by Jae
“Such as?” Hope asked.
“Difficulty focusing, for one thing. Your acquaintance might feel overloaded with stimuli, as if sounds suddenly got louder. Or she might see shadows out of the corners of her eye. It would get increasingly harder for her to function in her everyday life.”
No, that didn’t sound familiar at all. She had no problem focusing on her job. And in the sometimes chaotic emergency department, she surely would have noticed if she’d gotten more sensitive to sounds or visual stimuli. There had been no warning signs, nothing out of the ordinary before she’d accidentally shocked herself with the defibrillator.
“If you talk to friends and family members, they usually say that the patient has become very withdrawn.”
She hadn’t done that, had she? Admittedly, Hope spent a lot of time at work and didn’t socialize much, but it had always been that way. Her daily routine hadn’t changed. She never missed her squash date with Jordan, for example.
“If it’s not psychosis, what else could it be?”
“I didn’t say it’s not psychosis, just that it doesn’t sound typical. Remember that I’m a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, so this isn’t exactly my specialty. Has your acquaintance seen a psychiatrist or a neurologist?”
“Not yet.” Their staff neurologist was actually next on her list. While she didn’t think an EEG would show anything, it also couldn’t hurt. She was out of other options. “Thanks, Mel. I have to go. My shift is about to start,” she said before her perceptive friend could start asking questions about how she was doing.
She ended the call and shoved her cell phone back into the locker. After banging it shut, she marched toward the nurses’ station. At least she had twelve hours ahead of her in which she got to focus on what was wrong with other people.
* * *
Hope was starting to understand why her patients hated being stuck in the MRI cylinder with its loud, banging noises. After twenty minutes in the machine, she began to hate it too. Holding completely still, which she rarely ever did, was giving her too much time to think and to worry about what might be wrong with her.
When the noises stopped and the scanner table slid out of the cylinder, she hopped off.
A few minutes later, she stepped into the control room.
“Good news,” Rob said after he had told the MRI tech to take a break. He gestured to the image on the computer screen. “It’s confirmed. You’ve got a brain.”
Hope let out a growl. She wasn’t in the mood for his jokes. “But you won’t have one in a second. I’ll rip your head off if you don’t tell me what you found.”
He held up his hands. “Hey, don’t worry. Everything looks completely normal.”
Hope walked closer. Finally her elective radiology rotation came in handy. She couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary in the images either. No tumor, no edema, no hemorrhage, and no inflammation. The different structures of her brain looked the way they were supposed to.
“Hey, that’s good, right?” Rob asked. “You look like I’ve just told you you’ve got four weeks to live.”
“No, it’s good. It’s great.” He was right. It should have been a relief, but Hope couldn’t be overly happy about it. At least if they found anything, she could be treated. But the EEG one of their neurologists had ordered on her during Hope’s lunch break hadn’t revealed any abnormalities either.
Hope seemed to be completely healthy. There was no physical reason for her brain to do these weird things—but it did.
She thanked Rob and trudged toward the staff parking lot.
What the hell was she supposed to do now?
Instead of going straight home to her condo just a few blocks away, she kept driving aimlessly, heading northeast on Los Feliz Boulevard. Sometimes, driving around helped her think, but today she didn’t come up with any brilliant ideas.
Before she knew it, she was in Glendale, parked in front of the restaurant where she’d had dinner with Jordan last night.
What the…? She hadn’t consciously decided to drive in that direction. It was as if some part of her brain had taken over and directed her here on autopilot.
Now that she was here, what was she supposed to do? March in there and demand an explanation? But why would Laleh Samadi be able to provide it?
Because everything started with her and that damn defibrillation. It couldn’t be a coincidence that of all the languages in the world, she could now understand Farsi, Ms. Samadi’s native language, could it? Or that she had recognized her brother, even though she’d never seen him before, and that she knew the ingredients of every dish on the menu of her restaurant.
