by Sue Margolis
“God, how old were you?”
“Twenty-five.”
She roared with laughter.
When she asked him about his brother, Sam shrugged and seemed reluctant to say very much. “Josh is eight years younger than me and I think he was far more affected by our parents’ deaths than I was. Buddy and Irene loved him as their own, but he kinda went off the rails. These days he doesn’t have much to do with the family.”
She didn’t feel she knew Sam well enough to ask what “kinda went off the rails” meant, so she let it go.
“Sam,” she said, changing the subject, “can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Go ahead.” He had his hands in his pockets and his smile was causing appealing little crinkles to form around his eyes.
“What made you want to specialize in gynecology? I mean it’s a bit…” she struggled to find a word that wouldn’t offend him.
“Weird? Perverted? Misogynistic?” he said, sounding amused rather than offended. “Take your pick. I’ve been accused of all three.” Ruby said that she thought misogynistic sounded a bit harsh.
“I agree,” he said, “but some women believe male gynecologists are power-crazed woman haters who get sexual kicks out of dominating them.”
“I’m not sure I’d go quite that far, but as you know—since I blurted it out the other day when I fainted—similar thoughts had occurred to me.”
“I understand, and I wasn’t upset by what you said.” She could tell by his expression that he meant it. “Women are right to have reservations about male gynecologists. Once in a while you come across a gynecologist losing his license for what is politely referred to as ‘inappropriate behavior.’ The profession—like all branches of medicine—needs more women, but I went into it because mostly you’re dealing with healthy young people rather than the sick and elderly. And if I do get a kick, it’s not from examining naked women, it’s from helping to bring a healthy baby into the world, or knowing that it’s my skill that has made it possible for an infertile woman to conceive.”
He paused. “Sorry, I was getting on my high horse. I have this tendency to lecture people sometimes.” He was looking ever so slightly embarrassed and awkward. Seeing his vulnerable side like this made her feel even more drawn to him. She told him she didn’t think he had got remotely on his high horse and that she could really understand a person wanting to go into a branch of medicine where the joy far outweighs the pain and misery. “And I suppose having lost your parents, you’ve had your fair share of pain.”
She watched him sidestep a toddler. “Hey, little guy,” he said, kneeling down and placing a gentle hand on the child’s head. “Where’s your mom?” In fact, she was no more than three or four paces behind the child. Sam stood up, offered the mother a smile and turned back to Ruby. “You’re right. I’m sure my parents’ deaths had something to do with me not wanting to specialize in something like cancer or heart disease.”
She was desperate to ask him about St. Luke’s celebrity patients and whether he’d treated any of them personally, but decided not to say anything. She knew he was obliged to respect his patients’ privacy and she didn’t want to put him in an awkward position. She didn’t feel she could leave the subject entirely alone, though.
“It’s amazing how those celebs give birth at St. Luke’s and then appear in the newspapers a few days later looking so thin—as if they’ve never been pregnant.”
“I know,” he said, with a despondent shake of his head. “Don’t get me started. They exercise and diet like crazy when they’re pregnant. We do our best to explain the harm they’re doing. But they don’t seem to care. What worries me is that other women see these postpartum pictures, think they should look like that, too, and are starting to copy them. The whole thing is spiraling out of control. I just don’t know what the answer is.”
Ruby was glad and relieved that he felt the same way about this problem as she did. She wasn’t sure how she would have reacted had he turned out to be one of these men for whom women could never be too thin.
BY NOW THEY had reached the pier. They were greeted by a low, rhythmic boom coming from the sound system. It was the kind of noise that seemed to get inside you and make your pancreas wobble. This was accompanied by the heavy metallic clatter of the amusement rides and intermittent screams as the Big Dipper took another dive.
“Is there an arcade?” he said. “I love arcades.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. Follow me.”
