Four Chambers: Power of the Matchmaker

by Julie Wright

  “Awwww, sweet and cozy? How is that a problem?”

  I glared at her. “The difference between the sweet awwww and the horror stricken ahhhh is similar to the difference between the romantic poet and creepy, letter-writing stalker.”

  “So hot-doc is your stalker? And that’s bad because . . .?”

  “Because stalkers are generally considered bad, Becca.”

  “Are they?” She looked up from the vials of blood we’d taken to go down to the lab for testing “Even when they’re hot? Because seriously, I would let that man stalk me any day.”

  “Who can stalk you?” Camille, one of the orderlies, asked.

  “Don’t you have someone to shave?” Becca crossed her arms over her chest. She was a little antagonistic to unruly orderlies, but in general, she liked Camille.

  Her liking Camille meant that Camille didn’t much care if Becca looked like she might get bossy. “Who’s Dr. Stone’s stalker?”

  “The hot new doc,” Becca supplied before I could shut her up. Did she really spill that information to a snoopy orderly?

  “Not the new hot doc!” I insisted. “Not that I think he’s hot or anything, but that I mean he is not stalking me.”

  Becca shot a look to Camille. “That isn’t what she said a second ago.”

  I wanted to growl, face-palm, and stomp off to sulk somewhere, but leaving Camille in possession of such information was not an option.

  “What I meant was, Dr. Covington is not stalking me. He’s my friend. Only my friend. We’ve been . . . buddies for years. We did a photo shoot for his sister once, a long time ago. So I was just saying that people might think he’s stalking me if they ever see the picture. But he isn’t. Because we’re friends. Just friends.”

  Becca and Camille shared the sort of facial expression one gets when one is very sick with stomach cramps or when one is in serious doubt. “That is definitely not what she said a minute ago,” Becca said.

  Where I had worried before about people thinking we were too friendly together if they saw us in the halls, now them seeing us friendly seemed imperative. Miss Pearl would not like me botching up her assignment to make him feel welcome by painting him as a creeper. Nothing could stop the rumor mill faster than me working hard to establish Everett and myself as the very best of friends.

  So when I met Everett for our walking lunch, I smiled wide enough to force that smile to touch my eyes whether I felt actual happiness at seeing him or not.

  But the thing was, when I saw him, I did feel actual happiness.

  He came bearing Starbucks and Pockets Pizzas.

  “These are bad for you, you know,” I said.

  “I absolutely know. My mother refused to buy them for me when I was a kid.”

  “My mom too.” I took the proffered Pocket Pizza and, as had become our habit when consuming food or drink together, we tapped them to each other in a toast and bit in without any trace of guilt or shame.

  Our mothers would have been scandalized.

  The knowledge of that made the hot pocket taste that much better to me. “Pepperoni,” I said. “Perfect.”

  “It’s my favorite of the mystery meats. So where do you want to start your tour? I’ve got an hour.”

  I smiled. “Let’s start at the beginning.” I took him to the neonatal unit. Nothing had an earlier beginning than that. Though he had been taken to the unit by someone in Admin on his first day, he hadn’t been introduced to everyone. I made sure to make introductions to my long-time friend from our pre-med days.

  “How often do you end up with work in the NICU?” he asked me once all introductions were made and people went back to their work.

  “Not terribly often. I’ve had a few cases that brought me this way, but none of these patients are mine currently.” With the permission of the neonatologist, we peeked into an isolette at one of the sleeping infants. “It’s a tough way to make a beginning in the world.”

  “But kind of awesome too,” Everett said. “Twenty years ago, all the equipment here wouldn’t exist. These babies wouldn’t have the same chances. It’s kind of awesome.”

  I agreed.

  From there, we meandered through the halls splashed in kid-friendly colors and designs and visited several other departments where not all the staff had been there when he’d been introduced the first time. Most everyone already knew Everett, even without having met him. His reputation had gained a lot of popular traction. Everyone loved him—or at least liked him. And the few patients we visited along the way that belonged to him were thrilled he was their doctor.

  In many ways, seeing the hospital through his eyes made me feel like he was the one giving me the tour. The new perspective made the entire place a little shinier. When our time was up, I dropped Everett back where I’d found him.

  Before I could leave though, he said, “Hey! What time are you out of here tonight?”

  “Kinda late,” I answered.

  “Me too. Want to go out and get a kinda late dinner together somewhere around here?”

  He held my gaze for a moment while I debated and also while I wondered why I debated. “Sure,” I said.

  “Great. I’ll meet up with you kinda later then.” He laughed like he’d made a great joke.

  When he was gone, I grudgingly laughed like he’d made a semi-decent joke.

  “So. How are things going?”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Miss Pearl,” I had to make a grab for my stethoscope before it clattered to the ground. “You scared me.”

  “So it would seem.” Her dark hair was tied back into a ponytail and she wore scrubs with dragons that grinned mischievous smiles. Fitting even if it seemed a little out of the ordinary for admin to be in scrubs. That mischievous smile was echoed in Miss Pearl’s own grin.

