Falling

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  “It was a while ago,” she said cautiously, not liking where this was going.

  “I signed Sven up for one—you can take his place,” Leila said, confirming her suspicions.

  Isobel started to protest, that she was much too experienced, much too senior, much too not interested in going to stupid security courses, but she was interrupted by Leila’s cell phone. “It’s not up for discussion,” Leila said curtly before she disappeared to answer the call.

  When Leila came back, Isobel was deep in inventory lists and field reports from Chad. Her grandfather, Henri, who’d died in Chad, had left behind reams of notes in his dry, archaic French. Idris Toko, and all the doctors who had preceded Idris, had also sent regular reports back to Medpax over the years. All this meant three decades’ worth of fascinating reading on malaria treatments, cholera outbreaks, and the constant battle against undernourishment. Isobel couldn’t help but feel proud. This was her family’s legacy, after all.

  “Guess who that was on the phone,” Leila said from the doorway.

  “The pope? The king? I don’t know,” Isobel replied absentmindedly. She had found an old newspaper clipping. Her mother and grandfather outside the hospital in Chad. Simple buildings. A jeep. A vast, sandy landscape.

  “Alexander De la Grip. He wants to meet you.”

  Isobel looked up from the folder. “Is that a joke? Why?”

  “He wants you to tell him about Medpax and explain why his foundation should give us money.”

  Isobel had been so sure she had blown it. Had actually been relieved not to have to see him again.

  “Can’t you do it?” she pleaded. “Considering how I acted last time.”

  Leila leaned against the door frame again. “But he wants to meet you.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “You must have made an impression on him.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it. It’s just that he annoys me.”

  “This isn’t like you, Isobel.”

  “Fine, I’ll go see him. But I just want to say, on record, that I hate this, having to suck up to someone like him just to get money,” she said, knowing she had already lost.

  Leila snorted. “I just don’t understand the issue here. I’ve seen you fawn over people before. What’s the problem?”

  “Nothing. Aside from the fact that I’m used to dealing with older men. He’s so young,” she said, knowing even as she spoke that it was a ridiculous excuse.

  Leila gave her an incredulous look. “Alexander De la Grip is rich and he’s hot,” she said slowly, with emphasis on each syllable. “He turned twenty-nine this past January, so that makes him twenty-two months younger than you.”

  Isobel didn’t ask why Leila had memorized that fact. Leila stored masses of information in her super-brain. She was like a data bank on the people she met, their qualities and weak points.

  “I’ll give him a call then.” Isobel sighed. She wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. He would probably be drunk, was no doubt planning to humiliate her in any number of ways.

  “No need.” Leila turned her wrist and looked at her watch. “He’ll be here any minute.”

  “Here?”

  “Now you’re just playing dumb. Count Alexander De la Grip, Sweden’s most coveted bachelor, according to verified sources, is on his way here. And you, Doctor Sørensen, need to be on your very best sucking-up behavior.” Leila looked her up and down. “You should know that if you didn’t dress like a pious social secretary and didn’t criticize people the moment they turn out to be less moral than yourself, you could bring in a lot of donations.”

  Isobel drew for breath. “I don’t criticize people, do I?” she asked, offended. She decided to ignore the comment about her dress sense for the moment. “You make me sound like some anal psych case.”

  Was Leila right? Was that what she was like? No, criticizing Alexander De la Grip was practically a civil duty, but otherwise she wasn’t a moral snob. Was she?

  “Isobel, you’re the best doctor I have ever known. No one is as good with their patients as you. You’re warm, empathetic. If someone is dying or ill, you’re the one they want at their side. But even the people who won life’s lottery can actually be okay. You can’t judge someone just because he was born rich. Alexander De la Grip is a person. More important, he’s one we need.”

  Isobel hadn’t realized how obvious it was that she tended to—occasionally —look down on people who sailed through life. It was embarrassing. Her entire identity rested on the notion that she didn’t distinguish between people, but here was Leila, poking at her most vulnerable spot. Though that was Leila in a nutshell. She lived to push people’s hot buttons

  “Okay,” Isobel mumbled.

  “Don’t be so hard on him.” Leila came into the room and put a hand on Isobel’s shoulder. “And don’t be so tough on yourself. He looks good, you’re single. Try to have a bit of fun.”

  “You’re not telling me I should use some kind of female charm?” If there was one thing Isobel despised, it was women who batted their eyelashes to get what they wanted. “If I start to act like an idiot, you’ve got carte blanche to analyze me to death.”

  Leila rolled her eyes. “I mean that if you listen within, you’ll realize it might even be fun.”

  Listen within. It was Isobel’s turn to roll her eyes.

  “Sometimes I think that psychologists are the worst occupational group in the world.”

  “Not at all,” Leila replied, unfazed. “There are much worse. Politicians. PR types. Passport police. And those are just the ones starting with p.”

  “Thanks for your input,” Isobel said. She was petty enough to make sure she sounded cool and collected. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

  “Isobel . . .” Leila began, but then she shook her head and sighed. “I’ll send him in when he gets here.”

