by Dianne Drake
“It’s not that bad. It’s also in your best interests.”
The mischief in her eyes overtook the challenge. “I have a hard time believing that. Especially when I know that you don’t even want to be here. So, what is this one condition?”
“Dinner.”
She blinked. “As in…”
“As in dinner. The two of us, tonight. Or three, if you don’t have arrangements made for Sarah.” He checked his watch. “Three hours from now. You need the rest, and I think the only way you’re going to get it is to either let me sedate you or take you out to dinner. Because, if you really want to give this program your all when it starts in a few days, you’re going to have to be rested for it. The children deserve that. And, you deserve, too. So, it’s your choice. Sedative or dinner? Oh, and so you won’t get the wrong idea, we’ll talk about the camp. I have some ideas I want to go over with you, some things I’d like to try doing with the children. Dinner’s as good a place as any to talk about it.”
“Not a dinner date, but a working dinner?”
“I do work, but I don’t do dates. So, yes, a working dinner.”
“Can I add that to my perplexing list?”
“Agree to dinner, and you can add anything you want to your list.”
She glanced at her own watch then nodded. “OK, then. I’ll ask Dinah if she can look after Sarah for me. But let’s make it four hours. And I’ll cook.”
“But I wanted you to relax.”
“Cooking is relaxing. And I’m anxious to try out the kitchen here.”
“OK, you can cook. But three and a half hours, not four.” She actually held out her hand to shake on the deal and when she did, when he took hold and their palms glided over one another’s, a little tingle leapt up his arm. From his skin to hers, it was the true jolt out of the blue. One he hadn’t expected and, from the look on her face, one she’d also felt and likewise hadn’t expected.
“Static electricity,” she said, pulling back her hand and wiping it down the leg of her jeans. “Common here, in the winter, when the humidity is low.”
“Static electricity,” Mark agreed. “Or…” There was nothing to finish that sentence with, because the implication was one he wouldn’t consider. Not even with a woman as sexy as Angela. And make no mistake, in her tight little jeans, and that pink sweater she was wearing… “Static electricity,” he repeated, trying to snap that last image from his mind.
Twenty minutes later, with Fred on his way to a night of Emoline Putter’s pampering, Mark was directing the unloading of food from the delivery truck, trying to keep his mind focused on the various cans, boxes and sacks. But somehow all this food reminded him of Angela. And Angela reminded him of…well, no other woman he’d ever met.
The problem was, with the exception of his ex-wife, who was unforgettable for so many unpleasant reasons, every other woman he’d ever met was thoroughly forgettable. Every woman, that was, except Angela. And the fact that he was about to organize cases of canned tuna on shelves for her wasn’t good. Not good at all.
“Very nice,” Angela said, stepping into the pantry a while later.
“Nice? That’s all you’ve got to say? I’ve been busting my back for hours, getting everything inventoried off the truck then put away. And I’ll have you know, I went by my own list, not yours.” To prove it, he held up a sheet of paper covered with illegible scrawls.
“Oh, foolish man, thinking your list can top mine.” She arched a critical eyebrow, or tried to, but she couldn’t keep a straight face doing it. “Can you even read your list?”
“It’s perfectly legible.”
She grabbed it from his hands, studied it for a moment then asked, “Looks like doctors’ scrawl to me. So, what does it say?”
Grabbing the list back, he looked, frowned, then nodded. “Put the…um…” Frowned again. “Put the mayonnaise on the top shelf.”
“Except I didn’t have mayonnaise ordered. I make my own—a healthier version than the commercially prepared.” She grinned. “And the only thing I see on the top shelf is rice, which should be on the bottom, as the bags are heavy.”
“Rice, olive oil, mayonnaise…” He shrugged. “It’s still a perfectly good list, and the proof is in the pantry.” He stepped aside to allow her the full view.