They swapped their loose change for tokens and headed for the flashing lights and bleeping Martian sound of the slot machines. Most had been commandeered by boisterous gangs of tracksuited, hooded teenagers. One or two were occupied by men with vacant bloodshot eyes and tatty leather jackets.
“I have a system for working the slot machines,” Sam said. “It’s a sure thing. You hover around a machine and wait until whoever’s playing has spent all their money—hopefully without getting the jackpot. By then you know the machine is due to pay out, so you move in.”
“C’mon,” Ruby said. “Everybody’s tried that and it’s not that simple.”
“Trust me,” he said, with a sexy but distinctly self-mocking wink, “I’m a doctor.”
They waited until one of the tracksuited gangs decided to cut their losses and move on to another machine.
“OK. Watch and learn,” he said. For the next few minutes they stuffed tokens into the machine and lost every time.
“Sam,” she said eventually, watching him shove in another token, “there isn’t an Epstien system, is there?”
“How can you tell?”
This made her laugh. “And you’ve never won the jackpot, have you?”
“Not as such,” he said, staring intently at the spinning fruit. “In fact, between you and me, I’ve never won so much as a dime on a slot machine.”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a rattling waterfall of tokens began spewing onto the floor.
“Omigod,” Ruby exclaimed in disbelief. “We’ve won. We’ve actually won. There has to be fifty quid here.” She found herself flinging her arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek. People playing nearby machines had seen them get the jackpot and had turned to stare. For a moment she thought there was going to be trouble when the tracksuited teenagers, who were still hanging around, yelled out “we woz robbed.” But they simply pulled up their hoods and slouched off.
“See,” Sam said, laughing. “And you laughed at the Epstien system.”
Shaking her head with amusement, she got down on the floor and began sweeping the tokens into a pile. A second later he was kneeling in front of her, doing the same. “We can put them in my bag,” she said.
It must have taken them over a minute to gather up all the tokens.
“Right, I think that’s it,” he said, dropping a final handful into her bag.
She looked round and checked that there were no strays lying on the floor.
“Yep, that seems to be the lot.” He got to his feet, then took her hand to help her up. As her head came level with his, her eyes met his. Neither of them moved. What followed was one of those electricity-charged moments, which left them in no doubt as to what was about to happen. He began by cupping her face and drawing her toward him. Then he planted tiny kisses on her mouth. Before long his arms were tight around her and she was parting her lips for him. When his tongue found hers she felt her stomach flip with desire. He tasted of orange-flavor fruit drink. As she melted into him, she was aware of her breathing becoming much slower and deeper. She wanted him to ravage her here and now among the slot machines. It was only when some more kids yelled out “Gedda room,” that they pulled away, giggling self-consciously.
In the end it turned out they’d won far less than they’d thought. Instead of being £50, it was just over £20. Neither of them minded, though. The surprise and fun of seeing the machine spewing tokens had been enough.
THEY SPENT THE afternoon lazing side by side on the beach
. As they talked he would walk his fingers along her arm or start playing with her bangs. Every so often they would stop talking and start kissing again. Once when they were in the middle of necking, his mobile rang. “I’m sorry, Ruby, I have to get this. It could be the hospital.”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
He placed his finger in his ear to block out the beach sounds. “Hey, how’s it going?…What? When did this happen? Are you OK?” She watched his face darken. Then he stood up and moved away and she couldn’t hear what was being said.
When he came back she thought he looked agitated and preoccupied. “Problem?”
“Umm?” He was miles away.
“The call. Is there an emergency at the hospital?”
“Er…No. It’s just some minor glitch with one of my patients. It’s nothing to worry about. They’re dealing with it.”
She frowned. Sam seemed pretty anxious and perturbed for somebody who had just been told there was nothing to worry about. And did he usually ask colleagues if they were OK? He clearly took his work very seriously.
He sat down again. “You look stressed,” she said gently. “You sure you’re OK?”
“I was up until after two last night delivering twins. I’m just a bit tired, that’s all. Sorry.”