Laleh Samadi was the key to solving this mystery.
So instead of turning around and driving home, Hope remained in her car, observing the restaurant. She felt like a stalker lying in wait. But instead of a camera or a pair of binoculars, she was armed with a myriad of confusing thoughts and bits of knowledge that seemed to come out of nowhere. She drummed a rapid beat on the steering wheel with her thumbs and gazed over at the restaurant.
She wasn’t sure how long she had waited. The chain of lights wrapped around the tall trees in the courtyard still twinkled merrily, revealing the empty tables on the patio. The last guest got into his car and drove off.
Yeah, and you should too. She wasn’t sure if she would duck and hide once Laleh Samadi stepped out of the restaurant—or get out of the car and actually talk to her. What she had to say would sound crazy. It sure as hell seemed like the insane ramblings of one of her drug-seeking patients when she tried to put into words what was happening to her, even if it was just in her own head. What if Ms. Samadi didn’t believe her?
Or worse, what if she does?
Hope realized she didn’t want a confirmation of something strange going on. What she wanted was someone to give her a reasonable, scientific explanation. But if neither the MRI nor the EEG had been able to provide it, she certainly wouldn’t get it here.
This is stupid. When she reached out to start the engine, the lights on the patio went out and the restaurant’s front door swung open.
Hope froze and stared across the street.
A slender figure stepped out onto the sidewalk, but her face was shrouded in darkness.
Her face? Hope repeated to herself. How do you know it’s a woman? It could be Ms. Samadi’s uncle or a male employee. But somehow she knew that it wasn’t.
The person walked down the street. As the figure stepped into the circle of light filtering down from a streetlamp, Hope saw that her sixth sense had been right. It was indeed Laleh Samadi.
Sixth sense? Oh, come on. Stop it with that nonsense. There had to be a perfectly logical explanation. Her subconscious had probably recognized the way Ms. Samadi moved. That was how she’d known it was her when she’d left the restaurant.
Ms. Samadi turned right and quickly strode away from her.
No! Hope couldn’t let her walk away. She didn’t understand it, but each of the inexplicable things that had happened to her seemed to somehow be connected to Ms. Samadi.
Without giving herself time to reconsider, she opened the driver’s side door, jumped out of her BMW, and hurried after her.
Her footsteps echoed through the darkness.
“Ms. Samadi,” Hope called when she’d almost reached her.
Ms. Samadi whirled around and pressed a hand to her chest. “Dr. Finlay! Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s not nice to sneak up on people in the dark? You scared me half to death!”
Hope studied her in the yellow light of a streetlamp. Had she really been scared, or had part of her sensed who was following her? Why would she? You’re the one who’s suddenly one scalpel short of an instrument tray.
“Sorry, that wasn’t my intention. I just…” She snapped her mouth shut, not knowing how she should explain why she had returned to the restaurant.
“Apparently, you liked our food.” Ms. Samadi smiled. “I’m sorry, but we’re already closed.”
“I’m not here for the food.”
“No?” A frown wrinkled Ms. Samadi’s brow. She hesitated as if unsure what to make of this situation. “Then is there something else I can do for you, Dr. Finlay?”
“Yes.” Hope scraped her shoe across the pavement. “For one thing, you could stop calling me Dr. Finlay. I’m not your doctor anymore. Call me Hope.”
“Hope,” she said as if testing out the sound of it. After a moment, she nodded. “Then call me Laleh, please.”
It meant tulip, Hope knew. She wondered who had selected that name. It sounded nice, but in her opinion, Laleh should have been named after a more exotic and beautiful flower, maybe an orchid, not something as ordinary as a tulip.
Christ, are you listening to yourself? Now you’re waxing poetic about flowers!
“So, Hope…” Laleh gave her a quizzical gaze.
Hope stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, weighing every word before she spoke it. She had to be careful and test the waters first if she didn’t want to come across like some nutcase. “I was wondering how you are doing after your catheter ablation.”
