Code Blues

by Melissa Yi

  Mireille's lips tightened. "No." The syllable was clipped. "He went back to a woman who told him that everything he did was perfect. But in the end, he chose—" Her voice broke. She pulled her spoon out and dropped it back on her tray. She swallowed her coffee. After a minute, she said almost steadily, "He was coming back to me. I know he was."

  Chapter 20

  In parting, Mireille pressed kisses and a hug on Tori and even a peck-peck shoulder squeeze on me. I forced myself to hug her back, feeling more awkward than ever.

  Back in my apartment, Tori helped cut open a box of CD's. I said, "So, do you believe her?"

  Tori shrugged. "It's difficult to know what to believe."

  I made a face. "Can't you just say yes or no?"

  She laughed and cut open a box with an Exacto-knife. "I'm sure she believes what she's saying."

  "So what?"

  She shrugged. Another non-answer.

  I pulled a handful of CD's out. I couldn't bear to sell them, even though I only listen to MP3's now. "You know what, maybe we'd better leave these until I find my CD rack. I know it's somewhere."

  Tori moved on to the next box, labeled Medical Books, and applied the blade.

  I said, "Actually, you know what bothered me the most?"

  She murmured, "What she said about Kurt."

  "Exactly. About him being a martyr, basically. You think it's true?"

  Tori hesitated. "He enjoyed it. But yes, it was true. He was always available." She ripped open the flaps of the box.

  "Yeah. It made him a great doctor and a great teacher. But I bet it didn't make him the world's greatest boyfriend. I'd need someone who was more there for me. And not just helping me with my poster for a surgical conference." I peered inside the box. "Oh, those are more notes from med school. Damn, I wonder where my ACLS went."

  I spun The Best of Miles Davis on my CD player, which was sitting in the corner behind some boxes. Miles's melancholy tones hit home today. Kurt had been universally loved and lauded for giving so much of himself. That was the way doctors used to be, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for births, deaths, fevers, sore throats, and things that went bump in the night. Everyone loved and respected the town doctor.

  Things changed. I wasn't sure where, exactly. But now, there were walk-in clinics, academic physicians who worked in research centres, and ever-fewer old-fashioned family docs. The public had lost respect for us, the money wasn't as good, and, perhaps as a consequence, our generation of doctors were not as willing to sacrifice their whole lives to medicine. Surgeons were still hard core, especially during residency. But most physicians wanted to live, too. We usually banded together in call groups to arrange time off. At St. Joseph's, the doctors took turns backing up the resident-on-call for the FMC. There was no need for Kurt to be on call 24/7.

  So what did you do, if you were the old-fashioned type, medicine über alles, and you went into family medicine, which is looked down upon as a more slack field? Kurt could have gone the rural route. Instead, he chose to stay in Montreal, but he selected the most derelict hospital he could find, and advertised far and wide that he was there for everyone. All the time. He was going to be the St. Joseph's Superman.

  I'd never known the guy, and I couldn't really guess what motivated him to work like that. But it finally made sense to me. I'd been wondering to myself why anyone killed him, when everyone seemed to love him. Like I said, in fiction, it's always the biggest stinker who gets knocked off, and no one knows who did it, because everyone else plus the cat has a good motive. But for the first time, I thought the very quality that made Kurt the best-loved doctor was what broke up his personal life and, maybe, made him vulnerable to a murderer.

  How depressing. I'd chosen a profession that would consume your soul, if I let it.

  Tori's raised her voice above Miles's trumpet. "Are you all right?"

  I realized that I was sitting on the living room floor beside the boom box, barricaded behind boxes, with my arms wrapped around my knees. I said, "Yeah."

  She perched on the lumpy green cushion of the futon I'd managed to assemble. "What's wrong?"

  "Is it worth all this? To become a doctor?" I gestured at my tornadoed room, but I really meant all of it. The work, the crap pay, the rocked relationships, moving across the country because the Match said so, sleeping on the floor for a week.

  Her dark eyes were kind. "Why did you go into medicine in the first place?"

  "I wanted to help people." The traditional answer, but true. I added, "And I thought it would be challenging and fun."

