. You felt something, didn’t you?”
Ian didn’t say anything, and a mischievous grin spread across Jackie’s face, “I knew it! Tomorrow, after my interview, I’ll call you and you better have found her by then. Promise?”
He smiled at his sister, “Promise.”
“Good, now give me a hug. I should probably go back in there, though it would be much more fun to sit out here and talk to you all night.”
“No, go enjoy your friends. Have a good time, Jackie. I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he kissed the top of her head and watched her head back inside the restaurant.
He sighed and tried to make sense of the words he’d shared with Jackie. He was practical, sensible, resolute. And that woman, that woman was just ridiculous. She could get lost with a map strapped to her chest and was most likely the kind of person that felt lonely after being left alone for five minutes. She was the smiler and the punch-drinker. On the other hand, in her presence, Ian felt like he’d already visited a party without the grungy clubs and overpriced drinks. And Ian was practical. It was practical to experience different people, wasn’t it? It was smart, surrounding oneself with those that were different. It was sensible, he decided, and nodded to himself.