Actually, he was right. The proof was in the pantry. The shelves were lined up perfectly, and the pantry looked like a small grocery store. Large cans, large jars, large boxes, all, she noticed, with their labels turned facing out. And they were sitting so neatly he could have measured each container’s position with a ruler. With the exception of only a couple if things that would have to be rearranged, it was perfect. “You’re not compulsive, are you?” she asked, running her fingers lightly over the large jar of gherkins.
“Actually, I’m not the compulsive personality in this room. But I knew that if I didn’t get this in good order, the compulsive personality would make me do it over.” He grabbed hold of his aching back, faked a scowl. “And I’m too tired, too hungry.”
Angela laughed. “Having a little power feels so good.”
His response was to twist the jar of gherkins around until the label faced backwards. “Sometimes disrupting the power is good, too.”
“You really do like to go against the system, don’t you?”
“Mostly when I see that the system needs some going against.”
“And you think I need some going against? Is that what this is about?”
“What I think is that you think everybody needs some going against. And I’m just imitating the teacher.”
That was a fair assessment. She knew that. Recognized it in herself. But in her defense, which she wouldn’t say out loud, she’d had to become like that to survive Brad. Loving the wrong person had been so exhausting, and if she’d relaxed, if she hadn’t always fought against him so much, well…she wouldn’t have come away from him strong. For Sarah, she had to be strong rather then being another one of those casualties who wandered through life never knowing where they were, or who they were. “Sometimes you just have to fight,” she said. “It’s what makes sense at the time, I suppose.”
“But wouldn’t it be nice, Angela, being in a place where you didn’t have to fight?” His voice was gentle, serious. So much so it sent chills up her spine.
“Are you in that place, Mark?”
She knew he wasn’t. The grimness she saw on his face when he wasn’t forcing himself to look pleasant said so much.
“The place I’m in is a dark pantry with a pretty lady who prides herself on pushing the wrong buttons.”
“So it’s OK for you to analyze me, but I can’t do the same to you?” She’d come close to touching something deep, possibly the thing that others knew about him but which he’d never told her. In a way, she wanted to know. But in a bigger way, it scared her, because knowing would take their relationship to a different level, and she truly did not want them to go anywhere other than where they were.
“Something like that. And if you could get a clear look at my face right now, you’d see a scowl. But that’s because I’m off duty. And that’s what I do when I’m off duty. I scowl.”
He’d changed the subject, and it was a relief. Now they could get back to their usual level, the one where they tossed barbs back and forth and took care to make sure none of those barbs were truly sharp. Actually, she liked that place. “You’ve had so much practice doing it, too.”
“Angela!” Ed Lester shouted from outside the pantry.
“In here,” she called back.
Ed, the head of maintenance at the hospital, poked his head inside. “Just wanted to tell you that I’ve got some boxes full of laptop computers. Edith Weston donated them to the program and asked me to bring them up here.”
“Put them in the central storage for now,” she instructed. Then turned to straighten out the jar of gherkins. When she did, Ed shut the pantry door, which automatically turned off the light.
“So, is this wh
ere I asked you if this was planned? You know, you paid him to come and shut us in?”
“Right,” Angela said, fumbling along the exterior wall for the light switch. “My true motive was getting you alone in the dark.”
“It’s happened before,” he said, chuckling. “And I wouldn’t waste my time on the light switch. It’s outside the door.”
Angela sighed audibly as she sidestepped over to the door, taking care not to bump into the stacks of boxes along the wall. Thankfully, the little ribbon of light streaming in from under the door was just enough to give her a dim view as her eyes adjusted. “Well, my fondest wish right now is a nice Alfredo sauce. Linguini and crab. A hearts of romaine salad. Not a fumble and tickle among the saltine crackers.” She found the door, grasped the handle. Turned it and…
“Let me guess. It’s not opening.” Mark stepped up closer to her, like that would change the situation.
“It’s locked. Probably on the outside, like the light switch is. Who in the world would build a pantry this way? I mean, it’s a brand-new construction. They should have known better. Somebody should have…” She jiggled the handle, started to get frantic about it.