“Hey, you don’t have to apologize for being tired…. Here, I know something that might help.” She began massaging his shoulders. They were hard and knotted with tension.
THEY LEFT BRIGHTON around six. Sam was on call later that evening and needed to be close to the hospital in case there was an emergency. Before they left they went to a restaurant on the boardwalk called The Regent, and blew their winnings on a fish-and-chip supper. After a beer, Sam relaxed and returned to his usual bright self. Ruby forgot about the phone call and his odd reaction to it and spent most of the meal gently teasing him because he’d ordered mushy peas, thinking it was guacamole.
As they pulled up outside her flat, they kissed again. Deep urgent kisses that refused to end. At one point as they pulled away she remembered he needed to collect his jacket. “Do you want to come in and get it?”
“Do you want me to?” he said.
The serious tone of his question made her realize that her question had come out wrong. “What? God. No. Sorry. I meant ‘it’ as in your jacket. The one you left in my flat. I didn’t mean ‘it’ as in…you know…it-it.”
On the other hand, maybe subconsciously (she wasn’t Ronnie’s daughter for nothing) she had meant it-it. And if she had been asking him in for it-it, was it it-it that she really wanted? After all, this was their first date. She might hate herself afterward if she broke her strict no it-it until the third date rule. Then again, she wasn’t sure if she could hold out until then, and the way she saw it, the meal they shared after Connor’s circumcision was technically a date. So, by rights this was their second date. What was more, it had lasted all day—twice or even three times as long as a regular evening date. If she took the number of hours they’d spent together into account, surely there was an argument to be made for this being their third, or even fourth date.
“I think it would be OK if you came up…” she gave him a coy smiley look, “for…erm…the jacket.”
“You sure you want me to come up for the jacket?” he said, playing along with her. “I mean, I don’t have to have the jacket. I can manage perfectly well without the jacket. I am not a man so obsessed with getting the jacket that I would want to put pressure on a woman to give me the jacket. Particularly not on our first date.”
The speech was pure Jerry Seinfeld. He had managed to make her laugh and feel sexy at the same time. “I’m sure,” she said. “I really want to give you the jacket.”
“I KNOW I’VE got some Ray Charles here somewhere,” she said. As she carried on searching through a pile of CDs, Sam came up behind her and began kissing the back of her neck. She felt him slide the wide neck of her peasant top down over her arm. His kisses moved to her bare shoulder. Every nerve ending in her body was tingling. It was as much as she could do to concentrate on looking for the CD.
“Found it,” she said, slipping the CD into the player and placing the rest of the pile on a low shelf.
“Come here, you,” he whispered. Unaware that she had forgotten to hit “start” on the CD player, she turned to face him. The blood was pounding in her head. He cupped her face and drew her toward him. They’d been sharing passionate kisses all day, but this was different. There was an extra urgency about what was happening now, along with an absolute certainty about how it would end.
They moved to the sofa. Gently he pushed her back and soon he was on top of her, his erection hard against her. She let out tiny yelps of delight as he ran his hands through her hair and kissed the tops of her breasts. “Why don’t I get that music going?” he said at one point as they pulled away briefly. Barely taking his eyes off her, he extended an arm over the back of the sofa and just managed to reach the CD player. A moment later a voice was blasting out at full volume and it wasn’t Ray Charles. “I love and accept my body. I am beautiful and vibrant in my uniqueness. I am a child of the universe who has every right to love and be loved. I am capable of finding love.”
No! Panic shot through her. After she’d listened to it the other day, she must have put the Discovering True Love Through Inner Empowerment CD back in the wrong sleeve.
Ruby felt herself freeze. Sam looked up from her breast.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, a bemused look on his face, “but that doesn’t sound much like Ray Charles.”