  “Things are fine,” I said. “It’s nice to reconnect with Everett. He’s a good friend from the past, you know.” I wondered if she had seen the picture on his wall yet. She was bound to at some point.

  “Yes. An interesting past the two of you share.”

  Camille hurried past on her way to somewhere, clearly in a rush,, but she had enough time to smirk at me on her way by. “It’s not that interesting,” I said, feeling a little insecure about her emphasis on the word interesting.

  “You have an appointment right now, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I do, actually.” My stomach flipped a little at her reminder. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten or that I’d planned on getting to the appointment late. It was that she had stopped me and the idea of putting her off—even for a good reason—made my skin prickle.

  “With the Henderson boy?”

  “Yes,” I said again.

  “He’s so tiny for his age.”

  He was tiny. In some ways that might have served his excessively weak heart well.

  “I’ll go with you,” she said.

  We turned in the direction of the clinic, with her content to chatter at my side. I’d almost tuned her out while thinking of Jamin Henderson and his inner fire and strength that did not make itself known physically, but came out loud and clear in personality and sheer gumption.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say? A red string?”

  “Yes. The red string of fate. You and Everett cross paths too often to be coincidence. In China, there was a legend or myth that said the gods sometimes, for purposes of their own, tied people together with their red string of fate. They tie your wrists or your ankles to the one you are destined to meet in your life, the one you are destined to be with in order to change the world for good.”

  Which was not what I’d been expecting her to say at all when she talked about us crossing paths. I held up my hands and turned them in various directions, trying to make a joke of her observations. “No string here.”

  “You can’t see it, of course.” She scoffed at me. “It’s invisible.”

  I smiled and tried very hard to be patient with this strange sort of mystical nonsense. I didn’t have time for magica
l voodoo. I was a doctor. Miss Pearl was admin for heaven’s sake. Everyone knew admin never had any kind of imagination.

  I tried to keep my face passive so Miss Pearl wouldn’t know what I’d been thinking.

  Sometimes I wondered why Miss Pearl took such an active interest in my life. She was likely one of my dad’s friends, sent to spy on me, and my mom probably slipped her money every now and again to get Everett and I married off. My mother would love to have me marry a doctor. Becoming a doctor was not nearly good enough, not for my mother, not when she wanted me to have the time and freedom of a woman with a rich husband.

  When I saw her last, I told her I could afford my own Versace. She said I purposely missed the point. But she was wrong. It wasn’t on purpose. I simply just didn’t get the point.

  “You and Everett are unique.” Miss Pearl brought me back to the conversation at hand.

  Ah, yes, magical red string. “So who’s stringing us along?” I asked, trying to be good-natured about the whole thing.

  “Yuè Lǎo, the old lunar matchmaker god, who is in charge of marriages.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Did my mother send you?” I had to ask. The question was fair. Who else cared enough to worry about my dance card being full?

  I stopped laughing when Miss Pearl scowled. “Your mother is simply benefitting from a lucky coincidence.”

  “What is this coincidence?” I asked.

  “The two people connected by the red thread are destined lovers, regardless of place, time, or circumstances. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never break. Here in the West, they call this a soulmate or a destined flame.”

  Do not laugh, Andra Stone, I thought to myself.

  “Do not laugh, Andra Stone,” Miss Pearl said out loud, startling me a little that she seemed to know my thoughts. “You’ll see. When fate brings you together again and again, it might just mean the universe is trying to tell you something.”

  “Or it might mean we’re both working in the same narrow field, and meeting up is inevitable,” I tried to reason.

  “I like my theory better.”

  I smiled at Miss Pearl. How could anyone not smile? The ideas she spoke of were preposterous. Yet she seemed pretty dogged in her determination regarding them. “It’s okay for you to like it, but you have to admit, your theory is a little . . . outdated.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Love my house, love the crow on it. That’s a Chinese proverb that says, you get exactly what you see.” She nodded to the clinic door. “Get to work. And remember, I still expect you to take care of Dr. Covington.”

  “I won’t forget what you expect.”

  How could I?

  Hiding my grin proved more and more difficult the longer she kept talking. I’d never had a conversation on folklore with any of my peers before. The whole thing had been totally hilarious, even if it was a little disconcerting.

  But as I worked throughout the rest of the day, I kept having the feeling that I had to give my hand an extra tug to make it do what I needed, as if it really was tied up with some red string or whatever.

  At the end of the day, I stood in front of my window and tried to massage some feeling into my neck from bending over little people all day long. “This is what comes from not sleeping enough.” I said out loud to my office.

  “Don’t tell me you thought this job would get you a regular sleep schedule. You should have been a banker if you wanted that.” Everett stood in my doorway, smiling at me and looking very much like the hot-new-doc rumor touted him to be.

  I glanced at my wrist and frowned. No red strings, Andra.

  “You okay?” he asked when I looked up and was apparently still frowning.

  “I’m great. You ready to go?”

  He nodded with gusto. His eyes sagged, and I felt a little guilty to be pulling him away from going home and getting sleep, but he’d invited me, not the other way around.

  We walked in silence at first, but the silence didn’t feel like the kind that had to be filled. Everett had always been like that for me, a space of relief, no pressure.