Mark laid a hand on her shoulder. “Are you afraid of the dark?”
“No,” she snapped.
“Claustrophobic?”
“No!”
“Then calm down, and I’ll call someone to come get us.” He pulled out his cell phone, flipped it open, and… “No signal.”
That triggered her. Not a panic reaction as much as an agitated one. She didn’t have time for this. And the heck of it was, if they stayed in there all night, no one would even notice. Dinah wouldn’t. In fact, her sister would be thinking all kinds of things…the kinds of things that set Angela pounding on the pantry door. “Help!” she shouted. “Somebody, let us out! We’re in the pantry. Let us out!”
Thirty minutes later, her fists were sore, her voice hoarse, and they were still locked in a dark pantry. Together. “Any ideas?” she asked, slumping down onto the floor next to him.
“Wait.”
“Well, isn’t that just helpful!”
“Give me some tools and maybe I can take the door off the hinges. Unless the hinges are on the outside, too.”
“Good idea. But I don’t have tools.” Angela huffed a loud, frustrated sigh. “It’s after six. Nobody’s here.”
“Someone will miss you shortly when you don’t show up for Sarah. And they’ll come looking. So until then we make the best of it. Relax. Rest. Take a nap…I’ll bet you never take a nap, do you?”
“I don’t want to take a nap!” Not now, not while she was thinking about the fact that nobody would come looking until morning.
“Suit yourself. But it’s awfully tight in here for you to pace, and unless you plan to whip up a miracle dinner in here, that’s about all there is to do.”
Angela reached over to the shelf, grabbed a bag of pretzels, and thrust it at him. “Here’s dinner,” she said in a disheartened voice. “Bon appetit.”
If it weren’t for the fact that the floor was hard and the company was ice cold, it wouldn’t have been a truly bad situation. But his back ached from all the physical labor of getting this pantry stocked, and the cement floor underneath him wasn’t making him feel any better. Neither was the fact that Angela had been sitting off in the corner for the past hour, totally silent, except for the occasional exasperated sigh. He knew she had things to do. And he’d actually intended to go down to the hospital this evening, after dinner, and put in a shift in Emergency. It wasn’t scheduled, but Neil was on and he was sure Neil would have appreciated an evening off to be with his family. Then there was the other thing…he hadn’t seen a patient in a week now, and he missed it. Sure, his intention was to leave medicine behind him. So he was surprised that he was actually itching to get back to the ER for a shift.
“What time?” he asked Angela.
“What time, what?”
“Will Dinah or Eric start worrying about you?”
“About seven.”
“Then we shouldn’t have to wait much longer. It’s just after seven, now, so they should come looking pretty soon.”
“In the morning. Seven, in the morning.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Wish I were, but I’m not.” He didn’t need to know what Dinah hoped they were doing. That would only complicate things. “My sister was going to keep Sarah all night. So…”
“So unless the lodge is haunted and a kindly ghost lets us out, we’re here all night.”
“All night…”
“Could be worse.”
“How?”
“We could be stranded in a cave, or somewhere out in the snow. I’ve spent some miserable nights out in the mountains, on various rescues. Bad weather. Conditions you can’t even imagine. At least here, we have pretzels.” He crinkled the bag. “So, let me see if I can feel around for some of that bottled water I brought in, and we’ll be set for the night.”
“I think I like you better when you’re grumpy,” she snapped. “At least then I know what to expect from you. But now you’re sounding so…so chipper. Like maybe this is what you planned.”
Mark chuckled. “One of the things I stress in my classes is that you have to make the best of a bad situation. Being grumpy, complaining, pacing, worrying…it all just wears you down, and when you’re in a situation you don’t want to be in, you really need to keep your focus. So if you let the surrounding elements get to you, you’re letting yourself get distracted. And on a rescue you can’t let that happen. No exceptions.”