Laleh’s sensuous lips formed a startled “oh” as if she had expected an entirely different question. “Um, I’m fine.”
“No episodes of tachycardia?” Hope asked, gladly seeking refuge in the familiar medical terms.
Laleh shook her head. “None. Looks like they got that accessory pathway once and for all.”
“Good.” Hope meant it. She hesitated. “So everything’s back to normal? Nothing unusual has happened since your stay in the emergency department?”
Even in the low light from the streetlamp, Hope saw Laleh’s eyes widen. Her stance shifted, and her spine straightened as if she’d gone into hyperaware mode.
She knows something! Hope was sure of it. She took a step closer.
“Uh…unusual?” Laleh shuffled back a little. “What exactly do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Just something that… I don’t know. Something that made you wonder if you were really…well, healthy…physically and, uh, otherwise.” God, she hadn’t stumbled over her own words that badly since her first clinical rotation during medical school.
Laleh looked left and right as if afraid someone would overhear. “Uh, do you have to work tomorrow?”
What did that have to do with anything? “Yes, I do. But I’m covering the night shift, so I don’t have to get up too early.” That was the reason for Laleh’s question, wasn’t it?
“How about some tea?”
“If I say yes, you won’t serve me course after course of food and drinks until I’m stuffed to the gills again, will you?” Hope pressed her hands to her belly. Her stomach groaned when she thought about the amount of food she had consumed last night.
The tension on Laleh’s face receded as a fleeting smile darted across her features. “I see you understand Persian hospitality. I admit it can be brutal. But no, all I’m offering is tea. I’d like to continue this conversation somewhere less public.”
“Your place or mine?” Hope asked and then immediately wanted to take back her words. “Uh, that didn’t come out the way I wanted.”
Laleh laughed. “My place is closer.”
How did she know that? Hope hadn’t told her where she lived.
Probably just a lucky guess. Just because she, herself, was suddenly aware of things she shouldn’t know didn’t mean that Laleh was experiencing the same.
“All right.” While Hope was desperate for answers, she agreed that it was better to wait until they were in Laleh’s apartment. Wait a minute… How had she known Laleh lived in an apartment? She could very well have a house. Hope shrugged it off. “I’ll follow you. Or did you walk to work?”
“No, not today.” Laleh gestured toward a side street. “I’m parked over there.”
Less than ten minutes later, they parked on the street in front of a two-story apartment complex. The building looked strangely familiar. Had she been in this part of Glendale before? Hope wasn’t sure. She tried not to think too much as she followed Laleh up a set of exterior stairs and along the covered second-floor walkway.
Laleh unlocked the door and entered ahead of Hope.
The lights flared on, casting a welcoming glow across the small apartment.
Again, a strange sense of déjà vu overcame Hope as she stepped into Laleh’s home.
There was no hall; the front door opened directly into the living room.
A Persian rug covered most of the hardwood floor, its vibrant colors—Bordeaux red, gold, and a light blue—standing out against a beige background.
A buttery-brown couch took up almost an entire wall of the living room. A throw blanket was draped over one arm, and a wine-red pillow had fallen to the floor. On a shelf next to a flat-screen television, several family photos warred for space with an impressive collection of DVDs.
Laleh kicked off her shoes as soon as she entered, and after a second’s hesitation, Hope followed her example.
“So, how about some tea?” Laleh walked toward a little kitchenette in one corner of the room. “I have Earl Grey.”
“No, thanks.” She was too nervous to eat or drink anything. “And I swear I’m not taarofing.”
Laleh chuckled. “Why don’t you take a seat?”
Hope took two steps across the living room and then paused. Wait a minute! Laleh had offered her Earl Grey, not the chai they served at the restaurant, as if she knew that was Hope’s favorite. Or maybe she’s just good at guessing people’s tea preferences. She’s a waitress after all.