  Her eyebrows lifted a touch. "And is it?"

  I nodded. "Most of the time."

  She waited. I conceded, "I guess I like it. When I don't have to work with Dr. Callendar."

  She smiled. "You'll live."

  "I guess." I hadn't thought about Alex for an hour, and it felt good. But remembering Alex now felt like ground glass in my stomach. "Do you think Alex was with Mireille Friday night? When Kurt was killed?"

  Tori hesitated. "It's hard to tell when either of them is telling the truth."

  I bowed my head again. The drummer tapped his cymbals, the pianist played background, and Miles's trumpet blew across them both.

  A breeze rustled the tree leaves outside my living room window. Tori turned her face to it and closed her eyes. "But Mireille insists she was with Kurt that night, for at least part of the night. " She hesitated. "It would be a lot to make up."

  We'd never grilled Mireille about her alibi for the rest of the Friday night. Tori read my mind. "I wasn't going to ask her for an alibi. I want her to trust me." She smiled a little.

  "You want me to be the bad cop," I said.

  She shrugged. "I want the cops to be the cops. But yes, if you insist. I don't want to alienate Mireille in an attempt to investigate her."

  Pah. I still thought there were more holes in everyone's story than Havarti cheese, a product I'd recently discovered in the Montreal supermarkets. No one was willing to play Kinsey Milhone with me. I tried to needle her. "Okay. Are you willing to alienate Alex?"

  Tori laughed. "I'll leave it to you." Her hand flew to her mouth. "I'm sorry, Hope. I wasn't thinking."

  My eyes smarted, but I tried to smile. "It's true." A pain twanged in my chest around my heart. Maybe I could have aortic dissection and get it over with.

  Tori shifted on the futon. She traced the white piping of the cushion with her index finger. "All I know about Alex is, he seemed very disturbed about his past. He used to talk about it a lot with Kurt—" She stopped abruptly.

  I clicked through what I knew. He was from Kitchener. He might be a Mennonite. What could be so traumatic about buggies and plain clothes? Or in his case, forsaking buggies and taking up zippers? Wait, maybe that was the Amish. "What about his past?"

  Tori shook her head. "I'm not sure. Alex used to joke about it a bit. You know, if someone asked him why he talked to Kurt, he'd say, 'Blast from the past.' But he never said any more. And of course, Kurt kept all our talks confidential."

  I knew very little about Alex's past. I hadn't thought it mattered. We were here, we liked each other. If he rejected me, one of us had done wrong. But there might be a third factor holding him back, in addition to Mireille. His family, somehow.

  Some white people make a big deal about my race. Their favourite question is, "Where do you come from?" That means that I'm from elsewhere. I like to shoot back, "Where are you from?"

  "Oh, I'm Canadian," they say, laughing.

  "So am I."

  "No, where are you really from?"

  This can go on forever.

  Others ask, "How often do you go to China?" They're astonished that I've never been there, and want to regale me with descriptions of their own trip to China in 1989. So their question was a cover for a travel monologue.

  I've come to realize people's questions about my race reveal a lot more about themselves than it does about me.

  On the other hand, in the last few years,
I've figured out how much my family has subconsciously influenced me. Although I've been educated as a scientist, I'm very superstitious. I'm 26 years old, and I still don't step on cracks in the sidewalk. Just one of my quirks, I thought, until my mother told me four was an unlucky number because in Chinese, it sounds like the word for death. I'd never thought much about the number four, but I started avoiding it. Just in case. I even counted the leads in my mechanical pencil before each exam and made sure there were seven or eight but never four.

  I rejected the stereotypes—ah, Asian girl, therefore, must be a rich math whiz with good legs—but clearly, culture had influenced my personality. Because Alex didn't talk about it, because he dressed and acted and spoke like an average guy, I hadn't thought culture was a big deal to him. From Tori's comments, it was probably the opposite.

  "Huh," I said, finally.

  She flicked her eyebrows at me with her trademark economy of words.

  "It's just not me," I said. "Keeping it all bottled up inside. I've tried it. I just end up obsessing and, uh, exploding." Compared to her silence, it seemed immature. Cultural differences again. To change the subject, I peered into a box by the wall. Even though it was marked "Study," it was filled with interview clothes. "Geez, that's useful," I said.