“You can actually think that clearly when you find yourself in a bad situation? Say, you’re rappelling down the side of a mountain and you get stuck. You’re hanging in midair, can’t go up, can’t go down. Ground’s about a mile below you and the top is so far away you can’t see it. Can you honestly say that you’re not going to get distracted by your situation?”
“You want my lecture on that? Because it’s brief and to the point. And what I say will save your life in just that situation.”
“Have you been in that situation?”
“Once.”
“And you didn’t panic.”
“I knew what I was doing.”
“So give me the lecture. Tell me how you hung up there and didn’t get distracted.”
“Well, first, it’s about the equipment. If you climb a mountain on my time, you use an ATC—that stands for air traffic controller. You use it for both belaying and rappelling because it doesn’t kink, it has no moving parts, and it’s easier on the hip skin than a hip belay. It’s also light, inexpensive and safe if you know how to use it the right way.”
“And a belay is?”
“Belaying refers to different techniques used in climbing to apply friction on a climbing rope so that a falling climber doesn’t fall too far.”
“That’s a good thing, I suppose.”
“It is, if you’re falling.”
“And you’ve fallen?”
“Trust me, I’ve fallen. And it was long, and painful.”
“I get the feeling we’re not talking about you falling off a mountain,” she said.
“Isn’t mountain-climbing an analogy for life? You’re either fighting to get to the top, or hoping that once you get there you don’t fall off. And one misstep along the way…”
“Spoken like a true cynic…about life, not mountain climbing.”
His audible sigh filled the dark room. “Not cynical so much as experienced. Mountain climbing’s more predictable than life. If you do everything right, the odds are in your favor. In life, if you do everything right…who the hell knows what happens?”
“That’s why you’re quitting medicine? Because life isn’t predictable?”
“It’s as good a reason as any.”
“But you’re good, Mark. Eric and Neil practically skip up and down the hospital halls singing your praises. And the way you took care of Sarah after the avalanche—
”
“Sarah was fine,” he interrupted. “Every time you brought her into Emergency, she was perfect.”
“OK, then the way you took care of Sarah’s mother by indulging her bouts of anxiety when she brought Sarah in to be examined.”
He chuckled. “You’re a good mother. I worked in a hospital…one of the largest hospitals in California…and I was confronted by bad mothers all the time. You know, mothers who didn’t care, mothers who neglected their children’s medical concerns or totally neglected their children. I saw some pretty ugly things when I was there, so there’s no way I’m going to fault someone who might have brought her child in a time or two more than was necessary.”
“And that’s why you’re leaving medicine? You burned out because of the bad things you had to deal with?”
“No, those were easy because, no matter how bad the situation, I was taking care of someone who needed help, trying to help them get better. As discouraging as the bad cases can be, I never minded giving the care. But the reason I’m leaving medicine is that in one instance I displayed a gross lack of good judgment and killed my father-in-law.”
His words hung heavy in the darkness. So heavy, Angela could barely get her breath. “That’s not the end of the story, is it?” she finally managed to ask.
“The story? There is no story. We were on our way home from a banquet honoring my father-in-law. He was retiring as a cardiac surgeon. Well respected, beloved. A little intoxicated. So I drove us home—him, my wife, me. But I wasn’t in much better shape to drive than he was. Not intoxicated…I don’t indulge. But exhausted. I’d come off of thirty-six straight hours on duty…hard duty, lots of traffic accidents due to heavy fog. And I could barely keep my eyes open. Didn’t want to go with my wife and her father in the first place, but… Let’s just say that better sense didn’t prevail. I went, dozed my way though the banquet and afterwards asked Norah, my wife, to drive when I realized that Tom…my father-in-law wasn’t able. But my wife…well, she liked the privileged life and it was always easier for me to let her have her own way. Never seemed worth the effort to argue with her. And that night she was tired, didn’t want to drive, so I got behind the wheel. Didn’t doze off, mind you. But I was fighting it.