  “No,” said Isobel, getting to her feet. “I’ll wait in the lobby.”

  She wanted to take back control of the situation. Leila could be a pain in the ass when she decided to root around in your psyche, but she was right about one thing. Isobel was driven by a desire to do what was right, what was important, and she didn’t want to be fumbling about on the edges of morality. It was important to see the bigger picture, and in this instance, that was the future of Medpax. So. She would put on some lipstick and do what she was good at when she really put her mind to it. She would charm that rich good-for-nothing into giving them what they so badly needed. Money.

  Alexander wouldn’t know what had hit him.

  Chapter 7

  Alexander looked up at the building on Sibyllegatan, one of the city’s most expensive and exclusive streets. A flag bearing the Medpax logo hung from the façade. Fancy address, he thought as he studied himself in the elevator mirror. He hadn’t partied the past few days, hadn’t even gotten drunk, and he looked refreshed. It felt odd.

  Instead of drinking, flirting, and fucking, he had kept to his hotel room and gone to bed early each night. This morning he had taken a long shower, eaten a light breakfast, and dressed in one of his best tailor-made Italian suits.

  He ran a hand over his freshly shaved chin and tried to remember when something similar had last happened.

  He had literally hundreds of contacts in his phone, some of the world’s most sought-after women. They were supermodels, film stars, a couple of countesses, and a princess or two. Lovely, sexy women who appreciated the glamor and the notoriety that the infamous Alexander De la Grip brought with him. Several of them were in Stockholm at the moment. All he had to do was call any one of them, or simply walk down to Stureplan, and he would be set. But he hadn’t felt like it. Not since he’d met with Isobel, when he thought about it. That in itself was worth investigating more closely.

  Rather than indulging in his usual vices, he had spent the past few days reading up on humanitarian organizations in general, and Medpax in particular. What he didn’t know now could hardly be worth knowing. Because that was
how his brain worked. He focused on a subject, learned everything, and then quickly got bored of it again.

  He straightened his jacket and put a hand on the elevator handle. Over the past few days, he had gone through all of his mail, come to grips with his finances, delved into aid work, and called a real estate agent. It was profoundly unlike him.

  Maybe he was getting sick?

  He smiled to himself and opened the door. Well, as luck would have it, he was about to meet a doctor....

  The lobby was dark and somber despite the sunshine outside. A young woman with a boyish haircut and a green lace jacket caught sight of him. Alexander walked over to the polished wooden desk. He went all in and turned on the charm.

  “Hi there,” he said, giving her a brilliant smile.

  Her eyes gleamed eagerly. “Hello. My name is Asta. What can I help you with?”

  “I spoke to Leila Dibah,” he started, because he wanted to meet the woman with the husky voice and the impressive efficiency. Leila had sent to his hotel all the documentation and paperwork he had asked for. No fuss, no excuses, just a straight question about what he wanted, and then he had received it. “But I’m here to see Isobel Sørensen.”

  Before Asta had time to reply, a black-clad woman with thick, gold jewelry and high heels came out of a wide doorway.

  “I’m Leila.” She greeted him with a firm handshake. Sensual in a sophisticated way, but also commanding respect, with her piercing gaze and that voice, which made her sound as if she drank whisky for breakfast and chain-smoked the rest of her days away. Words like flint hard, no nonsense, and I eat people like you for breakfast came to Alexander’s mind. He remembered that this general secretary wasn’t a doctor, or a bureaucrat, but a trained psychologist. She didn’t look like any psychologist he had met before, though.

  A moment later Isobel appeared. In contrast to Leila’s refinement, Isobel was wearing virtually identical clothes to the ones she’d had on last time they met. Practical and hideous. And yet there was something about her. It was so amorphous that Alexander had trouble putting his finger on it. But Isobel had a presence. Everyone else disappeared into the background when she was around. Maybe it was her height, maybe her flaming red hair. He had never seen a color like it.

  “Hi,” she said.

  And then something unprecedented happened.

  Isobel Sørensen favored him with a smile.

  A thrill coursed through Alexander’s entire body. It began in his chest, moving backward and outward, up his spine, to his hair and arms. It was unreal. The woman had a movie star smile.

  “Hello again.” Alexander held out a hand, enclosing hers in a firm grip. Isobel’s skin was cool, her fingers almost cold, but when he fixed his gaze on her gray eyes, he saw something glittering. Isobel continued to smile, he continued to hold her hand, and they stood like that for a second or two too long.

  “Isobel will look after you,” said Leila. “Right, Isobel?”

  “Of course.” She withdrew her hand. She seemed completely unfazed by what had, for Alexander, been a handshake verging on the erotic. “This way.”

  Alexander waited politely for Isobel to sit down before he did the same. When she caught him looking at her, she flashed him another smile. Her mouth was fantastic, wide and sensuous, pale pink lips dotted with faint freckles.