  Tori checked her watch. "I should go soon." She surveyed the room. "I wish I could help more."

  "That's okay. You've done enough slave labor. We'll have to do something fun next time."

  She smiled wryly as we waved goodbye.

  I was overwhelmed by the chaos when I returned to the living room. The bedroom wasn't too bad. I'd unpacked some day-to-day clothes, and left the other boxes to be dealt with later. The bathroom was in order out of necessity, and boy, I was glad to have all my face-cleaning solutions and choice of hair conditioners again. The kitchen I was mostly deferring to that nebulous tomorrow when I'd have free time. As long as I had the basics, like some cutlery and dishes, a milk pitcher, and a can opener, life was pretty good.

  However, the living room suffered from the "dump everything here and start unpacking" syndrome. Three walls were stuffed with boxes, with tunnels to my desk and futon. The desk had become a collecting ground for fragile things like flower vases and jewelry boxes, as well as important papers and my laptop. I could hardly see Henry.

  I liked working with my hands. Medicine is mostly mental work. You can spend all day crouched over a book, and by the next morning, at least half the knowledge has leaked out and you have to learn it all over again. But a bookshelf doesn't usually tumble down unless you're a mighty poor builder.

  I levered the frame upright and screwed in the centre shelves. The bookshelf was now much more stable. I filled it with medical books. Get thee away from me, chaos!

  I'd managed to empty four or five wine boxes. I collapsed the boxes for recycling. We only had two lousy blue recycling bins for two entire apartment buildings. Last I checked, the two bins, each about the size of three milk crates, were overflowing with plastic jugs and, yes, cardboard boxes. With everyone moving July first, there was a ton of garbage.

  I shoved the boxes under my arm and trundled down the stairs, through the main foyer, and down a second, short, set of stairs to the basement.

  I pushed open the double doors, both of which were covered in flaking, gunmetal grey paint. A bare fluorescent light bulb glowed above my head. Cars had pulled up snugly to the concrete wall. The concièrge had told me to park as close as possible, to minimize the chance of another car taking off my bumper.

  Someone had left the garage door on my left yawning open again. I had complained to the concièrge about the unlocked, often gaping, garage doors. He'd pointed out the foot-high white letters spray-painted on the inside: FERMEZ SVP, CLOSE THE DOOR! I conceded that the one on the right, underlying the adjoining building of the Mimosa Manor, was usually closed. Perhaps only half the people here were literate.

  Evening had fallen. Through the open door, I could see the fuzzy outlines of pine trees, black against the grey-blue sky. At least the breeze dampened the smell of rotting food and damp cardboard.

  I advanced on the three garbage cans and two recycling bins next to the open door, and tucked my own cardboard between the overflowing blue boxes and the wall. I brushed the dirt off my hands and stepped toward the garage door, my hand already outstretched to pull it closed.

  A shadowy figure appeared in the mouth of the garage. "Hi Hope," he said.

  I screamed.

  Chapter 21

  "It's me, Alex!" the shadow exclaimed. He stepped closer to the 60-watt bulb, illuminating his forehead and his shaggy chestnut hair.

  It looked like Alex. It moved like Alex, with a casual, shambling gait. It sounded like Alex. My heart slowly re-entered normal sinus rhythm. " You scared the hell out of me!" I yelled at him. "Why can't you just ring the doorbell like everyone else?"

  He took a half step back. "Yeah, I see that." His hands remained outstretched, but didn't touch me. Although he smiled, his grey eyes were wary. "I just wanted to talk to you."

  I eyeballed him until he stuck his hands back inside his pants pockets. I asked, more normally, "Why didn't you go by the front door?"

  He sighed. "I did. But I saw you through the window. You were heading downstairs, so came down to meet you."

  Plausible but pat. "You shouldn't tell me it's a bad neighborhood, and then sneak up on me in the dark."

  "Okay, okay. Mea culpa. Walksafe. Take back the night."