With this satisfying explanation found, she circled the low cherry-wood coffee table and sank onto the velvety soft couch. She gazed around the room again. It was small, especially compared to her own condo, but it had a homey, lived-in feel that Hope found relaxing, despite the circumstances.
She took a closer look at Laleh’s DVD collection, which included a box set of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, a copy of Disney’s Maleficent, and black-and-white classics such as Casablanca.
When soft footsteps approached, she looked up.
Laleh padded across the Persian rug on bare feet, carrying a tray. A hint of a blush colored her cheeks as she set two glasses of water and a bowl of nuts on the table. “I know you said you didn’t want anything, but I can’t help it,” she said with an apologetic shrug. “I’m Persian.”
They sat on different ends of the couch, with more space than necessary between them.
“So,” Hope said, “you wanted to talk somewhere quieter.” She waved her hand in a so-talk gesture. If she got Laleh to go first, at least she wouldn’t embarrass herself saying something crazy out loud.
“I…” Without looking at her, Laleh picked up the pillow from the floor and held it on her lap as if taking cover behind it. Finally, her gaze flicked over to Hope. “When I was in the emergency department…”
She’d said emergency department, not emergency room, as most laypersons did. Of course, she could have picked up on that listening to the nurses talk to each other. And Hope remembered that she, herself, had also called it emergency department earlier, so maybe Laleh was mimicking her.
“Yes?” Hope prompted when Laleh hesitated.
“Did something happen?”
“Well, after you collapsed in the admitting area, you were in v-fib,” Hope said. “That’s when the ventricles are no longer contracting, but just quivering in a very rapid, uncoordinated—”
“I know what it means,” Laleh said.
“Oh. Okay.” Thrown off stride, Hope tried to remember how she’d meant to finish her sentence. “So, to get your heart back into a normal sinus rhythm, we had to defibrillate.”
“Obviously, it worked, or I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
Hope nodded. “Like a charm.”
“Like a charm,” Laleh repeated. She glanced down and picked some lint off the pillow in her lap. “So nothing out of the ordinary happened to me du
ring the resuscitation?”
She looked up, and they eyed each other like two boxers circling their opponent, neither willing to expose herself and take the first blow.
“Why do you ask?”
Laleh painted invisible circles on the pillow with her fingertip. “Just curious.”
This was getting ridiculous. One of them had to finally take the first step, or they’d still be sitting here tomorrow morning.
“No, nothing out of the ordinary happened.” Even though Hope wasn’t thirsty, she grabbed her glass and gulped down half of her water. “At least not to you.”
Laleh’s fingers stilled on the pillow. “You mean…? Something happened to you?”
Hope emptied the rest of her glass, desperately wishing it were something stronger than water, and then pressed the cold glass against her cheeks, which were burning with embarrassment. “Yes,” she finally said. “The charge from the defibrillator must have caught the deltoid too. That’s the muscle that controls the lifting of your arm.” She slid to the middle of the couch, reached out, and softly touched the rounded contour of Laleh’s shoulder.
Laleh didn’t move away; she just looked down at the hand on her shoulder.
What the fuck? Show her on your own damn body. Hope quickly pulled her hand back. “So when I pressed the discharge buttons, your arm flew up and caught me across the chest. I got zapped.”
“But you’re fine?” Laleh ran her gaze over Hope’s body as if looking for any damage she might have suffered. “No arrhythmia?”
Hope shook her head. “That’s not very likely to happen.”
“But it could if it hit you during the relative refractory period.” Laleh blinked and touched her mouth as if wondering what had come out of it.
Frankly, it made Hope wonder too. Most laypeople didn’t know these terms. “It didn’t,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“No aftereffects?”
Hope hesitated. Physically, she seemed fine, and apparently, she could also rule out a psychosis. Still, something was definitely going on. But if she answered Laleh’s question honestly, she’d come across like a complete lunatic. Did she really want to risk that?