  “Is this where you work?” he asked, leaning forward slightly and giving her his full attention. He looked her only in the eyes, didn’t make the mistake of allowing his gaze to fix on her mouth or move down over her body. Plus, he already knew: long, lithe legs, luscious curves. And then those freckles.

  “No, not primarily. I work in a private health clinic. On Valhallavägen.”

  Private? That was unexpected. Private health care was still rare in Sweden, still somewhat of a delicate issue in a country that prided itself on equal health care for all.

  She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. She was wearing flat, canvas shoes, and he wondered if she was one of those women who always wore flats so as not to be too tall. If so, it was a shame. She would be shit hot in high heels.

  “I have a special arrangement there,” she said, and Alexander dragged himself out of his fantasies. “So I can leave at short notice.”

  “Leave?”

  “I also work for MSF—Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders.”

  Three jobs. He barely had one. “But it’s Medpax you’re passionate about?”

  She furrowed her smooth brow. “I don’t like that phrase, passionate about. I’m involved in Medpax in my spare time.”

  “But how do you manage? With all the work. And being out in the field?”

  He had spent the weekend reading about the endless needs out there. She must have seen so much suffering, so many people die. It sounded unbearable.

  “I make sure to remember the times things went well for my patients. The sunshine stories. That’s the reward, and that’s how I cope. Also, you have to have reasonable expectations of yourself.”

  “And you do?”

  She gave him a wry look. One of her feet bobbed. “That depends on who you ask.”

  Alexander crossed his legs and smoothed his perfectly tailored suit, which had cost so much it could probably support more refugees than he wanted to think about. “It all seems so hopeless.”

  “Helping people?” Her tone was mild, but he caught the steel beneath it.

  “It’s so obviously never ending,” he said. “Do you never just feel like you want to give up, go home, and have a drink?”

  “Often, yes. But each of us has to do what we can.”

  That was almost word for word what Gina had said to him. It sounded equally naïve coming from Isobel’s lips. But it was clear she was serious, that helping people was, perhaps, the most important thing in her life.

  Alexander had wondered why Isobel thought so badly of him from the first time they met. It had been last summer. He hadn’t been able to understand her hostility when he was trying to come on to her. But now, it was as though he could suddenly see himself through Isobel’s eyes. She gave up her comfort and her time to help other people. He was a superficial rich man with no interest in anything other than his own pleasure. She was practically genetically predisposed to dislike him.

  “The worst is when you know you should’ve been able to save a patient,” she continued. “So many you could save if only you had access to what we have in any average neighborhood pharmacy. It’s tough.”

  This entire conversation was tough.

  Staying sober and learning about aid, had that really been such a good idea?

  “You look different,” she suddenly said, studying him closely.

  Alexander raised an eyebrow, glad that they had stopped talking about misery and death: “Good different or bad different?”

  She made a gesture to his face.

  “You broke it,” she said.

  He automatically raised his hand to his nose. The plastic surgeon had been either incompetent or hungover, because he really hadn’t done a good job. Still, most people didn’t notice. People paid less attention to things than they thought.

  “I used to box. The other guy got a direct hit.” It had hurt like hell, actually.

  “Do you still do it?”

  “Box? No.”

  He had enjoyed boxing, liked how strong it made him, liked to fight, if he was honest. But there were limits to how often you could have vital parts of yourself broken, punctured, or bruised.

  “Probably sensible. Sooner or later, the head takes a hit,” she said.

  He grinned at her. “I don’t use it all that much anyway.”

  She laughed, an open and sensual laugh that made Alexander’s toes curl in his handmade shoes. It was like talking to a completely different Isobel from the woman he’d met so many times before. This version was like the disapproving and angry Doctor Sørensen’s sexy twin sister.

  “Tell me about Medpax. Tell me why you in particular deserve
my money.”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do?”

  He gave her a sarcastic look. “You’re gonna have to give me more to work with than that.”

  She nodded; it didn’t seem that she had taken offense.

  “My mother and grandfather founded Medpax, but I guess you already know that.”

  “Yes, but tell me anyway. I like to listen.”

  “They were both brilliant doctors.”

  “Just like you?”

  Isobel shook her head. “No, no, those two have always been special.”

  “Are they still alive?” he asked, though of course he knew the answer.

  “Mom is. My grandfather is dead. He died a heroic death.”

  “Sounds like there are lots of heroes in the family.”

  “You have no idea,” she said. “My father died a hero’s death in a plane crash while he was on a mission for the UN. And his father was a Danish war hero. Sometimes it almost feels like it’s expected of me, too. That I should die while I’m doing something really heroic, I mean.”

  A chill went through him, and he brushed an invisible thread from his pants to hide his reaction. “That’s so macabre,” he said lightly. “I would never be able to care so much about something that I died for it. Other than champagne, maybe.”

  And sex, he added silently to himself. Especially sex with this fierce woman.

  Isobel flashed him that new smile, the one he thought he could easily get used to. She was dangerous when she was like this. She made him want to flex his muscles and lay down prey at her feet. If it was an act, then she was damn good at it. When had he last felt that he wanted to impress a woman so badly?