  I had to laugh then. So did he. He gestured at the garage, encompassing the oil spills on the floor and the junk along the walls. "Clearly, I was wrong about your neighborhood. A fine ambiance. Who said romance is dead?"

  I laughed again. "Don't push it." I cocked my head to one side. "I think they said chivalry is dead." I gave him a significant look. "I see no evidence to the contrary."

  He narrowed his eyes. "You just want me to kiss you feet again. I would be delighted."

  I giggled.

  "But first..." He backtracked and reached for the cord on the handle of the garage door and yanked it down. The door rumbled shut. He waved at it. "Chivalry."

  The enclosed garage suddenly felt quieter and more intimate. I was conscious of how close he was standing to me. His grey eyes were intense. His breath warmed my cheek. I tried to tell myself I was intoxicated by the smell of putrefying fruit in the garbage bin. I turned away.

  "Hope." A note of such yearning rang in his voice.

  It made me want to throw myself in his arms. I dug my nails into my palms. Just say no. You can do it, Hope. Café. Mireille. Bad boy. Bad boy.

  I didn't touch him. But I heard myself asking, "You want to come up?" Knowing it could spell doom.

  He stood so close, I could almost feel him nod.

  I walked faster, twitching open the first door. He grabbed it mid-swing and opened it fully. "After you."

  He made sure to beat me to the second door, too. I took a deep breath. Ryan used to open doors for me all the time. It wasn't such a big deal, but with Alex, every move felt seductive.

  Café. Mireille. Run away. I could make a poem out of this. Resist, resist. I could feel his eyes travel down my body as I mounted the stairs to my apartment. His hand trailed near mine on the banister. He wasn't even touching me, but my nipples were hard.

  No. Resist. Take a cold shower. But it made me think of Alex with me, his hair plastered to his head, rivulets of water coursing down his skin, his eyes bright with love for me.

  Aside from the sex, I just liked being with Alex. He made me laugh. He made me think.

  Some people, like Mireille, make the hair stand straight up from my head. I liked Tori, but she was so quiet, it was a bit of an effort to communicate.

  Alex struck just the right chord. When he wasn't running off or mentioning Mireille, that is.

  Alex leaned against the doorway as I fumbled with the lock. My keys jangled into the silence. I threw open the door, hitting the light switch on the left. "Sorry it's such
a mess."

  "Sure is." He raised his eyebrows.

  "Thanks a lot!" I snapped. He was one to talk.

  He shook his head. "Hope, you were the one who said it."

  I slipped off my sandals and crossed my arms. If we were fighting, it was easier to stave off the attraction. "Yeah, I know. But it takes one to know one."

  He inclined his head. "Guilty."

  Now I was even more embarrassed, remembering his apartment. I'd basically never made it out of the bedroom.

  His grey eyes were steady. "Anyway, I came to apologize."

  I stiffened. "Well, okay. About what, exactly?"

  He ran an aggrieved hand through his hair. "Sorry I freaked out that day."

  I waited.

  He shifted from foot to foot. "You don't know me very well, but I hate people looking through my stuff. It makes me crazy. But"—he shot me a smile—"when I cooled off, I figured it was probably a mistake."

  "Probably?"

  "Definitely a mistake. Sorry for going ham on you. Like I said, I'm ready and willing to kiss your feet or do anything else—"

  I shook my head. "Going ham?"

  "Going ape on you. You know. MC Hammer style."

  I didn't know anything about MC Hammer except "Can't Touch This" and the unforgettable pants I spotted on YouTube. I changed the subject. "You and I both think the problem is I don't know you well enough. So teach me about you."

  He leaned in close, his voice husky. "I thought you'd never ask."

  I took two steps away and bumped into a box, but evaded his steadying hands. "Not like that."

  "Like what, then?" His face curled in irritation. "Can I come in, at least? Or do we have to do this standing in your front hall?"

  I shrugged. "Hey, you thought the garbage basement was romantic." For once, I felt like the one holding the aces. It made me more relaxed. Alex wasn't that good-looking. His nose was a bit long. He was shorter than one of my towers of boxes. He got by on charm.

  But I was building an immunity to it. I hoped.

  "Fine."