  I frowned again.

  Except for the time I mentally snapped after losing my scholarship. And then again when he stole my apartment. And then the last time when he had a girlfriend and didn’t show up to my grandmother’s funeral.

  Those were lucky recollections because I felt too comfortable and too glad to be in his presence again, too much like fate had tried pulling a fast one on me.

  “I think there’s an opening for a surgeon.” Everett said finally.

  I experienced tachycardia because my heart rate had to be more than one hundred beats per minute. “I think you’re right. Are you going to apply?”

  He grinned a little sideways grin at me. “Will you still be my friend if I end up as your competition?”

  “I’m not a total frosty tyrant yet. Of course you should apply. I don’t know why I asked if you were. You would be an excellent addition.” I was proud that I hadn’t even missed a step while spewing any of those half-truths and sorta lies.

  Because I felt a little like a frosty tyrant when it came to my career. I wanted the position a lot. The competitive side of me hated to lose at anything—especially not at the one thing I had worked my whole life for. But then I did also believe he should apply, and that he would be an excellent addition.

  Was he my competition really? His newness to the hospital counted as a mark against him. “Don’t worry, Andra,” he said. “Although I plan on applying, there is no way they’d ever favor me over you.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. You have scary good skills with a scalpel.”

  “So do you.”

  We fell quiet again.

  We didn’t walk that far, just to Bertucci’s Brick Oven restaurant. We’d frequented the one over at Faneuil Hall a lot back in the days when we were nothing but study buddies. I was glad of the nearness. It would keep us from being out too late so there was a chance of getting some sort-of sleep.

  We entered the restaurant and got settled before Everett steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them. “Okay, you first.”

  “Me first what?”

  His eyes glinted with more gold and seemed to match his playful mood. “How many hearts have you broken since we last were together?”

  I actually laughed. That was definitely not the direction I imagined our first dinner conversation going. First? Does that mean I anticipate more? “Why do you think I’m going to tell you this information?”

  “Because it’s therapeutic. C’mon who else are you going to tell?”

  “I have tons of friends I can tell,” I said.

  “Yes but none of your other friends will make you laugh and feel so good about breaking hearts while breaking up. C’mon. It’s a fun game.”

  I threw my straw wrapper at him. “It’s a weird game to play with your ex.”

  “That’s what makes it more fun. Do you want me to go first?”

  I considered this. I was kind of curious about his dating habits after me. I was desperately curious about Liz. If he wanted to be all open and weird about it, fine. I was in. “Sure. Go ahead.”

  He picked up the straw wrapper I’d thrown at him and rolled the white paper into itself. “Well . . . There’s Liz who all but put an extermination order on me the day she showed up at my house to find you there.”

  “And who can blame her?”

  He nodded. “Exactly. So she spent the next several months trying to convince me that I was wrong about her and me, and the only reason she actually gave up was because I moved. Okay. Now it’s your turn.”

  “Uh-uh. It’s still you. I already knew about Liz, so she doesn’t count.”

  He’d been tightening the paper into itself. At those words, he flicked it at me. But he went again anyway.

  By the time we were done with the “game” as he called it, I learned that he’d dated a gymnast named Michelle, who dislocated her shoulder while she wa
s trying to show off to him by using a crumbly rock wall as a balance beam. He tried to get her to go to the doctor immediately since a fourth of all dislocated shoulders have a related fracture, but she only laughed it off and insisted she was fine because she was dating a doctor, which she insisted was close enough. The shoulder did turn out to be fractured, and he couldn’t date her anymore after she’d blatantly ignored good sense. He’d also dated a lawyer named Lara, who got along too well with his sister Riley. There was an events manager who traveled all over the world and apparently kept boyfriends in several of her regular haunts; another doctor who involved herself in practices Everett considered unethical for a doctor, though he wouldn’t tell me what those practices were; and an elementary school teacher who complained a lot about the unfair system that allowed doctors to make more money than teachers.

  During that time, Everett learned that I dated a concert pianist named Michael, who told me that my musical talents were so low that I should just stick to playing the radio and making the choice not to sing along for the good of all society. Everett actually got mad about that guy and rushed to defend my vocal honor by saying he’d never heard anyone who sang as beautifully as me. The only time Everett heard me sing was when we were on the Charles River and we sang a duet from the play "Wicked" together, but I appreciated him sticking up for my vocal chords.

  I told him about dating a professor named Terrance, who taught literature and refused to talk to me again when I told him I hated George Orwell’s 1984. Even after I explained that I understood the importance the book has in society but that I just didn’t like it for me personally, he continued on into a heated one-sided debate over all the many attributes that made the book the finest thing in literature since Shakespeare. Everett did not blame me for dumping that one, but he interrupted me when I mentioned my last semi-serious boyfriend.

  Interrupted me and leaned in as though vastly interested. “You dated a busker? As in one who busks?”

  “The very same.”

  He stared at me a long moment, took a bite of his pizza, then stared at me another long moment. “Did you have to pay for the dates?” he asked finally. “I mean, did he borrow money for rent?”