She swallowed hard as she wracked her brain for a plausible explanation. “Just one of those stupid CDs that you get free with the Sunday papers,” she blurted. “I listened to it the other day when I had nothing better to do, but only out of curiosity. Made me think how wretched it must be for all those pathetic lonely saddos out there who can never get a date.”
“You know,” he said, getting up to change the CD,
“when I was much younger and just getting into dating, I could have done with something like this to boost my self-esteem.”
“Oh, me too. Me too. But luckily those days are long gone. Long, long gone.”
He was searching for the Ray Charles CD when the phone rang. She decided to let the machine pick up. What she didn’t realize was that she had forgotten to set it to silent.
“Oh, hi, darling, it’s Mum. Just phoning up for a chat and to check you’re OK. You never told me how you’re getting on with the affirmation CD? Is it having any effect? Never give up hope, darling. Somewhere there’s a man for you. I promise. Love you.”
Chapter 11
“Omigod, you must have been mortified,” Fi said, clamping the breast-pump funnel to her left nipple. “What on earth did Sam say when he heard the message?”
“Nothing. He didn’t get a chance. He had to rush off.” Ruby described how just as her mother’s call ended, St. Luke’s rang Sam to say there was an emergency and he was needed. Apparently the same patient who had been giving cause for concern when they were in Brighton had taken a turn for the worse.
“Emergency, my aunt Fanny,” Fi snorted. “Probably just some celeb throwing a diva fit and threatening to sue because she’d found a postpartum hemorrhoid.”
“No, I think it was pretty real,” Ruby said. She explained that Sam had sounded pretty uptight while he was on the phone to the hospital and that he’d seemed particularly concerned for the nurse who’d phoned. “I could actually hear her crying on the end of the line and he was telling her to keep calm and not to worry. God only knows what must have been going on for a nurse to lose her cool.”
“You’d cry, too, if you had to cope with these spoiled, self-centered women who can’t cope with the tiniest thing going wrong in their lives. I’d hate to be in Sam’s shoes. He must live in constant fear of a malpractice suit landing on his desk.”
Ruby nodded. That probably explained Sam’s initial anxiety after he got the phone call on the beach.
/> Fi lowered her head and watched milk squirt from her breast and into the baby’s bottle. “I dunno why I don’t just put a bell round my neck, change my name to Daisy and have done with it.” She explained that Saul had offered to take over the night feeds for a while so that she could get some sleep. Since she was adamant that Connor should only have breast milk, she was forced to express it into a bottle.
Ruby offered her an affectionate smile and placed a hand on her shoulder. “C’mon, it won’t be forever.”
“I know. Look, don’t mind me, I’m still fretting about how all these stars manage to stay so slim when they’re pregnant.” Two or three magazines were lying in a pile on the table. She picked up the top one. “Have you seen this?” She was holding this month’s For Her. “There’s an interview with Claudia Planchette. It’s so bloody galling.” She slid the magazine toward Ruby. “Look at the picture of her. Apart from her bump she’s still as skinny as anything. And she has the nerve to say it’s all down to genes. Yeah, right. She’s clearly starving herself and her baby…. On the other hand, there’s no denying the results.”
“Fi, just listen to yourself. Are you saying that a bit of you wishes you had starved yourself when you were pregnant with Connor?”
“No, of course not,” Fi shot back. “Claudia Planchette’s obviously obsessed, but like they were saying on that TV show yesterday, the situation really is getting out of hand and stars like Planchette are to blame. I’ve got pregnant friends who are sane, grounded, professional women and even they are restricting their diets. Have you any idea where this could lead? I’m telling you, Rubes, if this situation gets any worse, we are going to start seeing educated, middle-class women giving birth to full-term babies who are severely underweight and malnourished. Why isn’t somebody doing something?” Fi was so angry and exasperated that her face had become quite pink.
“You’re right,” Ruby said. “But what do you do? Women have to wake up and start seeing this madness for what it is. Until that happens nothing will change.…C’mon, cheer up. Why don’t I pour us a glass of wine?”